There was no need to ask her mother if she had any regrets for giving up the life she had enjoyed as a girl.
But although she had never said so, Lara thought that she must have enjoyed staying with her father-in-law at the family mansion where there were also a great many servants to see to the comfort of everybody who lived there.
‘I wonder if I shall ever have a chance to see what Mama gave up when she married Papa and what we lost when Grandpapa was so extravagant,’ Lara reflected.
The door opened and the footman returned.
“Nanny asks if you’ll come upstairs, ma’am,” he said, “as she can’t leave her Ladyship.”
Lara followed the footman up an impressive carved staircase to the first landing.
Then he went through a green baize door, which led to another staircase that was not so impressive and up to the second floor where there were a number of doors behind which Lara thought must be the main bedrooms of the house.
They walked down a long passage at the end of which he knocked on a door, which was opened by a woman who Lara knew at once was Nanny.
She was almost a carbon copy of her own Nanny in her grey dress with a starched white collar round her neck and a wide waistband clasped in front with a silver buckle.
She had starched cuffs caught with pearl buttons and her grey hair was drawn back severely from the lines of a rather kindly face.
She also had a firm mouth and chin that reflected years of giving orders that had to be obeyed.
Nanny stared at Lara with a look of surprise before she said in an uncompromising voice,
“You wish to see me?”
“I have brought a message from Miss Jane Cooper.”
Nanny did not reply for a moment and, as the footman walked away, Lara said,
“I have something to explain to you. Could I please come in?”
“You say you’ve come from Miss Cooper?” Nanny asked and she sounded suspicious.
“Yes,” Lara answered.
A little reluctantly it seemed, Nanny opened the door wider.
“Come in,” she invited, “but don’t talk too loud. Her Ladyship’s asleep. She’s been restless all day and it’s the best thing that could happen. But I don’t want her woken.”
“Miss Cooper told me that she had an abscess in a tooth.”
“That’s what the dentist says it is,” Nanny said, as if she was inclined to disagree with him.
Now she was inside the room, Lara saw that it was a comfortable sitting room and she had the idea, although she might have been wrong, that it was not the ordinary schoolroom used by Georgina, but was in fact a boudoir of one of the guestrooms.
“You’d better sit down,” Nanny suggested.
Lara chose a sofa covered with a glossy flowered chintz and Nanny took a seat opposite her.
“Well?” she asked. “What’s this all about then?”
“I am afraid, Miss Nesbit, you will be rather upset when you hear what I have to tell you.”
“What’s happened?” Nanny asked.
“Miss Cooper came to see me in the country where I have been living,” Lara replied, “and she did not seem at all well. In fact after luncheon I asked the doctor to have a look at her and he is almost certain that she has measles.”
“Measles?” Nanny exclaimed with what was almost a shriek.
Then before Lara could speak she said,
“That’s all right. Her Ladyship’s had it!”
“Oh, I am so glad,” Lara said. “Miss Cooper was so frightened that she might have already infected the child.”
“All the same there’s a number of people at The Priory who’ve not had the measles,” Nanny went on, “including two housemaids who wait on the schoolroom.”
“That was another thing that worried Miss Cooper,” Lara said.
She was thinking as she spoke that she had been very quick in changing her story when she had learned the Lady Georgina had already had measles.
This was obviously something that Jane had not known, but it did not matter one way or the other as it would be impossible for her anyway to work for at least a fortnight or three weeks.
“Well, I’m very sorry to hear this,” Nanny said after a moment. “I have always said that with those childhood ailments it’s better to have them when you’re young. You suffer more when you’re older.”
“That is what the doctor said,” Lara answered, “and Miss Cooper felt that the only way she could make amends was to find somebody else to take her place temporarily.”
She saw Nanny stiffen, but before she could speak Lara continued,
“I have just left my previous place because my pupil is too old to require a Governess any longer and so, as Miss Cooper was very anxious that you should not be inconvenienced in any way, I said that I would be glad to come and teach Lady Georgina until the doctor is sure Miss Cooper is no longer infectious.”
Nanny looked doubtful.
“I don’t know what to say.” she answered. “It wouldn’t really hurt her Ladyship to have a holiday from her lessons.’’
Lara had expected this to happen and smiled.
“I am sure that she would much rather be with you,” she said, “but Miss Cooper was very anxious not to give you any extra to do when she told me how hard you work already. So, if I could just keep Lady Georgina amused for an hour or so a day it would, I am sure, make it easier for you than it would be otherwise.”
She saw by the expression on Nanny’s face that she was rather surprised at her attitude.
And after a moment she said almost grudgingly,
“Well, as you’re here, and I presume you’re a friend of Miss Cooper’s, you’d better stay for tonight at any rate.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Lara said. “If you had not wanted me, I don’t know what I could do, as I doubt if there is a train to take me back to the country at this hour.”
“I suppose Miss Cooper’s been visiting you,” Nanny said. “She did say she was going to see some friends.”
