The younger woman swallowed and took a deep breath.
“Yes.”
“Then care for you it shall,” Isabel said calmly. “We shall simply keep you well hidden. ‘Tis a large house. And you are James’s governess—there is little reason why a guest should see you.”
“Why is he here? In Yorkshire?”
“I do not know. I was led to believe that he was simply on a summer journey.” She paused, considering the girl’s fear. “You are safe under the protection of the Earl of Reddich.”
As safe as any of us can be.
Isabel rejected the small, contrary voice in her head.
They were safe. She would make sure of it.
Georgiana remained silent in the face of Isabel’s words. Eventually, she nodded once, placing her trust in Isabel—in the house.
“Good.” Isabel poured more tea for them both, hoping to reinforce the girl’s calm before she added, “When you are ready to discuss your reasons for coming here, I am ready to hear them. You know that, do you not? ”
Georgiana nodded again. “I do. I simply—I am not—What if—”
“When and if you are ready, Georgiana, I shall be here.” Isabel’s words were simple and direct. She had years of experience coaxing young women out from their fear. Sisters of dukes or barmaids from Cheapside, girls were not that much different from one another.
Not that different from her.
If she had had another choice, she would never have allowed Lord Nicholas St. John into her house.
But the threat of the other choice—of turning Georgiana, and the others, out into the world with nothing but the clothes on their backs—was unthinkable. And so Isabel was taking a calculated risk.
Lord Nicholas.
The irony was not lost on Isabel that she was placing the future of a houseful of women into the hands of one of the most dangerously compelling men she’d ever met. But as she looked at Georgiana, small and uncertain, both hands wrapped around her teacup, her gaze fixed on the liquid inside, Isabel knew that he was their best chance at success. Their best hope for a future.
They would simply have to keep him confined to the statuary.
That would not be so difficult.
The next afternoon, Isabel was feeling exceedingly proud of herself.
All her worrying about Lord Nicholas had been for naught. He was no trouble at all.
In fact, since he and Mr. Durukhan had arrived that morning and she had closeted them in the statuary and delivered careful instructions that they were not to be disturbed, Isabel had effectively avoided the pair.
Hidden from the pair, more like.
Nonsense. Isabel shook the thought away. So she was on the roof once more. The roof was still leaking. And, if the clouds careening toward them from the east were any indication, the repairs were going to be particularly welcome that evening.
So she was in breeches and shirtsleeves with Jane, and they were on their knees carefully applying a wicked-smelling paste to the underside of the clay tiles that seemed to have come loose all across the roof. It had been seven years since the first of the Townsend Park servants had left, including the skilled men—those who were most marketable to other large estates across the county. With them had gone any knowledge of the craft of roof repair, stone and woodworking, and several other skills that came in particularly handy on a country estate.
Isabel sighed at the memory. She supposed they had been lucky to have gone so many years without needing to take on major structural repairs of the house. Thank goodness for the manor’s library, and its collection of titles on architecture and building practices. She smiled wryly. Roof repair was not the preferred reading of most young ladies, but it would do if she could remove the chamber pot currently perched on the end of her bed to capture the rain that seeped regularly through the poorly tarred roof.
“Would you like to tell me what happened yesterday to send you into hiding from Lord Nicholas? ”
Jane had never been one to beat about the bush.
Isabel dipped a brush into the bucket of vile roof tar and said,
“Nothing happened.”
“Nothing whatsoever.” Nothing I’d like to revisit.
“No. He agreed to identify and value the collection. I thought I would let him get on with it. If all goes well, Minerva House shall have a new home within the month.” She tried to keep her voice light. Confident.
Jane was quiet as she laid several newly repaired tiles back down upon the roof. “And Lord Nicholas? ”
“What about him?”
“Precisely.”
“I would prefer that he were not necessary to the endeavor,” Isabel said, deliberately misunderstanding Jane’s question. A strong gust of wind blew then, sending Isabel’s shirtsleeves flapping like sails in a storm. She braced herself against the cool breeze, choosing her next words carefully. “But I think that we do not have much of an alternative.”
“You have alternatives, Isabel.”
“None that I can see.”
Jane placed several more tiles in the silence that stretched between them before turning back to Isabel. “You have cared for us for a long time. You have made Minerva House a thing of legend for girls across London. The ones who come to us now … they can barely credit our existence. All that is because of you.” Isabel stopped tarring her tiles, meeting Jane’s cool green gaze. “But you cannot allow the legend to overtake you.”
“It is not a legend for me, Jane. It is real.”
“But you could have more. You are the daughter of an earl.”
“An earl with morals best described as questionable.”
“The sister to a new earl, then,” Jane rephrased. “You could marry. Live the life you were meant to live.”
The life she was meant to live. The words seemed so simple—as though it were clearly mapped out—and perhaps it was. Other wellborn girls seemed to have no trouble following the well-worn path.
Other girls had not had her father. Her mother.
She shook her head. “No. This is the life I was meant to have. No smart marriage, no amount of tea with the ladies of the ton, no London seasons would have changed my course. And look at where my course has taken me. Look at the difference I have made for you. For the others.”
