Seducing the Governess by Margo Maguire Read Free Book Online Page B

favorite.”
    Emmaline nodded and took the book from Mercy’s hands. Very carefully, she closed it and put it back on the shelf. Mercy wondered how long Emmaline’s mother had been dead, and what had happened to her father. But it was clearly not appropriate to ask the child, who seemed so delicate she might break with the first untoward word.
    The child was not exactly skittish, but withdrawn. There was no light of curiosity or delight in her beautiful blue eyes. She kept them downcast as much as possible.
    “Have you ever had a governess?” Mercy asked.
    “No,” Emmaline replied softly.
    “And I have never been a governess before,” Mercy said with a smile, hoping to get past some of Emmaline’s shyness. “You will have to help me do a good job.”
    Emmaline looked at her sharply, and Mercy suppressed a smile at the girl’s sudden flare of interest.
    Now that she had some idea of how to engage Emmaline, she glanced around. “Where do you suppose my room is? Can you show me?”
    They stood, and Emmaline took Mercy’s hand. Leaving the nursery, Emmaline took her across the corridor into a stale chamber with a narrow bed and a dusty wardrobe. It had obviously been unused for quite some time, but there were large windows similar to the ones in the nursery that looked out over a grove of tall beech trees that were just beginning to bud. Beyond it were the tall fells and the path she’d traversed to reach her destination here.
    With a thorough cleaning, the room would do. And yet Emmaline would not. As a vicar’s daughter, Mercy had come into contact with the parish children, and yet none was as quiet and reserved as Emmaline.
    Presumptuous or not, she needed to ask Lord Ashby a few questions about little Lady Emmaline.
    As soon as his niece and her governess quit the room, Nash turned his attention to his injured ankle. As inconvenient as that was, it was far better than thinking about Emmaline’s sad eyes or Miss Franklin’s enticing ones. He neither needed nor wanted any new entanglements.
    Yet it had been amusing to tease the girl when she’d stopped to help him in the road. He’d been surprisingly engaged by Miss Franklin, half drowned as she was with her soaked bonnet plastered over her hair. The situation had been absurd, but the delicate outline of Mercy Franklin’s face had compelled him, with her high cheekbones and daintily pointed chin. Nash considered that her eyes had to be the clearest green of any he’d ever seen, and they’d watched him warily, even critically.
    But it was her plush mouth that had captured his attention. That, and the lushly feminine form that had been patently obvious in spite of her prim coat.
    Who would have thought such sharp words could have emanated from those enticing lips? Who would have thought Nash would feel such acute arousal for a young woman who had accused him—to his face!—of being foolhardy.
    He almost laughed aloud. She had been so busy scolding him, it seemed she had not even noticed the damaged side of his face or his filmy eye, despite the fact that he had done naught to hide them.
    Nash turned to look at the fire. Miss Franklin was a puzzle he had no intention of solving. He needed answers to several far more important other questions, which had been the purpose of his visit to Keswick’s magistrate earlier in the afternoon.
    He wanted to know who had been present when his eldest brother, Hoyt, had been shot and killed. He wanted to know what Hoyt’s relationship was with each of the men who’d gone deer stalking with him that day, and if there had been any reason one of them would have wanted him dead.
    Lowell had not been present for the day’s deer stalking, but there had been an inquest, of course. And Arthur had written Nash to say that the investigation had been conducted with all due consideration. With so many hunters spread out in the wooded land north of the Hall, it had been impossible to know who had fired the fatal shot. And since no