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necessary.”
    Mercy frowned. “Mr. Lowell, you said in your letter that Lord Ashby’s niece is eight years old.”
    “Correct.”
    “It does not seem altogether proper that two . . . young men are responsible for such a young child. She should have a nurse to care for her.”
    “I sacked the damned harpy on sight,” Ashby snapped. “Which is why Lowell has summoned you, Miss Franklin.” He turned to Mr. Lowell. “Have one of the men bring Emmaline to us here.”
    Nash was likely making a gross mistake in allowing Miss Franklin to stay at Ashby Hall. He’d ordered his men to stay clear of the young women in Keswick, and they were starved for female attention. He did not know how they would react to having Miss Franklin in their midst day in and day out.
    His own reaction was less than stellar, and for that reason alone, he should have sent her back to Underdale. But then they would be back to having only Blue and Roarke to keep track of Emmaline, dash it all. He knew it was an unsuitable situation.
    But his options were limited.
    He hoped Miss Franklin’s audaciousness would appeal to Emmaline, perhaps even draw the child out of herself. As much as the new governess attempted to appear the proper, straitlaced vicar’s daughter, Nash thought the young lady might actually be too softhearted to be effective with his niece. In spite of what he’d said about her stiff manner, Mercy Franklin was the very opposite of the peevish nurse he’d dismissed on the day he’d arrived at Ashby Hall.
    Which had led to his present predicament. He was in desperate need of a female to deal with Emmaline. Nash feared something was wrong with Hoyt’s daughter, for she was far too quiet for a child her age—not that he knew a great deal about children, but he’d seen plenty of them during his campaigns abroad. Not to mention that he’d once been one.
    But that was a long time ago. Before his brothers had died. Before John Trent had put himself in the way of a bloody Frenchman’s saber on the field at Waterloo.
    “My niece is quite shy,” he said to Miss Franklin. “She barely speaks.”
    “Even to you, my lord?”
    “ Especially to me.” She was as fragile as his mother’s bone china, and Nash hardly knew what to say to her, or how to deal with her. Not that he particularly wanted to. That was why he now had Mercy Franklin.
    Now that her bonnet was gone, he saw that the young woman’s hair was as black as her brows, as glossy as a raven’s wing. Nash could not help but wonder how it would look if she allowed its waves to fall loosely about her face. She would be stunning, and a man would have all he could do to keep from sliding his fingers through it and pressing his face to its lustrous bounty.
    He curbed his reaction to her and gestured to the chair across from him. Surely she would confine Emmaline and herself to the nursery and classroom for the most part. He couldn’t imagine any reason why she might spend time in the drawing room or kitchens. Or in his presence.
    Nor did he want her to. She was young, her skin perfect, the blush upon her cheeks a reminder of all that Nash would never have . . . never allow himself to have.
    He could not bear yet another loss.
    “Why especially to you, Lord Ashby?” she asked.
    “Are you blind, Miss Franklin?” he said angrily.
    “No, my lord. My vision is quite good.”
    “Then you can see what my niece observes every time she looks at me.”
    Her throat moved as she swallowed thickly at his harsh tone. Obviously, she’d seen his scars, even if she had not visibly recoiled from the sight of them. Perhaps a vicar’s daughter was accustomed to dealing with the sick or injured, and was inured to such ghastly sights.
    He changed the subject. “Tell me what you know of governessing while we wait for my niece.”
    She lowered herself onto a straight-backed chair near the fire and he caught a subtle whiff of flowers. Lilies, if he was not mistaken. “I know that a child of