“Nevertheless.”
“Nevertheless?” he echoed.
She gave a crisp nod.
“Hardly a rebuttal worthy of London’s finest governess.”
“A lovely compliment to be sure,” she volleyed, “but unlikely to spur me to battle.”
He stepped toward her, murmuring, “Coward.”
“Hardly,” she returned, managing to respond without even moving her lips. And then, with a bright smile: “Come along, girls, let’s get started. I shall remain here for a moment to help you begin.”
“I don’t need help,” Frances grumbled. “I just need to not have to do it.”
Anne just smiled. She knew that Frances would be boasting of her steps and calculations later that evening.
“You, too, Lord Winstead.” Anne gazed at him with her most benign expression. The girls were already moving forward, unfortunately at differing speeds, which meant that a cacophony of numbers filled the air.
“Oh, but I can’t,” he said. One of his hands fluttered up to rest over his heart.
“Why can’t you?” Harriet asked, at the same moment that Anne said, “Of course you can.”
“I feel dizzy,” he said, and it was such an obvious clanker that Anne could not help but roll her eyes. “It’s true,” he insisted. “I have the . . . oh, what was it that befell poor Sarah . . . the vertigo.”
“It was a stomach ailment,” corrected Harriet, and she took a discreet step back.
“You didn’t seem dizzy before,” Frances said.
“Well, that was because I wasn’t closing my eye.”
That silenced all of them.
And then finally: “I beg your pardon?” From Anne, who really did want to know what closing his eye had to do with anything.
“I always close my eye when I count,” he told her. With a completely straight face.
“You always— Wait a moment,” Anne said suspiciously. “You close one of your eyes when you count?”
“Well, I could hardly close both.”
“Why not?” Frances asked.
“I wouldn’t be able to see,” he said, as if the answer were plain as day.
“You don’t need to be able to see to count,” Frances replied.
“I do.”
He was lying. Anne could not believe the girls weren’t howling in protest. But they weren’t. In fact, Elizabeth looked utterly fascinated. “Which eye?” she asked.
He cleared his throat, and Anne was fairly certain she saw him wink each of his eyes, as if to remember which was the injured party. “The right one,” he finally decided.
“Of course,” Harriet said.
Anne looked at her. “What?”
“Well, he’s right-handed, isn’t he?” Harriet looked to her cousin. “Aren’t you?”
“I am,” he confirmed.
Anne looked from Lord Winstead to Harriet and back again. “And this is relevant because . . . ?”
Lord Winstead gave her a tiny shrug, saved from having to answer by Harriet, who said, “It just is.”
“I’m sure I could take on the challenge next week,” Lord Winstead said, “once my eye has healed. I don’t know why it did not occur to me that I would lose my sense of balance with only the swollen eye to look through.”
Anne’s eyes—both of them—narrowed. “I thought one’s balance was affected by one’s hearing.”
Frances gasped. “Don’t tell me he’s going deaf?”
“He’s not going deaf,” Anne retorted. “Although I might, if you yell like that again. Now, get going, the three of you, and carry on with your work. I’m going to sit down.”
“As am I,” Lord Winstead said jauntily. “But I shall be with you three in spirit.”
The girls went back to their counting, and Anne strode over to the bench. Lord Winstead was right behind her, and as they sat she said, “I can’t believe they believed that nonsense about your eye.”
“Oh, they didn’t believe it,” he said nonchalantly. “I told them earlier I’d give them a pound each if they endeavored to give us a few moments alone.”
“What?” Anne screeched.
He doubled over laughing. “Of course I didn’t. Good heavens, do you think me a complete dunce? No, don’t answer that.”
She shook her head, annoyed with herself for having been such an easy mark. Still, she couldn’t be angry; his laughter was far too good-natured.
“I’m surprised no one has come over to greet you,” she said. The park was not any more crowded than usual for this time of day, but they were hardly the only people out for a stroll. Anne knew that Lord Winstead had been an extremely popular gentleman when he’d lived in London; it was hard to believe that no one had noticed his presence in Hyde Park.
“I don’t think it was common knowledge that I planned to return,” he said. “People see what they expect to see, and no one in the park expects to see me.” He gave her a rueful half grin and glanced up and to the left, as if motioning to his swollen eye. “Especially not in this condition.”
“And not with me,” she added.
“Who are you, I wonder?”
She turned, sharply.
“That’s quite a reaction for so basic a question,” he murmured.
“I am Anne Wynter,” she said evenly. “Governess to your cousins.”
“Anne,” he said softly, and she realized he was savoring her name like a prize. He tilted his head to the side. “Is it Wynter with an i or a y?”
“Y. Why?” And then she couldn’t help but chuckle at what she’d just said.
“No reason,” he replied. “Just my natural curiosity.” He was silent for a bit longer, then said, “It doesn’t suit you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your name. Wynter. It does not suit you. Even with the y.”
“We are rarely given the choice of our names,” she pointed out.
“True, but still, I have often found it interesting how well some of us are suited to them.”
She could not hide an impish smile. “What, then, does it mean to be a Smythe-Smith?”