“But you should not sacrifice yourself for us. Would that not defeat the purpose of the house? Have you not taught us that our happiness and our lives are infinitely more important than the sacrifices we made before we arrived here?”
The words were soft, their aim true. Isabel considered her butler, the bracing wind turning Jane’s cheeks a ruddy pink, her warm brown hair slipping out from beneath her cap. Jane had been the first to come to Isabel, a working girl who had barely escaped a drunken beating at the hands of a customer and somehow found the courage to leave London for Scotland, where she had hoped to start a new life. She had made it as far as Yorkshire with a handful of stolen coins—not enough on which to live, but enough to send her to prison for thievery for the rest of her life. When she had run out of money, she had been dropped, literally, onto the side of the road with nothing but the clothes on her back. Isabel had found her asleep in an unused stall in the stables, the day after her last remaining servants had left their posts.
Isabel had been barely seventeen, alone in the house with James, just shy of three years old, and her mother—close to death. One look at Jane, too weak to run, too broken to fight, and Isabel had understood the desperation that had driven the girl to take the most extreme of risks—bedding down in a stable not her own, clearly a part of an estate.
It had not been kindness that had driven Isabel to welcome Jane in—it had been panic. The countess was slipping away, mad with sadness and desperation, the servants were gone, James needed love and nurturing, and Isabel had nothing. She had offered Jane work and gained the most loyal of servants. The most trusted of friends.
Jane had been the only one to witness the countess in her last days, as she railed against
Isabel; against smiling, toddling James; against God and Britain—blaming them all for her isolation. For her devastation. When the countess had died—even as the other threads of Isabel’s life were coming unraveled—helping Jane had kept Isabel from falling apart.
Within weeks, Isabel had made her decision to bring others to Townsend Park. If she could not be a good daughter or a good woman, she could ensure that other women on the edges of society would have a place to live and flourish. A few well-placed letters had brought her Gwen and Kate, and after that, there was little need to advertise their location. Girls found them. Townsend Park was renamed Minerva House in hushed whispers across Britain, and girls in trouble knew that if they could reach its doors, they would find safety.
In those girls, Isabel had found a purpose—a way to protect these ill-treated, ill-fated women, and to give them a fresh opportunity at life.
A way to prove that she was more than what others saw.
A way to feel needed.
Not all the girls had remained—in the seven years since Jane’s arrival, they had seen dozens of girls arrive and leave in the dead of night, unable to keep from returning to the life from which they had come. Still more had left to build their own lives, Isabel welcoming the chance to help them realize their dreams. They were seamstresses, innkeepers, and even a vicar’s wife in the North Country.
They were proof that she was not alone. That she had purpose. That she was more than the unwanted daughter of a notorious scoundrel. That she was not the selfish child her mother had accused her of being during those final weeks.
And when she was thinking of them—of Minerva House—she was not thinking of all that she had never had an opportunity to experience.
All the things she would have deserved—would have had—if she were born to a different earl.
No.
“It is not a sacrifice to continue Minerva House,” she said finally, the words almost too quiet to be heard on the wind. “I would repair a hundred roofs to make sure this one held above the girls’ heads.”
Jane quirked a smile. “Need I remind you that you are not alone atop this house? I shall never be able to remove the smell of this muck from my person.”
“Well then, we shall stink together.” Isabel laughed.
“Your lord shan’t enjoy that.”
Isabel did not pretend to misunderstand. “He is not my lord.”
“Gwen and Lara would have it differently.”
Isabel’s brows snapped together. “Gwen and Lara have cowslips between their ears. I won’t be thrust at him, Jane. You might as well tell them as much.”
Jane laughed then, the sound musical and merry. “You think I hold more sway than that ridiculous magazine?”
“I think you should,” Isabel said with a sigh. “He is only here for two weeks. All I need do is keep the girls from the statuary.”
“And what of you, Lady He-Is-Not-My-Lord?”
Isabel ignored Jane’s teasing, a vision of Lord Nicholas’s handsome face flashing. The way his teeth flashed white against his sun-warmed skin, how his full, soft lips turned upward in bold, promising smiles. The way his blue eyes tempted her to tell him everything.
He was very dangerous, indeed.
“I shall do the same. It shan’t be that difficult. After all, I have a roof to repair.”
The words were barely out of Isabel’s mouth when a familiar masculine voice sounded. “I should have guessed I would find you here.”
Isabel’s heart leapt into her throat at the words. Eyes filled with dread, Isabel looked to Jane, who immediately put her head down, as any good servant would, focusing entirely on the task at hand.
She was on her own, or they were discovered. With little other option, she turned to Lord Nicholas, who was climbing out of the attic window.
Who had let him up here?
She watched as one enormous Hessian boot took a tentative step toward her, landing precariously on the clay tile.
If the man wasn’t careful, he’d damage more of the damned roof.
“Wait!”
To his credit, he waited.
