Mr. Gardiner and the Governess - Sally Britton Page 0,4
twelve that he was ready for the children’s lessons. Alice sent them off, relieved beyond words to have an hour of quiet.
It was an hour she ought to spend organizing the schoolroom and preparing for the next lesson. Standing three floors above ground, looking out a window into the gardens, Alice yearned for something else.
The Clairvoir gardens were famous throughout England for their beauty. All of Society had sought news of how the duchess had rebuilt the castle in the past decade, and everyone sought to copy Her Grace. Even Alice, living on the fringes of Society in her uncle’s home, had heard about the statue garden. She still remembered one letter they had shared from a friend who had seen the work-in-progress.
A dozen commissioned statues of the favorite Greeks, a dozen more of historical figures, and all scattered about in beds of flowers meant to delight the senses.
And here she stood, with only a flight of stairs and a door between her and such magnificent beauty.
“Half an hour,” she said aloud, then nodded firmly. She could spare that much. She would be outside and back in so quickly she would not even need a bonnet and gloves. She briefly looked down at her dress.
The deep blue gown she wore was cut for practicality, not fashion. The neck was high, the sleeves long, and there were no feminine ruffles or flounces, or any lace to speak of. But what did she care? It was not as though she was going to a garden party. She meant to take a hurried stroll, be seen by no one, and return to the schoolroom on the upper floor.
That decided, Alice went out the door and found the servants’ staircase. When she accompanied the children, she was to keep to the main passages and stairs, but alone she could do as she pleased.
She passed a valet who gave her a quick bow and skirted by a maid who looked rather affronted at finding someone in her path. Then she was on the ground floor, and with just a few steps, she was out a door to the first terrace, which consisted of lawn furniture and tables meant for the household and guests to take their ease in the open air. Steps led down to the next level of gardens, and she took those quickly. After the first terrace where one could sit and enjoy the view, there were rose gardens, and then the slightly wilder gardens filled with riotous flowerbeds and columns of ivy; below that one she found the statues.
Her heart raced from her exertion, and Alice did not stop until she stood at the foot of the first statue she saw. “Who are you, then?” she asked the marble maiden. The woman stood holding a bowl in one hand and wheat in the other, looking out over the garden with a gentle expression.
Alice tapped her lip with one finger as she thought, before quietly whispering, “Hestia or Hera, a goddess of prosperity and harvest. Hm.” She went on to the next, the statue of a man holding a bow and surrounded by purple and pink butter-cup-like flowers. “Anemones. Ah, that makes you Adonis.” Alice smiled up at the Greek depiction of male beauty. Then she narrowed her eyes. He rather looked like the portrait of the duke she had passed on the grand staircase. “I wonder if the duke commissioned you, or if the sculptor sought to win his favor?” She giggled at herself and kept going.
Her time stolen from duty ran short. She needed to hurry, so as she went deeper into the gardens, she ran around the base of another statue to come to its front—and tripped over a pair of boots. Her momentum sent her sprawling face-first into the flowerbed.
Unladylike words trilled through her mind, learned when unsuspecting male relatives had let loose their caustic tongues within her hearing. But she clamped her lips against saying such things out loud, only to immediately taste dirt.
Alice tried to rise at the exact moment the owner of the other pair of legs attempted the same. Her foot slipped between a pair of ankles, tangling them both up. It also sent her face back into the flowers.
A rather masculine voice, likely belonging to those same legs, released a torrent of ill-tempered words. “What in blazes—if His Grace keeps allowing this, I will never complete my work.”
What did the duke have to do with a man lying about in the gardens, where anyone