“You are not my governess, Miranda,” he added after a moment of seething silence. “Nor is it your responsibility to re-order my life.”
There were, of course, no words I could say in my defense. Over the years I had seen both father and grandfather hold sway over the lives of thousands, and somehow I had never absorbed the message that I was female, therefore unqualified to do the same, being both mentally inferior and bound by societal rules I had strained against, almost from the moment of my birth.
In this case, however, Jason was appallingly correct. If I had driven him through Fenley-on-the-Marsh, sitting sideways in a vehicle designed for children, he would have been the laughing-stock of the fens. Though perhaps that was, after all, better than being considered a demon.
I sat with head bowed, shoulders slumped, as he turned the cart around and headed back to Lunsford Hall. I knew I must apologize, must explain that I had been too caught up in my zeal to rehabilitate his reputation to consider the spectacle we would make.
Which would only confirm that he had employed an addlepated numbskull as governess. As he said, I had no right to rescue him. In retrospect, the sheer effrontery of it brought tears to my eyes.
Just before the road narrowed to run in a straight line along the embankment above the canal, Lunsford slowed the cart to halt. Without giving him an opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, I plunged straight in. “I am so sorry. I was foolish, immensely foolish, and I am ashamed. But . . .”
“Yes, Miranda?” I thought I saw his lips twitch, as if he were repressing a smile. Did he find me amusing, miserable man?
“You really do need to visit the village. I have driven the cart. Now you must attend church on Sunday.”
A great bark of laughter shot from him, echoing over the fields and marsh. Shoulders shaking, chest heaving, he laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. I glowered, feeling the dagger bite of every moment of his amusement. At long last he wiped his eyes and said, “Whatever made you think you could go for a governess I cannot even imagine.” I kept my eyes fixed on my hands, which were tightly clenched in my lap. “And I too wish to apologize, for I know your intentions are good, and I should not have barked at you. And though it greatly pains me, I honor my bargains. I will go to church. In the carriage,” he added with dry emphasis, “not perched on a seat designed for the infantry.”
When we arrived home, my arrogance shaken to the core, my sole thought was to retreat to my room and contemplate my sins. The absolute last thing I needed was to discover that the Talmadges had come to call.
Chapter Sixteen
There was no way to identify the somewhat shabby carriage drawn up in the drive, but the moment Stebbins threw open the front door, his eyes gleaming in most unbutler-like fashion, he alerted Mr. Lunsford to the surprising fact that the Talmadges—mother, son, and daughter—had come to call. Surely a first since Talmadge Park became Lunsford Hall. I, still thoroughly mortified by my ill-judgged determination to drive through the village, thought only to escape as rapidly as possible. As I made for the staircase, however, Mr. Lunsford brought me up short with a commanding, “Not so fast, Mrs. Tyrell. After all Cressida’s chatter about the Talmadges, surely you wish to meet them.”
I had seen them in church—that was quite enough. But he stood there, his face rock hard, and swept his hand in a commanding gesture that virtually ordered me to precede him into the drawing room. I huffed a sigh and obeyed.
The younger Talmadges must have their father to thank for their looks, for both were tall, dark, and strikingly handsome, while their mother was of average height, a faded blonde, with streaks of gray beginning to show if one looked closely, and the careworn face one might expect in a woman whose husband had lost the family home and taken his own life. Although I suspected, from what I had observed on Sundays, that she took a perverse enjoyment from her martyrdom, fluttering and fading into die-away phrases with each person who spoke to her at church. Today was no different, although I received the strong impression that neither female Talmadge was best pleased to be introduced to the governess. In fact, the censorious look Miss Alyssa Talmadge swept over my elegant driving ensemble was enough to set my teeth on edge. How dare she judge me?
But Mr. Miles Talmadge was another matter entirely. All smiles and flashing white teeth, he bowed to me with elaborate grace. “Enchanté, Mrs. Tyrell.” I, having already been rebuked once today for putting myself forward, attempted to efface myself to a chair some distance from the others.
