Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow

by Catherine Bowness

  “Surely she was not planning to abandon her charge?”

  “No; I gathered she was prepared to take her back to England, but she was undoubtedly somewhat at the end of her tether so far as chaperoning my cousin was concerned.”

  “Well, I am not in the least surprised,” Cecilia answered, amused.

  The Earl laughed. “Just so! Miss Godmanton was at her wits’ end. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think your sister has discovered my sex’s appeal yet.”

  “No, thank God! I do not know what I would – will – do when – if – she does.”

  “Oh, she is bound to! I never yet heard of anyone who does not at some point develop what you might call a ‘grown-up’ interest of some sort. That, you see, is not related in the smallest degree to intellect.”

  While he was speaking, Cecilia had continued to sew, only occasionally glancing up at him to ascertain his expression. She did not look up during this discussion but kept her head lowered over her work, although she could feel a disproportionate degree of warmth in her face which was not, she suspected, entirely related to the height of the flames in the grate.

  “Obtaining a job for her will make your life so much easier for, in a modiste’s, she will be protected from gentlemen almost completely. Will you allow me to see if I can find such a position?”

  “For Phyllis?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mama? She was used, you know, to work in a dress shop before she was married. We do not come of noble stock.”

  “If she has experience of such a thing, it will be an easy matter to find her a position. What have you been doing to earn a living?”

  “At first we had sufficient money for our needs – some left over from the time Papa was in the army and some acquired through selling the contents of our house. The house itself was rented so that was simply repossessed by the owner. There are six of us children: the eldest has joined the navy, the next is training in the law and our other sister recently married a farmer in Piedmont. You must not think we are entirely destitute; both my brothers contribute what they can to maintain us.”

  “You have a third brother though, do you not? The romantically-named Endymion? Does he pay his way?”

  “Yes, when he makes a win, although I wish he would not game for he is far more inclined to lose, which is really no help whatsoever. All the same, I own it is a comfort to have him with us.”

  “Yes, of course. Have you any family or acquaintance in Geneva?”

  “No.”

  “Is that why you have chosen it as your next stop?

  She flushed. “Do you think we are running away?”

  “I daresay you will say that it is none of my business, but I cannot help wondering whether it is your love of travel or your reluctance to stay in one place for long which is the more powerful motivating factor?”

  “There are a good many things to run away from when you have not a great deal of money and your party includes an excessively pretty young woman who, unfortunately, has little sense of self-preservation,” she replied rather tartly.

  “But you have been running since she was seven years old! Surely she cannot have been attracting loose screws all that time – although I suppose, then, it must have been you who acted as the lure.”

  “Not intentionally, I do assure you, my lord. The fatal combination, as you pointed out, is most likely good looks allied to lack of money. Of course, we are not precisely gentry either, which only adds to our difficulties because we are not taken seriously.”

  “You have not mentioned the most salient point of all: that your mama holds rather different opinions on the sort of protector she seeks for her daughters,” the Earl said drily. “That must make your efforts to protect your sister – and indeed yourself – almost beyond achieving.”

  Cecilia flushed again. “I suppose you think I am absurdly prim - and prudish beyond my station.”

  “Certainly not! It would be outrageous in me to consider that persons of a lower rank should also adopt an inferior degree of morality. I promise I think no such thing, but I do suspect that your mother and you do not see quite eye to eye on this particular matter.”

  “When I was a child – and Papa was alive – we lived more comfortably and I attended a seminary for young ladies in Bath for a few years. I was seventeen and had already left the seminary when we – when Fate struck us such a blow. I daresay I had already learned to both think and act above my station.”

  “Ah! That must be what it is. Did your older brothers go to school as well?”

  “Yes - to Harrow. Endymion, as I told you, had just begun there when – when disaster struck – and he was forced to leave. Neither of my sisters has ever attended school, although they did have a governess when Papa was alive. I have tried to make up for the deficiency myself.”

  “In that case you could probably find employment as a governess or a teacher in a school. Do you speak French?”

  “Yes – and several other languages too, acquired during our travels - but I cannot work in either a family or a school whilst keeping a close eye on Phyllis. That is why, when I have found employment, it has usually been in a shop or something of that nature.”

  She had come to the end of another long seam down the middle of a sheet and snipped off the thread.

  “I am sure you are doing a wonderful job,” the Earl said as she stood up, shook out the material and folded it. “But I own I find it excessively irritating to have a long seam down the middle of my bed.”

  “I wager you’d hardly notice this one, my lord,” she said, showing him her neat repair, the material folded so flat and stitched so minutely that it almost looked like part of the original.

  “I would definitely notice it and I would complain at once,” he told her, running his thumb down the seam.

  “Well, I don’t suppose the Signora would put a mended sheet on such a fine gentleman’s bed,” she said. “It will probably be used for inferior guests.”

  “Very likely. What sort of sheets are on your bed – and where, by the way, is your chamber?”

  “Why do you ask, sir?”

