A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(63)

“What happened?” Daniel echoed, panic rising within him as he wondered to what, precisely, his aunt was referring. Had someone found out about his visit to Anne’s bedroom? No, that was impossible. Anne would have been thrown out of the house if that had been the case.
“Your time spent alone with her,” Lady Pleinsworth clarified. “Don’t think I was unaware. As much as I would like to believe that you have suddenly taken an interest in Harriet, Elizabeth, and Frances, any fool could see that you’ve been panting after Miss Wynter like a puppy dog.”
“Another insult, I assume,” he bit off.
She pursed her lips but otherwise ignored his comment. “I do not want to have to let her go,” she said, “but if you pursue the connection, I will have no choice. And you can be sure that no family of good standing would hire a governess who consorts with an earl.”
“Consorts?” he repeated, his voice somewhere between disbelief and disgust. “Don’t insult her with such a word.”
His aunt drew back and regarded him with mild pity. “It is not I who insults her. In fact, I applaud Miss Wynter for possessing good judgment where you do not. I was warned not to hire such an attractive young woman as a governess, but despite her looks she is extremely intelligent. And the girls quite adore her. Would you have me discriminate against her for her beauty?”
“No,” he bit off, ready to climb the walls with frustration. “And what the devil has that to do with anything? I just want to speak with her.” His voice rose at the end, coming dangerously close to a roar.
Lady Pleinsworth leveled a long stare at his face. “No,” she said.
Daniel practically bit his tongue to keep from snapping at her. The only way his aunt was going to let him see Anne was if he told her that he suspected that she had been the target of the attack at Whipple Hill. But anything that hinted at a scandalous past would have her fired immediately, and he would not be the cause of her loss of employment.
Finally, his patience worn down to a threadbare string, he let out a between-the-teeth exhale and said, “I need to speak with her once. One time only. It may be in your sitting room with the door ajar, but I would insist upon privacy.”
His aunt regarded him suspiciously. “Once?”
“Once.” It was not strictly true; he wished for a great deal more than that, but that was all he was going to request.
“I shall think about it,” she sniffed.
“Aunt Charlotte!”
“Oh, very well, just once, and only because I wish to believe that your mother raised a son who has some sense of right and wrong.”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Don’t blaspheme in front of me,” she warned, “and make me reconsider my judgment.”
Daniel clamped his mouth shut, gritting his teeth so hard he fully expected to taste powder.
“You may call upon her tomorrow,” Lady Pleinsworth granted. “At eleven in the morning. The girls plan to go shopping with Sarah and Honoria. I would prefer not to have them in the house while you are . . .” She appeared not to know how to describe it, instead flicking her hand distastefully in the air.
He nodded, then bowed, then left.
But like his aunt, he did not see Anne, watching them from a crack in the door to the next room, listening to every word they said.
Anne waited until Daniel stormed out of the house, then looked down at the letter in her hands. Lady Pleinsworth hadn’t been lying; she had gone out to run her errands. But she’d returned through the back door, as was her usual practice when she did not have the girls with her. She’d been on her way up to her room when she realized that Daniel was in the front hall. She shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but she could not help herself. It wasn’t so much what he said; she just wanted to hear his voice.
It would be the last time she would hear it.
The letter was from her sister Charlotte, and it was a bit out of date, as it had been sitting at the receiving house where Anne preferred to pick up her mail since well before she had left for Whipple Hill. The receiving house she hadn’t gone to that day she’d run into the bootmaker’s shop in a panic. If she’d had this letter before she’d thought she’d seen George Chervil, she wouldn’t have been frightened.
She’d have been terrified.
According to Charlotte, he’d come by the house again, this time when Mr. and Mrs. Shawcross were out. He’d first tried to cajole her into revealing Anne’s whereabouts, then he’d ranted and screamed until the servants had come in, worried for Charlotte’s safety. He’d left then, but not until he had revealed that he knew Anne was working as a governess for an aristocratic family, and that this being springtime, she was likely in London. Charlotte did not think he knew which family Anne was working for; else why would he have expended so much energy trying to get the answer from her? Still, she was worried, and she begged Anne to take caution.
Anne crumpled the letter in her hands, then eyed the tidy fire burning in the grate. She always burned Charlotte’s letters after she received them. It was painful every time; these wispy slips of paper were her only link to her old life, and more than once she had sat at her small writing table, blinking back tears as she traced the familiar loops of Charlotte’s script with her index finger. But Anne had no illusions that she enjoyed perfect privacy as a servant, and she had no idea how she might explain them if they were ever discovered. This time, however, she happily threw the paper into the fire.
Well, not happily. She wasn’t sure she would do anything happily, ever again. But she enjoyed destroying it, however grim and furious that joy might be.