All the same, she hadn’t been right for this particular position. His recently orphaned half-siblings were opinionated and idiosyncratic, to say the least.
He needed a really fine specimen of a governess, someone special.
Eugenia hadn’t moved from her chair in three hours, and yet, to all appearances, the pile of correspondence on her desk had hardly diminished.
She stifled a moan when her assistant, Susan, entered with another fistful of letters. “These arrived this afternoon, and Mr. Reeve is asking to see you.”
A drop of ink rolled from Eugenia’s quill and splashed in the middle of her response to a frantic lady blessed with twins. “Bloody hell, that’s the third letter I’ve ruined today! Would you please repeat that?”
“Mr. Reeve is here,” Susan said. “You will remember that we sent Penelope Lumley to him a week ago, on an emergency basis.”
“Of course. He’s the Oxford don with two orphaned half-siblings to raise,” Eugenia said.
“Likely born on the wrong side of the blanket, just as he was.” Susan leaned against Eugenia’s desk and settled in for a proper gossip. “Not only that, but Reeve was jilted at the altar last fall. I suspect the lady realized what that marriage would do for her reputation.”
“His father is the Earl of Gryffyn,” Eugenia pointed out. She didn’t add that Reeve was outrageously wealthy, but it was a factor. Registry offices didn’t pay for themselves.
“He’s as arrogant as if he were an earl himself. I peeked at him, and he’s got that look, as if the whole world should bow to him.”
Eugenia gave a mental shrug. It was unfortunate that the conjunction of a penis and privilege had such an unfortunate effect on boys, but so it was.
Without just the right governess, they never learned how to be normal. Having grown up in a household that prided itself on eccentricity, Eugenia was a fierce proponent of the virtues of conventional living.
Better for oneself, and infinitely better for the world at large.
“He’s wickedly handsome, which probably plays a part in it,” Susan continued. “I could tell that he always gets his way. Though not,” she added with satisfaction, “with the lady who jilted him.”
Rich, privileged, and handsome, for all he was a bastard: a formula for disaster, from Eugenia’s side of the desk. She crumpled the ruined letter and threw it away. “I find it hard to believe that he has a complaint about Penelope.”
Some of Eugenia’s governesses were formidable, even terrifying women who could be counted on to train a child as spoiled as a week-old codfish.
Others were loving and warm, just right for orphans. Penelope Lumley was sweet as a sugarplum, and, admittedly, about as interesting. But to Eugenia’s mind, grieving children needed love, not excitement, and Penelope’s eyes had grown misty at the very idea of two waifs thrown into an unknown brother’s care.
“He told Ruby that he had sacked her,” Susan said. “I have a tear-stained note from Penelope to prove it.”
“Did she say what happened?”
“Lines were struck through and she’d wept over it. I couldn’t make out much beyond a reference to a locust, though perhaps she meant a swarm of them, à la the Book of Exodus.”
Miss Lumley’s Biblical reference was unsurprising; Snowe’s specialized in hiring daughters of vicars, as that circumstance often resulted in ladylike accomplishments with a total lack of dowry.
“I can’t think of a reference in the Bible to a single locust,” Eugenia said.
“I wouldn’t know,” Susan said with an impish grin. “My father’s Bible lessons never took hold.”
Eugenia leaned forward and gave Susan a poke. “There’s a reason I never sent you out as a governess. You’d unleash a plague of locusts on the man who tried to sack you. I suppose I’ll have to see him, but I shan’t give him another governess.”
“I would guess Penelope’s nerves got the best of her,” Susan said, standing up and shaking out her skirts. “She has masses of them and they make her twitchy.”
“That is no reason for dismissal,” Eugenia said firmly. “She is an excellent governess, and just what those children need.”
Mr. Reeve should have thanked his lucky stars that she had sent him anyone—twitchy or not—but the fact that he’d appeared in the office suggested that he didn’t appreciate the value of a Snowe’s governess.
