There was a wide stream running in front of it and a bridge built at the same time as the house to cross it.
Then there were smooth green lawns, which looked like velvet, at the side of which the first spring shrubs were coming into blossom.
Almond trees edged the stream and yellow kingcups sloped down its banks into the water.
“It is lovely! Absolutely lovely!” Lara exclaimed and did not realise that she was speaking aloud.
“It’s nice enough,” Nanny said grudgingly, “and, as I’ve often said before, there’s no place on earth that’s perfect.”
The way she spoke was so like her own Nanny that Lara could not help laughing.
Then, as Nanny gave her a sharp glance, she remembered that this was a very crucial moment.
After having come so far on her adventure, there was every chance that she might be sent home ignominiously because Mr. Simpson, or perhaps the Marquis himself, did not think that she was really necessary.
‘Please, God, let me stay here,’ she prayed.
She was still praying as she stepped out from the carriage after Georgina and went up the steps and in through the huge oak door surmounted by a Coat of Arms.
CHAPTER THREE
Lara looked around the room and thought that it was very comfortable and rather luxurious for a schoolroom, but at the same time rather badly arranged.
She had always had an artistic feeling for rooms and she knew that if she stayed long she would have to move the sofa and tables around to make it more attractive.
However, as she was being very careful at the moment not to do anything wrong, she said nothing.
Mr. Simpson had accepted without much comment, her explanation that she came in Jane’s place.
“I’m very sorry to hear that Miss Cooper’s not well,” he said, “but it was very considerate of her to send you in her place.”
“I am an old friend,” Lara replied, “and I have brought a reference in case you should need one.”
She handed it across the desk to Mr. Simpson as she spoke, who looked at it perfunctorily, obviously not particularly interested.
She had written and signed it with her father’s name, saying that Miss Wade had proved an excellent Governess in every way for his daughter and he was only too pleased to recommend her to any similar post.
Mr. Simpson had handed it back saying,
“I hope you can persuade Lady Georgina to be a little more attentive to her lessons than she has been up until now. Every Governess we have had for her says the same, that she finds lessons dull and will not concentrate.”
Lara smiled.
“I think most children go through that phase at one time or another and I understand that Lady Georgina’s main interest is riding.”
“That is true,” Mr. Simpson agreed, “and her father was an exceptionally fine horseman, as is her uncle.”
“You are very very lucky to have good horses,” Lara said in a soft voice.
She prayed as she spoke that Mr. Simpson would be perceptive enough to realise what she was hinting at and after a moment he said with a faint smile,
“You sound, Miss Wade, as if you would like to ride too.”
Lara gave a little cry.
“Would it be possible? I cannot tell you how wonderful that would be for me! My life has been very restricted in the last few years because Lord Hurlington could not afford to keep many horses.”
Mr. Simpson looked surprised.
Then he said,
“I suppose, as Lord Hurlington is a Parson, that is understandable.”
“I think you will find, Mr. Simpson,” Lara replied, “that most Parsons are very poorly paid.”
Mr. Simpson laughed.
“There I can agree with you wholeheartedly, Miss Wade, because my father was one.”
Lara felt that she had found an ally when she least expected it.
“You will understand then,” she said, “how wonderful it would be for me during the time I am here if I can ride with Lady Georgina.”
“I will give orders to the stables that you can accompany her whenever she takes out her pony.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Lara cried, “and now I really feel as if I have stepped into a Fairy story.”
It was a feeling that was accentuated when she went upstairs and saw the very comfortable suite of rooms that were allotted to Georgina and her Governess.
The child’s bedroom was magnificent, and Lara’s, although not quite so large, was a room she felt must have stepped out of one of her dreams.
But then the whole house was different from anything she had ever experienced before and the moment she awoke the following morning her one idea was to see everything she could of The Priory.
Georgina was obviously still tired and, as it was not a particularly nice day with grey skies overhead, which hinted of rain, Nanny refused point blank to allow her to ride.
Lara discovered that Nanny called Georgina in the morning, dressed her and brought her into the schoolroom for breakfast and then disappeared to her own rooms which, she learned, were like the nurseries on another floor.
This answered one of the questions that had puzzled her, if Nanny was within hearing distance when Lord Magor called on Jane, why she did not interfere?
Now she realised that the schoolroom had been brought down a floor from the nurseries and the suite that Georgina and her Governess occupied was isolated both from the grand rooms in the house and also from the nursery and the servants’ quarters,
‘It’s another case of being neither upstairs nor downstairs,’ Lara pondered with a little smile.
She had, however, been too busy to think of either Lord Magor or the Marquis because she wanted to concentrate on getting to know Georgina.
Having been told that she could not ride her pony that morning, Georgina looked sulky at breakfast and, when it was finished, looked at Lara apprehensively as if she expected to be told that she had to do the lessons she disliked.
“What would you like to do today?” Lara asked her.