He sighed, with perhaps too much drama. “I suppose we were doomed to perform the same musicale over and over and over . . .”
He looked so despondent she had to laugh. “Whatever do you mean by that?”
“It’s a bit repetitive, don’t you think?”
“Smythe-Smith? I think there is something rather friendly about it.”
“Hardly. One would think if a Smythe married a Smith, they might be able to settle their differences and pick a name rather than saddling the rest of us with both.”
Anne chuckled. “How long ago was the name hyphenated?”
“Several hundred years.” He turned, and for a moment she forgot his scrapes and his bruises. She saw only him, watching her as if she were the only woman in the world.
She coughed, using it to mask her tiny motion away from him on the bench. He was dangerous, this man. Even when they were sitting in a public park, talking about nothing of great importance, she felt him.
Something within her had been awakened, and she desperately needed to shut it back away.
“I’ve heard conflicting stories,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her turmoil. “The Smythes had the money and the Smiths had the position. Or the romantic version: The Smythes had the money and the position but the Smiths had the beautiful daughter.”
“With hair of spun gold and eyes of cerulean blue? It sounds rather like an Arthurian legend.”
“Hardly. The beautiful daughter turned out to be a shrew.” He tilted his head to her with a dry grin. “Who did not age well.”
Anne laughed, despite herself. “Why did the family not cast off the name, then, and go back to being Smythes?”
“I have no idea. Perhaps they signed a contract. Or someone thought we sounded more dignified with an extra syllable. At any rate, I don’t even know if the story is true.”
She laughed again, gazing out over the park to watc
h the girls. Harriet and Elizabeth were bickering over something, probably nothing more than a blade of grass, and Frances was powering on, taking giant steps that were going to ruin her results. Anne knew she should go over to correct her, but it was so pleasant to sit on the bench with the earl.
“Do you like being a governess?” he asked.
“Do I like it?” She looked at him with furrowed brow. “What an odd question.”
“I can’t think of anything less odd, considering your profession.”
Which showed just how much he knew about having a job. “No one asks a governess if she likes being one,” she said. “No one asks that of anyone.”
She’d thought that would be the end of it, but when she glanced back at his face, he was watching her with a true and honest curiosity.
“Have you ever asked a footman if he likes being one?” she pointed out. “Or a maid?”
“A governess is hardly a footman or a maid.”
“We are closer than you think. Paid a wage, living in someone else’s house, always one misstep away from being tossed in the street.” And while he was pondering that, she turned the tables and asked, “Do you like being an earl?”
He thought for a moment. “I have no idea.” At her look of surprise, he added, “I haven’t had much chance to know what it means. I held the title for barely a year before I left England, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t do much with it during that time. If the earldom is thriving, it is due to my father’s excellent stewardship, and his foresight in appointing several capable managers.”
Still, she persisted. “But you still were the earl. It did not matter what land you stood upon. When you made an acquaintance you said, ‘I am Winstead,’ not ‘I am Mr. Winstead.’ ”
He looked at her frankly. “I made very few acquaintances while I was abroad.”
“Oh.” It was a remarkably odd statement, and she did not know how to respond. He didn’t say anything more, and she did not think she could bear the touch of melancholy that had misted over them, so she said, “I do like being a governess. To them, at least,” she clarified, smiling and waving at the girls.
“I take it this is not your first position,” he surmised.
“No. My third. And I have also served as a companion.” She wasn’t sure why she was telling him all this. It was more of herself than she usually shared. But it wasn’t anything he could not discover by quizzing his aunt. All of her previous positions had been disclosed when Anne had applied to teach the Pleinsworth daughters, even the one that had not ended well. Anne strove for honesty whenever possible, probably because it so often wasn’t possible. And she was most grateful that Lady Pleinsworth had not thought less of her for having departed a position where every day had ended with her having to barricade her door against her students’ father.
Lord Winstead regarded her with an oddly penetrating stare, then finally said, “I still don’t think you’re a Wynter,” he said.
How odd that he seemed so stuck on the idea. Still, she shrugged. “There is not much for me to do about it. Unless I marry.” Which, as they both knew, was an unlikely prospect. Governesses rarely had the opportunity to meet eligible gentlemen of their own station. And Anne did not want to marry, in any case. It was difficult to imagine giving any man complete control over her life and her body.
“Look at that lady, for example,” he said, motioning with his head toward a woman who was disdainfully dodging Frances and Elizabeth as they leapt across the path. “She looks like a Wynter. Icy blond, cold of character.”
“How can you possibly judge her character?”
“Some dissembling on my part,” he admitted. “I used to know her.”
Anne didn’t even want to think about what that meant.
“I think you’re an autumn,” he mused.
“I would rather be spring,” she said softly. To herself, really.
He did not ask her why. She didn’t even think about his silence until later, when she was in her small room, remembering the details of the day. It was the sort of statement that begged for explanation, but he hadn’t asked. He’d known not to.
She wished he had asked. She wouldn’t have liked him so well if he had.
And she had a feeling that liking Daniel Smythe-Smith, the equal parts famous and infamous Earl of Winstead, could lead only to downfall.