“That is right,” Lara said. “I was staying with Lord Hurlington, as it is his daughter I have been teaching, and Miss Cooper’s father lived in the same village before he died.”
She thought, although she was not sure, that Nanny was impressed when she mentioned the name of a Lord, before she asked,
“What is your name?”
“Wade – Lara Wade.”
She had chosen the name because she thought it sounded rather prim and proper. There had been a spinster in Little Fladbury called Wade, who had taught rather inadequately at Sunday School.
“Well, Miss Wade, you’ll understand that it’s not up to me,” Nanny said briskly, “to decide whether you stay with us until Miss Cooper’s better. It’s for his Lordship, or rather, his secretary Mr. Simpson, who engages the staff, to decide. You’ll see him when we go back to The Priory tomorrow.”
“I hope he will allow me to help you,” Lara said, “and I am very much looking forward to seeing The Priory after all Miss Cooper has told me about it.”
“I expect she admires it as everybody else does,” Nanny said indifferently, almost as if she would not demean herself to be enthusiastic.
“I think,” Lara said, “Miss Cooper feels that she is very lucky to be able to work in such an historic place with somebody as kind as you have been to her.”
She was sure as she spoke that Nanny had been nothing of the sort, but merely jealous and obstructive.
But her mother had often said to her,
“You should always praise people for being the opposite of what they are and hope that you will shame them into changing themselves.”
Lara had laughed.
“You mean, Mama, that if you tell a miser he is generous and somebody who is cruel that he is gentle, they will change?”
“Exactly!” Lady Hurlington said. “Sometimes, just sometimes, I have known it to work!”
Lara had laughed and she knew now that Nanny was pleased at what she
had said and had relaxed a little.
“As there’s a little time before supper, Miss Wade,” she said crisply, “I expect you’d like to take off your bonnet and cape and wash your hands.”
She spoke almost as if Lara was a child who had to be reminded, and at the same time she gave the bell that hung from the ceiling a good tug.
As she did so, Lara thought with a leap of her heart that she had won!
She had crossed the threshold, she had been accepted and she could already visualise how much all this was going to improve the third chapter of her book.
*
When Lara met Georgina the next morning she was exactly as Jane had described her.
A pretty child but lethargic, she seemed to have little interest in anything that was going on around her.
Nanny took Lara into the bedroom where Georgina was sitting up in bed eating her breakfast.
When she explained that Miss Cooper was ill and had sent a friend to take her place until she was better, it appeared to arouse little curiosity in Georgina who continued to eat her egg.
Only as she finished the last mouthful, did she say,
“I don’t want to be given any lessons! I hate verbs!”
“So do I,” Lara agreed. “It took me a long time to be able to remember them.”
Georgina made no comment and Lara went on,
“Before we do any lessons, I hope you will show me your lovely home where we are going today. I am so looking forward to seeing it.”
“It’s very big,” Georgina said, as if that was a disadvantage.
“I have been living in a very small house,” Lara answered, “so I shall find a big one very exciting, but you must save me from getting lost.”
There was just a flicker of interest in Georgina’s eyes before she answered,
“No one gets lost at The Priory and the housemaids are afraid to walk about at night in case they see the ghost.”
“Is there a ghost?” Lara asked. “How thrilling! Do tell me about it.”
“Now that’s enough of that talk,” Nanny interposed sharply. “You know as well as I do that it frightens Nelly and Bessie and we’ll have them screaming all over the place that they’ve seen the ‘White Lady’, or the ‘Grey Monk’, or some such nonsense.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” Lara asked.
“If there’s people creeping about the corridors at The Priory, they’re not ghosts!” Nanny said sharply.
As if she thought that she had said too much, she walked out of the bedroom leaving Lara alone with Georgina.
“Nelly’s terrified of ghosts,” she said in a low voice. “Once I dressed up in a sheet and said ‘boo!’ to Nelly when she came into the room. She screamed and dropped a tray and Nanny was very angry.”
Lara laughed.
“I am not surprised. If people are frightened it makes them do all sorts of silly things.”
“Perhaps you will be frightened when you get to The Priory,” Georgina suggested.
“I hope not,” Lara replied, “and I will not scream, even if I see a ghost.”
“Lots of people are frightened of Uncle Ulric,” Georgina said impulsively.
Lara guessed that this was the Marquis and she asked,
“Why?”
“Because he is a frightening person,” Georgina replied.
Then, as if she had no wish to answer any more questions, she said,
“I want to get up. Tell Nanny I want to get up.”
“Yes, of course.”
Lara rose and opened the door to find that Nanny was in the sitting room collecting a number of objects that were scattered about and would obviously have to be packed.
“Georgina wants to get up,” she said, wondering if she was right to speak of the child without her title, “and do let me help you, Miss Nesbit.”
Nanny appeared surprised that she should offer.
Then she held out a miscellaneous collection of items she had in her hands and said,
“They’re for the trunk in the corner. I’ll see to her Ladyship.”
Lara put all the things into the large trunk, which she noticed was made of a very expensive well-polished leather.
