She darted back to the Hall. “Success! It is done. He still wants the girl. Mercy, but I doubt she’ll have him if she gets a look at him. Hair flying down to his shoulders like a madman. You must get a firm promise from her, Max, or she’ll bolt at the first glimpse of him. But he cannot last long. He’s skin and bones. Go at once, and be sure you drop by and let me know what she said, hear?”
Chapter Three
DeVigne had no alternative but to press on with his half of the bargain. At three o’clock he had his crested carriage harnessed up, two liveried footmen standing behind to lend him consequence, his new blue superfine jacket on his shoulders, and a wary expression on his face. His timing was perfect. Out of the door of the schoolhouse erupted a stream of screaming students just as he drew up. Every one of them had to come and admire his carriage and horses before dashing off home to tell the parents deVigne was at the school.
It was Mr. Umpton who first saw him and ran out to make him welcome, but within three minutes he was in Miss Sommers’s room, sitting atop a student’s desk with his curled beaver in his hands and feeling more foolish than he had ever felt in his life, to put his preposterous scheme to this dignified gray-eyed woman who was looking at him in astonishment, and not friendly astonishment either. She appeared hostile, and he scarcely knew where to begin.
“How do you like teaching here?” he asked, to play for time.
“Fine. I like it very much,” she answered calmly, wondering why he had come, and fearing Umpton had at last arranged to be rid of her. She had had words with Umpton only recently about her seeing some of his students after school. Lord deVigne was going to fire her!
“That’s nice,” he said, though it was not what he had hoped to hear. If she liked it, she would not be eager to leave. “Still, it must be a difficult life for a young lady.” He didn’t hesitate, even mentally, over the word lady. He had been pleasantly surprised to see that Miss Sommers was just that. Well-spoken, dignified, even pretty, with an elegance unrelated to her toilette but inherent in her bearing.
“The hours are long and work demanding, but I enjoy it. Why is it you have come to see me?” she asked immediately, when he had planned to broach the matter by degrees. Her eyes took in every detail of his splendor. A coat that seemed poured on his back, so well did it fit. An immaculate and intricate tie, above which his well-shaped head sat at a proud angle. Dark eyes, an aquiline nose, a lean face, with a touch of arrogance that was caused more by the arrangement of features than by his expression. Through the window she saw the impressive carriage, the footmen, and wondered at all this display, only to fire her.
“It is a family matter,” he told her, after clearing his throat. “My brother-in-law, Mr. Grayshott…” He noticed her face took on a wary look at the name. “You are acquainted with him, I believe?” His dark brows rose in a question.
She realized this was not mere chitchat. The visit had to do with Mr. Grayshott. “I know him very slightly,” she allowed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have met him twice, very briefly.”
“But I understood-I thought you were better acquainted than that!”
“No, I was only speaking to him twice in my life.”
“I see.” He came to a standstill. The eyebrows settled down, and he blinked twice in surprise. She hardly knew Andrew, and here he thought there had been some romance between them. His proposition was clearly ineligible. A fool’s errand, “I understood there was more to your relationship than that. I thought he had offered for you.”
“He did. Twice.”
DeVigne stared hard at her, out of penetrating, dark eyes. “He met you twice, and twice offered marriage to you? To a virtual stranger, in fact?”
“Yes, it was very strange,” she agreed. “The first time ever I met him, he asked me to marry him. He was-he had been drinking, I believe, which would account for it.”
“Very likely,” he murmured, rapidly considering what to say next.
“What about Mr. Grayshott? Has your coming something to do with him?” she pressed on.
He was favorably impressed with her and, though he was pretty sure she would not accept the plan, he decided to put it forward, having come this far. Indeed, he could think of no other way of extricating himself from the classroom. “He is not well, you know,” he said.
“I haven’t seen him about the village for some months now.”
“No, he is ill. Very ill.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
“Dying, in fact,”
“Ah, that is too bad. It will leave his daughter an orphan.” That’s why he is come, she thought, her spirits lifting. I am at last to be offered the post of her governess, and I shall accept this time, if Grayshott is indeed dying.
“Yes, the reason I am come has to do with his daughter, Roberta.” She smiled a little in anticipation. “She will be left under the guardianship of her uncle, Clancy Grayshott, when her father dies. It is not what we wish for her.”
“Would you not be a more proper guardian, milord, being also an uncle?”
“I think I would, but there is some-disagreement between Grayshott and myself. We have not got along for years, since his wife’s death. A family matter. So Roberta will leave the area and go to Clancy Grayshott, which the family is anxious to prevent.”
“In what way can I be of help? I don’t see what all this has to do with me.”
As she was always rushing him on to the facts, he decided to blurt it out, and have it over with. “You could marry Andrew Grayshott. He still wants to marry you. If you did so, you, as her stepmother, would be appointed guardian. You would not be left alone in charge of her. I-the family-would give you every help. We would be most eager to help you in every way. You would live at the Cottage-you know, I expect, where Grayshott lives?”
“Yes. Oh, yes, a charming place. But I must tell you before you say any more, milord, that I am not at all in favor of this plan. Twice I have refused Mr. Grayshott in person, and I am not at all interested in marrying him.”
“He is very ill, dying.”
“Yes, but he’s not dead yet, and who is to say he won’t recuperate?” she asked frankly.
The possibility of this could not be totally ignored. He was rapidly drinking himself to his grave, but if he did actually engage in the life of sobriety he had mentioned to Jane, he might pull through. “I cannot guarantee his death,” deVigne admitted.
“I didn’t mean that! Indeed, I hope he does not die at all, but I cannot marry him.”
“He likes you very much. Loves you, he says.” This was a mistake. She drew back involuntarily, and he diluted the claim of passion as much as he could. “He is impressionable. When he cares for someone, he is eager to please her. He made my sister Louise a good husband; his drinking did not set in till after her death. If you married him, he might very well settle down and make you a good husband.”
“No, he would not be a good husband for me. I dislike him intensely.”
“Only think of the advantages. You would be freed from this life you lead. You say you enjoy the work, but you must confess it is hard on you, working every day from dawn till dark, with very little pay, and living in straitened circumstances. As Grayshott’s wife you would live a life of ease, in a fine home that you could soon set to rights. You would be a respected member of society, with a carriage of your own, good company to visit, a completely different life from what you have now.”
She brushed all this aside immediately and firmly. “The perquisites of the position are clear to me, clearer than they could possibly be to you who are not really aware of the alternative, but I do not wish to marry Mr. Grayshott. My present life is not that distasteful to me. If it were a job you were offering, your niece’s governess I had thought, then I would happily accept. I cannot enter into marriage with a man I actively dislike, do not respect at all. My past dealings with him were of a sort to make me very decided in this matter.”