“I’m your employer,” Sinclair said in his hard voice. “I consider myself an honorable man, which means I shouldn’t have my way with everyone in my house, from the cook to the second housemaid.”
“Ooh, I’d like to see you try that with Mrs. Hill.” Imagining Sinclair acting like a besotted swain with the coldly haughty housekeeper made a hysterical laugh bubble from Bertie’s mouth.
“This isn’t funny,” Sinclair said, the growl returning to his voice.
“Yes, it is.” Bertie took a step toward the desk. “My pal Ruthie told me about a place where she was kitchen maid a long time ago—the man of the house dipped his wick in whichever maid he wanted, and a couple of the footmen too. He never got around to Ruthie, because she told her mum, and her mum took her right out of there.”
“Bertie.” Sinclair raised his hands. “Stop.”
Bertie’s tongue tripped on. “Point is, you ain’t like that. What’s between you and me is . . . between you and me. But if you want me to go, I’ll go.” She had to swallow on the last words. Her throat hurt so much—maybe she was coming down with a cold.
“I don’t.” The words came out quickly. Sinclair clenched his fists again, his hands brushing the desk.
Bertie remembered the scar on his wrist his rising shirtsleeve had showed her last night, and resisted the urge to go to him and push up his sleeve now. She’d lift his tanned wrist to her lips and kiss the scar, maybe lick it. She wondered what he’d taste like.
Bertie felt her br**sts tighten, and she tried to banish the vision. She’d never think straight if she imagined such things. “Why’d you ask me to go, then?”
Sinclair let out an exasperated breath. “Damn it, Bertie, I’m trying to be noble.”
“Well, don’t. It don’t suit you. Are you finished? I’ve got lessons to give.”
He rested his fists on the desk, keeping Hadrian’s Wall between them. “Yes, yes. Go,” he said in annoyance, as though Bertie had come to bother him instead of him sending for her.
Bertie made for the door, knowing a dismissal when she heard one, but she lingered, her hand on the porcelain doorknob. “You off to your chambers now?”
“Yes.”“Oh.” Bertie tried to think of more to say, so she could stay in this room and speak to him longer, but she came up with nothing. “Well, you have a fine day, then.”
“Thank you,” Sinclair said. His gray eyes pierced her from all the way across the room. He wanted her gone, no mistake.
Bertie felt as though she should curtsy or something before leaving his presence, but he wasn’t a king or duke. Only a man—a tall, handsome, lonely gentleman with a warm and wonderful voice—and she was governess to his children.
How nice it would be if she could hand him his valise in the mornings, wish him a good day, and give him a kiss good-bye. And welcome him back home again with another kiss, he enfolding her in his arms and saying how glad he was to be there.
Bertie had to settle for giving Sinclair a brief nod and gliding out the door, her heart hammering. Sinclair said nothing at all, the session over.
Bertie ran up the stairs, back to her own room, where she had to pace the floor for a time before she calmed herself enough to make her way to the nursery and the lively children waiting for her there.
“What is it now?” Sinclair snapped at the clerk who put his head around his door. He looked up from another of the blasted anonymous letters that he’d received this morning, no longer interested in the day-to-day running of the common courts.
“Your meeting with his lordship,” his junior clerk Henry said. “If you don’t look sharpish, sir, you’ll be late.”
“Bloody hell.”
Sinclair shoved aside the letter that burned his fingers and made himself get to his feet. His entire body felt wrong, his legs stiff. Not the only thing that’s been stiff. Sinclair had lain awake hard and furious all night and decided it best to send Bertie away. Only way he’d regain any sanity. He either had to take her to his bed and ease his need for her or send her off.
But when he’d summoned Bertie to dismiss her, the sensible thing to do, she’d stood resolutely in front of his desk and looked at him as though he were a fool. She didn’t want to leave, and Sinclair didn’t want her to go.
She had nowhere to go, in any case, and they both knew it. Her choices were the slums of the East End or another house of some aristocrat who exercised his power over the staff, as her friend had described. Damned if Sinclair would let that happen. Also, Richards had told him what Eleanor’s coachman had told him, about the dank rooms and Bertie’s bully of a father who’d been ready to hold her back when she wanted to leave. Sinclair would never send her back to that.
But he had to do something. He couldn’t lie awake all night and still be able to give attention to his cases. He couldn’t stand up in front of a judge and tell him in the politest possible terms that his lordship was an ass when he was daydreaming about unbuttoning Bertie’s new and prim governess gowns.
He could always stay overnight at chambers, Sinclair thought as he snatched up his robes and followed Henry out. He never had, always wanting to return home to his young family, but knowing Bertie slept so near him every night was going to drive him mad.
Henry helped Sinclair settle his robes and look respectable before he strode from Essex Court across the way to Middle Temple Hall. The brown brick building, its white corner trim and windows soot-stained, stood like a cathedral on the green of the gardens, an imposing edifice of the law. The walls told the outside world that here was an important place of learning and weighty decisions. If Sinclair hadn’t known many of the men inside it so well, he might believe it.