The Danice Allen Anthology

by Danice Allen

  “I’ve an appointment to keep, as well you know.”

  “And ye dinna think that a wee scrap of a female can be left waitin’, do ye?” Will had a habit of turning most of his conversation into questions. It was an idiosyncrasy that could be either endearing or irritating, depending on one’s mood. Despite his impatience to be home and comfortably settled in the library at Leys Castle to greet his new employee officially, thereby setting a formal tone from the very first meeting, Adam couldn’t help but be a little amused by Will’s affectionate grousing. He decided to reply to Will’s questions with more of the same.

  “How do you know she’s a wee scrap? The last one wasn’t. And don’t you think a female deserves the same courtesy as someone of the male gender, Will? Do you object to her being English? I should hope not, since I, myself, am half-Sassenach. Or do you deem her unimportant because she’s a governess?”

  Will made a scoffing noise with his tongue and talked over his shoulder. “And do ye think I’m such a bounder as that, me lord? As a servant meself, do ye think I’d look down on me own lot? B’ sides, a fine-speakin’, well-learned governess is more than a servant, she’s a lady—dinna ye ken? And aren’t ladies supposed t’ be forgivin’?”

  “If she’s the lenient and forgiving sort, Will, do you think she’s the kind of governess I’m wanting for Kyle and Mary?”

  Will squirmed on his high wooden seat till Adam feared he’d catch splinters. The man was overcome, no doubt, with exasperation. “And did that old battle-ax, Miss McCall, the one what ye just gave the heave-ho to, do any good by the wee ones? I dinna think she did! Or wasn’t she mean enough to scare the very starch out of Miss Grundy’s apron? That’d be quite a piece of work, since the apron could stand up and walk by itself it’s so full of the stuff—hmmm?”

  Adam chuckled despite himself, imagining his fastidious housekeeper’s apron marching about the kitchen disembodied. Then he sobered, considering himself bound by duty to instruct Will on the principles of correct child rearing. “’Tis important for a governess to be quite firm, Will. Kyle and Mary are high-spirited and require a governess who will hold them in tight rein. Those two little scapegraces would run roughshod over a tenderhearted creature, such as Miss Kimble was.”

  Will snorted. “Miss Kimble was a snivelin’ peahen! If ye be wantin’ my opinion, me lord, there’s got t’ be some sort of governess between Miss McCall and Miss Kimble what the bairns could take to. The poor wee mites! Ever since me lady—”

  “That will be enough, Will,” Adam interrupted sternly, his good humor thoroughly doused by Will’s implication that the children had suffered since Maggie’s death. Will immediately turned to sit fully forward in his seat and urged the horses to a spanking pace. He probably recognized that he’d blundered by mentioning Maggie at all, much less the children’s behavior. Adam knew that Will, and probably all of the servants, thought he was too strict with the children. Certainly Maggie had been much more loving and spontaneous in her relationship with them. Adam’s mouth stretched into a thin line. Her spontaneity had killed her.

  Even on such a bright day as this, his dark memories could still intrude. But Adam was saved from too deep an immersion in the past by a sudden jarring of the carriage, followed by violent wobbling. “What the devil…?”

  While Will managed the horses, endeavoring to slow the vehicle, Adam raised up to look over the side of the carriage. Surely they’d run over a rock and damaged one of the wheels. While he balanced in this precarious position—his point of gravity being far above the seat where it belonged—the right forward wheel separated from the carriage and bounced off the road into a field of heather. The carriage came to an abrupt halt, and Adam somersaulted over the side, landing on his aforementioned point of gravity in a large rut filled to the brim with mud.

  Adam was so taken by surprise at this untoward event that he didn’t move immediately. Cold, slimy mud covered him in large splotches from head to toe. His hat had spun off in another direction while he’d been catapulted through the air, and he could feel mud creeping along his scalp.

  By now Will had calmed the horses and tied them to a nearby tree. He scurried over as fast as his spindly aging legs would allow and stood looking down at his master with an oddly controlled expression that Adam suspected was three parts amusement.

  “Ye dinna hurt yerself?”

  “No.”

  “But ye’re a mite mucked up … would ye say so, me lord?”

  “I’d say so,” Adam growled.

