Page 40 of Aurelia

Miss Hatchet inhaled deeply, filling her lungs for a glorious harangue.

Thankfully, a knock on the door interrupted whatever she was about to say, and the girl they’d just been discussing opened the door and hovered uncertainty on the threshold.

“Did you need something Lady Celsa?” Aurelia asked, feeling a bit like a toad to be caught gossiping about her with her governess.

“Could I speak to you for a moment, Miss Burton? Alone.” She gave her governess a sullen look, her eyes swollen and reddened from crying.

He had beaten her. Aurelia felt nauseated at the knowledge the earl had laid a hand on his child in anger.

“Would you please excuse us, Miss Hatchet,” Aurelia said, when the woman looked inclined to linger.

Miss Hatchet’s pale cheeks flamed when she understood that she was being dismissed. She spun on her heel and stormed from the room in a flurry of skirts.

“What can I do for you?” Aurelia asked more sharply than she’d intended, but Celsa’s smug enjoyment of the governess’s embarrassment annoyed her. She might not like the tittle-tattling of Miss Hatchet, but neither did she care for the pulling-the-legs-off-flies enjoyment the girl was showing.

“I am sorry for leaving you on Nesta’s Perch today.”

“And I am sorry you were whipped.”

Celsa’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“Your father gave you a whipping, Miss Hatchet said.”

The girl gave her a superior look. “You should not listen to gossip, Miss Burton. My father did not whip me. He never has.”

Aurelia was flooded with relief. And then annoyance that she cared so much about the earl’s behavior.

“Why did you do it?” she asked the girl.

Celsa shrugged.

“Are you saying that you don’t know why you left me there?” she asked, allowing all the irritation and scorn she felt to show in her tone.

Celsa bristled. “I did it because I don’t like you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“You are like all the others.”

“What others?”

“The women who come here—all of them fawning over my father and trying to get his attention.”

“I don’t know about these others, but that is not what I’m trying to do,” Aurelia snapped, more than a little aware that she wasn’t being entirely honest.

“That is a lie! The only reason you spent any time with me today is to curry favor with him.”

Aurelia stared, unsettled by the truth—albeit only a grain—in the girl’s words.

“What? Why are you staring at me like that?” Celsa demanded, crossing her arms.

“Because I think it is sad that you consider your own company so lacking in appeal.”

Celsa’s eyebrows drew together over her nose and Aurelia could see the girl was trying to figure out if she had just been insulted.

“I would like to propose an agreement, my lady.”

“What sort of agreement?” Lady Celsa asked, looking far too suspicious for one so young.