Rules For A Proper Governess (MacKenzies & McBrides #7)(66)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

“I know.” Sinclair sounded resigned. “Andrew has asked me when he can go off to school and join a running team. Not so he can study and learn anything, you understand.”

“Of course not.” Bertie eyed the two of them, children she’d become so fond of in such a brief time. “When you do send them off, I’ll be out of a job.” The words came out more forlornly than she’d meant them to.

“No, you won’t,” Sinclair said quickly.

“I don’t think any of the fancy governess agencies will put me on their books, no matter how many references you write.” Bertie glanced up at him, but Sinclair was watching Andrew, his face a careful blank. “I’ve started my own collection, you know. Of rules for a proper governess.”

Sinclair still watched Andrew, though she saw his chest rise more quickly. “Oh? And what are they?”

Bertie held up her hand, ticking the rules off on her fingers. “Well, book learning for a start. If a governess is going to teach her charges, she should know what she’s teaching them.”

“I’ll grant you that. What else?”

“She must have the patience of a saint but love the children no matter what. They shouldn’t have to behave to earn her fondness.”

“Rather like being a father,” Sinclair said, slanting her a look. “Anything more?”

“She should find ways to keep them interested in learning, not just beat them with facts. Like making history a string of great stories, not dates to memorize.”

“Hmm, I wish you could have given your rules to some of my tutors when I was a lad.”

Bertie grinned and touched another finger. “She should take plenty of exercise with the children and not be upset if they want to run and play. A governess being fit is a help.”

The glint of humor had returned to Sinclair’s eyes. “You sound like a reformer.”

“Do I? It’s only common sense. I think your other governesses ran away because they didn’t like children. They wanted Cat and Andrew to sit like statues while they talked at them, and got angry if they couldn’t repeat the boring details. Heaven forbid either of the kids should have an opinion.”

“The world expects children to be seen and not heard, you know.”

“Then the world ain’t—isn’t paying attention.”

Sinclair didn’t answer, but the space had lessened between them. Sinclair’s gloved hand touched hers, the backs of their fingers brushing.

Bertie wanted this moment to last—she and Sinclair on the hilltop, almost holding hands, Andrew happily exploring, Cat quiet and content. No dark world, no difference in their stations in life, in their pasts. Effervescent happiness welled up inside her—she could float away on it.

The moment broke when the sound of a hunter’s gun cracked the air far away. Hart’s ghillie and Macaulay had taken some of the remaining English visitors on a stalk on the other side of the valley. The cold, clear air brought the sounds from miles away.

Andrew stood up on one of the rocks, firing an imaginary rifle. “Take that, Butcher Cumberland. See what you get when you rile a Highlander.”

Sinclair left Bertie to climb to Andrew. “Don’t fall while you’re trying to fight the Battle of Culloden again. And keep in mind we lost, more’s the pity.”

“Wouldn’t have if I’d been there,” Andrew vowed. He made more shooting noises.

Cat rose from her seat, tucking away her notebook. “We should help father lure him down, or we’ll never get our tea,” Cat said, resigned. She took Bertie’s hand. “Can we go higher? I want to see.”

Bertie kept a firm hold of Cat’s hand as they climbed up to Andrew and Sinclair. The castle had been built on a rocky outcropping, giving the defenders a good view over the valley. They’d have seen attackers from miles away, and any opposing army would have been hard-pressed to reach it without harm.

The castle had fallen, so Daniel had told Bertie, not to attackers, but to bored English soldiers after the war with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and to time.

The black rocks were slippery. Andrew stood on a half-ruined wall, Sinclair holding the back of his jacket as Andrew shot at imaginary Englishmen.

Cat, next to Bertie, trod on a slab of loose stone, and lost her balance. Her foot went off the stone, her leg in its knit stocking and fashionable boot catching on a jagged rock below.

Bertie clung to her, and Cat scrambled for solid ground. She was almost up again when her other foot slipped on the snow, and Cat began to plunge downward.

With a cry, she grabbed desperately for Bertie. Bertie, heart pounding, seized Cat with both hands and pulled her to safety, but Cat lost hold of her doll.

The doll’s pink china face beamed its perpetual smile as it slipped over the black rocks, and fell, end over end, tumbling down, down, down, toward the jutting stones, gorse, and half-melted snow many feet below.

Chapter 24

A high-pitched keening sounded over the valley. Bertie jerked around, wondering what sort of creature could make such a noise, but the next instant, she realized it was Cat.

The little girl ripped herself from Bertie’s grasp and flung herself down on the stones, reaching desperately for the doll that continued to roll her merry way down the nearly vertical hill. The doll was battered from rock to rock, pieces of porcelain flying from her face to litter the hillside.

The doll’s wild tumble came to a halt on a rock jutting over the cliff, where she lay like a dead thing, her arms and legs dangling over empty space.

Cat’s desperate keening wound into words. “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

Sinclair leapt back down toward them, carrying Andrew. “Cat. Sweetheart.”

Cat reached toward the doll, her empty hands opening and closing. “Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama! . . .” Her words choked her, the girl barely able to draw breath. “Mama . . .”

“Bleeding ’ell.” Bertie stripped off her hat and her coat, jammed her leather gloves more firmly over her fingers, and started scrambling down the tumble of boulders toward the limp body of the doll.

“Bertie!” Sinclair’s deep voice bellowed over the continuing cries of his daughter. “Get the hell back here! Bertie! . . .”

Bertie climbed down the rocks, hands and feet finding niches to steady her along. She knew she was mad to do it—one slip, and she was over the cliff, down the pretty hill to the rocks below. The view that had seemed so beautiful from the top would kill her.