“I—” Isabel looked to Jane, who shook her head in a manner indicating that she would be absolutely no help, then pressed on. “I shall come to you, my lord!” Scrambling to her feet, she scurried across the roof as carefully as possible. When she reached him, she smiled a too-bright smile.
Which he did not return.
“My lord! What brings you to the roof? Was there something that you needed? ”
“No,” he said, the one syllable drawn out into many as he raked his gaze over her, taking in her attire.
Dear God. She was dressed in men’s clothing. Not at all the thing. Of course, ladies on roofs were not precisely the thing, either. Nonetheless, her attire was a problem. And leaping from the roof seemed like a not so sound solution. She’d simply have to brazen it through.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, ignoring the flood of heat that spread over her cheeks. “I was not expecting you to join me, Lord Nicholas,” she said pointedly.
“I can see that. Although I do admit a modicum of surprise that you would dress so in front of your servants.” He indicated Jane, who remained head down, setting a roof tile.
“Oh.” How was she going to escape this? “Yes. Well. Jan—” Careful, Isabel. “Janney has been with the family for many years. He is aware of all of my—eccentricities.” She laughed, wincing at the sound, loud and uncomfortable.
“I see.” His tone said he did not, in fact, see.
“Shall we go inside? Perhaps you would like some tea? “ she said quickly, as though she could rush him off the roof, out of the house, and, indeed, out of Yorkshire. “No, I don’t think so.”
“My lord?”
“I should like to see this roof that has so captured your attention.”
“I—Oh.”
Was it she? Or did he seem pleased with her discomfort?
“Will you give me a tour of the repair site, my lady?”
He was most definitely teasing her.
He was a wretched man. Not at all worthy of kissing.
“Certainly.” Isabel turned to Jane—she had to get the other woman off the roof. “That is enough for today, Janney. You may go.”
Jane was up like a shot, heading for the attic window like it was salvation itself.
Which, of course, it was.
But as she passed them, St. John stayed her with “You should be more protective of your mistress.”
Jane paused, head down, and nodded once.
“I see you take my meaning.”
Isabel held her breath for a long moment, waiting for him to continue. When he did not, she said, “That is all, Janney,” and Jane scrambled through the window, disappearing into the attic.
Watching her disappear, Isabel considered her options. While she had never received formal training in deportment and proper conversation, she was fairly certain that roofs were not appropriate locales for conversations between members of the opposite sex.
“I do not like you on the roof.”
The words, so imperious, as though she were placed on the earth at his whim, took Isabel aback. She met his gaze, and took pleasure in matching his irritation with her own. It wasn’t as if she’d asked him to join her up here, for goodness’ sake. “Well, considering it is both my roof and my person … I do not see how my location impacts your life in the slightest.”
“If you were to fall …”
She lifted one foot, showing him her slippers. “I have an excellent tread.”
His gaze tracked the limb, from the leg of her breeches down the curving slope of her stockinged calf, to her foot, and the perusal made her instantly nervous. She set her foot down firmly, the clank of the roof tiles punctuating the movement. One hand flew nervously to her hair, pulled back into a tight knot. “I think we should go inside.”
He moved to sit on the peak of the roof. Surveying the work that she and Jane had completed,
he asked, “Why did you leave me in the statuary yesterday? ”
It was not a question she had expected. “My lord? ”
“Leave is not really the appropriate word, is it? Flee is more apt.”
“I prefer escape, actually.”
Her frankness surprised them both. He inclined his head. “A palpable hit, Lady Isabel.”
She blushed at his words, embarrassed by her statement, but refused to back down. “I haven’t time to languish in the statuary with you, Lord Nicholas. I have far too much to do.”
“Need I remind you that it is you who asked me to attend your marbles? ”
The color on her cheeks flared higher. He was calling her rude. And he was not entirely incorrect. “You needn’t. I am very grateful for your help, my lord.”
His eyes narrowed on her. “I am happy to give it, but you must admit, our time together has been rather … unorthodox.”
She smiled crookedly. “I suppose our current location does not remedy that.”
“Nor your clothing, Lady Isabel.” He matched her smile with his own before he asked again, “Why did you flee the statuary?”
“I—I did not have a choice.”
She thought he would press her further, but there must have been something in her tone that stayed the line of questioning.
There was a long silence before he changed tack. “I think you should tell me why you are repairing the roof.”
She gave a little shrug. “I told you already, my lord. It leaks. Which makes it quite unpleasant when it rains. As this is Britain, it rains a great deal.”
He draped one long arm over a bent knee and looked out over the lands, ignoring her tone. “You deliberately misunderstand me. I see I have no choice but to use my only currency.” He sighed, then recited, “Voluptas, the daughter of Cupid and Psyche, is made of pink marble from Mergozzo, an area in the Alps known for it.”
“That statue isn’t pink. And it isn’t Italian.”
He shot her a look, and she was lost in the glittering blue of his eyes before she noted the twitch in the muscle of his cheek. She wondered what the movement meant.
“The statue is made of pink marble from Mergozzo,” he repeated slowly, as though she were simpleminded. “Pink marble is not always pink. And the piece is not Italian. It is Roman. She is a Roman goddess.”