“Only if you come with us.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I have appointments this afternoon.”
Winnie’s eyes widened. “Oh no, I’m so sorry! There was a lady waiting, but I rushed past her and demanded to see you.” She scrambled to her feet and snatched up her reticule. “My dear, you are such a comfort to me! Send me a tutor!” she called as she trotted out the door.
Eugenia ought to have returned to her desk, but instead she stood at the window and watched as Winnie chased her son, still faintly blue, around and around the fountain where Fred was enjoying a bath.
Even through the beveled glass, she could hear Marmeduke’s screams and Winnie’s laughter.
It seemed to her that widowhood would be bearable if your husband left behind a child, a part of himself.
The door popped open behind her. “Ma’am, may I send in Mrs. Seaton-Roby?”
“Yes,” Eugenia said, turning about. “Of course.”
Chapter Two
Later that afternoon
Theodore Edward Braxton Reeve—Ward, to his intimate friends—walked up the steps to Snowe’s Registry Office thinking about how many governesses he’d chased away as a boy.
He had vivid memories of the dour women who had come through the door of his house—and what their backs looked like as they marched right back out the door.
If his father and stepmother hadn’t been traveling abroad, he would have dropped by their house to apologize, if only because his young wards seemed capable of topping his score, and it was a pain in the arse to be on the other side.
Frankly, his half-siblings Lizzie and Otis—whom he hadn’t known existed until a few days ago—were hellions. Devils. Very small devils with trouble stamped on their foreheads. Their governess had been in the household for only forty-eight hours, which had to be a record.
He was greeted by a footman who eyed him sharply from head to foot before ushering him into a reception chamber. Snowe’s wasn’t at all what Ward had expected, from that burly guard posing as a footman to the empty room in which he found himself.
He had envisioned a cluster of women sitting about, waiting to be dispatched to nurseries—and he planned to choose whichever one most resembled a general in the Royal Marines.
This chamber looked more like a lady’s parlor than a waiting room. It was elegantly appointed, from the tassels adorning thick silk drapes to the gilded chairs. In fact, it was about as fancy as any room he’d seen in a lifetime of living in his father’s various houses.
And his father was an earl.
That said, Snowe probably had to put on the dog in order to convince people to pay his outrageous fees. Since Ward needed his young brother to be up to snuff so he could enter Eton in September, he was prepared to pay whatever it took.
A young parlor maid appeared from a side door. “I’m here to see Mr. Snowe,” Ward told her.
It took a few minutes to sort out the salient facts that Mr. Snowe was deceased, that Mrs. Snowe had started the company some years ago, and that no one saw Mrs. Snowe without an appointment.
“They are arranged weeks in advance,” she told him earnestly. “You might request an appointment now, and we would inform you when she had an opening.”
“That won’t do,” Ward said, smiling because her voice took on a reverential tone whenever she mentioned her mistress. “I sacked the governess you sent. I need a new one, but I have a few stipulations.”
Her mouth fell open and she squeaked, “You sacked one of our governesses? A Snowe’s governess?”
He rocked back on his heels and waited until she stopped spluttering and trotted off to inform someone of his crime.
The front window looked down on two oil lamps positioned on the heads of brass winged horses. Never mind the incongruity: the governess business must be wickedly profitable for Snowe’s to own a building in this neighborhood.
Obviously, he wasn’t the only one prepared to pay virtually anything to a woman who could corral wild beasts posing as young children.
He had planned to spend the day working on incorporating a steam engine into the continuous paper-roller that had made his first fortune. But the sketches were left in his study when he set off from Oxford at the crack of dawn.
Ward jammed his hands in the pockets of his breeches and took a deep breath. Much though he hated waiting, he had no bloody idea where to find another registry office. The last thing he wanted was to hire another random woman who would quit or be dismissed a few days later.
From what he’d heard, Snowe’s had tied up all the good governesses. And to be fair, even given Miss Lumley’s habit of weeping like a rusty spigot, she had been better than many of the governesses he’d had as a child.
All the same, she wasn’t right for this particular position. His siblings were recently orphaned, opinionated, and idiosyncratic, to say the least.
Damn, he wished his father and stepmother were in the country. Roberta had tamed him, and she would do the same for his siblings. In fact, the moment they returned from traveling, he meant to fall on his knees and beg them to raise the siblings he never knew he had.
But meanwhile?
He needed a really fine specimen of a governess, something special.
Eugenia hadn’t moved from her chair in three hours, and yet, to all appearances, the pile of correspondence on her desk had hardly diminished.
She stifled a moan when her assistant, Susan, popped through the door with another fistful of letters. “The afternoon mail has arrived, and Mr. Reeve is asking to see you.”
A drop of ink rolled off Eugenia’s quill and splashed in the middle of her response to a frantic lady blessed with twins. “Bloody hell, that’s the third letter I’ve ruined today! What did you say?”
“Mr. Reeve is here,” Susan said. “We sent him Penelope Lumley a week or so ago, on the countess’s request. I mean your stepmother, of course,” she added, as if there was more than one countess begging Eugenia for favors.