She saw the answer coming and prevented it from being said by adding quickly,
“Nanny says you cannot ride today and it is just as disappointing for me as it is for you, because I am longing to ride with you, and I cannot tell you how excited and thrilled I am at the idea.”
Georgina looked surprised.
“Can you ride, Miss Wade?” she asked. “None of my other Governesses has ever wanted to ride. They always want to drive about in the pony cart.”
“I am certainly going to ride,” Lara said, “and perhaps we could have races. I will give you a start as you are on a pony, but I am sure Snowball, although I have never seen him, is very fast.”
“Very, very fast,” Georgina answered proudly, “and I would like to race you, it will be fun!”
“Very well,” Lara said. “That is what we will do tomorrow, but let’s enjoy ourselves today and certainly not do any boring lessons.”
She saw Georgina’s eyes light up and she added,
“I think you must give me a lesson and show me round the house. That is, if your uncle is out and we will not get in anybody’s way.”
“Uncle Ulric will have gone riding,” Georgina said. “He always rides in the morning.”
“What about his friends?”
“If there are ladies staying, they will be in bed.”
“Then perhaps we could see the rooms they will not be in,” Lara suggested.
She felt there were a dozen plots turning over in her mind in which The Priory would be the background.
As she and Georgina went downstairs, she thought how grateful she was to Fate, or rather to Jane, who had given her this opportunity of seeing just the sort of house she needed for her novel.
They avoided the main hall where she guessed there would be a number of footmen on duty and Georgina took her instead down another staircase.
This led to a wide corridor, hung with ancient armour and pictures of the
Priors who had ruled over The Priory before it was closed by the order of Henry VIII.
Lara wanted to stop and look at each of them, but Georgina hurried her along saying,
“I thought first you would like to see the Orangery. It is very pretty and there are some birds in it that Uncle Ulric has brought here from across the seas.”
To say the Orangery was pretty was an understatement. It had obviously been added to the house a century or so later, but it seemed to blend in beautifully with the original building.
But what took Lara’s breath away was the profusion of orchids that were growing in it.
She had never seen any orchids before, but she had read about them and now to be confronted with dozens of different specimens of all colours and all sizes was to know that here was another subject that would fill the pages of her novel.
Georgina, however, hurried her past the mauve orchids and a collection of little star-shaped ones that looked as if they had fallen out of the sky.
At the far end of the Orangery was an enormous cage filled with budgerigars, the little lovebirds that Lara found almost as fascinating as the flowers.
“I come and feed them when I can,” Georgina said, “but Miss Cooper will never come down here because she is frightened of meeting Uncle Ulric or that nasty old Lord Magor.”
Lara was surprised that the child knew so much.
“Why is he nasty?” she asked.
“He pretends he comes up to the schoolroom to see me,” Georgina replied, “but all the time he is looking at Miss Cooper and I know she is really frightened of him.”
Lara thought that children always knew more than one suspected they did and, feeling that this was a subject that should not be pursued, she remarked,
“I love these birds and I will bring you here as often as you like.”
Georgina smiled at her and fed the birds with the seed that was kept near the cage.
Then she said,
“What would you like to see next? The Armoury or the library?”
“I want to see them both!” Lara answered and Georgina laughed.
As they walked back through the Orangery, she told Georgina a story that she remembered about orchids and another one that she invented about a budgerigar, who carried a message seeking help for the little girl it belonged to when she had fallen down a cliff.
“That was very clever!” Georgina exclaimed.
“Of course she had trained the budgerigar to do what she told it for some time,” Lara said quickly. “He would fly up to the ceiling and when she whistled fly down again onto her shoulder.”
“Do you think we could teach one of Uncle Ulric’s budgerigars to do that with me?” Georgina asked wistfully.
“We could try,” Lara answered, “but perhaps it would be wise to have one of your own in the schoolroom. Then if it refused to obey, we could catch it more easily and put it back in its cage.”
“We will do that, promise we will do that!” Georgina cried.
“I will ask Mr. Simpson if you can have one,” Lara replied.
She felt that at least she had broken through the dull lethargy with which Georgina seemed to have contemplated life until now.
They went next to the library and Lara kept up the little girl’s interest by suggesting that they should find out if there was a book on birds and how to train them.
The curator, who was an old man with grey hair, was surprised at their question.
Lara explained who she was and he said,
“Her Ladyship seldom pays me a visit, but now she has asked me for a special book I must obviously find it for her.”
“I am sure that you must also have some books on horse racing,” Lara enquired.
The old curator smiled.
“His Lordship has bought every book on the subject for years and I can supply you with some very interesting pictures of horses, starting, of course, with how the Arab strain was brought to England.”
Lara looked around the tightly packed bookshelves of the huge library with its balcony from where one could reach the top shelves by using a little spiral staircase that led up to it.
“I never believed that there could be so many books packed into one place!” she said. “I want to read them all!”
