"Take it off," he finally muttered.
She stripped off the heavy wool coat with efficient, unhurried movements, draping it over the back of one of his velvet reading chairs. She then pulled off her muddy half-boots, leaving them by the door, and walked toward his desk in her stocking feet.
"Miss Miller," Richard started, leaning forward. "Let me be entirely transparent. This house is a disaster. My daughters are unruly, disobedient, and actively malicious toward anyone attempting to educate them. The last governess left here covered in pond water. I do not need a soft touch. I need a warden."
Josephine rested her hands on the edge of his desk. Up close, he noticed the calluses on her fingers. This was a woman who worked.
"I read their files, Your Grace," Josephine said, her gaze locking onto his. "Lady Abigail, Lady Clara, Lady Harriet. You think they are malicious? From what I gather, they are simply bored and grieving. You hire simpering aristocrats who teach them French embroidery and expect them to sit perfectly still while their entire world has been upended. I've handled children who fight for scraps of bread in the gutter. A little pond water is hardly going to break my spirit."
Richard felt a flare of genuine irritation. "You speak very boldly for a woman seeking a position."
"I speak practically, sir. You need me far more than I need you." She offered a tight, brief smile. "Shall I meet the terrors, or are we going to continue glaring at each other?"
Before Richard could answer, a loud, suspicious thud echoed from the ceiling directly above them, followed by a muffled giggle. Josephine didn't wait for permission. She turned and walked out of the library.
Richard, driven by a morbid curiosity and a sudden, sharp panic that his daughters might actually murder this one, pushed himself up and followed her.
He caught up to her on the second-floor landing. The door to the schoolroom was slightly ajar. Josephine paused outside it. She didn't push the door open immediately. Instead, she looked at the top edge of the heavy wooden frame. Richard followed her gaze. A heavy copper bucket filled to the brim with something dark and writhing was balanced precariously on top of the door, attached to a crude tripwire made of sewing thread.
Josephine reached out with a long fireplace poker that had been resting near a hall table. With a swift, practiced motion, she nudged the bucket just as she pushed the door wide open.
The bucket crashed to the floor, missing her completely. A wave of mud and squirming earthworms spilled across the floorboards.
Inside the room, three girls froze. Harriet, the youngest, held the other end of the thread. Clara dropped a copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Abigail merely narrowed her eyes, assessing the failure of their trap.
Josephine stepped into the room, stepping carefully over the mud in her stocking feet. She looked at the writhing worms, then at the three girls.
"Earthworms," Josephine said, her tone conversational. "A solid choice. Excellent for the garden soil, terrible for indoor flooring. However, the knot you used on the tripwire was a basic slipknot. Amateurish. The tension was all wrong. If you're going to lay a trap, Lady Harriet, at least do it with structural integrity."
The girls stared at her, utterly bewildered. Nobody had ever critiqued their vandalism before.
"I am Miss Miller," Josephine continued, picking up the empty copper bucket and setting it on a desk. "I am your new governess. And before any of you try to lock me in a closet or set my skirts on fire, know this: I survived 4 years wrangling 60 orphan boys in Cheapside. You three in lace dresses do not frighten me. Now, who is going to fetch the mop?"
From the doorway, Richard watched in absolute silence. Abigail, his stoic, terrifying 14-year-old, actually looked uncertain. Harriet dropped the thread. Clara stared at the newcomer with wide, fascinated eyes. None of them screamed. None of them threw anything.
Richard leaned against the doorframe, a long, slow breath escaping his lungs. He looked at Josephine Miller's straight spine and messy hair. She hadn't just survived her first 5 minutes; she had conquered them. And for the first time in 2 years, Richard felt a terrifying, unbidden flicker of hope—and an even more terrifying flicker of attraction.
Mud squelched under heavy leather boots, a sound entirely foreign to the manicured rose gardens of Ashborne Manor. Richard stood by his study window, pulling the heavy velvet curtain aside with one finger. He watched the scene unfolding on the south lawn with a mixture of horror and profound fascination.
It was day three of Josephine Miller's tenure. There had been no screaming fits, no shattered vases, no resignations delivered via a trembling butler. Instead, there was digging.
Josephine had not confined his daughters to the schoolroom; she had marched them outside immediately after breakfast. She wore the same ugly wool pelisse from her arrival, her skirts pinned up severely at the waist to reveal heavy, scuffed boots.
His daughters, the Ladies Croft, were currently up to their elbows in topsoil. Abigail leaned on a heavy iron spade, her usually immaculate blonde hair escaping its pins in messy strands; she looked exhausted, yet she was fiercely hacking at a stubborn tree root. Clara was on her knees, carefully measuring the distance between freshly dug holes with a piece of twine, muttering numbers under her breath. Harriet, predictable in her chaos, was simply shoveling dirt from one pile to another, her face smeared with a thick layer of brown sludge.
"She is having them build a trench, Your Grace," Bates murmured. The butler had materialized beside Richard with a fresh pot of coffee, his face a mask of polite bewilderment.
Richard accepted a porcelain cup. "A trench, Bates?"
"Miss Miller informed Lady Abigail that true structural engineering cannot be learned from a textbook. When Lady Clara protested, citing it was unladylike, Miss Miller challenged her to calculate the volume of earth required to alter the drainage of the flowerbeds. And Lady Harriet..." Bates paused, clearing his throat. "Miss Miller told Lady Harriet that if she could find a worm longer than 4 inches, she would be excused from piano practice."
Richard took a slow sip of the scalding coffee. He watched Josephine step forward, pointing at Abigail's spade, adjusting the girl's grip with a firm, correcting hand. Abigail didn't flinch away; she simply adjusted her stance and drove the blade deeper into the earth.
"It's madness," Richard said quietly.
"The head gardener was entirely opposed, sir," Bates added, "until Miss Miller pointed out the stagnant water pooling near the hydrangeas. She appears to possess a working knowledge of irrigation."
Richard let the curtain drop. He walked back to his desk, sinking into the leather chair. Two years. For 2 years this house had been a mausoleum of whispered voices, tiptoeing servants, and explosive tantrums. The silence of grief had suffocated them, only broken by the girls' desperate attempts to feel something—anything—by terrorizing authority figures. Now they were outside in the dirt, working together.
Later that afternoon, Richard found himself pacing the hallway outside the library. He told himself he was merely stretching his legs; he was absolutely not waiting to intercept the governess.