The mother to whom she’d been writing—not to mention poor Winnie—was one of many begging her for help. Mr. Reeve had been sent Penelope only because of his orphans.
Snowe’s Registry office was the most elite establishment of its kind, renowned for its promise to take children “to majority or marriage, whichever came first.” As Eugenia saw it, that vow was a pledge to “her” children. She had been known to keep a governess in place, the wages paid by the agency, even if a family lost its funds.
But if a family simply didn’t like the governess? That was something different altogether. She couldn’t spend her time shuttling women around England because one interfering man thought his charges deserved someone better than Penelope Lumley.
“Please ask him to join me,” Eugenia said, coming out from behind her desk and walking over to the window looking onto Cavendish Square.
Every year she swore that she would take more fresh air and exercise, and somehow the days spun by in the whirligig that was Snowe’s. Her house was only a few steps from the office, which meant she often worked until she went home and fell into bed.
“Shall I order tea?” Susan asked.
“No,” Eugenia replied. “I mean to dispense with him quickly and go for a walk in the square.”
“I doubt you have time,” Susan said apologetically. “You have the Duchess of Villiers, and I squeezed in Lady Cogley after that.”
“Is there a problem in Her Grace’s nursery? I thought Sally Bennifer was very happy there.”
“Sally has accepted a proposal from the vicar. He must have behaved in a most unvicarish fashion, because she needs to marry spit-spot. Ergo, the duchess needs a replacement.”
“Is ‘unvicarish’ a word?”
“I suppose not,” Susan said. “But the man took his post only a few months ago, so he must have jumped on Sally like a cat on raw liver. My father would not approve.”
“How about sending her Penelope Lumley, since she’s now free?”
“Penelope might be put off by the irregular nature of the Villiers household,” Susan said doubtfully. Most of Villiers’s children were now grown, but he had raised six illegitimate children under the same roof as the three born to his duchess.
“Mary Tuttle,” Eugenia suggested.
Susan nodded. “I’ll ask her. And I’ll be listening during Reeve’s visit, in case his claim to being a gentleman isn’t as accurate as it might be. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a ballroom.”
After a few unfortunate incidents during which degenerates had acted on their conviction that any woman engaged in commerce had no morals and would welcome their advances, Eugenia had had a discreet peephole drilled in the wall between her office and Susan’s; Susan could dispatch their footman to the rescue, if need be.
“Don’t worry,” Eugenia said now. “I’ll brain him with the poker.” Their fireplace implements were topped with solid brass knobs for just that reason.
“Actually, Mr. Reeve is so handsome that women likely just drop at his feet,” Susan said, with a smirk. “If I hear a thump as you fall to the floor, I’ll be sure to leave the two of you alone.”
Eugenia rolled her eyes. “I might prostrate myself before a freshly baked crumpet, but never a man.”
Susan took herself away, and a moment later the door opened again. “Mr. Reeve,” Ruby announced.
The man who strode into the room was tall, with thick brandy-brown hair and darker eyebrows, the color of tarnished brass.
He had a lean rangy look, but something about the way his coat fit across his upper arms made Eugenia suspect he was muscled. What’s
more, his nose had been broken in the past.
This was not the sort of person who typically appeared in Snowe’s refined drawing room. He breathed a different kind of air than did the mothers she dealt with daily.
Abruptly, Eugenia realized that she was staring, her thoughts straying in directions they hadn’t gone for years.
Since Andrew’s death.
She didn’t give a damn what Mr. Reeve’s thighs looked like!
And she would do well to keep it in mind. He was a client, for goodness’ sake. Did she see . . .
No she didn’t.
And she didn’t want to, either.
Chapter Three
Ward entered Mrs. Snowe’s office and checked in his stride.
No governess he’d ever seen had hair that was a curly, swirly mess of red caught up on her head, a delectably curved figure, and lips several shades darker than her hair. Her lips were lush, even erotic, despite being pressed together into a hyphen.