“Mrs. Tyrell, please join us.” Moving with surprising agility, Mr. Lunsford swung a dainty sidechair from its position along the wall and set it down next to the chair he had chosen for himself. Having little choice in the matter, I sat, though I could feel at least three pairs of eyes—belonging to Mrs. Talmadge, her daughter, and Cressida—boring into me, possibly with lethal intent. Lady Hadley, thank goodness, appeared to have a bit more charity.
Mr. Lunsford startled me even more when he opened the conversation by saying, quite as if he were not dropping a shocking reminder of better days for the Talmadge family, “I have been giving Mrs. Tyrell a driving lesson, Mrs. Talmadge. In that clever cart, which I understand your husband designed for your children.” I sucked in a sharp breath as he nodded kindly toward Miles and Alyssa Talmadge. The devil was in him at the moment, no doubt about that. Mrs. Talmadge turned milk white, her son’s lips thinned to a grim line. Miss Talmadge, however, betrayed no sign of being disconcerted. Merely viperous.
“How charming,” she cooed. “Did you enjoy your lesson, Mrs. Tyrell? I am certain Mr. Lunsford is a most adept instructor.”
“Indeed,” I agreed through jaws so tight I could scarcely move them. “I plan to drive the boys to visit Nurse Jenkins as soon as I have the feel of driving on the catty-corner.” If she chose to take that as criticism of her father’s design capabilities, then so be it.
Mr. Lunsford took up the gauntlet. “Mrs. Tyrell is an experienced whip. I have no doubt she will adapt with alacrity.”
As Miss Talmadge shot yet another disparaging glance in my direction, her brother tactfully changed the subject, leaving me to wonder why Jason had mentioned the cart. Was he merely explaining why he and I returned to the house together? Or was he demonstrating that he would not succumb as easily to overtures of friendship as had Cressida and her mother? Or . . . was it possible? Was he probing for a reaction, attempting to dig beneath our visitors’ polite façades, because he suspected the Talmadges were the villains causing mischief in the neighborhood?
Nonsense! My imagination was creating villains out of thin air. A fluttering widow? A handsome and charming young man? And just because Miss Talmadge and I had taken an instant dislike to each other did not give me the right to think her capable of attempted murder. Absurd, Miranda, simply absurd!
Mr. Miles Talmadge’s words overrode my wandering thoughts. “We have heard that your son suffered a boating accident, Lady Kempton. How fortunate all turned out well.”
As Cressida launched into a mother’s dramatic lament, Miss Talmadge leaned toward me and declared in an all-too-penetrating whisper, “Losing both charges, Mrs. Tyrell. Not well done.”
“Alyssa!” her brother hissed, and she shifted her attention to Cressida’s tale, ostentatiously turning her back to me.
As my eyes sparked, Jason clamped a warning hand over my arm. I subsided in my chair and let the conversation flow around me. No one, after all, wished to hear from the governess. But twenty minutes later, as the Talmadges took their leave, Mr. Miles Talmadge smiled at me and said he looked forward to renewing our acquaintance in church on Sunday. I couldn’t help but be gratified. When one’s spirits are low, it is easy to seize on the slightest crumb of kindness.
Which I certainly had not received from Mr. Jason Lunsford! He had quite put an end to my foolish female flutterings! Nor did I ever want to see that miserable cart again. Those shiny blue velvet squabs could go hang!
Even if the whole contretemps had been m
y fault. I heaved a disgusted, and thoroughly chagrined, sigh. A more thoughtless, head-strong female could not be found in all of Britain!
The truth was, I had allowed the arrogance of my upbringing to burst through all my good intentions. I had overstepped the bounds of my relationship with my employer and richly deserved his set-down. Even the former Miss Miranda Chastain of the Warwickshire Chastains had no right to decide how Jason Lunsford lived his life.
Why, oh why could I not accept my lowly status? It wasn’t as if Papa were a duke. That was Grandfather, my papa a mere younger son. (Not that Papa ever considered himself a mere anything.) But the younger sons and daughters of royalty lurked on the family tree, and Papa always said I must have inherited the accumulated arrogance of every last one of them. How else had I managed to find the courage to defy the Chastain family en masse and run away with Avery, sinking myself beneath reproach for all time?
