Henrietta’s eyes widened. Thoughts flitted across her expressive face, and then she smiled. “And the perfect solution, I suppose, would be to contrive this invitation to a place near where Miss Milsom is employed? Without being in the same house.”
“Ideally,” Marcus agreed. “If it could be managed.”
“Do you know,” Henrietta said happily, “I think it just might?”
Chapter Eighteen
It was mid-January when Helen found herself in a stagecoach to the city of Lincoln. Christmas with her aunt and cousins had not been an unqualified success. With her aunt much recovered from her previous visit there in November, Helen’s presence was clearly regarded as being as much of a financial burden as a family pleasure. She had felt obliged to hand over more money than would have paid for her keep over the three weeks she was there, retaining only enough to pay for correspondence to find a new position and for transport to get there.
The London agency she had previously used wrote back at once to tell her there was little hope of a position with a respectable household of the upper echelons without a reference from Lady Overton. But just when she had resigned herself to going to a school she had never heard of for a vastly reduced salary, she received a letter from Henrietta Cromarty.
Henrietta expressed sorrow at her departure from Audley Park and assured her she would go there and spend some time with Eliza when her brothers had gone back to school. And on that subject of education, Henrietta wrote, a friend of her sister’s in Lincolnshire had two small girls who had outgrown—and outrun—their aging nurse. Although they were not yet five years old, their mother believed they would benefit from the teachings of a governess. Henrietta supplied the address, along with the advice to write to Mrs. Carluke at once, mentioning her name and that of her sister, the Duchess of Alvan.
Helen was surprised to have been accepted so quickly, without even meeting the Carlukes. Clearly, the duchess had spoken for her. It was some comfort to know that her previous employer’s daughters still believed in her and had, in fact, gone out of their way to help her.
It began to snow lightly in the final hours to Lincoln. Helen hoped the weather would not slow the carriage supposed to meet her, or hold up the journey to Ingolby, which she understood to be a village an hour or so from the city.
She had very little information about her new home or her new employers. She did not even know it was who would meet her in Lincoln, or what kind of vehicle it would be.
Fortunately, the snow did not stick to the ground, and as she stepped stiffly down from the coach outside the George Inn, a slightly stooped gentleman in a dark gray greatcoat walked up to her at once.
“Miss Milsom?” He peered at her with the concentration of the short-sighted.
“Yes, I am Helen Milsom. Are you from Mrs. Carluke?”
He beamed, and she realized he was much younger than she had first thought. “Indeed I am.” He gave a quick bow and held out his hand. “George Carluke, at your service. Let me take your bag.”
Grateful for the courtesy, she gave it up and hurried after him across the inn yard to a slightly battered gig. A large, shaggy dog reared up from the floor, wagging its tail but growling faintly.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Mr. Carluke said cheerfully. “He’s perfectly friendly once he knows you, so if you’ll allow me to hand you in, he’ll accept you, and we’ll all be comfortable.”
Helen doubted that, for even though the dog sniffed her in friendly fashion when she climbed in, he took up so much space that she knew there would be little room for his master. Mr. Carluke climbed up and lifted the reins, causing the dog to squash in against her knees.
“Sorry, he’s a bit large,” Mr. Carluke observed. “But in fact, he’s quite useful in keeping you warm. Here, wrap this blanket about you, and we’ll share the other over our knees. With those and Bounder here, we’ll be warm as toast.”
Despite the snow flurries, she was certainly warmer than she expected to be in an open carriage for more than an hour.
“You are Mrs. Carluke’s husband?” Helen hazarded as they drove through the town. “The father of my new charges?”
“I have that good fortune.” He cast her a quick grin. “I double as the coachman.”
“So I gather.” She rather liked this eccentricity, although she couldn’t help wondering how, without carriage and coachman, he was in a position to employ a governess at not very much below the salary she had received from Lord Overton. “Um, do you have a large establishment, sir?”
He appeared to consider this. “Cozy,” he pronounced.
She wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, especially when she discovered that her employer was a scholar. “Meant to make my life in Cambridge,” he confided. “Only then I met Eleanor, who for some reason, is prepared to put up with me and the books.”
During the journey, she guessed the reason for Mrs. Carluke’s generosity. There was something very charming about the scholar. Despite peering short-sightedly at approaching vehicles—“Forgot my glasses,” he told Helen—he entertained her with amusing anecdotes and self-deprecating wit all the way to Ingolby, which turned out to be a decent-sized village with a few shops and a church built around a square and a few streets leading off it.
Although it was dark by then, Mr. Carluke drove straight through at alarming speed—perhaps the villagers had learned to look out for him—and turned through a pair of open gates at the edge of the village. The driveway turned sharply, and a house suddenly appeared in Helen’s view.
Well-lit outside, with various other lights showing in the windows, it was a good-sized building of two stories with a neat garden. It did not look like the home of a poor scholar who had to drive himself in a tatty gig.
However, Bounder suddenly woke up and leaped off Helen’s feet, barking, before the horse had come to a standstill. And then all hell broke loose.
