Page 33 of His Forgotten Bride
She took a short breath, and then another, and by the stoicism of her expression he gathered that this was not the first time she had practiced this particular brand of patience. At last she said, in a steady, firm voice, “Riding is the pastime of gentlemen, my lord. Not of servants, nor of their children.”
“Where is the harm?” he asked. “Should he be denied the opportunity to learn, if it so pleases him? It is a healthful activity, and a boy of his age should have some manner of exercise.”
“And who will teach him this activity, my lord?” Her voice was caustic, biting, hardly the sort of tone a servant—even an upper servant—ought to have used with her employer.
“I will.”
Her head swiveled sharply toward him, and for a long, drawn-out moment, something unbearably fragile swam in her dark eyes. To his horror, they glazed over with a fine sheen of tears, and she turned her face resolutely away from him and croaked out, “Please excuse me.” In a swirl of brown skirts, she was heading for the door, her head bent at a disconsolate angle.
Somewhere in his chest there was a vicious pulse of regret, and he called out, “Wait. Claire,wait.” But she didn’t. In fact she gave no indication that she’d even heard him, though she certainly must have done. He heard her footsteps retreating down the hall, fading into the distance. For the first time he regretted having purchased such a large residence for himself—it would likely take some time to track her down.
From the far corner of the room, the tailor cleared his throat. “My lord, I believe I have the measurements I require. I can commence work at once, but I have brought along several—”
“Yes,” Gabriel interrupted. “Yes; we’ll take whatever you’ve got with you. Just send me your bill.” He bellowed for the governess, who poked her head into the nursery. “Matthew may continue his lessons,” he said, striding for the door. “Please send him down for tea at four.”
“But, sir,” she said. “Tea is taken in the nursery—”
“Today, it is taken in the drawing room,” he said, and swept out of the nursery to go in search of Claire.
∞∞∞
He ran her to ground in the still room, which he had needed some direction to locate, given that he had never had occasion to set foot in it before. Shelves wreathed the walls, stacked with all manner of jars and baskets, filled with preserves and root vegetables, sacks filled with what he assumed to be flour and other assorted dry goods. He had never wondered precisely how his meals were prepared or how such things were stored—he knew only that somehow he always seemed to have an assortment of jams for his scones.
A long table was situated beneath the only window at the rear of the room, the early afternoon sunlight that poured in the sole source of light. Claire sat in a chair at the table, her head bent over as she worked, scooping herbs from a few baskets strewn across the table into tiny pouches.
She jolted as he stepped into the room, the heavy click of his heels on the wooden floor startling her from her work. Her head popped up, and the small spoon in her hand shook, scattering a shower of herbs across the surface of the table.
“Blast,” she muttered, laying down her spoon to scrape up the herbs with her hands.
The pungent scents of rosemary and lavender tickled his nose. “What are you doing?”
“Filling herb sachets,” she said testily, her gaze focused firmly away from him. “They keep clothes smelling fresh. The lavender and rosemary repel moths.” She shoved the herbs into the sachet and tugged the strings closed, knotting them to secure the herbs within. “Have you some business in the still room, my lord?”
“Yes,” he said. “With you.”
Her shoulders stiffened, and she drew a deep breath. “I cannot think why.”
Conscious of the well-trafficked hallway just beyond the door and the kitchen in close proximity, Gabriel swung the door shut and crossed the room. “I suppose you think I overstepped earlier,” he said. “It wasn’t my intention to usurp your authority.”
She struggled for a moment with her silence, waging a war between her position as a mother and her position as his employee—though she might dearly wish to upbraid him, she must also know that it would be reckless in the extreme to speak her mind to the man who held her livelihood in the palm of his hand.
It sat ill with him, to see her so conflicted. For the life of him he couldn’t have said why—he’d never cared overly much about any of his other servants’ opinions of him, whether they would bite their tongues to keep their criticism to themselves. But Claire was different from the rest of them somehow. The thought of her adopting the same aloof mien as the rest of his employees was distasteful in the extreme. She, who had sat at his bedside and nursed him into the night, had earned a sort of respect he could not recall owing to another in recent memory.
He found himself easing closer, offering softly, “I give you leave to speak freely.”
With a mirthless laugh, she shoved her chair away from the table and rose to her feet. “I don’t require yourpermissionto speak freely, my lord.” The waspish tone of her voice was excoriating, condemning, thrilling. It wasn’t that he relished her anger—but he appreciated her candor.
“Then do tell me what has got you so up in arms,” he invited.
Her hands fisted at her sides, fingers clenching and unclenching reflexively. “Matthew is not apet,” she said. “Neither is he a toy to be taken off his shelf and put away again when he had outlived his usefulness. He is a living, breathing boy.”
Stunned by the fury in her voice, he blinked in surprise. “I have never thought otherwise,” he said. “I assure you, I do not think of your son as a pet.”
“What good can come of dressing him like a child ofyourclass? Of teaching him skills he will never have occasion to use?” Her fierce breaths broke her words into sharp barbs, intended to sting. “He is just a little boy—it iscruelto show him a world he cannot inhabit. To pretend as though he belongs in it.”
“But hecouldbelong in it,” he said. “It’s not uncommon for gentlemen of my station to provide for a ward—”
“Matthew is not your ward!” Her voice cracked on the words.
