Mena found herself wondering if those hard lips ever softened. If those heated, merciless, assessing eyes ever became languid and tender.
“I asked Lady Northwalk to send me a capable, experienced, and educated governess and she sent ye, Miss Lockhart, what do ye make of that?” His words pierced her with panic, though his tone remained neutral.
“D-did you not receive my references? My letters of recommendation? I assure you, sir, I am beyond qualified to teach your children comportment. Lady Northwalk informed me that after reading the Whitehalls’—”
“Yer references were impeccable. However, the expectations of my children differ greatly from the Whitehalls’, ye ken? They were merchants, I’m a marquess, if ye’ll believe it now.”
“A marquess who dresses like a Jacobite rebel,” she reminded him. “Forgive me for not believing you earlier, but you were covered in mud and ash from the fields, and I’d never met a marquess who assisted in such—physical labor.”
Ravencroft stepped forward, and Mena retreated, her hands covering the flutters in her stomach as though holding back a swarm of butterflies. “I only meant—”
“There are some, Miss Lockhart, who would argue ’tis the responsibility of a noble to oversee every aspect of work on the land he owns. And there are others who would find it mighty strange that a proper London governess kens so much about linchpins and carriage wheels.”
Mena recalled Miss LeCour’s sage advice, that a lie was best told peppered with truth. “My father was a landed gentleman and avid agriculturist, as well as a scholar. I learned quite a few things at his feet as a child which included—”
“And are ye aware of how far behind schedule my men and I are because we spent all bloody afternoon saving yer stubborn hide? If ye’d allowed me to take ye on my horse, we’d not have lost the daylight.”
“I do regret my part in that,” Mena said, and meant it. “But as I was a woman traveling alone you can’t expect—”
“Ye’ll need to ken more than farm maintenance and how to distract a man with a pretty dress in order to teach my children what they’ll need to know to survive in society,” he clipped.
“Well, their first lesson will be on how rude and socially unacceptable it is to consistently interrupt people in the middle of their sentences,” Mena snapped.
Oh, sweet Lord. She could hardly believe her own behavior. Here she stood, alone and defenseless before perhaps the deadliest warrior in the history of the British Isles, and she’d just called him to answer for his bad manners.
Had she escaped the asylum only to go mad outside its walls?
“Go on then,” he commanded, his voice intensifying and a dark, frightening storm gathering in his countenance. “I believe ye were about to apologize for wasting my time.”
Mena actually felt her nostrils flare and a galling pit form in her belly. What was this? Temper? She’d quite thought she’d been born without one. Affection and tenderness had made up her idyllic childhood, and acrimony and terror had dominated her adult life. She’d never really had the chance to wrestle with a temper.
And wrestle it she must, or risk losing her means of escape into relative anonymity. Closing her eyes, she summoned her innate gentility along with the submissive humility she’d cultivated over half a decade with a cruel and violent husband. Opening her mouth, she prepared to deliver a finely crafted and masterful apology.
“Why aren’t ye married?” the marquess demanded, again effectively cutting her off.
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“Wouldna ye rather have a husband and bairns of yer own than school other people’s ill-behaved children?” His glittering eyes roamed her once again, leaving trails of quivering awareness in their wake. “Ye’re rather young to wield much authority over my daughter, as ye’ve not more than a decade on her.”
“I have exactly a decade on her.”
He ignored her reply, as the corners of his mouth whitened with some sort of strain that Mena couldn’t fathom. “Were ye a Highland lass, ye’d barely seen Rhianna’s age before some lad or other had dragged ye to church to claim ye. Whether ye’d consented or not. In fact, they’d likely just take ye to wife in the biblical sense and toss yer father his thirty coin.”
Flummoxed, Mena stared at him, her mouth agape. He still seemed irate, in fact his voice continued to rise in volume and intensity. But it sounded as though he’d paid her a compliment.
“So that causes a man to wonder,” he continued. “What is a wee bonny English lass like ye doing all the way up here? Why are ye not warming the bed of a wealthy husband and whiling yer hours away on tea and society and the begetting of heirs?”
Had he just called her “wee”? Was she mistaken or didn’t that word mean little?
And bonny? Her?
A spear of pain pricked her with such force, it stole her ire and her courage along with it. Was he being deliberately cruel? Had she left one household that delighted in her humiliation and sought refuge in another?
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.” She hated the weakness in her voice, the fear she’d never quite learned how to hide.
“Everything that happens within the stones of this keep, nay, on Mackenzie lands, are of concern to me. That now includes ye. Especially since ye’ll be influencing my children.” He took another step forward, and before Mena could retreat, his hand snaked out and cupped her chin.