The Governess Affair (Brothers Sinister #0.5)(3)

Hugo pressed his lips together in annoyance.

“After all,” Clermont said, striding to the door, “it’s my entire future that’s at stake. When I return, I expect that you’ll have sorted out this entire unfortunate affair with the governess.”

It wasn’t as if Hugo had any choice in the matter. His future was at stake, too, every bit as much as Clermont’s. “Consider her gone.”

Clermont simply nodded and exited the room, leaving Hugo to contemplate the bench in the square below.

The governess sat, turning her head to watch people passing on the pavement. She did not look as if she were about to burst into hysterics. Perhaps Clermont hadn’t wronged her all that much, and he could solve this over the course of one conversation. He hoped so, for her sake.

Because if talk didn’t work, he was going to have to make her life hell.

He hated having to do that.

IT WAS HARD FOR Miss Serena Barton to keep from fidgeting at the best of times; today, a chill wind had arisen in the afternoon, sending clouds scudding overhead and robbing the day of sunshine. The breeze sent autumn leaves rattling across the cobblestones. It sliced through her inadequate pelisse, and it was all she could do to refrain from wrapping her arms around herself. Still, she forced herself to sit, her spine straight. She wasn’t going to freeze to death; she was just going to get very, very cold. Nothing that a cup of hot tea wouldn’t fix when she returned to her sister’s rooms that evening.

She glanced sidelong at the small cluster that had gathered on the gangway in front of the Duke of Clermont’s home. In the lull of the late afternoon, a few servants had come by; they huddled in a little knot to gawk at her. No doubt they knew she’d talked to Clermont. She was counting on their gossip. Speculation would embarrass the man more than a simple recounting of the truth, and her only hope was to embarrass him a great deal. Speculation bred gossip; gossip gave rise to censure.

Three maids in ruffled aprons were whispering to one another when a man turned the corner onto the street. He scarcely seemed to notice them, but the group of women took one look at him and scattered to their respective houses, like hens fleeing a hawk overhead.

He didn’t look like an aristocrat. He wore a brown suit, simply made, and a cravat, plainly tied. His linen was not the snowy-white that the wealthy insisted upon; his cuffs looked clean, but—as whites were wont to do upon washing—faded to a less respectable ivory. He stopped on the street just opposite her, and raised his head to meet her eyes.

For three months, Serena had wondered where she had gone wrong—what she could have done to avoid this fate. She’d retraced her steps a thousand times, searching for her error.

She’d been weak three months ago, when the duke had first found her—dropping her eyes for every man simply because he was bigger and stronger, holding her silence merely because it was improper to scream. Serena was done being weak.

She’d met the duke’s gaze this morning, not flinching when she looked in his eyes and issued her threats. After that, she could do anything.

And this man wasn’t a duke.

So she met his gaze. I’m not afraid of you, she thought. And if the clamminess of her palms declared otherwise, there was no need to tell him that.

But he was only a working man, if she read the middling-quality fabric of his jacket aright. Everything about him was middling. He wasn’t particularly tall, nor was he short. He was neither skinny nor fat. The most that she could imagine anyone saying about him was that he was virulently moderate.

He looked safe. An utterly ridiculous thing to think, of course. Still, Serena held his eyes, smiled, and gave the fellow a polite, dismissive nod.

He crossed the street toward her.

He was as unremarkable as the shrubbery that edged the square. He had a nondescript face, so familiar that it might have belonged to anyone. He gave her a friendly, unassuming smile.

She did not respond in kind. She wasn’t nice, she wasn’t easy, and she was done being a target. She gave him a pointed look—a raise of her eyebrow that signified don’t you impinge on my time.

A man as ordinary as this one should have flinched from her expression. But this one came right up to her bench and, without so much as asking her leave, sat next to her.

“Nice day,” he commented.

His voice was like his face: not too high and not too deep. His accent was not the drawl of aristocratic syllables trained to lazy perfection, but a hint of something from the north.

“Is it?” It wasn’t—not when she’d been sitting outside long enough to turn her nose red. Not when an unfamiliar man sat next to her and started a conversation.

She turned to frown at him.

He was watching her with a quizzical little smile. “I believe there is no good way to continue.”

She sighed. “You’ve come for gossip, haven’t you?”

“You could say that.” He tensed, and then met her eyes. “It’s Hugo Marshall, by the way.” He tossed the introduction out, and then leaned back, as if waiting for her response.

Was he an important man? She remembered the servants scattering as he’d approached. Maybe he was a solicitor, who might carry tales. Or a butler, who enforced rules. He looked rather young to be a Mayfair butler, but whatever he was, he wasn’t going away.

She would have preferred a woman to start the gossip—she found it easier to talk to women. But perhaps this fellow would do.