Risky Rules of a Passionate Governess

by Henrietta Harding

  Cecil gave her a snide smile. “Regarding the extension of our family, you mean?”

  Alice forced herself to maintain her smile. “It’s just, Cecil. We’ve been married now for quite a while. And I wonder, I wonder if it’s time…”

  “You’ve said all I need to hear, darling,” Cecil said. He snapped his head to the staircase, strutting towards it. “We shouldn’t beat a dead horse, now, should we? I know that I’ll certainly be ready to speak to you more regarding this issue when I return. But you know, darling…”

  At this, he paused and cut his eyes back to her. Alice felt she couldn’t breathe. Her fingers pressed hard against her chest, feeling the quake of her beating heart.

  “You know that if you don’t give me a son first, I have every ground to leave you,” he said.

  Alice felt her knees give out. They felt like water beneath her. Her face fell towards the floor. This wasn’t a true fact, of course. He had no grounds to leave her, and couldn’t, if he ever wished to remarry. That is, he couldn’t unless she was deceitful to him, an adulteress. She simply didn’t have it in her to do such a thing.

  “I’m only joking, darling,” Cecil said, his smile growing wider. It was clear he liked to watch her fidget. “You know I would never do such a thing. Don’t you know that?”

  Alice pressed her lips together, feeling them thin out. She grimaced, then forced a light chuckle. “Of course, darling. Be safe on your journey.”

  Cecil leant a bit closer towards her, whipping his trunk to the other side of his body. Alice was suddenly conscious of Evelyn, lurking at the far end of the landing. She was akin to a ghost, her eyes glowing from every corner. Alice couldn’t do a thing.

  “We’re going to be very rich, my love,” Cecil murmured. “Richer than you or I could have ever comprehended before. Trust your Cecil, darling. Trust him. He takes risks when he should. He knows all the proper people. Didn’t he take your meek and weak title and make it extraordinary? Weren’t you very much nothing, when he met you?”

  Alice detested when Cecil slipped into this third-person mode of speak. She swallowed hard, forcing her knees to lock beneath her. “Of course. You’ve given me everything I could ever need.”

  “There’s always more,” Cecil returned.

  Cecil sauntered through the door and down the steps, cutting towards the back of the big house towards the stables. Alice spun into the bedroom and drew her forehead against the chill of the glass. A spring rain spat through the sunlight, seemingly insistent, despite the ache from the people below for the weather to change once and for all. She watched Cecil step into his carriage and yank the carriage door closed. It clattered.

  The horse stalled, seemingly shaken by the quake of the carriage door. The stable boy – yet another person left over from the years prior to Alice’s move into the Andrews estate – tossed a whip across the horse’s glowing mane, surging them towards whatever meeting awaited Cecil. Outside the estate walls, Alice felt a simmering quality to everything that awaited Cecil: as though he was strong enough, in mind and in spirit, to tear through the rules of society and ensure he came out on top.

  ***

  “You’re weak-minded,” Cecil had told her once, perhaps a year ago. Alice hadn’t known him well at the time. She’d been seated at the pianoforte bench in her parents’ smaller estate, twiddling her fingers across the keys. When Cecil had spouted this accusation, she’d yanked her shoulders back and drawn her hair over her ear, shivering. It had seemed an accurate description of her at the time –barely twenty-five years old, without a suitor in sight. Except for Cecil, of course. And that had seemed oddly accidental, just a brief greeting at a ball. Her parents hadn’t dared to hope she could attach herself to someone like him. A nobleman, the sight and lust of countless girls across court.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Alice had murmured, throwing her fingers into a minor scale. The music was a direct reflection of her inner world.

  In the corner, Alice remembered now, had been her younger sister, Samantha, acting as chaperone. At the time, Samantha had been six months pregnant with her second child, despite being three years younger than Alice. Her sleepiness, due to the pregnancy, had brought her eyelashes across her cheeks, fluttering. This was perhaps why she didn’t rip up from her chair, demanding that Cecil take back his words.

  Of course, if she had heard, she’d never mentioned it to Alice. Perhaps it was better this way, her younger sister staying out of her business. Allowing her elder sister to do what she thought was right in her own life.

  It was the least she could do. The most respectful.

  “But you know I can teach you. Teach you to become better,” Cecil had said. He’d taken a step forward, drawing his hand across Alice’s upper back. The motion was tender, so unlike the severity of the words.

  Perhaps he finds it difficult to articulate how he feels, Alice had thought at the time, knowing this was quite a normal trait in men. Perhaps he recognises me for who I am. And despite knowing I need to change – my, don’t we all – he still wants me.

  Alice had never been wanted before.