After entering my bedchamber, I plopped myself down in the chair by the window and contemplated my sins. I had trapped myself, and Chas, in a situation in which there was no honorable way out. I could not flee as my predecessors had. Something deep inside me insisted that I was needed here, that I must be part of the solution to the troubles plaguing Lunsford Hall. And no matter how angry Jason made me, nor how agonizing my humiliation, I did not want to leave him. There, I’d admitted it! And after spending a half hour watching Alyssa Talmadge all but drape herself over him—the hussy!—I was more than ready to do battle.
Foolishness, thy name is Woman. Not that Papa would ever use such a parody of Shakespeare in one of his sermons, but the implication always lurked just below the surface. No wonder I had run away at eighteen.
I quite enjoyed the wide eyes and dropped jaws of the Hall’s residents and staff on Sunday morning when Jason strode down the front steps and climbed into the carriage, where he promptly swept Nicholas off the rear-facing seat next to me and plopped him down between his mother and grandmother. Which deft maneuver left Chas playing gooseberry between the two of us. I could feel the color rushing to my cheeks. When we had made our bargain, I had not considered the enforced intimacy of six people in a modest-sized carriage.
Forestalling an anticipated torrent of words, Jason tipped his hat to the astonished ladies on the opposite seat and said, “Mrs. Tyrell and I had an agreement. If she would make the effort to conquer her fear of horses long enough to learn to drive the cart, then I would attend church. At least this once,” he qualified hastily. “She has demonstrated her capability as a driver, so here I am.”
“You astound us,” Lady Hadley declared. “Though that is nothing compared to the uproar I anticipate when you enter the church. How utterly delicious!”
“Delicious?” Cressida gasped. “I daresay Mr. Pilkington will suffer an apoplexy.”
“Then he does not deserve to call himself a man of God,” I snapped.
“So fierce, Mrs. Tyrell,” Jason murmured. “After yesterday I did not think you would be so quick to my defense.”
Cressida and Lady Hadley favored us with sharp looks, clearly wishing to know more, but I burrowed into my corner of the carriage and spoke not another word all the way to the village.
Hesper, Lady Hadley, could not have been more correct. The stares we received as we walked up the path to the small stone church were bad enough, but the growing wave of gasps and whispers as we made our way up the center aisle was positively electrifying. Shock, animosity, fear, curiosity—all leaped to life, filling the air with the tension of a bowstring ready to loose its arrow.
Perhaps the appearance of the so-called Demon of Fenley Marsh at Sunday services had not been wise.
At that moment a terrifying scream shook the rafters. A girl rose from the end of a pew several rows behind us, one hand grabbing her throat, the other pointing straight at us. Head thrown back, her body, bent in an unnatural curve, she jigged and jogged down the aisle, backing away even as her screams stabbed through every person present. We stared, aghast, as she traversed a good ten feet before suddenly collapsing like a rag doll onto the stone floor.
Complete and utter silence, somehow louder than her screams. Until at last a couple who were likely her parents unfroze from their seats and, with the aid of several other parishioners, carried her into the vestibule. As befitted the lowly position of governess, I was sitting on the far end of the Lunsford pew, next to the boys, and could not see Jason’s reaction. Our ladies, however, hidden behind their bonnets, were staring straight ahead, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. This was a Sunday morning like any other.
A rather difficult ignorance to maintain as the girl’s screams had brought Mr. Pilkington running from his robing room, rushing down the center aisle to give succor to the stricken girl. She was, I was nearly certain, the same person who had once pointed two fingers at Nicholas in the ancient gesture to ward off evil. Unlike the Lunsford ladies who kept their eyes firmly fixed on the altar, the boys and I were among the vast majority of the congregation who turned our heads and held our breaths as we watched Mr. Pilkington stride back up the aisle like a Medieval knight leading a Crusade. He mounted the dais, climbed up to his pulpit, the wrath of God an almost visible cloak hovering about him.
