Lady Midnight by Amanda Mccabe Page B

laughing, her too-serious face momentarily young and radiant as she chuckled at one of Christina's jests. The way Mrs. Brown gave a quick, trembling start, like a wary, exotic bird when his hand accidentally brushed her arm at the dinner table. Mrs. Brown's dark eyes gone suddenly sad and very faraway as she stared into the fire during after-dinner tea.
    She was a very intriguing woman—there was no doubt about that. And it wasn't just her beauty, which she tried to hide with plain gowns and severe coiffures, or her lilting, musical accent. Her clear eyes and smooth, fair skin said she was very young, perhaps not even as old as the twenty-two she claimed with the agency. But she seemed far too unhappy, almost melancholy, for a young lady whose life lay before her in all its possibilities. It was almost as if she was afraid to smile, to laugh—afraid to be close to him.
    Michael took another swallow of his brandy, turning the crystal snifter in his hand as he considered the enigma of Mrs. Brown. Perhaps she was simply afraid of him because of his scars and limp. Some young ladies were—he was resigned to that by now. But that didn't seem to be the problem with Mrs. Brown. She would look at him directly, just not very often, and there was the mark on her own face. No, she seemed leery of all the world, on edge somehow. And sad. So sad.
    Was it the loss of her husband, Mr. Brown—whoever he had been? Had she loved him and relied on him so very much that his death made her suspicious of all the world and everyone in it?
    Somehow the thought of her deep love for the mysterious Mr. Brown stirred the embers of a forgotten temper deep inside Michael. His fingers curled tightly about the snifter, until the thick crystal creaked. Mr. Brown was surely not a good husband. He left his young wife alone in the world with nothing, forcing her to make her living as a governess.
    Not that he should throw any stones about being a bad husband, Michael reflected bitterly. He had been the worst of the lot, marrying a lady of Caroline's sweetness and then leading her a merry dance into doom.
    But whatever it was that etched such melancholy over Mrs. Brown's beautiful face, he wanted to erase it. To somehow make things better, as once he had made them so much worse. He wanted to make Mrs. Brown's sadness vanish, to show her how much life could still offer her.
    Once, he could have. He could have showered her with jewels far finer than her mysterious, hidden brooch, diamonds and satin gowns, roses and houses and carriages. Not now. Now he was a most respectable gentleman, with an estate and a family and a position in the neighborhood. And she was his governess. His respectable governess.
    The governess who flinched with surprise when his hand brushed her arm. His enigma of a governess, who hid a sapphire brooch among her plain garments.
    Michael drank down the last of his brandy. A shadow drifted over the moon, reminding him of how late it was. He should be thinking of retiring. It promised to be a busy day tomorrow, as every day was at Thorn Hill, especially in the spring.
    But as the shadow moved away from the silvery greenish moonlight, his attention was caught by a movement in the garden below. Someone strolled along the narrow paths between the flower beds, drifting ghostlike in the night.
    Christina? It would be just like her to slip out of her chamber in the middle of the night to muck about in the gardens. This figure wasn't digging, though, just walking. And on the breeze, he heard a snatch of an Italian song.
    "Tra le braccia, lo sen a e lungamente, lo bacia in bocca."
    The mezzo-soprano tones were soft and sweet, plaintive, as alluring as a sea siren's call. Kate Brown. It had to be. Wandering all alone in the night, singing as if to summon the spirits.
    He really should just go inside the house, Michael mused. Leave her to whatever thoughts she nursed in her nocturnal perambulations. It wasn't his place, or his nature, to intrude on