  This had been a near-constant conundrum in her life. Her elder brother, Joseph, her sister Samantha, and Alice herself were all remarkably beautiful, each in their own right. Joseph was six-foot three inches, with sweeping dark locks and a quick wit. Frequently, he was lauded as one of the top hunters on the moors and had been known to capture the interests of several women in society. At twenty-eight years old, he’d only flirted with the idea of settling down, whispering to Alice that he didn’t want anything to be decided upon yet. “I’m having too much fun,” he’d offered.

  Samantha had married at twenty. A man named Thomas with a moderately strong title, whose love continued to reflect out in his mannerisms, the things he said, despite their being married for several years. Samantha looked similar to Alice, but perhaps (and this had been said many times) not nearly as beautiful. Her eyes glowed blue, her blonde locks curled across her shoulders, sweeping down her back. Her motions were tender and feminine. She was alert and cordial and never spoke out of turn.

  Yet Alice – there was something off about her, at least in Alice’s eyes (and the eyes of society, and clearly, the eyes of her now-husband). It wasn’t entirely apparent what it was that people saw off. Alice was a brilliant pianist, a generous sister, a curious woman of the world. Perhaps that was it, Samantha sometimes offered. Perhaps the world couldn’t comprehend why she wanted so much from it, saw such beauty. “Calm your mind,” Samantha murmured to Alice, over and over again. “It doesn’t have to be so big all the time.”

  Perhaps, in retrospect, these thoughts had been the ones to push Alice towards her love for Cecil. Her decision to lower her requirements of the world down to a different level, perhaps forcing herself to see Cecil as the rest of society did. As a perfectly perfect option. A man anyone should covet, given the opportunity.

  That afternoon at the pianoforte bench, Cecil’s hand had swept down to the small of her back. Alice had never been touched so tenderly before. It felt akin to being seen for the first time. Immediately, her fingers had drifted off the keys. Her eyes had closed, as though she was trying to trap the memory in her skull.

  “But just because you’re weak-minded,” Cecil had continued, allowing his fingers to tickle across her waist. “Doesn’t mean you’re not worthwhile. My mother, too. She was a weak little thing. Always apt to pick up a paintbrush or write a poem or play the pianoforte, rather than bother herself with the affairs of the household.”

  “She sounds like a daydreamer,” Alice had whispered.

  “She’s been dead for years,” Cecil had said. “Perhaps it’s because her head was so lost. When she got the influenza, she didn’t take much care.”

  Alice hadn’t been sure how to respond. She shifted away, so that his hands fell towards the floor. His fingers hung down, looking like little willow trees. Samantha opened her eyes in the corner, coming-to.

  Alice had
forced herself to gaze up at Cecil, at the impossible ocean-blue of his eyes. A wave fell over her, one of lust and desire and pain and power. Perhaps she had more of it than she initially thought.

  “I’m terribly sorry to hear about your mother,” she whispered.

  Cecil had given her a small shrug, one that seemed flippant, but was surely hiding something. He had reached his palm across her cheek, perhaps testing her. How far could he take her? How much could he possibly do, with Samantha pressed deep in the lounge chair in the corner?

  “We all go the way of death, don’t we?” Cecil had returned. “Even you. Even me.”

  When Cecil had asked her father for her hand in marriage, Alice’s father had agreed immediately – sensing the power that lurked behind the man’s title, the man’s account. The previous late summer had been a daydream of garden engagement parties, of Alice stitching herself into tight little brightly coloured gowns and perfecting the laugh she had to use, to ring out between the rose bushes. “Oh, yes, isn’t he divine? How did I get so lucky?”

  It had all moved so quickly. Alice had felt herself strapped to a kind of ever-running horse, surging towards a future she couldn’t quite name. She felt herself jostling around, her smile waning. In the wake of the ceremony, she’d moved into the Andrews estate, finding herself the victim of rules and household goings-on that she couldn’t quite comprehend. And Cecil, he’d turned rather ominous. The pomp and circumstance of the ceremony and various parties had thrilled him. And the fact that he was marrying down seemed an act of compassion to several. So much so that Alice had heard, several times, the words, “He really is saving that poor girl.”

  ***

  Alice perched in the bedroom she shared with Cecil, wrapping a blonde curl around and around her finger. Cecil had been gone for ten minutes, perhaps fifteen. Outside the room, she heard Evelyn bucking about, sweeping the staircase for the twelfth time, as though to prove something. Alice felt certain she’d heard the conversation regarding children. “I just want to expand our family,” Alice practised to herself, feeling that the words sounded proper, sincere. “Is that such a hard task?”

  Despite her inner anxieties about their relationship, Alice truly did love Cecil. When she awoke in the middle of the night, she occasionally gazed at the view of his face, usually cased in moonlight, marvelling at how lucky she’d been. Since their marriage, society had regarded her with a much more eager eye. At various balls and parties, and throughout Christmas, she’d seen a staggering leap in her social status.

  “It’s as though they don’t remember what they said about the old me,” Alice had marvelled once to Samantha, shrugging. “It feels a bit dishonest, doesn’t it?”

