Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons #4)(23)

“What are their names?”

He scratched at his brow. “Beg your pardon?”

“Your sisters. What are their names and ages?”

Hmm, this was the question she’d put to him. Odd, indeed. He’d expected requests for more on her part. She may be his new governess, but she was still a young lady and accustomed to a comfortable lifestyle, he imagined. Well, before her wastrel brother had probably begun squandering all their wealth.

“Poppy, twelve. Penelope,” he grinned, and remembered back to his earlier conversation with his second youngest sister. “We refer to her as Penny, is thirteen,” he suggested, knowing all the while he was wickedly setting the lady up for failure with Penny. “Prudence is fifteen. And my oldest sister, Patrina, not one of your charges, is nineteen and recently made her Come Out.”

Juliet’s bow-shaped lips moved as though she were silently cataloging this recent information on her new charges. She nodded once. “And their interests?”

Jonathan folded his arms across his chest, and winked. “Come now, Juliet, you do not simply imagine I’d make this an entirely easy task for you.” Not that he needed to make caring for his troublesome sisters any more difficult than it already was. “Why, would you expect me to simply turn over the cottage to you?”

“I would,” she replied instantly.

That damn niggling guilt grew, and knifed at his conscience. He inclined his head. “Then all you need to do is help shape them into proper, English young ladies.”





Chapter 7


All you need to do is turn them into proper, English young ladies.

Juliet stared at the trio of black-curled young ladies who stood side by side like the King’s infantry, moments before battle. And by the mutinous set to their like mouths, Juliet suspected this would be a battle, indeed. She glanced over at Jonathan, whose hard lips were turned up in wicked smile, displaying his pearl-white teeth and narrowed her gaze. Oh, the lout. He thought she could be defeated so easily.

Jonathan spread his arms wide. “Miss Marsh, your three charges.” He inclined his head. “If you’ve no further questions.” Further questions? She’d not had the opportunity to ask a one. “Then I’ll leave you to your er... meeting. Good day.”

An overwhelming urge to charge after him and drag him back for the remainder of this meeting filled her coward’s body. She eyed the door longingly, and then gave her head a firm shake when he closed it behind him. She’d never been a coward before. Not when Albert had tipped her from the tree and left her to all but drag herself through the rolling hills bordering Rosecliff Cottage. Not when her Papa had died, and she’d been scolded for weeping. Not even when she’d learned about the loss of the cottage to the Earl of Sinclair.

“Why is she shaking her head like that?” the smallest of the girls whispered, pulling Juliet back to the moment.

The girl on the end, the eldest, folded her arms on a huff. “Because she’s mad, is all. Sin brought us a madwoman for a governess.”

Oh, dear. They were a pugnacious lot. Juliet smoothed her hands down the front of her skirts. “I’m not a madwoman,” she said to the girls. Determined. Undeterred. But not mad.

A trio of eyes fixed on her. She wandered closer to the girls. The same girl Juliet took for the eldest studied her with a narrow gaze. “Are you injured?”

Juliet shook her head. “No. I was injured a long time ago.”

Prudence snickered. “Oh, you’re a cripple.”

She smiled at the girl and said, “Some might say that, Lady Prudence.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed even further. “How did you know my name?” she demanded.

Ah, so she’d been correct in her supposition. She merely smiled in response.

“What happened to your leg?” the girl who stood in the middle at last broke her silence.

Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “The long story or the short, Lady Penelope?”

Poppy and Prudence fixed matching glares on Penelope, as if willing her to silence. For a long moment, Juliet suspected the girl might not respond, but her curiosity proved far greater. “The short.” Though her tone fair begged for the long version.

Juliet began to walk a small circle about the room. “My brother pushed me from a tree,” she murmured.

Poppy gasped. “That is horrid.”

Juliet nodded. “Yes, it was.”

Penelope snorted. “I’m certain you deserved it.”

Her attention swung back to the girl. Their eyes met, locked, and held in an unspoken battle of the wills. She wandered back over to the girl who backed up a step, and then tossed her chin up a notch.

Juliet paused before her. “Undoubtedly, Lady Penelope,” she said in whisper-soft tone.

The girl swallowed hard, her eyes went wide. But she said nothing else on the matter, and Juliet considered this rather small battle won.

She continued surveying the grand space. With its wide ceilings, Chippendale furniture, and ivory silk wallpaper, she could fit the whole lower rooms of Rosecliff Cottage within the four walls.

“What do you intend to teach us,” Poppy murmured, eying her the way she might eye the devil come to dinner.

“Needlepoint,” she began. “We’ll refine your singing and dancing.”