“The boys haven’t had a lesson for over a month, and I’m afraid they’ve been running wild whenever father isn’t here.” The girl sighed. “Which is most of the time.”
Willa said nothing for a few minutes, the silence stretching out between them like blank pages in a diary. What kind of monster would force a young woman, a child really, like Annalise, to care for so many children on her own?
When Dr. Partlow had come to Portsmouth several years before to meet with her father, Willa had been only eighteen. He’d seemed a reasonable, kindly man then. What in God’s name could have happened during the intervening years to turn him into the architect of his huge family’s distress? His wife had died, probably sometime less than two years before, judging by the age of the babe bouncing at Annalise’s hip.
Finally, Willa spoke. “What leads you to believe I am in fact a governess?”
Annalise gave her a queer look. “You are Miss Morton, aren’t you? Father said you’d be arriving today to take charge of the children.”
Instead of denying the preposterous claim, Willa continued more out of curiosity than anything else. “What happened to the last governess?”
Annalise’s face reddened, and she leaned down to kiss her little brother’s downy blond head.
“She wasn’t happy,” the girl finally revealed. “She argued with Father, and he sent her away.”
“Will your father be home in time for afternoon tea?”
“Probably not. Lady Portman is confined, awaiting her first child. He said not to expect him back until tomorrow.” Annalise hid her face from Willa again while she wiped at a smudge on the tiny boy’s forehead.
“Very well,” Willa said. “I will wait until I discuss my duties with the doctor. I would not presume to serve as a governess, since I have no idea how to go about teaching children. I am, as I explained before, a physician’s assistant.”
This time when Annalise lifted her face to Willa, there were tears in her eyes. She said nothing more, but fled with the child on her hip, down the narrow attic stairs.
In spite of her anger, Willa fought to tamp down feelings of guilt about not being what the Partlow children needed. When the doctor returned, she would straighten out the misunderstanding.
After years at sea, Cullen had forgotten how demanding riding long distances at a canter could be. His lower back and thigh muscles were complaining, loudly. Every hour or so he would get down from Heracles’s broad back and walk him for a few minutes.
The interludes gave him a chance to get on the beast’s good side with chunks he’d cut from the apples retrieved in the hurried visit to Mrs. Taylor’s orchard in Portsmouth. He would leave Heracles to rest in Godalmin at the stables of the Swan Inn, and leave with a fresh mount in the morning.
Cullen had stayed at the Swan many times over the years after infrequent returns to Portsmouth. Most of his service before the African Squadron had been with the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean fleet. Times in port had been rare, except for when his ships put into Freetown to re-settle rescued slaves, or to deal with the prize court.
The only reason he’d returned now was that his crew had been awarded a prize ship, Captain Bellingham’s Black Condor. The damages from the fight to claim her were so extensive that the Admiralty had ordered them back to the Royal Naval Yard at Portsmouth, instead of having her patched up at Freetown.
One of the spars had suffered a direct hit during the battle and had to be replaced. Part of the wait was the time required for the wood to soak in one of the curing ponds at Portsmouth. The trip back from Africa had been lengthy, using the sail canvas sparingly to preserve the weakened mast.
When he sighted the village church spire, he leaned forward and assured his heroic mount, “Respite awaits, my friend, if only you can forge up one last hill.”
Heracles’s ears flicked, and he quickened his pace to a bumpy trot.
When at last they entered the inn courtyard, Cullen slid down and pressed some coins into a groom’s hand. “Give this old fellow your best bag of oats.”
Willa awoke from a deep, black sleep. Maybe it was the quiet sound of the coverlet being lifted, or, more likely, the shock of a cool night breeze filtering onto her bare legs through the cracked, drafty attic windows.
She sat up suddenly and jerked the tattered quilt back from the dark figure sitting on her cot. So shocked and disoriented was she to wake to find an apparition pulling aside her bedclothes, she reverted to her shipboard male persona. “Sir—I would thank you to unhand my person.”
In the fleeting moment when the dark figure hesitated, she reached to the floor near the wall for the heavy branch she’d found in the yard earlier in the day. Heaven only knew who dared to interrupt her slumber, but she did not care. She struck a hard blow to the apparition’s shoulder and was rewarded with a moan followed by an indignant shout.
“Oy! Stop—it’s only me, Willa — Dr. Partlow. I meant merely to comfort you in your mourning for your father.”
Several wild possibilities flitted through Willa’s mind. No one would take the word of a young woman over that of a respected town physician. If he chose to say she was in an addled state of mind over her father’s death, she might well end up in an asylum for the insane. Willa’s innate sense of self-preservation forced her to project a sense of calm.
She was certain, beyond a doubt, no reasonable gentleman would extend sympathies in the dead of the night, unannounced, to a barely clad female. She also feared, a sour certainty in her belly,