The curator laughed.
“In which case, Miss Wade, you will have to stay here for at least two or three hundred years!”
“I am quite prepared to do so,” Lara answered, “as long as I can read every book I want to.”
She thought that Georgina was beginning to look bored and so said quickly,
“Please give us one of your nicest picture books on horse racing and, as I remember the story of how the first Arab stallion came to England, I would like that one too, so that I can read it to her Ladyship.”
The curator fetched the books and then, as he gave them to Lara, he said to Georgina,
“If you come back this afternoon, my Lady, I promise you I will have the book on birds for you, but I cannot put my hand on it right now.”
Georgina did not answer and, as they left the library with Lara carrying the precious books, she said,
“I don’t want a book on birds, I want a bird all to myself.”
“I will talk to Mr. Simpson as soon as I can see him,” Lara promised. “But, please, now show me some more rooms in this wonderful house.”
They walked for some way down the long corridor, then Georgina opened a door and Lara found herself in the Great Hall.
She knew that this was where the monks had met those who came to them for help, both physically and spiritually.
She stared at the high beamed ceiling, the long diamond-paned windows and the magnificently carved mantelpiece, thinking she was witnessing a part of history.
She felt as if she could almost step back into the past and would find herself with a ruffle round her neck and being a dutiful admiring servant of Queen Elizabeth.
Then, because she felt that she must share her thoughts with Georgina, she said,
“Can you imagine what it was like when the monks were here and the Prior, who was a very holy man, taught them how they must help and feed anyone who came to the door?”
“Did they do that?” Georgina quizzed her.
“Beggars were never turned away and, when the winters were hard and cold, there would not only be human beings who were hungry, but birds, deer, hares and rabbits. They all trusted the monks because they were holy and would not do them any harm.”
“Then why do they not come here today?” Georgina asked.
“Because it is no longer a holy place,” Lara replied, “and the animals know that by instinct.”
She spoke softly, feeling that she could almost see the monks like St. Francis with the animals and the birds clustered around them.
Then she started as a voice behind her asked,
“Can you be disparaging those who now live in The Priory?”
She turned round and saw advancing towards them from a different door from which they had entered the Great Hall, there was a man she knew immediately was the Marquis.
It was not only because he was smartly dressed in his white breeches and polished riding boots, but also because he was tall, broad-shouldered, authoritative and, what Jane had omitted to tell her, extremely handsome.
At the same time, since his voice had been mocking and sarcastic and there were deep lines running from his nose to the corners of his mouth, which made him look cynical, she could appreciate that he could be extremely frightening.
“Oh, it’s you, Uncle Ulric!” Georgina exclaimed. “I thought you had gone riding.”
“As it is raining heavily I have returned,” the Marquis replied. “Good morning, Georgina! I imagine that this is one of your lessons, but who is teaching you?”
He looked at Lara as he spoke in a way that made her immediately conscious that the gown she was wearing was shabby and that her hair, instead of being brushed smoothly into place in a way she thought looked respectabl
e, was curling somewhat riotously round her forehead and over her ears.
Because she knew that she must explain her own presence, she curtseyed and said,
“My name is Wade, my Lord, and, as Miss Cooper is ill, I have taken her place until she is well enough to return.”
“Why was I not told about this?” the Marquis enquired.
Lara thought his voice was hard, as if he resented anything happening in the house without his being aware of it.
“I saw Mr. Simpson when we arrived yesterday,” Lara replied, “and he agreed that Lady Georgina should continue her lessons and it would be a mistake for them to be interrupted.”
She thought that the Marquis raised his eyebrows and she had the terrifying feeling that perhaps, when she had felt sure that she could stay, he would send her away.
Because she could not bear to lose The Priory before she had seen hardly any of it and it was so important to her personally, she said impulsively without thinking,
“Oh, please, your Lordship, let me stay with Lady Georgina. It is not only that I shall enjoy teaching her but I am so entranced with this wonderful, wonderful house.”
She thought that the Marquis looked surprised and then he said,
“But judging from what I have just overheard, not so entranced with its present ownership!”
“I would not presume to criticise you personally, my Lord,” Lara answered quickly. “I was merely trying to make Lady Georgina see a picture of what The Priory must have looked like when it was peopled by those who devoted their lives to God.”
“And you think that a life of prayer is preferable to living in the world as it is and being part of it?”
As Lara could never resist an argument, she had no idea that her eyes sparkled as she replied,
“I think it is a question, my Lord, of doing what we are best suited to do in life. While I greatly admire those who dedicate themselves wholly to the service of God, I confess to wishing for myself a much wider and more eventful existence, limited, unfortunately, by my means.”
The Marquis laughed and she thought that it was a different sound from the one she had expected.
“You are certainly very eloquent on the subject, Miss Wade,” he remarked, “and I am sure Georgina will benefit from your wisdom.”
The Poor Governess Page 5
