Mary Balogh: Slightly Scandalous

Asinine words!

Miss Martin did not dignify them with a reply. She merely inclined her head.

"To see how you did," Freyja added. "To see if there was anything your school was in need of. Anything I could provide."

It was amazement that was in Miss Martin's eyes now-and far more open hostility.

"I am doing very well, I thank you," she said. "I have both paying pupils and charity pupils and several good teachers. I also have a benefactor who has been both kind and generous to me and to my girls. I have no need of your charity, Lady Freyja."

"Well." Freyja had taken note of the barely concealed shabbiness of the place and decided that the benefactor was not nearly generous enough. Or that the person acting for the benefactor had different notions than his employer of what adequate funding was. "I thought it worth making the offer."

"Thank you." Miss Martin's voice quivered with an emotion her person did not show. "I can only hope that you have changed in nine years, Lady Freyja, and that you have come here out of a genuine goodness of heart rather than out of a malicious hope of finding me desperate and destitute. I am neither. Even without my benefactor's generosity my school is beginning to pay its way. I certainly do not need your assistance-or any further visit from you. Good day. My pupils are missing their history lesson."

A short while later Freyja was walking in Sydney Gardens, her heart still beating erratically, her ears still ringing from the rebuke and the obvious dislike with which it had been delivered.

It must not be a fashionable time to be here, she concluded with some relief. She passed very few other people as she walked the meandering paths, and no one at all that she knew. This was not, she supposed, the place to be walking without a maid trailing decently along behind. But she had never cared about the proprieties and at this particular moment she was very glad indeed to be quite alone. She sat on a rustic bench for a while, close to an ancient oak, feeling the sunshine on her face and the merest suggestion of autumn in the air, and watching a pair of squirrels foraging around for anything visitors to the park might have left behind by way of food. They were remarkably tame. But she sat very still anyway. She did not want to frighten them away.

She had frightened away a whole string of governesses when she was a girl. She had never taken kindly to being confined, to having to do as she was told, to giving her mind to lessons she found excruciatingly boring, to accepting the authority of insipid gentlewomen. She had been a horror, in fact.

Wulf had always found her governesses other employment after dismissing them or accepting their resignation, and Freyja had never given them another thought. Until, that was, Miss Martin had shown unexpected spirit by walking away from Lindsey Hall-literally walking-her head high, having refused any assistance whatsoever from Wulf.

For once in her life Freyja had been genuinely upset by a governess-an ex-governess, in this particular case. She had tolerated the next one, even though she was the most insipid of all, for the rest of her time in the schoolroom.

It was only by accident that she had heard of Miss Martin again. She had opened a school in Bath, but she was struggling dreadfully and must soon close it down. The story had been told maliciously to Freyja by an acquaintance who had expected her to be delighted. She had not been. She had sought out a solicitor, disabused him of the idea that she needed a man to accompany and do business for her, and paid him very well indeed to find Miss Martin, determine the needs of her school, and announce to her that an anonymous benefactor was prepared to answer those needs, provided she could prove to an inspector each year that the education she provided her pupils was up to an acceptable standard.

Since then Freyja had warmed to her unaccustomed role as a carer of deserving humanity and had sent Miss Martin several charity pupils and even one needy teacher, providing all the necessary funding for their keep.

Poor Miss Martin would have an apoplexy if she knew the identity of her benefactor.

And she herself would be mortified indeed, Freyja thought as she absently watched the squirrels, if anyone were to discover her secret softness. For softness it was. Any governess who could not control her charges deserved to be dismissed. And any dismissed governess who was too proud to accept her employer's assistance deserved to starve.

She chuckled softly. How she had liked Miss Martin this morning. How she would have despised her if she had fawned all over her former tormentor.

And then a scream jerked her back to reality-a feminine scream, coming from somewhere down the hill and around a bend in the winding path. Trees hid the screamer from Freyja's view, but there were the distinct sounds of a scuffle, a deep male voice, another less frantic scream, and a high-pitched female voice. The squirrels scampered to the nearest tree and shot up its bark to disappear among branches and foliage.

Freyja surged to her feet. She was female herself. She was small. She had no one with her, not even a maid. She was in a park that seemed almost deserted and was made even more secluded by the hills and trees of which it was composed. It was certainly not the occasion for heroics. Any normal woman in this particular situation would have turned right and hurried away in the opposite direction as fast as her legs would carry her.

Freyja was not any normal woman.

She turned left and strode down the path, almost breaking into a run as she did so. She did not have far to go. As she rounded the bend, a stretch of lawn came into view just ahead. On it stood a great tall beast of a man-a gentleman, no less-clutching a small slip of a serving girl. Her arms were imprisoned against his chest and he was lowering his head with the lascivious intent of claiming his prize-though to complete the process he would doubtless be dragging her off into the bushes within the next few moments.

"Take your hands off her!" Freyja commanded, lengthening her stride. "You uncouth villain. Let her go."

They sprang apart and turned identically startled faces her way. And then the girl-wise wench-screamed again and made off down the hill as fast as her feet would carry her and did not look back.

Freyja did not slow her pace. She strode onward until she was almost toe-to-toe with the villain, drew back her arm, and punched that assaulter of female innocence in the nose.

"Ouch!" he said, his hand jerking up to cover the offended organ. And then his watering eyes focused on her. "Well, now, I thought I recognized that gentle feminine touch. It is you, is it?"

He was fashionably dressed in a blue riding coat with buff breeches and shining top boots, a tall hat on his head. But with a shock of recognition Freyja noticed the long limbs and perfectly proportioned body, the very blond hair beneath the hat, and the very blue eyes of the man she had last seen diving from her inn window three nights ago. Adonis and devil all rolled into one. She drew an audible breath.

"Yes, it is I," she said. "And I am sorry in my heart now that I did not reveal your hiding place in the wardrobe to that gray-haired gentleman and abandon you to your fate."

"No, you are not, are you, sweetheart?" he asked, having the gall to grin at her, watering eyes and reddening nose notwithstanding. "How unsporting of you."

"You dastardly, cowardly villain," she said. "You wretched debaucher of innocence. You are beneath contempt. I shall report you and have you run out of Bath and away from the company of respectable people."

"Will you?" He leaned a little toward her, his eyes dancing with watery merriment. "And whom will you report, my charmer?"

She swelled with indignation. "I shall discover your identity," she said. "You will not be able to show your face outdoors in Bath again without my seeing you and finding out who you are."