This was just another example of wealth and she thought with a twist of her lips that the one person who would look like a beggar maid at The Priory would be herself.
She had in fact been so ashamed of her old bonnet that she had asked Jane if she might borrow hers.
It was only a cheap straw decorated with blue ribbons that matched Jane’s eyes, but it was in good condition.
Putting it on her head, Lara thought it looked slightly theatrical with her red hair, but at the same time she could not have appeared in her old straw, which was sadly out of date and, as she had already told Nanny, might fall to bits at any moment.
“Take anything else of mine you require,” Jane said, “but I am afraid my clothes are not very smart.”
“I expect I shall be green with envy when I see the gowns that are worn by the Marquis’s guests.”
“They are absolutely fantastic!” Jane answered. “They cost pounds and pounds to buy and some of the beauties in London never wear them more than once.”
“What happens to them after that?” Lara asked with interest.
“They become a perk for their lady’s maids who sell them.”
“What an extraordinary idea!”
“Oh, no, it is quite usual amongst Ladies of Fashion,” Jane replied. “I have often thought that if I had the money I would try to buy my clothes in that way. But as you know, Lara, I have to save every penny in case I am thrown out of work.”
“Yes, of course,” Lara agreed.
At the same time she hoped that Jane would have a few things she could borrow and which would not look as shabby as the gowns she had worn for years, some of which had become too tight because she had grown and because they had been washed so frequently.
“As you will be using my room,” Jane said, “you will find everything there waiting for you and if you like I will give you the gown I have on.”
As Lara thought it was rather ugly, she decided that she might as well wear her own which had been one of her mother’s.
She put it on under a light cape and did not realise that, because her figure was so perfectly proportioned and her waist so tiny, she gave the gown, old though it might be, an elegance that was something that could not be purchased in any shop.
All the same, as they drove behind the four perfectly matched horses in the Marquis’s well-sprung comfortable carriage, Lara was aware that even beside Georgina she looked sadly out of place.
Georgina’s gown was of fine muslin interspersed with little insets of lace and she wore with it a coat of satin trimmed with ermine at the cuffs.
It was just what Lara had dreamed of her heroine wearing and she thought it was a pity that Georgina was too young to play the lead in her story.
Nevertheless she made mental notes of the solicitous way in which the cockaded, top-hatted footman placed the rug over their knees and the respectful manner in which the butler and four footmen bowed them away from the door of Keyston House.
Nanny insisted that Lara should sit beside Georgina on the back seat of the carriage while she sat opposite them.
“I am sure that as I am a stranger Georgina would rather have you next to her,” Lara said.
She knew that Nanny was pleased at the suggestion.
At the same time she replied,
“It’s right for you to sit there, Miss Wade, and it’s not something I intend to argue about!”
“Very well,” Lara replied, “but I am quite prepared to change over at any time during the journey.”
She found that her respectful manner and the flattery that she employed very skilfully had already softened Nanny’s attitude towards her.
She guessed that in the past Governesses had tried to assert themselves and she remembered how her own Nanny had always been on the defensive with them.
> ‘If I am to stay, I must treat everybody in the same manner,’ she told herself.
She set out to try to amuse Georgina, telling her stories most of which she invented about her own childhood, aware that Nanny was listening and being careful to say nothing that might make her presence seem suspicious.
Georgina grew tired before they finally reached The Priory and, as they turned in at huge ornamental iron gates, Nanny said,
“Now you’ll go straight to bed, my Lady. No hanging about, otherwise there’ll be no riding tomorrow.”
“I am going to ride tomorrow,” Georgina said with a positive note in her voice that had not been there before. “I know Snowball will have missed me.”
“Well, if you have a good rest tonight, we’ll see about it,” Nanny promised.
Lara noticed that Georgina looked sulky, but there was undoubtedly a glint in her eyes.
This conversation told her that the child was keen on riding and she thought with a sudden excitement that, if Georgina rode, perhaps she might be able to ride too.
When Rollo was young she had ridden him every moment her father did not need him, but now the horse was growing old and it was almost a cruelty to take him far or very fast.
Because the Vicarage was so far from anywhere, she longed to be able to ride every day, instead of having to walk over the fields and through the woods to the village.
Then she would pretend that she was on the back of a huge black stallion or a snow-white unicorn.
“Thank goodness we’re home!” Nanny ejaculated.
Looking ahead of them down a long avenue of oak trees, Lara held her breath.
There had been so much she had to ask Jane so that she would not make a mistake once inside The Priory, that she had forgotten to ask her what it looked like outside.
Now as she saw it glowing like a jewel in the afternoon sun, she thought it was the most beautiful house she had ever seen in her life.
She knew at once that it was Elizabethan and must have been a Priory before the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Built of red brick, which had mellowed to a warm pink over the centuries, it was in the shape of an ‘E’ as a compliment to the Queen and its gabled roofs and its tall twisting chimney-pots silhouetted against the sky were lovelier than any building she had ever imagined in her dreams.
The Poor Governess Page 4