  “Enjoy it,” Samantha had said, bouncing her second baby upon her knee. Her tone was almost mothering now, despite her younger years. “The moment you have children, everything will change.”

  “I don’t suppose it will change so greatly. Cecil says that Evelyn is remarkable at child-rearing,” Alice offered.

  “Evelyn? You detest her. And don’t say differently. I’ve sat up with you as you cry about her,” Samantha said, her tone growing increasingly taut with passion. “You can’t possibly have me believe that you want her to raise your children.”

  “Samantha, this has all been a remarkable experiment,” Alice had whispered, feeling vaguely deflated. “It’s not as though I thought anyone would marry me, anyway.”

  This had closed Samantha’s lips.

  “As long as he loves me back,” Alice murmured now, her nostrils flared. “And he truly does. He wouldn’t have married me if he hadn’t. And we’ve an entire world to build together, right here at the Andrews estate. I must uphold my love for him over everything. I will carry his sons. I will live for him in everything. It’s what I’m meant to do as wife, as mother. It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”

  Chapter 2

  Alice was an active dreamer. She tossed and turned, thrusting herself up from the sheets, her eyes burning towards the window. Outside, the spring rain had ripped into a horrendous black storm. The trees tipped themselves towards the sweeping fields, all looking apt to crack. Alice wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and peered out, her feet shoulder-width apart beneath her.

  With Cecil away, she felt she was in an impossibly empty home – a mere skeleton filled with ghosts of so many other different lives. She felt an urge to find Evelyn Sanders, just to sit alongside someone. Another warm body. But she held back, fearful, knowing that going to Evelyn Sanders meant an immediate rebuke.

  It was a strange thing, sleeplessness. Alice wracked her brain, hunting for a path to some sort of reprieve. Shots of lightning burned across the sky. She pressed her hand across her abdomen, pretending that she was protecting a baby that didn’t yet exist. How funny it would be, years from then, gazing out across the same field, with her babies tucked in their beds around her. Perhaps she would feel as regal as the queen herself – a tiny nation of the world, in her care.

  Shivering, Alice padded to the door and shuffled to the kitchen below, where a fire flickered in the corner. Seated beside it was one of the stablemen, who’d darted indoors in the midst of the storm and had begun to brew himself a pot of tea. The man was perhaps forty years old and, according to Cecil, had been a stable boy at the Andrews estate for the majority of his life. Alice hadn’t spoken much to him and found her brain zipping about for his name.

  Finally, she landed at it. “Matthew,” she murmured. She patted at the back of her hair – soft and a little tangled from the pillow – and added, “I suppose the both of us can’t sleep.”

  “Difficult to find the energy to do so, with the wind so wild out there,” Matthew returned. He cut his eyes towards the bubbling water, adding, “I don’t suppose I can offer you some tea, My Lady?”

  “That would be grand,” Alice said.

  With the elegance of a clownish child, Alice dropped into the chair alongside him, sweeping her hands across her knees. She watched as he brewed the tea with tentative motions, looking as though he was handling very delicate wares.

  The motion activated a strange memory in the back of Alice’s mind. Surprised at herself, she opened her lips and said, “You remind me a great deal of my uncle, Matthew.”

  The words were so bizarre, articulated with the bouncing thunder outside. Matthew turned his attention towards her, keeping the cup of steaming tea high.

  “No one has ever said I remind them of anyone before,” Matthew returned.

  Alice’s cheeks burned red with embarrassment. She sought the tea and drew it to her face, inhaling the steam. She hadn’t spoken so freely since her move into the Andrews estate. Yet something bubbled within her, a childishness, which she’d had to abandon the moment she’d become Cecil’s wife.

  “Yes. The way you brewed the tea. Such light motions. He was a doctor, my uncle. We used to go into the woods together. We would gather up various herbs, leaves and flowers. Things I couldn’t have imagined meant anything to the medicinal world. And then, he would set me up with a mortar and pestle, and I would – Oh, goodness. I probably sound mad, don’t I?”

  Matthew tossed a small log onto the fire, which spit around it and then swallowed it.

  “I ain’t in the market for sleep, anyway,” Matthew offered.

  This wasn’t entirely an invitation to continue. Alice drew her lips around the edge of the cup. Her heart beat slowly, thudding like a drum.

  “But I ain’t complaining about it, either,” Matthew said.

  Alice singed the tip of her tongue but forced herself to keep quiet. After a pause, she said, “He talked to me endlessly about the wood, about the green, about the natural world that so many of us ignore day to day. What was it he said? The secret to good health is found outdoors. I never thought I’d forget that.”

  “It seems you haven’t,” Matthew returned, his voice gruff, yet oddly warm.

  “It’s not that I forgot it exactly,” Alice whispered. “Perhaps just that
I filled my head around it so much with other information, other people, that I didn’t see it for quite some time.”