How to Claim a Governess’s Heart - Bridget Barton Page 0,59
to acquire a publisher than he anticipated.
Over the next few days, whenever she had a free moment, she spent it in her room reading the novel. It served her well to keep her from joining Lord John in the parlour after Betsy’s bedtime. She couldn’t bear to be there with him.
Half the time she questioned if he genuinely was set to marry such a cruel lady like Lady Temperance and the other half of the time she chastised herself for being the very trollop that the dowager duchess had surmised her to be.
She wished to go back to the time before the duke and dowager duchess’s arrival in London. It was a time when they had all lived happily under the same roof. Betsy had settled into her new life and was starting to find joy in her new surroundings. Lord John and she had become perfect partners in raising her.
At the time her heart had ached to be more to Lord John that just the governess, against her better judgment., Now with the new future prospects before he, she would have been satisfied in life to just go back to how things once were.
“I finished your manuscript,” Bridget stated during an afternoon walk with Lord John in the park three days later.
They were walking at a pleasant pace while Betsy ran along ahead of them to her favourite fountain. The sun was shining in earnest, and it was the first day that really felt like spring was going to soon wane to summer.
Having never spent a summer outside of school or near the coast, she inwardly wondered how unbearable it would be to keep her arms covered all summer long. No matter the discomfort, however, she was determined not to be caught by surprise as she had been in the library.
“I hoped that was the reason you were going straight to bed each evening. I did fear you were avoiding my company. I thought maybe you liked things better when I was in my office all night long,” Lord John half-joked.
“I couldn’t help myself. It was so enthralling I had to finish it,” Bridget replied while sidestepping the fact that she had avoided him for an altogether different reason.
“Do you think it will be satisfactory to publish then,” Lord John asked, looking down at Bridget with a nervous crease to his brow.
“Absolutely! I think it would be a most welcome addition to any library. To follow the main character from boyhood to man and see how his upbringing in industrial London affects his outlook on life and people was thought-provoking. Then to have him inherit the place he was once forced to work in provided such a wonderful dilemma. For the first time, he saw the struggles of a factory from the proprietor’s point of view, then had to decide for himself to continue those traditions or break the mould for the betterment of those below him.
“It’s entertaining and kept me guessing what would happen next and at the same time made me wonder what moral fibres I would have in his situation. Could I stand up for what my soul told me was right and good, even if the world around me didn’t expect me to?”
“Well, I can tell you that I know what you would do, Miss Thatcher. You are an inherently good person. You would always choose right. I am sure of that.”
“You think too much of me, sir,” Bridget said quickly. “I am human, just like everyone else. I don’t know if I could have chosen right, at a detriment to my own happiness, to benefit others when it wasn’t expected of me as your hero did.”
Though she spoke of the book, there were so many parallels in her own life. She had been a thief now on two occasions. The first had been for pure selfish desires – hunger yes – that had given her a lifetime reminder of her misdeed. The second dilemma was sure to come in her future.
Could she still stand by Betsy, live in Lord John’s home, and pretend all was right when he chose to take Lady Temperance for a wife? She knew that would be the right thing to do. It was not her place to tell Lord John her opinion of the lady, nor would it have been right to leave Betsy in that woman’s care to spare herself the heartbreak of watching the two grow as a couple.