  “Are you afraid I will come and force myself upon you? I promise I will not. I ask out of curiosity. I daresay she has put you in the absent servants’ rooms.”

  “Room.”

  “Oh, yes, of course; I suppose the servants sleep in rows in the attic. Have you a bed, Miss Moss?”

  “In point of fact I have not; there are only two in our room, but I assure you I have often slept on the floor.”

  “I don’t doubt it – but you will not tonight. It will be cold and there are probably insufficient blankets.”

  He rose and pulled the bell.

  “Everyone will have gone to bed, sir.”

  “I shall think it a very poor establishment if that is the case. An Earl expects someone to hang around to do his bidding until he is soundly asleep, Miss Moss. Ah, here he comes.”

  As he spoke, the door opened to admit Ernesto, looking tired and endeavouring to smother a yawn.

  “We have kept you up,” his lordship surmised. “And I am going to ask you to do something you probably consider beneath you, but it has come to my notice that Miss Moss does not have a chamber or indeed a bed of her own. I would like you to prepare the best bedchamber you have available without delay. Please make sure there is a large fire in the room with plenty of fuel so that, if Miss Moss finds she cannot immediately fall asleep, she will at least not be cold while she is reading. She will need plenty of candles too in case she finds she wishes to spend the entire night in perusal of her book.”

  Ernesto, casting a wondering glance at Miss Moss, bowed, muttered his assent in Italian and withdrew.

  When the servant had gone, the Earl said, “Now, Miss Moss, pray fold up those sheets, put away your needle and wait in idleness while he prepares your room. I will foot the bill and forbid you to pick up another needle tonight. Tomorrow, I hope you will honour me with your presence at breakfast
– together with the rest of your family – and then, if the snow is not too thick, my party intends to set off north again towards Geneva. Do you think your carriage and horses will be up to the journey?”

  “I certainly hope so and, if they are not, it will be Endymion’s fault for he has been attending to them.”

  “I don’t suppose even he can work miracles.”

  Chapter 10

  Helen, who had at the beginning of her travels, dispensed with the maid’s assistance in preparing for bed – after all, she did not have a maid of her own at home – undressed, put on her nightgown and sat down at the mirror to brush and plait her hair.

  She had spent much of her childhood consumed with envy of the female cousin who had been brought up with her and who possessed the sort of dazzling looks which made everyone consider her the prettier of the two – and to mention the comparison with distressing regularity. She had, in addition, a brother, a few years her senior, whose looks and charm of manner endeared him to everyone who met him. As a consequence, she was convinced not only that she was plain but that she also lacked the ability to make people like her.

  This belief had not been put to the test for she had never been vouchsafed the opportunity to meet anyone outside the family, apart from one ill-fated visit to the assembly rooms more than a year ago – when, in fact she had not lacked partners. Her mama, reluctant to take her and her pulchritudinous cousin in the first place, was confirmed in her opinion that such places were full of deceitful and dangerous men by subsequent events, and never went there again.

  It was her aunt who had suggested that the poor girl should be introduced to persons of her own age if she were not to end by going mad. Lady Charles had been persuaded by this warning - together with the fact that she had herself recently been unwell and hardly able to leave her bed, much less escort her daughter anywhere - to send her to stay for a few months with her cousin. He was now settled in Geneva, a far less fashionable place than Vienna – his previous posting - and therefore, in Lady Charles’s anxious opinion, safer for an inexperienced girl. He agreed to meet Helen and her chaperone in Venice, whither he had travelled to visit a relative, and escort them from there to his house on the shores of Lake Geneva.

  Helen knew that her mother had intended her to marry Waldron from the moment she was born. He was now a little more than thirty, an age when Lady Charles was convinced he should be settling down and making provision for the succession. Helen herself had no such expectation. Waldron had left England the minute he was able and had not returned since other than for brief visits.

  But it was not of him that she was thinking as she unpinned her hair and began to brush it for it was not he who had set her on fire but a very different sort of man.

  She could see that Mr Moss’s mama was not Quality; indeed, she had never sat down to dinner with a person of such demonstrably low rank and was convinced that her cousin had only invited the family to join them because he was taken with the daughters’ looks. She was not surprised; both were really quite ravishing, the elder with the sort of classical, mature beauty which made one draw in one’s breath in wonder and the younger with a species of childish, innocent charm that men - or so at least Helen believed from her extensive reading of romantic novels - were often taken with. She did not know whether her cousin was a man who liked that sort of child-woman for, in truth, she knew very little about him apart from his family tree.

  She did not doubt that her mama would be horrified if she had the slightest inkling that her over-protected daughter had fallen violently in love with a man who possessed all the characteristics of extreme unsuitability which would surely have featured prominently on any list drawn up by an anxious mother of ‘men to be avoided at all costs’.

  He came from a family of chancers, who took rooms in a hostelry without having the means to pay for them, and were then obliged to find either a benevolent gentleman to settle the bill or else work their way by performing whatever menial task the proprietor chose to impose upon them. She suspected that the beautiful daughters were often forced to pay the benevolent gentlemen in some way or another which she, Helen, was supposed to know nothing about.

