The Governess Game (Girl Meets Duke #2)(27)

Millicent sat on the opposite bed, wearing a paper sailor’s hat and, as was her usual, an unsettling smile.

Rosamund slashed her blade through the air. “Fire.”

From behind them, Miss Mountbatten made a series of the most fantastic noises. A boom, then a whistled glissando, followed by a rumbling crash that she accompanied with a brisk shake of the bedpost.

The girls gave a rousing cheer.

“Dead-on hit to the broadside,” she declared. “Bring the ship about and ready the plank.”

Rosamund yanked on a curtain tie, and a white “sail” unfurled from the top of the bed frame. Meanwhile, Daisy reached for a board that looked to have been ripped from a crate and cobbled together with rope.

“Ready for boarding!”

She scrambled from one bed to the next and held the cutlass to Millicent’s throat. “Hand over the plunder!”

Chase had seen enough. “Ahem.”

All three of them froze. Four, if he counted Millicent. The room went silent, save for an audible gulp from Miss Mountbatten.

“What is going on here?” he demanded.

Daisy spoke first. “Millicent’s been wounded.” She drew the “blade” across the doll’s neck. “Kerchief, please. She’s losing a great deal of blood.”

Chase ignored the doll’s death throes and stalked across the room to have a word with his governess.

“I can explain,” she said.

“You had better.”

“The girls and I . . . Well, we’re playing a game, you see.”

“You weren’t hired to play games.”

“But this is an educational game.”

“An education in cutlasses?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Only partly.”

Her eyes flitted toward the slate, and he followed her gaze. “Piracy?” He read the word aloud with horror. “You’re instructing them in piracy.”

“It isn’t how you’re thinking. I—”

Chase caught her by the elbow and guided her to the far side of the room. He needed space to berate her properly. “You are meant to be teaching them to be proper young ladies.”

“They’re not ready to be young ladies. They’re girls. They need to play, and they’ve forgotten how.”

“They need to learn their lessons. Letters, numbers, stitching samplers with misshapen flowers and dire Bible verses.”

“They are learning.” She directed his attention to the world map on the wall, where a series of pins guided a string from England to the West Indies. “We’ve plotted a course to Tortuga. There’s geography.” From there, she walked to the slate and pointed to a stack of figures. “Calculated the length of the journey, how many days it will take. How many rations we’ll need aboard. That’s arithmetic. I’ve even taught them a bit of French.”

Chase read aloud from the board. “‘Donnez-nous le butin, ou nous vous ferons jeter par-dessus bord.’ What does that mean?”

She hedged. “Hand over the booty, or you’ll walk the plank.”

“Millicent’s dead,” announced Daisy. “It will have to be a burial at sea.”

Chase rubbed his temples. “Right. This little game of yours stops. At once.”

“If I’m the governess, I must be allowed my own methods.”

“I’m your employer. You’ll do as I instruct.”

“Or what? You’ll hire another of the candidates queuing up for the post?” She made an exasperated gesture. “I’m succeeding where all the others have failed. How many is it you’ve been through again?”

“Fifteen,” he replied. “But I can always find the sixteenth. London is rife with women who’ll happily submit to my wishes.”

“No doubt it is. I’m not one of them.”

They stood locked in a stalemate. Dangerously close together. Perhaps it wasn’t that he was unwilling to step aside. Maybe he didn’t want her to get away.

Maybe he wanted her closer.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he got his wish. He felt a tight cinch about his rib cage. She made a startled cry.

In the space of a moment, they’d grown very close indeed. Indecently close. Chest-to-chest close. And if not for a few layers of fabric . . . the kind of closeness that meant skin on skin.

God.

Baffled, he attempted a self-protective step in retreat. A force resisted. “What the devil?”

His hellion wards collapsed on the bed with laughter.

He looked down. They’d been tied together with a length of rope. Tied and knotted, it would seem. Apparently while he’d been lost in her fiery eyes, the girls had managed to loop a rope about the two of them—and then cinch it tight.

“Oh, dear.”

“You little . . .” Chase wriggled, attempting to turn and chastise them. He succeeded only in craning his neck. “Come back here at once.”

“Daisy, do you think there’s cake in the kitchen?”

“I heard there’s jam, as well.”

The girls linked hands and skipped toward the door.

“Don’t you dare.” Chase hopped in their direction, dragging Miss Mountbatten with him. “Get back here, or I’ll—”