Adorna shook her head. "They devastate; they are not devastated."
The children weren't devastated by their father's death? Charlotte's long-forgotten romanticism surfaced. Perhaps the children had been orphans for a long time, wandering the desert…
Just ahead, a carriage turned onto the road, and the coachman whipped up the horses. They drove past in a breakneck hurry.
Charlotte recognized the crest on the carriage—as if she could ever forget it!—and her face went stiff.
Adorna craned her neck to see who was within. "How odd! That was Lord and Lady Howard."
Charlotte managed to answer, "So it was."
Adorna patted her hand. "Of course. I remember. How dreadful for you. But they were coming from Austinpark Manor, and it looked as if she were striking him with her hat! No one should be at the house except…" Her eyes rounded in horror, and she clutched the lace at her throat. "Tell me he didn't invite anyone to visit while I was gone."
"Who?"
"He wouldn't dare. I gave him specific instructions…"
"What?"
Adorna leaned forward and said urgently, "Skeets, hurry!"
The carriage turned between two gateposts onto a country lane. Skeets obediently urged the horses past a large and handsome gatehouse. Gravel sprayed from beneath the wheels. Adorna clutched the side of the carriage in her white-gloved hand and strained to see forward.
Charlotte was missing a very important piece of information, but what it was she could not imagine. They rolled past magnificent old trees lining the road. She caught azure glimpses of a serene lake in the distance, a marble pavilion, a trellised garden alight with bobbing flowers of gold, lavender and pink. And finally, as they rounded a curve, she saw the aged mellow blend of brick and stone of Austinpark Manor. The house blended into its surroundings, hugging the earth and rising to the skies in a celebration of man's elegance. The classic style had been popular one hundred years before; Charlotte wondered what noble family had built it, and lost it, and why.
Then another carriage rolled toward them, and Adorna exclaimed, "That's Mr. Morden and his wife, and you know what a stickler for propriety she is! Oh, I hope he hasn't ruined everything."
The house disappeared behind a grove of trees, then when their open carriage rounded the curve, the house reappeared just ahead.
On the portico stood a man.
Even from a distance, Charlotte could tell he was tall and broad-shouldered, a monument to masculine strength. Or perhaps he could be better called an affront to English civilization.
As they drove closer, she noted that his hands, clenched in fists on his hips, were massive. His shoulders stretched broad, and the muscles on his chest couldn't be concealed by his white shirt and sober black waistcoat. His trousers did not conceal his potency; rather, they emphasized it with a trim cut that provided the concept of straining seams and popping buttons.
He gave the impression of a man who had staked a claim, yet Charlotte didn't understand how. Surely this was Adorna's new husband, although she hadn't mentioned one, or a relative. Perhaps Stewart, the distant relative Adorna had mentioned.
But Charlotte couldn't pull her attention from the brute's hair.
Barbarously long, his locks blew in the breeze— and they were blond. The same blond as Adorna's.
As the carriage pulled to a halt, the man smiled. He started forward. And Charlotte saw what she hadn't seen before. His poor disguise of refinement was not complete.
His feet were bare.
It couldn't be, yet Charlotte had to ask, "Who is he?"
"My son." Adorna glared at him as she waited for Skeets to place the step and assist her down. "My son Wynter, back from the grave to plague me."
CHAPTER 3
"I thought he was dead," Charlotte blurted. Charlotte never spoke without thinking, and that slip should have warned her of the impact Wynter would have on her life. But she was blissfully oblivious as Adorna descended from the carriage.
As Charlotte watched, Adorna mounted the shallow steps and enfolded Wynter in her arms. "Dear boy, what have you done now?"
He leaned down to give her a warm buss on the cheek. In an accent so faint and foreign Charlotte had to strain to hear it, he said, "I simply told the men that they should keep their women under tighter rein."
Charlotte's old infatuation died a death so painless she scarcely noted its passing.
"Wynter, how could you say such a thing in Mrs. Morden's presence? She fancies herself above reproach, and the Mordens are rich and high-placed enough that she may think whatever she likes."
