Once Upon A Dream by Grace Burrowes Mary Balogh Page A

Lady Connaught and Miss Everly, that she was to be their new mama, that it was
    only a matter of time before he got around to asking her.
    "I have been touched," she said. "Although I love young children, I have never considered myself good with them as my sisters are."
    "But I daresay," he said, "they have never been as good with older children as you are."
    "You are kind," she said. "Your son is enjoying himself, is he not? Has he never had children younger than himself with whom to play?"
    "All his cousins and all the children of our closest neighbors are older," he said. "Young Tommy was a godsend. He and a few other infants see Robert as an
    older, bolder boy who will condescend to play with them. And I believe he is seeing himself through their eyes."
    "Yesterday," she said, "when several of us climbed the tower folly on the wilderness walk, he took my hand to help me up the winding stairs and then
    pointed out for my edification all the landmarks we could see from the top."
    He wondered why she had never married. Had it been from choice? From lack of opportunity? From an unwillingness to marry just anyone in order not to end up
    a spinster? Had she held out for love or some other ideal that had never happened for her?
    "I am sorry," he said, "for that encounter with Lady Connaught last week. She treated you as an inferior who might be of service to her. I am glad you put
    her in her place. "
    "Did I?" She turned her head to look at him but did not speak. They were crossing the driveway before the large circular flower bed and stopped to look up
    at the fountain. Lord Aidan Bedwyn had explained to him how it worked so that it could shoot water so high. It was a quite ingenious mechanism.
    "I have almost made up my mind," he said, "not to send Georgette away to school. Not yet, anyway, and never just because it would be more convenient to me
    to have her out of the way. I shall ponder the matter carefully over the next year or two, and I shall consult her wishes. She has had a governess since
    she was six, though I fear she outstripped her teacher in academic knowledge some time ago and was never much influenced by her in other ways. Fortunately,
    the lady resigned in London a month or so ago in order to marry a barrister. I will seek another governess, one who can teach both children and somehow
    serve all their educational needs. It will not be easy to find such a paragon."
    "I may be able to help you," she said. "My school always takes in a certain number of charity girls. Part of my responsibility at the end of their
    schooling is to find them suitable employment. I never turn them out into the world until I am satisfied that they will be happily settled. There is one
    girl I have been unable to place yet. She is too intelligent and too…oh, talented and full of energy to fit any of the offers that have been made. I
    have even thought of keeping her on at the school as an assistant instructor until there is an opening for a regular teacher, but…well, I may not be
    able to do that after all." She did not explain.
    "Thank you," he said. "If she comes recommended by you, then I am satisfied.
She
may not be satisfied, of course, if and when she meets
    Georgette."
    She smiled and changed the subject. "I am always disappointed," she said, "if I come here to find that the waterfall has been turned off, as it is in the
    winter. It seems to characterize Lindsey Hall. It has grandeur but brightness and fluidity too. Alleyne Bedwyn once told me that when he was suffering from
    memory loss after receiving a head wound at Waterloo it was the fountain that kept flashing into his mind when all else was blank."
    They gazed at the water together and listened to the rushing, soothing sound of it.
    "Are you happy?" he found himself asking her and then could have bitten out his tongue. Where had that question come from?
    She did not answer for a while and he wondered if she would. He was on the verge of apologizing for the