Gift-Wrapped Governess Read Free Page A

fed in the kitchen.’
    Relieved that Melusine was to be given a meal, Seraphina piled her plate with food as high as she deemed polite and sat down.
    â€˜What was your brother’s name?’ His lack of small talk made caution surface, his presence filling the room to bursting.
    â€˜Andrew.’
    â€˜Andrew Moorland? Which regiment did he serve with?’
    â€˜The 18th Light Dragoons, sir.’ Lord, pray that the duke was not a soldier within those ranks as well or her ruse would be up.
    When he shrugged his shoulders and leant back against the chair, she relaxed. In another life she might have asked what regiment he marched with and what the conditions had been like on the Peninsula at that particular time, just to give herself a better idea of the place where her beloved brother had fallen. But that life was long lost to her and a servant who had come to care for children would have no place in the asking of it. So instead she stayed silent. She was aware that he was observing her most closely.
    â€˜Have we met before? You look…somewhat familiar.’
    She reddened again, the curse of her fair skin and blonde hair. She remembered him, of course, for she had seen him once a good seven years ago, before he was injured and when his wife Catherine had conquered the ton with her beauty. Seraphina had been thirteen and gauche when he had stopped her wayward mount from bolting across a newly laid garden off the Row in Hyde Park. She had thought then that he was like the princes in her storybooks, handsome, kind, brave and wonderful.
    He would not remember. It was her mother he would have some recall of. Elizabeth Moreton. A rival of his wife. An Original. Every man who had ever laid his eyes upon her was entranced by her beauty and kindness, except for her husband, Seth Moreton.
    But she wouldn’t think of this now, here in a room full of books and music and the smell of spice, here in a castle far from London and the dangerous jealousies of men. Swallowing, she took a drink of lemonade.
    â€˜There are probably many others who look like me, sir.’
    She had the feeling he wanted to say something else, but did not. The clock at one end of the room ticked loudly into the silence and farther away in the house there was the sound of a crying child. She saw how he tilted his head to listen until the noise stopped.
    A watchful father. In this light the scar on his cheek waswide and reddened—the mark of fire, perhaps, or a wound that had festered and been left untended. She did not dare to ask him of it.
    â€˜Did the agency tell you that you are number six in a long line of governesses?’
    â€˜They did, sir.’
    â€˜And did they tell you of the reason many left without notice?’
    â€˜No.’ Seraphina shook her head. The woman at the agency had cited unresolved differences when she had asked and made it clear that she would divulge nothing further.
    â€˜The Castle is haunted, it seems. The science of such a possibility belies any rational thought, but belief is injudicious and once an idea is seeded…’ She saw resignation on his face, a man who spoke of the supernatural with no true belief in any of it, but she could not leave it just at that.
    â€˜I have always been interested in the metaphysical, my lord, and there is much in life that cannot be simply explained away.’
    â€˜Such as?’
    â€˜Six governesses, perhaps?’
    His brows rose alarmingly and she fancied the dent of a dimple in his chin. ‘Your dog, of course, is named after the Phantom Lady of the de Lusignan family.’
    â€˜I am surprised you should know of this, sir, without having the need to revert to a book. Usually I have to explain the connection.’
    â€˜Melusine, one of three sisters cursed with an undisclosed flaw.’ He shifted on the seat and looked directly at her. ‘I think I comprehend the secret nature of your dog already, Miss