He reflected. "Actually, it was Lady Howard who took the greatest offense. A viperous woman who flirted with me in front of her man."
Charlotte pretended not to hear.
"Ladies are not sequestered here," Adorna said. "Flirtation is allowed."
"Is it proper?" he demanded.
Adorna tilted her head as she considered the intricacies of English society and how to explain them to her son. "Not when one party is married, but—"
"What but can there be? If it's not proper, it's improper." He turned to Charlotte as she gathered her carpetbag and descended from the carriage with Skeets's assistance. "What do you think?"
Charlotte thought any man who went barefoot, wore his hair like a woman and couldn't manage to button his shirt all the way to the top should not be passing judgment, but her ingrained manners would not allow her to say so. Instead she folded her hands before her. "It's not what I think or you think that matters. What matters is the hospitable treatment of guests."
"Yes. In the desert, if a guest is not treated hospitably, the sand and the sun bleach his bones." He looked past her as if seeing the shifting dunes and blazing sun. Then, behind him, someone cleared his throat and Wynter's attention snapped back to the present. He moved away from the top step of the portico to allow Charlotte to ascend, and without inflection, said, "Speaking of guests, Mother, you have one."
Adorna faced the well-dressed gentleman standing in the open doorway. Her fingers fluttered at her throat, and she said, "Lord Bucknell. Dear Lord Bucknell, what a surprise! Always pleasant, of course, but I had no idea…and to catch me away! But you've…met my son?" Her usual husky tone held a note of consternation, yet a smile curved her lips, and she moved toward Lord Bucknell with both hands outstretched.
Lord Bucknell stepped into the sunshine, a fit, handsome man of perhaps fifty. His hair was sprinkled with gray, his carriage erect, and he took her hands in his as if he knew better than to indulge in such a greeting, yet couldn't resist. "Yes, I met your son. Quite a shock, after these years. But you must be happy, Lady Ruskin. I know his absence caused you no end of grief."
"It did." She gave a gurgle of youthful laughter. "But I told you he wasn't dead."
"So you did." His solemn smile contrasted oddly with Adorna's warmth. But perhaps Wynter's unflinching gaze constrained him.
Charlotte stepped foot on the veranda, and as smoothly as some great-maned predator, Wynter again switched his concentration back to her. She stood still as he closed in behind her and proceeded to circle, examining her with the open curiosity he might show a zoo animal.
She did not lower herself to do the same, but neither did she turn her eyes away in a pretense of cowardice. Nothing intimidated Charlotte; the sooner he learned that fact, the less conflict they would endure.
He had truly grown tall in his sojourn away from England; he topped her by more than a foot. His bulk filled her gaze, but she kept her vision properly affixed to his countenance.
He might have been a geometry proof, for angles of every kind made up his face. His forehead was a handsome rectangle, his cheeks jutted out from the point of his chin, his nose was a sharp, beaked triangle. A long scar tugged at the edge of one eye and bisected his right cheek. His brown eyes, she noted, no longer contrasted with his fair complexion. The sun in El Bahar had tanned him to the color of toast, and lightened his hair in streaks. He still sported those
unusually dark eyelashes and brows, but he no longer allowed them to droop in Byronesque brooding. He looked at the world with such direct and avid interest, some lesser beings might find themselves discomfited.
"Mother, does she fulfill all our requirements?"
He directed his question to Adorna, acting as if Charlotte were either deaf or invisible. Notables did behave so to their servants, of course, but governesses lurked in that ill-defined domain of neither servant nor aristocrat. Charlotte, especially, as a doyen of deportment, tended to be treated with respect. But Wynter was obviously oblivious to the niceties.
Charlotte would be offended—was offended— except she wanted to hear the answer.
"Mother?" Wynter repeated.
"Hmm?" Adorna was still holding Lord Bucknell's hands in her own and paying very little attention to the scene at the edge of the veranda. "Yes, she's perfect."
"She's very young and very pretty." Wynter's years in the desert had apparently stripped him of artifice.