Ward paid little attention to women’s clothing, but he remembered his governesses in gray and black, like dingy crows.
Mrs. Snowe was wearing a pale yellow gown that celebrated her breasts. Her absurdly wonderful breasts.
A delicate jaw, a straight nose . . . Their eyes met.
There was the look he remembered from governesses of old.
She was cross as the dickens, likely because he’d dismissed Miss Lumley. Under her controlled façade, she was practically vibrating with exasperation.
Mrs. Snowe was a former governess, all right, and she’d already summed him up and found him lacking.
He bit back a grin. The governesses he’d chased from the house as a boy hadn’t cared for him either. It was strangely comforting to realize that at least one type of woman was absolutely honest in her assessment of a man.
Eugenia took a deep breath and pasted a smile on her face. No matter how foolish Mr. Reeve had been to sack one of her governesses, it wasn’t his fault that she was irritated by her unexpectedly desirous reaction to his appearance.
She began to walk toward Mr. Reeve, but before she could take more than a step, his long legs had carried him across the room.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Snowe.” He extended his hand with an unhurried confidence that Eugenia recognized.
She ought to: she had grown up with it. It meant that Mr. Reeve, like her father, generally found himself the most intelligent man in the room.
She touched his fingers, thinking to withdraw her hand immediately and drop a curtsy. A good part of the allure of Snowe’s was that she was a member of the peerage. No one ever forgot that.
His large hand closed around hers and he shook it briskly.
Unless they had no idea.
Now he was nodding to her with all the detached civility with which one greets an upper servant. A housekeeper. Or, more to the point, a governess.
It had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t know who she was. They’d never met, but their fathers were friends. Though she had a vague memory that he’d spent years abroad . . . perhaps at university?
“How do you do?” she asked, withdrawing her hand. Her accent usually informed even the most bumptious father that in the current social hierarchy, she belonged at the top.
No such recognition seemed to occur to Mr. Reeve. He glanced about the room with lazy curiosity.
“Very well, thank you,” he said, bending over to look more closely at a small Cellini bronze that stood on a side table. “I wonder if we could come straight to the point, Mrs. Snowe.”
Eugenia’s registry was situated in a small but beautifully proportioned house in the most fashionable area of London. The chairs were Hepplewhite and the rug Aubusson. The wallpaper had been hand-painted in Paris in an exquisite lattice pattern of violet and cerulean blue.
The chamber was so elegant that its atmosphere served as a correction to clients deluded enough to think that they were bestowing a favor on Snowe’s by seeking a governess. Moreover, it had a dampening effect on reprobates in pursuit of her person or her fortune.
Mr. Reeve was obviously as unaffected by his surroundings as by her person.
“May I offer you a cup of tea?” Eugenia asked, forgetting that she had intended to push him out the door without ceremony.
He straightened and turned, and the pure masculine force of him went through her like a lightning bolt.
“I would be grateful if we could dispense with formalities.”
There was no question about it; she was facing the rare client who had no idea who she was.
At all.
It was rather . . . fascinating.
The appeal of her agency lay in her rank—by right of being born to one nobleman and married to another. Her enormous inheritance didn’t hurt, but it was her birth that allowed her to be accounted “eccentric” for running a business, instead of being banished from polite society.
Although to be fair, there were a few who considered her to be a disgrace to her name. Still, even those recognized that her father was a marquis and her late husband the son of a viscount.
Mr. Reeve appeared to believe that she was a governess.
Eugenia was appalled to find that he was rattling her nerves. This was absurd. He was just another client, to be soothed or squashed as his complaint merited. Considering his termination of Penelope’s employment, he needed to be squashed.
She would be polite but firm, as was her practice. He was far from the first parent to whom she’d refused a governess, let alone a second one.
She sat down and nodded. “Won’t you please be seated?”
He dropped into the chair opposite her. “I imagine that you’ve learned that I had to dismiss Miss Lumley. I need someone else.”
“May I know the nature of your dissatisfaction?”