Actually, there was, but her darling Harriet was the only one who mattered.
“Oh, I remember. Reeve has two orphaned half-siblings to raise,” Eugenia said, trying to remember the details.
“Likely born on the wrong side of the blanket, just as he was.” Susan leaned against Eugenia’s desk and settled in for a proper gossip. “Not only that, but he was jilted at the altar last fall. I expect the lady realized what that marriage would do for her countenance.”
“His father is the Earl of Gryffyn,” Eugenia pointed out. She didn’t add that her stepmother had said Reeve was outrageously wealthy, but it was a factor. Registry offices didn’t pay for themselves.
“I would guess he’s as arrogant as if he were an earl himself. I peeked at him, and he’s got that look, as if the whole world should bow to him.”
Eugenia gave a mental shrug. It was unfortunate that the conjunction of a penis and privilege had such a bad effect on boys, but so it was.
Without just the right governess, they never learned how to be normal. Having grown up in a household that prided itself on eccentricity, Eugenia was a fierce proponent of the virtues of normality.
Better for oneself, and infinitely better for the world at large.
“He’s wickedly handsome, which probably plays a part in it,” Susan continued. “I could tell that he always gets his way. Though not,” she said with distinct satisfaction “with the lady who jilted him.”
Rich, privileged, and handsome, for all he was a bastard: that was a formula for disaster, from Eugenia’s side of the desk. She crumpled the blotted letter and threw it away. “I find it hard to believe that he has a complaint about Penelope.”
Some of Eugenia’s governesses were formidable, terrifying women who could be counted on to train a child as spoiled as a week-old codfish.
Others were loving and warm, just right for orphans. Penelope Lumley was sweet as a sugar plum, and, admittedly, about as interesting. But to Eugenia’s mind, grieving children needed love, not excitem
ent, and Penelope’s eyes had grown misty at the very idea of two waifs thrown into an elder brother’s care.
“He told Bessie that he sacked her,” Susan said. “That’s an exact quote. I have a tear-stained note from Penelope to prove it.”
Reeve must be one of those frightful clients who poke their nose into the nursery and wouldn’t let the governess get on with the alchemy needed to turn a cabbage into a rose.
Or worse: several cabbages into a whole rose bush, if more than one child was involved.
It wasn’t easy. Winnie wasn’t the only parent singularly unsuited for the job, in Eugenia’s opinion.
“Did Penelope say what happened?”
“She crossed her lines and wept over it, so I couldn’t make out much beyond a reference to a locust, though perhaps she meant a swarm of them, à la Exodus.”
“Her father is a vicar, isn’t he?” Childhood in a vicarage was practically a prerequisite of employment at Snowe’s, as it so often resulted in ladylike accomplishments without a dowry.
“Yes, and unlike me, the Bible lessons took hold,” Susan said with an impish grin.
Eugenia leaned forward and gave Susan a poke in the hip. “There’s a reason I never sent you out as a governess. You’d unleash a plague of locusts on the man who tried to sack you. I suppose I’ll have to see him, but I shan’t give him another governess.”
“I expect Penelope’s nerves got the best of her,” Susan said, standing up and shaking out her skirts. “She has masses of them and they make her horribly twitchy.”
“That is no reason to dismiss her,” Eugenia said firmly. “She is an excellent governess, and just what those children need.”
In fact, Mr. Reeve should have thanked his lucky stars that she had sent him anyone—twitchy or not—but the fact he’d shown up in the office suggested that he didn’t understand the value of her stepmother’s personal recommendation.
The mother of twins to whom she’d been writing—not to mention poor Winnie—was one of many begging for a Snowe’s governess. Mr. Reeve had been given Penelope only because her own stepmother had appealed on the basis of his orphaned siblings.
Eugenia’s registry office was the most elite establishment of its kind, famous for its vow to take children to majority or marriage, whichever came first. As Eugenia saw it, that vow was a pledge to “her” children. She had been known to keep a governess in place, the salary paid by the agency, even if a family lost its funds.
But if a family simply didn’t like their governess? That was a different story. She couldn’t spend all her time shuttling employees around England because an interfering man thought his siblings deserved someone better than Penelope Lumley.
“Please ask him to join me,” Eugenia said, coming out from behind her desk and walking over to the window looking onto Belgrave Square. The crocuses were just coming out. This year she had to make time to walk in the park.
Every year she swore that she would take more fresh air and exercise, and then somehow the days spun by in the whirligig that was Snowe’s.
“Shall I order tea?” Susan asked.
“No,” Eugenia replied. “I mean to dispense with him quickly so I can go for a walk in the park.”
“I doubt you have time,” Susan said apologetically. “You have Lady Hamilton, and I squeezed in the Duchess of Villiers after that.”
“Is there some problem in Her Grace’s nursery? I thought Sally Bennefer was very happy there.”
“Sally has accepted a proposal from the vicar. He must have behaved in a most unvicarish fashion, because she needs to marry spit-spot. Ergo, the duchess needs a replacement.”