  She wondered if Mr Moss would have taken any more interest in her if she had been an heiress and suspected he would. As it was, he had spoken little to her, choosing instead to direct the blaze of his charm upon Miss Godmanton, whose habitually disapproving expression had cracked and disintegrated beneath his attention. She had thought Miss Godmanton indifferent to the male sex but realised now that this was far from the case; it was more a question of pride prompting her to launch a pre-emptive attack on a set of people for whom she was, had always been, more or less invisible. How painful it must have been to have spent her youth watching other, prettier, girls being chosen in preference to herself; no wonder she had feigned indifference and grown to dislike pretty women.

  Helen, although she had received admiration in the Papal States – where it had rather gone to her head - had this in common with her chaperone: she did not expect attention from the male sex. The fact that Mr Moss had appeared indifferent to her came as no surprise; what was astonishing was that he had focussed his attention upon Miss Godmanton for, surely, if he had to direct the dazzling beam of his regard upon one or the other, one would have expected him to choose the younger.

  Having plaited her hair and washed her face and hands in the water provided, which by this time was no more than lukewarm, she climbed into bed, blew out the candle and prepared herself for sleep.

  Sleep, however, did not come for she could not free her mind from the frenzy of excitement that Mr Moss’s presence had lit. He had not meant to, she was certain, indeed he was probably largely unaware of her, but she was subject to the most alarming tremors and what felt like rivers of fire coursing through her. She went from hot to cold and from optimism to despair within moments, although the optimism extended no further than seeing him again at breakfast.

  When she rose the following morning, it was to see that a fine covering of snow had been cast over the landscape so that she began, almost, to believe that they would indeed all be snowed in for the foreseeable future. That would be the most wonderful thing she could imagine for, although it was no more likely that Mr Moss would rest his wonderful eyes upon her, she would at least be able to gaze at him for a little longer.

  She called for hot water, washed and dressed in what she believed to be her most fetching gown – a deep blue merino wool – and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders for it was exceedingly cold in spite of the fire which the maid had lit even before she opened her eyes.

  Downstairs, she found that, as she had expected, the two parties had gathered in the same saloon to take their breakfast. She was the last one down, probably on account of only having fallen asleep towards morning.

  “Ah, there you are, my dear,” Miss Godmanton said. “I was beginning to think you must have been taken ill in the night and was all for sending someone up to make sure you were well.”

  “The maid came up to light the fire,” Helen pointed out, “so I daresay she would have told you if she had found me dead in my bed.”

  Mr Moss, Helen noticed, was particularly bright of eye and fresh of complexion this morning, which made her wonder not only how anyone could so absolutely fulfil every maiden’s dream but how he had managed to acquire such a very blooming appearance.

  “Have you already been out, Mr Moss?” she asked, blushing at her temerity in addressing him directly.

  “Oh, lord, yes,” he replied at once. “I’ve been in the stables for an hour or more!”

  Wondering whether this was one of the tasks he had been set to pay his bill, she exclaimed with an assumption of innocence, “Goodness! Are they your own horses that you take such good care of them?”

  “Good lord, no! I would be quite ashamed to lay claim to them – at least to the ones which dragged us up the mountain yesterday – but, if we are to have any chance of continuing on our way, I suppo
se they must be fed and watered, and their legs checked and so forth.”

  Helen opened her eyes very wide at this. “But surely you do not do that yourself, sir?”

  “Oh yes, I do – and have had a look at his lordship’s too, which are vastly superior to ours.”

  “Not mine,” his lordship put in, “picked ‘em up at the last change. I hope they’ll get us to the next one.”

  Cecilia, having had such an exceedingly frank conversation with his lordship the night before, explained to Helen, “My brother’s contribution to our overnight stay was to do some work in the stables. I suppose Signora Valdini has some horses too, does she not?” she enquired of her brother.

  “Oh, yes, indeed, but they are a rather sorry bunch too. I must say, these alpine horses are not what I would have expected.”

  “No?” the Earl enquired. “And yet, you see, they need to be a bit different from ours – more in the way of lung capacity and shorter, sturdier legs, which makes them look less elegant, but they’re good workhorses all the same.”

  “Good God!”

  This was Miss Godmanton, who did not appear to remember Cecilia’s shamefaced confession of extreme poverty the previous evening. Helen assumed this memory lapse was most likely due to her subsequent bedazzlement by Mr Moss which had, it seemed, driven everything else out of her head.

  “Do you mean to tell me you turned up here, in the dark, in winter, without having the wherewithal to pay your shot?” Miss Godmanton pursued, apparently outraged and becoming quite flushed.

  “I’m afraid I do, ma’am,” Endymion admitted, affording her a colluding smile. “What else is a poor man to do?”

  “I don’t think he should be dragging his womenfolk all over Europe without sufficient money to pay for their accommodation,” she replied severely. “I’m afraid you’re an irresponsible young man, Mr Moss.”