The Carriagemaker's Daughter Read Online Free Page A

Quentin’s body was quick to respond. Lady Sinclair had been toying with the neckline of her gown as they spoke, and at this point very little of her bosom was left to the imagination. Vivid memories of previous visits to Celia’s boudoir before her marriage sprang forcefully to Lord Quentin’s mind.
    Lady Sinclair leaned closer, and Charles realized the answer to his own question as the scent of a fine sherry wafted in his direction.
    Celia was drinking again. Poor Jonathan.
    The girl stirred in his arms. “Papa,” she said, and then something too soft for him to hear.
    Somebody’s daughter. He sighed, and, ignoring Celia, carried the governess off toward his rooms.
    “Charles!” the marchioness cried, watching him leave. “You can’t take her into your rooms!  She’s–she’s... unclean!”
    “Call Mrs. Tiggs,” he called back to her.
    “Oh!  I’ll do no such thing!  If you’re so smitten with that odious... creature , take care of her yourself. ”  Celia flounced off, slamming the door to her suite.
    Charles knew this was bluff. The marchioness would call the housekeeper–and quickly–if only to remove the governess from his bedroom.
     
    Lord Quentin laid the girl down on the silk coverlet. He checked her breathing–strong and regular–and would have unfastened the stays on her dress if the garment hadn’t already been little more than a loose sack. There was nothing else he could do for her at the moment. The years in Spain had familiarized him with all manner of bullet and bayonet wounds, but hunger was a different problem. He sat down to wait for Mrs. Tiggs.
    As expected, the housekeeper arrived within minutes, clucking loudly. She took one look at the woman lying unconscious in the middle of Charles’s large, four-poster bed, and rang for a footman.
    “ ’Tis the governess, milord?” she asked Charles. “Telford said–”
    “It would seem so.”
    “Taken ill, milord?”
    “Hungry, I should think.”
    “Hungry!”  Mrs. Tiggs looked astonished for a moment; then she nodded and set to work, muttering imprecations under her breath.
     “Not that I’m complainin’, you see,” she told Lord Quentin, gently wiping the girl’s forehead with a moistened cloth, “but ’twould be better t’ my way of thinkin’ if a body was informed when someone new comes t’ the door.”
    Lord Quentin frowned. “Are you saying that no one knew that a governess had been hired?”  That would be just like Celia, he thought.
    “No, milord. Well, yes, milord. Didn’t know she was t’ be comin’ today. Last girl left over a month ago.”
    “Ah.”  Charles considered this for a moment. “There was a previous governess?”
    “Aye, milord,” said Mrs. Tiggs. “This one’ll be the third.”
    “What happened to the first two?”
    Mrs. Tiggs shot him a sharp look. “Well, now, ’twouldn’t be my look out, would it?  But both of them was pretty and young, and as near t’ quality as makes some people nervous, if you get my meanin’.”
    “Ah.”  Celia’s resentment of any other pretty woman was well-known. But Charles still wondered at the unconscious girl’s physical state. Was Lady Sinclair hiring from the poorhouse now?  Or was this merely Jonathan’s attempt to appease his wife’s jealousy? 
    He looked at the governess’s face, where the clear ravages of recent hunger–dry, cracked lips and sunken cheeks–couldn’t erase the charm of thick lashes, black against smooth skin, and a wide, sensual mouth.
    She might have been lovely, thought Charles. If she had been a lady.
    “Not that I need the warnin’, you understand,” continued Mrs. Tiggs. “All my rooms are in order and ’twould have been a simple matter–”
    Lord Quentin nodded his agreement. “I dare say.”
    “And the poor girl, half froze t’ death, I just don’t know–”  Mrs. Tiggs chattered on, smoothing tendrils of the governess’s hair back from her face. The thick mass of auburn curls gleamed in