“Is unvicarish a word?”
“I expect not,” Susan said. “But the man only took his post a few months ago, so he must have jumped on Sally like a cat on raw liver. My father would not approve.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Genevieve Midge is ready to take another post? She wouldn’t be put off by the irregular nature of the Villiers household,” Eugenia pointed out. Most of Villiers’s children were now grown up, but he had raised six illegitimate children under the same roof as the three belonging to his duchess.
Susan nodded. “I’ll send her a note and ask if she’s interested. Ruby will bring in Mr. Reeve. I’ll be listening, just in case Reeve’s claim to being a gentleman isn’t as strong as it might be. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a ballroom.”
After a few unfortunate incidents during which degenerates acted on their conviction that any woman engaged in commerce had no morals and would welcome their advances, Eugenia had had a discreet hole drilled in the wall between her office and Susan’s study so that Susan could dispatch their footman if need be.
Eugenia liked to think that she was a brave person, but it had been shocking to learn how easily a man can overpower a woman; it was only by the grace of God that she had escaped serious harm in the early days of the agency before she learned to be cautious.
And fierce, to be honest.
The first time a man lunged at her, she had tried to reason with him, which had absolutely no effect. She had slugged the second one in the eye, and found that both satisfying and effective.
“Don’t worry,” she said now. “I’ll brain him with the poker.” Their fireplace implements were topped solid brass knobs for just that reason.
“Actually, Mr. Reeve is so handsome women likely just drop at his feet,” Susan said with a smirk. “If I hear the thump of your falling body, I’ll be sure to leave the two of you alone.”
Eugenia rolled her eyes. “There are days when I might fall to my knees before a freshly baked crumpet, but never a man.”
Susan took herself away, and a moment later the door opened again. “Mr. Reeve,” Ruby announced, snapping the doors shut behind her. Apparently, Reeve had not made a good impression on their parlor maid.
The man who strode into the room was tall, with thick brandy-brown hair, his eyes marked by darker eyebrows that were the color of tarnished brass.
He had a lean rangy look, but there was something about the way his coat fit across his upper arms that made Eugenia think he was muscled. What’s more, his nose had been broken at some point.
In short, he looked like a boxer.
This was not the sort of man who generally showed up in Snowe’s cultured drawing room. He breathed a different kind of air than did the mothers she dealt with on a daily basis.
Abruptly, Eugenia realized that she was staring, her thoughts straying in directions they hadn’t gone for years.
Since Andrew died.
She didn’t give a damn what Mr. Reeve’s thighs looked like!
And she would do well to keep it in mind. He was a client, for goodness’ sake. Did she see . . .
No she didn’t.
And she didn’t want to, either.
About the Authors
ELOISA JAMES is a New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature who lives with her family in New York, but who can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight. Visit Eloisa at www.eloisajames.com or on Facebook or Twitter.
JODY GAYLE, bestselling author and researcher, likens her work to that of a literary archeologist rather than a traditional author. She is dedicated to unearthing publications of the past, and sharing these long-forgotten books . . . the jewels and riches of the written word. She has uncovered tens of thousands of old publications from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and wants to bring them to life, and send her readers traveling back in time.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
By Eloisa James
My American Duchess
Four Nights with the Duke
Three Weeks with Lady X
Once Upon a Tower
As You Wish
With This Kiss (a novella in three parts)
Seduced by a Pirate (a novella)
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The Ugly Duchess
The Duke Is Mine
Winning the Wallflower (a novella)
A Fool Again (a novella)
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
Storming the Castle (a novella)
A Kiss at Midnight
A Duke of Her Own
This Duchess of Mine
When the Duke Returns
Duchess by Night
An Affair Before Christmas
Desperate Duchesses
Pleasure for Pleasure
The Taming of the Duke
Kiss Me, Annabel
Much Ado About You
Your Wicked Ways
A Wild Pursuit
Fool for Love
Duchess in Love
Copyright
This is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpts from Much Ado About You copyright © 2005 by Eloisa James.
Excerpts from Kiss Me, Annabel copyright © 2005 by Eloisa James.
Excerpts from The Taming of the Duke copyright © 2006 by Eloisa James.
Excerpts from Pleasure for Pleasure copyright © 2006 by Eloisa James.
“When the Hero Puts on a Dress” copyright © 2015 by Anne N. Bornschein.
“Regency Fashion Categories” copyright © 2016 by Candice Hern.
“A Heroine Whose Story Needs Telling” copyright © 2016 by Franzeca Drouin.
A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace copyright © 2016 by Eloisa James, Inc.
Excerpt from A Gentleman Never Tells copyright © 2016 by Eloisa James, Inc.
Excerpt from Seven Minutes in Heaven copyright © 2017 by Eloisa James, Inc.
All photos included are property of the Public Domain.
THE OFFICIAL ESSEX SISTERS COMPANION GUIDE. Copyright © 2016 by Eloisa James, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.