  “Aye. Yer yellow locks are takin’ on a decided shade of brown. Mayhap you’ll be needin’ a bath afore ye meet the new governess, eh?”

  Adam lifted one grimy hand and flicked a glob of mud at Will, hitting the coachman square on the nose. Surprised, Will grunted in protest, then performed a series of facial acrobatics that would make the great actor Edmund Keene green with envy.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” Adam advised him with grim good humor. “I can see you’re holding it back with all your might. You won’t be any use to me till you’ve let loose, I suspect.”

  Thus given permission, Will doubled over and laughed out loud. His hoots and guffaws lasted a moderate amount of time, allowing Adam sufficient opportunity to stand up and encourage the mud to slide off his person by the shaking of each arm and leg in turn. Finally Will composed himself, wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and inquired, “What will we do, me lord?”

  “I don’t know,” was Adam’s succinct reply. “I don’t wish to go into town looking like this. Yet I don’t wish to sit here waiting for you to return, either. I say, Will, how roomy are those breeks you’re wearing?”

  “Not big enough fer the likes of you, me lord, I’m happy … er … sorry t’ say! But saints be thanked, here’s a fellow what ought to be glad t’ sell ye the shirt off’n his back.”

  Adam looked up and saw a yeoman leading his mule down the road toward Inverness. His clothes, although rough and simple, appeared to be relatively clean, a fact that recommended itself highly to Adam, especially in the present circumstances. The man was also very close to being Adam’s size, which was unusual. Adam was all of six-foot-three, broad-shouldered and lean-flanked. After a short dickering session, he bought the man’s clothes.

  The two men retired to separate clumps of crowberry bushes near a sparkling, quick-flowing beck, disrobed, and handed their clothes to Will, who then exchanged them. Adam briefly bathed in the gurgling water and flapped his arms in the air to dry more speedily, feeling for all the world like a duck preening his feathers.

  As for the yeoman, it was to be assumed that he would wash Adam’s fashionable toggery in the beck, hang them up to dry in the bright midday sunshine, then put them on as dusk approached. He would then be in possession of the most expensive and fashionable pair of pantaloons, shirt, waistcoat, and jacket as he had ever hoped to own, quite impressing his family when he arrived home for supper. And he’d been paid as well.

  On the other hand, Adam would be dry and less embarrassed to approach the wheelwright in the small village of Culcabock than to have regaled the locals with the muddy sight of him in his ruined finery. The wheelwright knew Adam, as did just about everyone thereabouts, but if he kept his hat pulled low over his brow, perhaps his clothing would allow him to go about his business unrecognized by most. He knew the wheelwright would obey his directions immediately to take his tools out to Will and the carriage to make the necessary reparations.

  “Ye’ll be goin’, then?” Will had sat down in the shade of a tree and was chewing on a blade of grass.

  Adam placed the floppy dun-colored hat atop his head, yanked the sleeves of his shirt to cover his wrists, and wished that his trousers at least met the top of his ankles. “Yes, I’ll be going. Never fear. Will. The wheelwright will come to rescue you shortly. I’ll try to catch the mail coach at Culcabock. The driver will quite handily deposit me at Balloan, which, as you know, is but a stone’s throw from home, easily walkable in fifteen minutes or less.”


  “Aye, for legs such as yours, me lord,” agreed Will, grinning and staring pointedly at Adam’s bare ankles. “But won’t the governess be takin’ the mail coach? Mayhap ye’ll be meetin’ her afore ye’ve tidied yerself, me lord, and I dinna ken she’ll be impressed seein’ ye dressed thus!”

  “She said she was hiring private transportation from Inverness. I haven’t the slightest expectation of seeing her before the agreed-upon time. And possibly, just possibly, I’ll still be able to keep that three o’clock appointment with Miss Letitia Webster.”

  “Miss Letitia, eh?” Will rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth and scowled. “Hope she’s as stiff-rumped as ye’re wishin’, me lord. But judgin’ by the name … I knew a Letitia once’t. I called her Letty. Sweet as a cherry comfit, she was. Soft as the feathers of a dove. Such a name dinna belong to no dragon.”

  “The Lord knows I hope you’re wrong, Will,” Adam grumbled, stuffing into his deep jacket pocket the pamphlet he’d bought at Woolsy’s. Then he turned and strode quickly down the road toward Culcabock.

