It was on the tip of his tongue to reply that whatever Miss Ellerby wanted could wait until the Cadmores left. He had no intention of delaying their dinner so she could flog a dead horse with more pleas that he abandon his plan to wed his comely neighbor. Did she not realize his daughters were becoming resigned to the idea? Once they saw that he had not saddled them with a wicked stepmother from out of a fairy tale, they would accept his marriage and all would be well.
But what if the governess meant to go further by threatening to resign her post if he proposed to Mrs. Cadmore? Though Rupert had no intention of allowing her to coerce him, he thought it worth hearing what Miss Ellerby wanted at least.
“If you will pardon me for a moment.” He cast Mrs. Cadmore an apologetic smile. “There is a matter I must attend to then we can begin.”
“Is it that urgent?” The lady made no effort to conceal her impatience. “Surely it can wait until after dinner.”
“I’m not certain it can,” said Rupert, even though he knew Mrs. Cadmore was probably right. “It will be a very brief postponement, I assure you.”
As he strode to the door he refused to admit that part of him welcomed this delay, fleeting though it would be.
“What is it you wish to tell me, Miss Ellerby?” he muttered as he closed the door behind him. His impatience was less with her than with his divided inclinations. “I hope you will keep it brie—”
Then he turned and his gaze swept upward from her familiar dull-green dress to the startlingly attractive woman wearing it. “Good heavens!”
It couldn’t be plain Miss Ellerby—yet it was. Rupert would never have credited a cap and spectacles with making such a striking difference in a person’s appearance. How beautiful she might look in a pretty gown, he could only imagine.
To his further shock Rupert realized he could imagine it all too easily.
“Good heavens,” he gasped again. “You!”
The woman before him was Grace Ellerby—he could tell that, just barely. But she was also the mysterious beauty from the masquerade. Now he understood why she’d seemed so familiar. No wonder he had not been able to place her. He had plundered his memory for every beautiful woman he’d ever met, but his daughters’ mousy governess had not numbered among them.
“You do know who I am, then?” She looked ready to shrink from a blow that might fall at any moment.
He gave a stiff nod. “Now that I see you without your disguise. Without either of your disguises.”
To think he had congratulated himself on hiring a governess who would never abandon his family to elope. What a blind dupe he’d been!
The realization that he had been so thoroughly hoodwinked did not improve his temper. “You owe me an explanation, Miss Ellerby, if that is indeed your name.”
She flinched as if that were the blow she’d been expecting. “It is. I may not have told you the entire truth about myself but I tried to tell you as much as I could. As for my explanation—you will get it, I promise. But there is not nearly enough time now.”
Her words reminded Rupert of the party in the dining room awaiting his return. The sight of her had driven every thought of them from his mind. “What do you want with me then?”
“Just to beg you not to propose to Mrs. Cadmore until I have had the opportunity to explain my situation. I have reason to know you are not done with love as you claim. It would be a grave misfortune indeed if you undertook a marriage of convenience only to later meet a lady you could care for.”
He had been beguiled into fancying he cared for her.
“Is that why you stole in to the masquerade?” he demanded. “To seek me out and make up to me so I would abandon my marriage plans?”
The emotions that had possessed his heart in the moonlit garden last night had not entirely released him. But they did have to battle equally potent feelings of betrayal and abandonment.
“I did not steal in.” Grace shook her head so hard her golden hair billowed around her face. “My friend Lady Benedict secured me an invitation. It was she and her husband in the carriage you saw earlier. Viscount Benedict wanted to pay his respects to you but I was afraid it might raise awkward questions and you would discover what I’d done.”
Lady Benedict? Rupert had heard about the viscount’s recent marriage as well as some wild rumor about him proposing to the lady in front of a great crowd at Bath. But that did not mean Grace Ellerby was telling him the truth.
“I did not ‘make up’ to you to ruin your marriage plans,” she continued with vehement sincerity. “You came to my rescue, remember? I did not even know who you were at first.”
“At first?” Rupert seized on those words to distract himself from the memory of trailing after her like a calf-eyed schoolboy, eager to protect her from the unwelcome attentions of other men. “When did you realize who I was? And why did you keep on pretending we were strangers?”
A wave of shame seemed to quench her spirit. “Because I feared you would suspect the worst of me... as you do. The truth is I accepted my friend’s invitation so I could keep watch on you in case you tried to propose to Mrs. Cadmore.”
“What would you have done then? Thrown yourself into my arms? Pretended you had a prior claim upon me?” In spite of his outrage, Rupert could not suppress a traitorous wish that she had done those things.
“No!” Grace Ellerby’s forceful denial felt like a rejection of the feelings she’d stirred in him. “That is... I don’t know because that is not what happened. Instead you came to my assistance then we walked in the garden and talked. You told me—”
“I am not responsible for anything I said under the influence of that romantic atmosphere!” Rupert lashed out against the sting of her rejection. “Today I woke up to the practical necessities of life.”
She flinched from the intensity of his anger but refused to back down altogether. “Nonetheless, what happened last night convinced me you will never be happy married to a woman you do not love.”
Her quiet certainty shook him to the core and threatened to rally his own doubts against him. “There is much more at stake than my happiness!”
“But if you are not happy, your daughters will not be either.” If only she would respond with anger, it would have been easier to dismiss her claims. Her heartfelt pleas were much harder to disregard. “I know you are trying to do what is best for them but this is not it! I do not believe your wife would have wanted that for any of you.”
Rupert’s temper flared. “Do not presume to tell me what my wife would have wanted! I will be the judge of what is best for my children, Miss Ellerby. Now, I must get back to my guests. But I will expect a full explanation later for why you entered my employ under false pretenses, which you have continued to this day.”
Fearing she might say something more to detain him, he turned and fled back into the dining room, shutting the door firmly behind him.
“Is there some difficulty, Lord Steadwell?” Mrs. Cadmore inquired in a tone of concern. “We heard raised voices.”
Rupert shook his head and made a determined effort to regain his composure. “A minor issue with the staff, though the timing was altogether inconvenient.”