Season Of Secrets. Кэрол Мортимер

coloured silks and exquisite lace draped on the chaise in her bedchamber…

      ‘In return for?’ Adam felt incredulous. ‘You make it sound as if you are the one doing me a service rather than the other way about?’

      She arched a dark brow. ‘And am I not?’

      Adam’s lids narrowed. Could this young woman possibly know how much he wished to see her in something other than those unbecoming black gowns she habitually wore? Or preferably in nothing at all!

      He drew in a sharp breath. ‘You are being presumptuous again, madam.’

      ‘If that is so, then I apologise.’ She looked flustered again. ‘I am merely—I only wished to—’ She broke off to gather herself and tried again, more calmly. ‘Several days ago you asked for my help, for suggestions in how you might deal better with your daughter. It is Amanda’s dearest wish to own her own pony and to learn to ride it, my lord.’

      Adam stared at her, not sure that he had heard her correctly. Not sure he had ever met anyone quite like Elena Leighton before. ‘Let me see if I understood your terms correctly?’ he spoke slowly. ‘You are willing to accept the new gowns, without fuss, if I agree to buying Amanda a pony and allowing her to learn to ride?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No?’ Adam looked perplexed as he sat forwards. ‘But did you not just say exactly that?’

      Elena’s chin rose determinedly. ‘I did say that it is Amanda’s dearest wish to own her own pony and learn to ride, yes. It is also my suggestion that you should be the one to teach her.’ The idea had come to her after those days of travelling into Cambridgeshire, when she had noticed that Amanda seemed the most attentive to the scenery outside when there were horses to be seen grazing in the fields. Several minutes’ casual conversation with her charge had revealed Amanda’s deep love of equines and her secret yearning to own a horse or pony of her own so that she might learn to ride.

      The second part of Elena’s suggestion—an inspired one, she had thought!—arose from her conversation with her employer in which he had asked for her help in finding ways of taking more of an interest in his young daughter’s life. The stunned look on his face now would seem to suggest he had not meant that request to be taken quite so literally as this! ‘Would it not be a perfect way for you to spend more time with Amanda, whilst also doing something she would enjoy?’

      Adam was starting to wonder if he had not seriously underestimated this young woman, if he had not been fooled, both by her widow’s weeds and her demur demeanour during those first few days in his employ, into thinking that she was both complacent and obliging.

      Their last few conversations together had revealed her as being neither of those things!

      He stood up to move around the desk until he was able to lean back against it, knowing a certain inner satisfaction as he noted her discomfort at his proximity. At the same time as he recognised, and appreciated, the way in which she remained standing exactly where she was, despite that discomfort, as testament to her spirited nature. ‘Do you ride yourself, Mrs Leighton?’

      She gave him a quick glance before as quickly glancing away again, a blush to her cheeks. ‘Why do you ask?’

      The reason Adam asked was because the more time he spent in this woman’s company, the more convinced he became that there was something about her, an inborn ladylike elegance and a certain self-confidence, which did not sit well with her role as paid governess to a young girl.

      She had also had no difficulty whatsoever in recognising that the seamstress had brought with her the finest silks for her approval, as Adam had instructed, rather than the inferior ones which might normally have been requested in such circumstances. Adam seriously doubted that most employers would ever buy expensive silks for a woman who was a member of their household staff. Unless that woman was also his mistress…

      Of course he knew nothing of Elena Leighton’s life before her employment with the Bamburys, so she could have been the daughter of an aristocrat, who had eloped with her soldier husband, for all Adam knew of that situation; he could certainly more easily believe that to be this elegantly lovely woman’s history than he could see her as having been the daughter of an impoverished vicar or a shopkeeper!

      He looked down the length of his nose at her. ‘Do I need to give a reason in order to ask a question of one of my household staff?’

      ‘No. Of course you do not.’ The colour deepened in her cheeks—as if she had once again briefly forgotten that was now her place in life? he wondered. ‘But to answer your question—yes, I have ridden since I was a child, my lord. I only thought this might be the perfect opportunity in which you might give pleasure to Amanda, whilst at the same time allowing you to spend more time with her.’

      Adam’s mouth twisted derisively. There was definitely something about this young woman—her background before she married Private Leighton?—which Adam found himself becoming more and more interested in knowing.

      That, in itself, was unexpected…

      His brief marriage to Fanny had succeeded in revealing all too clearly the many vagaries of human nature to him—the lies, the greed, the utter selfishness—until his own character, out of self-protection perhaps, had become that of the true cynic, to the extent that Adam rarely saw good in people any more—most especially the female of the species.

      For whatever reason, Elena Leighton remained a mystery to him, yet at the same time there was a burning honesty about her, a determination, a desire to right injustice—such as she perceived his own lack of interest in Amanda to be. It was so at odds with the selfishness Adam had come to believe to be the motivation behind every human action—even his own, to a great extent, an example being that he had dragged his daughter and her companion off to the wilds of Cambridgeshire, in the middle of the Season, with the intention of dealing with matters on the estate, but also for the purpose of escaping the matchmaking machinations of his own grandmother!

      Yes, he had become both selfish and cynical these past six years. And yet…And yet this little governess had brought something to life in him that was neither of those things, a desire not to act in his own interest, but instead for the pleasure of others. A desire to please her that had nothing to do with the physical attraction he felt towards her…

      Adam straightened abruptly before moving back round his desk and sitting down behind it, his tone cool and controlled when at last he spoke. ‘The seamstress will think you have forgotten about her.’

      In truth, Elena had forgotten that lady’s presence upstairs in her bedchamber during this past few minutes’ conversation. Indeed, she had forgotten everything but the disturbing gentleman who now looked across the desk at her so disdainfully. A gentleman who suddenly looked so very different to the handsomely boyish one who had burst into spontaneous laughter only minutes earlier…

      ‘And Amanda’s pony and riding lessons?’

      His mouth thinned. ‘I will see what can be arranged.’

      Elena’s heart sank in disappointment as she turned to leave, inwardly knowing that any ‘arrangements’ Adam Hawthorne chose to make about Amanda’s riding lessons were unlikely to include him.

      ‘And, Mrs Leighton…?’

      She turned back slowly, her expression wary. ‘Yes?’

      He sighed his exasperation. ‘You have a look on your face like that of a beast in fear of being whipped!’

      Elena stiffened in outrage. ‘I trust that is not the case?’

      ‘It was not a personal threat, madam, but a figure of speech!’ Adam scowled, knowing he had once again been wrong-footed by this exasperating woman.

      ‘Then it was an exceedingly unpleasant one,’ she protested.

      Adam gritted his back teeth together so tightly he feared they might snap out of his jaw, knowing he should not have delayed her departure from his study, but let her return upstairs to the