  “I do wish you’d confine yourself to your side of the coach, madam,” drawled Mr. Rumey, a solicitor from Inverness who’d just begun a long journey on the mail coach to the lowlands, only to be made most uncomfortable by a huge butcher’s wife in possession of a basket of yowling kittens sitting just opposite him. “You’ve a whole seat to yourself. Miss Webster and I have politely kept our appendages, clothes, and sundry articles of luggage entirely on our side of the coach.”

  “I dinna ken why ye’re such a complainer, Mr. Rumey,” wailed the woman, clutching her basket and eyeing the solicitor reprovingly. “I canna help it if the kittens are missin’ their mother. I wouldna ha’ brung them at all from me sister’s in Inverness, ’cept me new-married daughter was so needful of a few toms t’ fend off the mice at the farm. Seems to me it wouldna hurt ye a bit t’ be more accommodatin’. I’m only goin’ so far as Culcabock, and it’s only a wee mile or so down the road.”

  “Here, Mrs. Dodd,” said Letitia, reaching forth her arms. “Give me the basket. Then you won’t have to … er … sprawl so, and Mr. Rumey will be made more comfortable.”

  Mr. Rumey immediately withdrew a large handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and covered his face with it. “Animals make my eyes tear and my nose itch most unbearably. I can’t think having those cats right next to me would be the most desirable alternative.”

  Letitia sighed and smiled. “Well, I was only trying to help, Mr. Rumey. Heavens! I hope the two children I’m going to be teaching won’t be as difficult as the two of you!”

  Mrs. Dodd patted Letitia on the knee. “Och, how I feel for ye, Miss Webster. A fair, sweet thing like you, with such bonny blue eyes and chestnut hair, having t’ fend fer herself in the wild world. And on top of it all, ye had the bad luck to hobble yerself to the likes of Lord Blair.”

  As soon as she’d said it, Mrs. Dodd appeared to wish back her comment. Her mouth gaped open in surprise at her own lack of judgment, and she took a sudden interest in the landscape as it skimmed past the carriage window. Mr. Rumey put his handkerchief back in his pocket, shook his head, and tsk-tsked in a melancholy manner.

  “Mrs. Dodd, what do you mean?” Letitia asked her, alarmed. “You said nothing about Lord Blair when I first mentioned that I’d be governess at Leys Castle. I know he is a widower, but please don’t tell me he’s a libertine! If he is, I’ll simply have to catch the next coach back to Inverness!” Letitia had had her share of fending off amorous employers, and sometimes even the elder brothers of her small charges, and she was in no mind to repeat the ordeal, no matter how empty her purse was.

  “Naw, lass, he ain’t that!” Mrs. Dodd assured her, shifting the basket of kittens to one side and leaning close. Casting Mr. Rumey a sideways glance as if to indicate that he wasn’t supposed to be privy to their conversation, and being rewarded with Mr. Rumey’s upturned nose and “hmmph” of disdain, she whispered, “If’n he were beddin’ th’ servants, I’d have heard tale of it. It’s not that what makes ’im a hard man. ’Tis his cold heart, lass. Ever since his wife died, he’s run Leys Castle like a prison. And he expects the governess to be the warden over those dear bairns of his. Strict, hard, demandin’, and downright mean, he is, lass.” Mrs. Dodd leaned back and nodded sagely.

  Letitia frowned and chewed on her bottom lip. “That’s very discouraging because I’m not strict at all. I’ve found that it’s much easier to teach the children if they are comfortable with me and aren’t always thinking up some way to discompose me, such as with a frog in my bed or some such thing, you know. Naturally I require a certain amount of respect and decorum during lessons, but I must admit that I’ve been known to romp with the children during their play periods.”

  “Play periods?” Mrs. Dodd gave a cackle of disbelief. “I dinna ken he’ll allow ye t’ have play periods, lass.”

  “But children must be allowed to play,” Letitia insisted worriedly.

  “Well, dinna fret,” Mrs. Dodd advised her kindly, ready to soothe Letitia now that she’d set her to worrying. “I’m sure ye’ll manage somehow! At least he’ll not reject ye fer yer English ways. Lord Blair’s father died when the lad was just a wee bairn, and his mother—born and raised as she was in Kent—hired an English governess, then later sent him to English schools. He’s as much a Sassenach as he is a Highlander. Ah, here’s Culcabock.”