A boy loped round from the side of the house and ran to hold the horse while Mr. Carluke alighted. The front door of the house flew open, and two children charged down the steps to be bowled right over by the huge dog. While they crowed with delight and the brute stood over them, licking their faces, a middle-aged servant who might have been a nurse, rushed down after them, clicking her tongue and scolding and shouting at the dog to get off them. “Vile, smelly beast!” she yelled.
As if he understood the insult, the dog looked up, then bounded toward her. The nurse screamed and fled back up the steps, the dog barking at her heels. They streaked past a young woman with a baby in her arms, who said nothing in protest, merely stood aside to get out of their way.
“Welcome to the madhouse,” Mr. Carluke said cheerfully, holding up his hand to help Helen climb out of the gig.
“The dog won’t hurt her, will he?” she asked anxiously, obeying the unspoken command.
“Lord, no, he loves her to bits. But she’s convinced he carries all the diseases known to man and hates him to be anywhere near the children.”
The little girls, both talking at once, ran to their father, hugging one side of him each, and smiling up her with a beguiling mixture of shyness and mischief.
“These are my daughters, Sarah and Sophia,” Mr. Carluke said proudly. “Girls, your new governess, Miss Milsom.” As he spoke, he began walking toward the front steps with the children dangling from him. It seemed not to discommode him, for he still carried Helen’s bag.
The lady with the baby in her arms smiled at Helen.
“My wife,” her husband said with equal pride. “Miss Milsom, my dear.” Quite without embarrassment, he dropped a kiss on his wife’s lips, and then they were inside the house with the door closed.
From the depths of the house, a furious female voice could be heard scolding and ordering someone out.
“Go and rescue Nurse,” Mrs. Carluke told the children. “and then come down for tea. You had probably better bring Bounder with you. Come into the drawing room, Miss Milsom, and sit by the fire. You must be frozen!”
“Are your daughters twins?” she asked Mrs. Carluke.
“No, Sarah will be five next month. Sophia is only twelve months younger and very slightly taller! And little Selena here is a mere five weeks old.” She met Helen’s gaze. “You should know I don’t want their governess to keep their noses to the grindstone. I think you’d all be insane in a month. But…they are too lively for Nurse, and for me right now with Selina. Perhaps they could just do a little reading, writing, and drawing? A few outings and walks? Are you happy to play as well as teach?”
“Of course,” Helen said. “Whatever you would like me to do.”
Mrs. Carluke’s face relaxed. “That is what I was told. I hope you don’t find us too chaotic. It’s true the girls could do with a little discipline in their lives, but they are mostly biddable and very good-natured.”
“I have no wish to talk myself out of the position,” Helen said frankly. “But would it not be less expensive for you to employ a younger nursemaid to assist the nurse you already have?”
“It crossed our minds,” Mrs. Carluke admitted, “but then we heard about you, and since my husband is very keen on learning…” She shrugged. “This seemed the ideal choice.”
“I shall do my best to live up to your expectations,” Helen murmured, wondering exactly what had reached the Carlukes from Henrietta and her sister, the Duchess of Alvan.
*
The rest of the evening was spent with the children, first in the company of their parents—and Bounder, who settled contentedly before the fire. Later, the children took her to see the schoolroom and their bedchamber. They asked her more questions than she asked them, and by their bedtime, she knew that in this post, she had landed on her feet.
During the bedtime ritual, she was introduced to Nurse, who seemed to regard her with deep suspicion. Helen was friendly and deliberately held herself back from interfering with Nurse’s duties, merely said goodnight to the girls and left the bedchamber first. She supposed Nurse would come around in time, but the peculiar detachment that had hung around her since leaving Audley Park prevented her from caring too much. She would perform her duties to the best of her ability and contrive to keep her charges happy. Nothing else in the house would really touch her.
On the other hand, she did find a certain enjoyment in dining with Mr. and Mrs. Carluke. If their quiet banter and contented intimacy made her heart ache for what she had lost—what she had refused—then the entertainment of their company more than made up for it. They were undoubtedly an eccentric couple, particularly the absent-minded scholar whose conversation often went off on tangents or stopped abruptly altogether as some other idea took possession of his thoughts. Mrs. Carluke took it all in stride.
Helen’s bedchamber was situated between the schoolroom and the landing. It was large enough to be comfortable and small enough to be cozy. As she arranged her meager possessions in the drawers, she told herself this was the ideal position to make a new life, to recover her equilibrium, and stop regretting what could never have been.
All the same, as she blew out the candle and lay down in bed, familiar sadness swept around her with the darkness. She missed Marcus. His loss was like a physical pain, making it very hard to look forward to the next day with any eagerness. She forced her thoughts to her new charges, to plans for lessons and play.
But asleep, she could not control her dreams. After weeks apart from him, she had grown used to waking in the night to find her face wet with tears.
In the morning, she discovered that the family ate breakfast together. Mr. Carluke, unlike the majority of men, did not appear to mind the babble of children so early in the day and seemed quite happy to entertain them. His newspaper lay folded and untouched by his elbow. Mrs. Carluke joined in the chatter, though she seemed wearier than her husband.
When he had drunk a second cup of coffee, he picked up his newspaper and rose, wandering off to his study with the wave of his hand.