“I see no reason to get into particulars,” Mr. Reeve replied, drumming his fingers on his chair. “She’s a pleasant woman, but she won’t do.”
“Miss Lumley is not a glass of milk that you can send back for being curdled,” Eugenia stated.
“‘Curdled’ is a good word for her. Let me be clear that I’m not blaming you. Or her, for that matter. The blame for Miss Lumley’s curdled nature must be put at the feet of her parents.”
Since when did Oxford dons have husky voices that made a woman think—not that Eugenia was thinking of that, because she wasn’t. Still, her tutors had spoken in polished syllables, whereas Mr. Reeve had a gravelly timbre. “Could you be more specific about Miss Lumley’s perceived shortcomings?”
“She hasn’t the strength of will or the wits needed to deal with my siblings.” A hint of impatience passed over his face. “I could make allowances if Lizzie and Otis were fond of her, but they aren’t. Surely you can spare a governess? I’m told all the best ones work for you.”
“Yes, they do,” Eugenia said. “But as a general rule, I do not reassign my employees. Inasmuch as you were not happy with Miss Lumley, you are welcome to look for a governess elsewhere. I can direct you to several respectable registry offices.”
Any ordinary client would have panicked at this pronouncement, but Eugenia was forming the impression that panic wasn’t in Mr. Reeve’s arsenal.
“I’d rather you gave me a new one.” His mouth curved upward in a smile that—that—
Eugenia spent a second wrestling with the fact that his smile set her heart racing. “Mr. Reeve, forgive me, but you don’t appear to understand the nature of Snowe’s Registry Office.” She sounded like a pompous fool, but what could she do? He seemed to know nothing at all about her or her company.
“I suspect you are correct.” The faint humor in his eyes was extraordinarily irritating, but it was certainly not unusual to meet gentlemen who underestimated her.
“My governesses are highly trained and much in demand,” Eugenia stated. “They are considered essential in the best nurseries. Parents have been known to hide their children in the country and pretend they didn’t exist if I can’t find them a governess.” S
he paused in order to emphasize the statement. “I cannot offer you another of my governesses.”
Mr. Reeve didn’t even blink. “Surely you could spare just one? We didn’t have the chance to meet before you sent Lumpy—I mean, Miss Lumley, but—”
Eugenia cut him off. “‘Lumpy?’”
“The children didn’t take to Miss Lumley,” he said apologetically.
“‘Lumpy’ is a highly disrespectful epithet,” Eugenia snapped.
“I’m fairly certain they never used it to her face.” He seemed to think that was sufficient. “But as I was saying,” he continued, “given that you and I did not have a chance to meet before Miss Lumley was dispatched to my household, I came to London in order to ensure that the next governess will be more suited to the position. To be frank, I need a cross between a lion tamer and a magician.”
“Never mind the impossibility of that; your request implies that I would trust you with another of my governesses,” Eugenia countered. “You will have to seek your lion tamer elsewhere.”
By way of reply, he gave her another wicked smile. The sort that made a woman likely to give in to whatever he asked. “May I first tell you about the children?”
Eugenia spared an incredulous thought for the woman who had jilted him. She must have been as chaste as an icicle to reach the altar without succumbing to that smile. Yet there was no question but that his fiancée had held him off.
This man would never let a woman go after he had made love to her. Eugenia was certain of it.
She drew in a soundless breath. What on earth was getting into her today? She must be having a reaction to being cooped up in the office for the last few weeks. She needed fresh air.
“Lizzie is nine,” Mr. Reeve was saying. “I would describe her as excessively dramatic and unnaturally morbid.”
“What form does her morbidity take?” Eugenia asked.
“She wears a black veil, for one thing,” Mr. Reeve said.
Even after years of hearing about children’s eccentricities, that was new.
“I have the idea that only widows wear mourning veils,” Mr. Reeve continued, “but most nine-year-olds don’t make their governess faint by dissecting a rabbit on the nursery table, either.”