  Mr. Rumey cheered up considerably when the outskirts of town came into view, for he would soon be rid of Mrs. Dodd and her mewling kittens. Truth to tell, Letitia would be glad of a little less noise so that she could think about Mrs. Dodd’s description of Lord Blair’s character. The woman at the registry office in Edinburgh who’d interviewed her for the position of governess had mentioned that Letitia had been preceded by three governesses already, none of whom had lasted more than six months. Letitia had not dared to question why their employment at Leys Castle had been terminated so soon, because she herself had had four governess jobs in the past eighteen months and was thankful simply to be granted another opportunity to work.

  Not that it had been her fault that the previous jobs hadn’t lasted. Indeed, could she help it if the young men of the households took a fancy to her and set their aristocratic mamas to worrying that their darling sons would shackle themselves to a mere governess? Even more often the husbands turned speculative eyes in her direction and cornered her in dark corridors to “chat.”

  Letitia felt tears spring to her eyes, and she resolutely fought them back. The great ladies of the households where she’d served as governess needn’t have worried that their sons would propose marriage to her or that their husbands would demand a divorce. The proposals she’d received from the gentlemen—if they could be called that!—had never been anything so binding, or so respectable, as marriage. Drat these good looks she’d been “blessed” with. They’d not served her well in the past two years.

  Letitia had been raised as a gentlewoman. In fact, her father was a baron. But when her mother deserted the family to marry Letitia’s dancing instructor five years ago, Letitia’s papa developed a weakness for gambling, which finally left their family destitute. Sir Arnold Webster responded to these dire circumstances by drinking himself into a stupor one night and falling out of his bedchamber window, breaking his neck on the gravel drive below.

  These were grave and trying times for Letitia and her two younger brothers, but she ignored, as best she could, the murmurs of scandalized neighbors and “friends” who suggested that their family was tainted with bad blood. After all, wasn’t their father a drunk and a wastrel, and worse still, wasn’t their mother a doxy? Doxy or not, Letitia had sorely missed her mother after she went away. And the odd part of it was that Mrs. Webster had never shown signs of such weakness of character before she met Letitia’s dancing instructor. This fact made Letitia rather nervous. Was it possible that beneath her own proper exterior she had the makings of a fallen woman, too? So far in her brief
life she’d felt no urge to embark upon a life of sin, but she had moments of doubt and worry.

  Letitia arranged for her brothers to live with distant cousins, but at the age of one and twenty she considered herself old enough to fend for herself in the “wild world,” as Mrs. Dodd so aptly put it. Letitia was glad her brothers had a safe place to live for now, but she’d every intention of discovering some way to earn enough blunt to set up a humble cottage for the three of them. How she would accomplish such a feat remained a mystery. She couldn’t even keep a governess position for very long, and all the money she did manage to save was spent on food and lodgings while she looked for yet another position.

  Her first position had been in a household in Yorkshire, far away from her old neighborhood in Nottinghamshire. But as opportunity and desperation dictated, she’d gradually ended up in Inverness, the center of the Scottish highlands. From the registry office there she’d learned about Lord Blair’s need of a governess. She had planned to hire private transportation from Inverness, but lack of funds prohibited such a luxury. She had inquired about Leys Castle and had discovered that it was in walkable distance from Balloan. Though she would arrive at the Castle windblown and hot, she felt she had no choice.

  Letitia smoothed her hands down her best blue kerseymere dress as the carriage slowed to a halt in front of a small black-and-white inn. Mrs. Dodd, in a knocking, elbow-poking, grunting flurry of activity, gathered her belongings in preparation to alight. Pressed against the squabs of the carriage to avoid most of Mrs. Dodd’s clumsy movements, Mr. Rumey watched with undisguised irritation.

  A jostled bandbox or satchel hit Letitia in the knee more than once, but she stoically bit back any exclamation of pain she was tempted to utter. After all, Mrs. Dodd was a good-natured lady who meant no harm. Though, thought Letitia, grimacing from another blow to her knee, she certainly inflicted enough harm unintentionally. Not the least of Mrs. Dodd’s blows was the one to Letitia’s hope of happiness in her new home. Those stories about Lord Blair had filled her with foreboding.