This, Helen suspected, was now the hard part of the day for his wife, who could neither catch up on sleep nor summon the energy to play with the girls as their vitality demanded.
“I thought,” Helen said, “if you are agreeable, ma’am, that the girls could show me the village this morning? We could buy anything there that you need, and then we could have our first lesson with a cup of hot chocolate?”
Mrs. Carluke smiled gratefully, and the girls cheered, so Helen swept them off to find boots and warm cloaks.
The day worked out much as Helen planned, with short bursts of classroom lessons mixed up with less structured activities, like counting early snowdrops during their afternoon walk in the woods outside the village.
They returned home as dusk began to fall, and that was when Helen’s careful plans slipped.
They had taken Bounder with them, and he jumped back indoors with his usual enthusiasm only to stop and gaze toward the staircase, a low growl in his throat. A small ball of fur hurtled down the stairs, jumped at Bounder’s nose, ran rings around the girls, then threw itself at Helen, who caught it in her arms from sheer instinct.
“Spring?” she said in disbelief. The Duchess of Alvan’s pet terrier, whom she had met during the couple’s stay at Audley Park last year, was a unique animal. She really doubted there could be another like him.
Spring licked her face enthusiastically, then struggled and sprang free to encourage Bounder to play. Bounder tolerated him, even wagged his tail.
“There he is,” said a familiar voice from the drawing-room door. “He’s been looking all over for Bounder, I think.” The Duchess of Alvan smiled at the children. “How do you do, little Carlukes?”
The girls ran to her, and the duchess, never high in the instep, even now when she was with child, knelt down to hug them before her gaze lifted to Helen’s.
Although the duchess had been instrumental in finding this position for her, Helen had no real idea how she regarded her. She could not help tensing.
But the duchess rose and offered her hand. “Miss Milsom, what a pleasure to see you here.”
Helen curtsied, mumbling some greeting and shook hands with the duchess. Mrs. Carluke watched from the drawing-room door, the baby, inevitably, in one arm.
The duchess squeezed Helen’s fingers, murmuring, “I’m so sorry for what happened. But we won’t speak of it now.”
“Join us for tea,” Mrs. Carluke invited, and Helen, feeling slightly stunned, could only walk into the drawing room and obey, keeping the girls distracted enough not to hog the whole conversation between their mother and the duchess, who were clearly friends.
Although Helen had known Mooreton Hall was not very far from Ingolby, she had not expected to come across the duchess so soon or so intimately. She did not want this reminder of the past, just as she was beginning this new phase of her life. But there was nothing she could do about it.
Mr. Carluke, having let the dogs outside to play in the garden, joined them for tea. His hair was endearingly ruffled as though he’d been dragging his fingers through it the wrong way. He seemed pleased but not surprised or remotely awed to find the duchess there.
As he sat down, the girls climbed up on his knees. Helen glanced at his wife for guidance as to whether or not to call them to order. Mrs. Carluke shook her head, faintly smiling.
“I have left cards to my rout at the end of the month,” the duchess told her host. “And have been trying to persuade your wife she should come.”
“Will there be dancing?” Mr. Carluke asked. “She likes to dance.”
“Yes, we shall have dancing, music, poetry, and even art to admire,” the duchess replied.
“There, just the sort of thing you love,” Mr. Carluke encouraged. “We should go.”
But his wife shook her head,
however reluctantly. “I cannot leave the children, especially not grumpy Selina here.”
Helen spoke up. “Then why don’t you take the baby—and Nurse—with you, and leave the girls here in my care?”
“That way you could stay the night,” the duchess agreed. “In fact…bring all the children and Miss Milsom to look after them. For my own young brothers and sister will be there—if the weather lets them travel—along with those of a few other guests. Then you need not worry, and there will be plenty of people to look after them so you may enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, your grace is kind!” Mrs. Carluke exclaimed, dashing one hand across her eyes. “But I know you will have more than enough people staying—”
The duchess laughed. “There’s no shortage of space at Mooreton Hall! Do come. It will be more fun for me if you do. And there’s another reason I’ll tell you about later. But I’ll leave you to think about it. It’s time I went home.”
Helen preferred her own plan of remaining in Ingolby while her employers went to Mooreton Hall, for she did not wish to run into the Overtons, not least because she didn’t want them telling the Carlukes of her dismissal. However, with luck, it would snow horrendously and block all the roads.
*
Over the next ten days, Helen developed a flexible kind of routine for the children that seemed to be quite acceptable to the easy-going parents. They practiced letters, numbers, and reading, and she told them stories that led to a little history, or on walks to talk about the weather that led to talking about the climate of other countries and showing them, on their return to the schoolroom, where these countries were on the globe. The children soaked it all up like sponges, clearly possessing their parents’ intelligence as well as their curiosity.
On the eleventh day after her arrival, Helen took the girls to the village inn for tea in order to give their parents some time together in peace. They sat in the coffee room, happily wolfing lemonade and cakes and waving through the window to a couple of village boys they apparently knew. Though Helen refused to let the girls go outside to play with them, she beckoned the boys inside where she could keep her eyes on them all.
The Weary Heart Page 19