No no no! He had to be sensible. He must! He could not truly believe . . .
If he used the girl’s hysteria to turn on Jason, he was not worthy of his calling. My papa, I knew, would censure him without a second thought.
Merciful heavens, when had I come to think of my father as a man of sound judgment?
Perhaps since I was older and wiser and realized only an excess of Godliness, and perhaps more than a soupçon of ambition, had forced him to shut me out of his life.
A wave of nostalgia rolled over me, and though I could never regret actions that had brought me Avery and Chas, I wished I might not have been quite so headstrong, so precipitate. Surely there must have been a less dramatic way to become Mrs. Avery Tyrell than a flight to the border? Indeed, I had found it impossible to completely erase those many years of strict upbringing in the church. Guilt had wound its way through my defiance, and it was only years later, when I reached my majority and Avery and I repeated our vows before the vicar in Kent that I felt truly married.
Mr. Francis Pilkington’s bombast brought me abruptly back to our wooden pew in the ancient stone church. The vicissitudes of my past forgotten, for the next hour I sat there and wondered how I was going to explain the curate’s wild rant to the boys. Interspersed with wondering what words I could find to apologize to Jason for making him endure this torture. And Nicholas . . . I had never seen him so white-faced, not even after his near-drowning. He knew—he could not help but know—that he was included in Mr. Pilkington’s rant against the Devil and all his minions.
The Lord Jesus would not approve of Francis Pilkington, of that I was certain. Just as I had long wondered what He would have thought of my papa, who also assumed the Church had a right to be judgmental.
A new dread reared its ugly head. What would happen when it was Jason’s turn to shake the curate’s hand at the church door after the service?
I shuddered.
But with the exception of collective held breaths, nothing at all happened. Jason, completely stoic, shook Mr. Pilkington’s hand, wished him good-day, and taking Nicholas by the hand, stalked off to our waiting carriage. The rest of our party scurried after him.
Looking back on the disastrous scene as we made our way to Lunsford Hall, I recalled a number of sympathetic faces among the parishioners, but not one had dared speak to us. I winced as I imagined the wagging tongues now splitting the air outside the church.
“A Godsend,” Jason suddenly declared into the gloom. “I daresay, Mrs. Tyrell, you will not again chide me about not going to church.”
Dear God, would I never learn to mind my own business? I pulled Chas tight against me, like a shield and tried to picture us back in Kent. But danger lay that way as well. My mind raced, accomplishing nothing. Something
must be done to burst the myth of the Demon of Fenley Marsh, yet at the moment I was powerless. My grand scheme to show Jason Lunsford as nothing more than a battle-scarred veteran of the Peninsula War had failed. Utterly. And I had no idea what to do next.
Chapter Seventeen
A cloak of silence enveloped us all. When I attempted to apologize to Jason for pushing him into attending church, I was silenced by a cool, “Your intentions were good, Mrs. Tyrell. We will not speak of it again.”
Your intentions were good. I cringed. We all knew where that road led!
Lady Kempton and Lady Hadley chose to ignore the incident as if it had never happened, and I was pleased to let them do so. At that point I felt as if I could no right.
Sir Basil and the Talmadges, evidently regretting their inaction at Sunday’s service, rushed to call the next afternoon, Miss Talmadge going so far as to demand Jason’s presence in the drawing room so they might apologize to him in person. Not that I was present for any of these effusions, but Josie was never one to keep her mouth shut if there was a good story to be told.
“All sugar and spice she was, missus, with poor Stebbins not knowing what to do, but Lady Hadley give him the nod, so off he went to fetch the master. And fair glowering he was when he heard he was wanted in the drawing room. Told Stebbins he could go jump in the nearest ditch. But in the end, the master went stomping into the drawing room, only to find Mr. Talmadge with looks black enough to match his own.. Or so Stebbins said.” Josie sucked in a gasping breath and rushed on. “Odd, ain’t it, ma’am, that he’d bring his mum and his sister to call if he’s still not forgiven old Mr. Lunsford for winning the house all those years ago?”
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