Charlotte's fingers tightened around the handle of her bag and she put a crisp edge to her voice. "Youth and prettiness are not a barrier to efficiency."
"No? We shall see."
A rush of blood flooded her cheeks. And for no reason, she assured herself. In every new employment, she had been initially disdained by someone. But to have this man, this brute, so openly doubt her…ah, that set her teeth on edge.
Adorna hastily provided introductions. "Miss Dalrumple, may I present my son, Wynter, Viscount Ruskin. Wynter, this is Lady Charlotte Dalrumple, the governess for…or rather, an expert in manners."
Lord Bucknell coughed, and Charlotte correctly interpreted that as censure. But she paid him no heed. It was Wynter, Lord Ruskin, who commanded her attention. Determined to behave as if the personal comments, the cross-conversation, the insolent inspection were quite normal, Charlotte curtsied. "I am delighted to make your acquaintance, my lord."
Lord Wynter just gazed at her rather stupidly. "What should I do?" he asked, apparently to the thin air.
Acting on reflex, she placed the bag on the floor beside her. "You bow and repeat, 'I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Dalrumple.' "
"But you have a title."
"Only because my father was an earl, and besides, using one's title to excess is considered uncouth. Even Her Majesty Queen Victoria is frequently called 'Ma'am' by her attendants."
"I see." He bowed, a sweep of courtesy. "I should bow like this?"
"Exactly like that."
"And I should say"—he took her hand and bent over it, then looked into her eyes—"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Dalrumple."
At that moment, she realized he made a game of her. He knew exactly what he should do.
She didn't like the man. She didn't like him at all, but if he was similar to the other fathers she'd had truck with, she would never see him past this initial meeting.
Only he looked at her as if she were a person who now merited his full attention. The gaze that before had been analytical now searched her as if he wished to know her in some intimate manner. And when he brought her hand to his cheek and smoothed it across the skin, she thought she knew exactly why.
The slight growth of his beard caught at the cotton of her glove. She knew her eyes had grown wide. She glanced at Adorna and Lord Bucknell, but they were engrossed in a conversation of their own. So she tugged at her hand, and when Wynter released her, she said, "If you would allow me, my lord, to offer a critique of your conduct?"
He straightened, still watching her. "Of course."
"I believe I may have pinpointed the reason for Lady Howard's flirtatious manner. That gesture of hand to cheek is quite unusual in English society. She may have read into it interest on your part. Perhaps it would be best if you dispensed with such gestures until you once again regain your sense of propriety."
He tucked his hands behind his back and straightened his shoulders. "Actually, I believe my sense of propriety is alive and well."
Now she looked at him, seeing him as others would; a swaggering, powerful, experienced man of the world. "But it is not British."
"You think the British have defined propriety?"
"Certainly. In your situation, where you have been gone for many years, to be a paragon of British propriety would prove a social advantage."
Wynter laughed, a wholehearted bellow of amusement. "You are lovely, oh moon of my delight. Without you, my life has been as barren and cold as the night desert when the harmattan blows with its endless, sorrowful breath."
Charlotte wanted to respond, to somehow point out that such an unrestrained babble of words was indelicate and most improper.
Yet with his head lifted, his hair swung back. In one small, neat earlobe, she saw a gold loop.
She couldn't have been more shocked.
An earring. In his ear. Only low-class women and gypsies wore earbobs, and he was neither. Yet undeniably gold glinted in the sun.
"Come inside, you two," Adorna called gaily, her hand tucked into Lord Bucknell's arm. "Charlotte and I have been hours on the road, so we shall have tea."
Wynter padded behind Charlotte as she walked toward the door. His barefooted step whispered on the smooth, sunlit stone while appalled astonishment rioted through her mind. Had the Bedouins held Wynter down and forced the ring through his earlobe? Had they tortured him, withheld water, tied him to a camel? No Englishman would allow such a ring without extreme measures.
Lord Bucknell and Adorna had entered the shadowy interior of the manor when Wynter stepped around Charlotte and bowed again. As he stood, again she saw that earring, and she realized: Perhaps he had been forced to accept the ring, but he was back in England.
