Breaking the Governess’s Rules Read Online Free Page B

dismissed? A governess has little choice in such matters.’
    The shadows deepened in Jonathon’s eyes and his advance stopped. There was the faint hint of hesitation in his mouth as if he had never suspected his stepmother might do something like that. Louisa’s stomach lurched. He did know. He had to have known what Mrs Ponsby-Smythe had done, what she was capable of doing. A tiny whisper resounded in the back of Louisa’s brain—perhaps he hadn’t known.
    She quashed it.
    ‘I was an innocent, Jonathon. You were infinitely more experienced.’ She paused and controlled the faint tremor in her voice. ‘You knew what you were doing. I had no idea, but I knew you were disappointed in me. We quarrelled. You broke with me. It was a late summer romance and then the chill winds of autumn came.’
    ‘You are wrong, Louisa, very wrong.’ Jonathon banged his fists together and took a step towards her, his face contorting in anger. ‘I wanted you.’
    ‘You may wish to live in fantasy worlds, Lord Chesterholm, but mine is solidly grounded in reality.’ She kept her voice steady and her eyes on a spot somewhereover his right shoulder. Dignity and hard-won poise would see her through this ordeal, rather than weeping uncontrollably or shouting. ‘You discarded me because I no longer excited you.’
    A faint smile tugged at his mouth. ‘Interesting—that is not my recollection of the night. Untried, yes, but passionate and willing to learn.’
    Louisa focused on the dust-sheeted furniture, forced herself to remember the awful words Venetia Ponsby-Smythe had said when Louisa had proudly boasted that she would marry Jonathon. ‘You left your stepmother to sort out the mess just as she had sorted out every other scrape from the Earl’s wife to the little dancing girl at Covent Garden.’
    ‘Which Earl’s wife? What dancing girl from Covent Garden?’ Jonathon tilted his head to one side, his lips a firm white line. ‘What fustian nonsense are you spouting, Louisa? Why would I ever ask Venetia to do something like that?’
    ‘The women that your stepmother had to pay off. She showed me a list of your women …’
    Jonathon’s mouth dropped open and his eyes were wide with disbelief and horror. The expression vanished in an instant. He slammed his fists together. ‘I have
never
asked for any assistance from anyone in my family with managing my women, as you call them. I never would.’
    ‘You married another woman, a woman who was far more acceptable to your family. You were engaged to her when you made love to me,’ Louisa continued on, refusing to allow him and this pretended outrage to distract her. ‘You never looked for me.’
    ‘One does not look for the dead amongst the living, Louisa. Clarissa and I only became engaged after I thought you were dead,’ he said slowly, running his hand through his hair. A small shiver ran down her spine. He was serious. He had thought her dead. ‘As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I thought you dead—a fact you have not until now bothered to correct.’
    ‘I refuse to dignify that remark with an answer.’
    ‘What were you so frightened of that you had to disappear?’ His voice held a new note, a plea for something. In many ways, it was worse than his anger. Anger she could react against. ‘Did our love-making frighten you? There was so much passion between us.’
    She gazed up at the ceiling, noticing the swirls and stains from the burning tallow candles. He was right in a way. She had been frightened, frightened of losing him, particularly after their bitter quarrel in the curricle as they had journeyed back to the house. Her cases had been waiting for her in the vestibule as Mrs Ponsby-Smythe had discovered her lie about her ill friend. And Jonathon had departed before she could ask for his help. Very quickly the enchanted afternoon and night had become a nightmare.
    His stepmother had said the very words Louisa had half-expected to hear drip from Jonathon’s