As Daniel walked home that evening, after having stopped by Marcus’s house to convey his formal congratulations, he realized that he could not recall the last time he had so enjoyed an afternoon.
He supposed this was not such a difficult achievement; he had spent the last three years of his life in exile, after all, frequently on the run from Lord Ramsgate’s hired thugs. It was not an existence that lent itself to lazy outings and pleasant, aimless conversation.
But that was what his afternoon had turned out to be. While the girls counted their steps along Rotten Row, he and Miss Wynter had sat and chatted, talking about very little in particular. And all the time he could not stop thinking how very much he’d wanted to take her hand.
That was all. Just her hand.
He would bring it to his lips, and bow his head in tender salute. And he would have known that that simple, chivalrous kiss would be the beginning of something amazing.
That was why it would have been enough. Because it would be a promise.
Now that he was alone with his thoughts, his mind wandered to everything that promise might hold. The curve of her neck, the lush intimacy of her undone hair. He could not recall wanting a woman this way. It went beyond mere desire. His need for her went deeper than his body. He wanted to worship her, to—
The blow came out of nowhere, clipping him below his ear, sending him tumbling back against a lamppost.
“What the hell?” he grunted, looking up just in time to see two men lunging toward him.
“Aye, there’s a good guv,” one of them said, and as he moved, snakelike in the misty air, Daniel saw the glint of a knife, flashing in the lamplight.
Ramsgate.
These were his men. They had to be.
Damn it, Hugh had promised him it was safe to return. Had Daniel been a fool to believe him, so desperate to go home he’d not been able to bring himself to see the truth?
Daniel had learned how to fight dirty and mean in the last three years, and while the first of his attackers lay curled on the pavement from a kick to the groin, the other was forced to wrestle for control of the knife.
“Who sent you?” Daniel growled. They were face-to-face, almost nose to nose, their arms stretched high as they both strained for the weapon.
“I jest want yer coin,” the ruffian said. He smiled, and his eyes held a glittery sheen of cruelty. “Give me yer money, and we’ll all walk away.”
He was lying. Daniel knew this as well as he knew how to draw breath. If he let go of the man’s wrists, even for one moment, that knife would be plunged between his ribs. As it was, he had only moments before the man on the ground regained his equilibrium.
“Hey now! What’s going on here?”
Daniel flicked his eyes across the street for just long enough to see two men running out from a public house. His attacker saw them, too, and with a jerk of his wrists, he flung the knife into the street. Twisting and shoving, he freed himself from Daniel’s grasp and took off running, his friend scrambling behind him.
Daniel sprinted after them, determined to capture at least one. It would be the only way he would get any answers. But before he reached the corner, one of the men from the pub tackled him, mistaking him for one of the criminals.
“Damn it,” Daniel grunted. But there was no use in cursing the man who’d knocked him to the street. He knew he might well be dead if not for his intervention.
If he wanted answers, he was going to have to find Hugh Prentice.
Now.
Chapter Five
Hugh lived in a small set of apartments in The Albany, an elegant building that catered to gentlemen of exception
al birth and modest means. Hugh certainly could have remained in his father’s enormous manse, and in fact Lord Ramsgate had tried everything short of blackmail to force him to stay, but as Hugh had told Daniel on the long journey home from Italy, he no longer spoke to his father.
His father, unfortunately, still spoke to him.
Hugh was not home when Daniel arrived, but his valet was, and he showed Daniel to the sitting room, assuring him that Hugh was expected to return shortly.
For nearly an hour Daniel paced the room, going over every detail of the attack. It hadn’t been the best lit of London streets, but it certainly wasn’t considered one of the more dangerous. Then again, if a thief wanted to capture a heavy purse, he would need to venture beyond the rookeries of St. Giles and Old Nichol. Daniel would not have been the first gentleman to be robbed so close to Mayfair and St. James’s.
It could have been a simple robbery. Couldn’t it? They had said they wanted his money. It could have been the truth.
But Daniel had spent too long looking over his shoulder to accept the simple explanation for anything. And so when Hugh finally let himself into his rooms, Daniel was waiting for him.
“Winstead,” Hugh said immediately. He did not appear to be surprised, but then again, Daniel didn’t think he had ever seen Hugh appear surprised. He had always had the most remarkably expressionless face. It was one of the reasons he’d been so unbeatable at cards. That and his freakish aptitude for numbers.
“What are you doing here?” Hugh asked. He closed the door behind himself and limped in, leaning heavily on his cane. Daniel forced himself to watch his progress. When they had first met up again, back in Italy, it had been difficult for Daniel to watch Hugh’s painful gait, knowing that he was the cause of it. Now he bore witness as a sort of penance, although after what had happened to him that very evening, he was not certain it was a penance he deserved.
“I was attacked,” Daniel said curtly.
Hugh went still. Slowly, he turned, his eyes carefully sweeping from Daniel’s face, to his feet, and back again. “Sit,” he said abruptly, and he motioned to a chair.
Daniel’s blood was rushing far too quickly to take a seat. “I would rather stand.”