He didn't have to wear it.
Before Charlotte stepped into the manor's long gallery, Wynter laid his hand on her arm and, when she halted, stepped close. His accent strengthened as he lowered his voice. "Lady…Miss…Charlotte." He tried out each word as if confused, then smiled in delight, a stranger of obnoxious seductiveness. "Lady Miss Charlotte, in all fairness I must inform you—I did not bring Lady Howard's hand to my cheek, for I am not interested in the sensation of her touch on my skin."
Without a thought to the Governess School, to civility, to the respect due a man society deemed her superior, she drew herself up to her full height and haughtiness and stared right into his impudent, mocking face. "In all fairness, Lord Ruskin, I must inform you—I am not interested in the sensation of your touch on my skin, and if you imagine part of my duties to be to suffer such a touch, tell me now so I may catch Skeets and have him transport me back to London."
CHAPTER 4
By the dunes, 'Lady Miss Charlotte Dalrumple was a fierce little thing! Wynter quite enjoyed the frosty bite of her glare and that ruffled indignation. Lady Miss Charlotte—how it amused him to call her that!—was passing every test.
"My lord?" she snapped, not backing off, although he towered over her.
Smoothly he stepped back and offered her an obeisance. "All shall be as you wish, oh sunshine most brilliant."
Lord Bucknell harrumphed—something he'd done frequently since his arrival—and, when Wynter glanced his way, turned his gaze aside with so much obvious discomfiture he might have been interrupting a prolonged session of lovemaking.
Lord Bucknell did not approve of Wynter. But this was Wynter's home. Wynter was not the one on trial here. With the impassivity he'd learned at Sheik Barakah's side, Wynter inclined his head to Lord Bucknell and gestured for Charlotte to enter. She hesitated, perceiving the risk she took by accepting his offer of shelter and sustenance. But with their stifling clothing and hypocritical decorum, his English countrymen attempted to cloak the basic, primitive urges. Urges that drove a man to master and protect an unclaimed woman.
Because Charlotte had been raised with, and believed in, that travesty of civilization, she failed to heed the cry of her instincts. She stepped over the threshold into his home.
He
r naïveté made him chuckle, and at the sound she looked back at him. Their eyes met.
Her eyes widened and lit that smooth, cool face.
Then Adorna called, "Come in, Charlotte."
Deliberately, Charlotte turned her gaze from his and sank back into the artificial safety created by her beloved culture.
And, he admitted grudgingly, if she became his children's governess, she was safe. It did not matter that he looked at her prim-pressed lips and carefully trussed body and wanted to open them both to his mouth and his body. He'd been long without a woman, but he couldn't imagine why he was attracted to a scowl and a corset. Yet he'd lived with the fatalism of the Bedouin long enough to accept the attraction while knowing with English certainty that only a cad would seek to take her.
Speaking of cads…when Adorna introduced her to Lord Bucknell, Lord Bucknell's bow was swift and shallow.
Bucknell's behavior astonished Wynter. Since his arrival a few hours ago, Lord Bucknell had been thoroughly correct, yet he turned a fisheye on Charlotte. Admittedly, Wynter might no longer completely understand the complexities of English social structure, but his mother wouldn't treat a governess with such warmth if that behavior was unacceptable.
Yet Charlotte seemed imperturbable, as though she'd suffered other such cuts in other households and considered them beneath her notice. "Lady Ruskin, you have a beautiful home," she said, as she looked around the long salon with its acres of shiny polished wood floors, the wall of windows that looked out onto the terrace and the gardens, the portraits and bookshelves and rugs.
"So it was on my first sight of Austinpark Manor, and I've changed little. One doesn't improve perfection." Adorna indicated the grouping of chairs and tables around one of the merrily burning fireplaces where the maids were assembling cakes and biscuits. "We'll take our tea there. For all the sun is shining, one is still aware of the bite of winter past in the air."
With a glance at Lord Bucknell, now studiously examining some of the titles on the bookshelves, Charlotte said, "That would be lovely, Lady Ruskin, but I would really like to meet the children."