by M C Beaton
When she came in sight of the house, her heart sank. This was no romantic castle. Instead, it was a Gothic monstrosity, dark and sinister.
All sorts of doubts rushed into her head. She did not have any references. The impertinence of her action took her breath away. But then, behind her was her aunt. Better at least try.
She seized the knocker and gave it a good bang, wondering what sort of household put a brass devil’s head on its main door as a knocker.
The door creaked opened and Dredwort stared down at her.
Jean tremulously presented one of her cards which had the Highland address scored out and then the Edinburgh address scored out and the Gunshott address penciled in.
“I am come,” she said in a shaky voice, “in answer to Lord Hunterdon’s advertisement.”
Dredwort frowned. He knew of no advertisement. Then he remembered a footman had been sent to deliver a letter to the local newspaper offices. His eyes ranged from her plain bonnet to her buckled shoes. All were of good quality.
“Advertisement for what, miss?”
“Governess, to be sure,” Jean said tartly. “It is beginning to rain. Pray allow me to step inside.”
“I will inform his lordship,” Dredwort said coldly. “Wait here.”
So Jean waited with her battered trunk at her feet in the great hall, looking in amazement at the fake medieval flags, the suits of armor, the general air of damp and neglect.
The great mansion was very quiet. Jean could not understand it. She opened her cloak and squinted down at the watch pinned to her bosom. Ten o’clock. The servants should have been in evidence, working about. Perhaps they rose very early indeed to complete their duties.
After half an hour Dredwort came slowly down the dim wooden staircase. “Follow me,” he said in a hollow voice.
Jean left her trunk in the hall and walked up the stairs after the butler. Various old paintings, so dark and dirty that it was almost impossible to make out what they were supposed to be, hung on the walls. The staircase was uncarpeted and not very clean.
“The drawing room,” Dredwort intoned, throwing open a pair of double doors. “Wait here for his lordship.”
Jean felt a lump rising to her throat. Here was neither elegance nor comfort. The room was cold. The furniture was musty and dusty, as were the curtains. An old game bag lay in one corner and a pile of fishing rods in another.
She began to wonder again about this future employer. He could not be either handsome or Byronic. No one with the slightest sensitivity could live in a place like this. He was probably the sort of man who enjoyed cockfights and never washed.
A tear rolled down her cheek, followed by another, and she fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.
“Take mine,” said a masculine voice, and Jean looked up at the viscount through a blur of tears.
“Thank you.” She firmly wiped her eyes and stood up and curtsied, and then looked up into the face of the most handsome man she had ever seen. Even in this gloomy room his hair shone like gold, his eyes were as blue as the summer sea, and his lightly tanned skin without a single flaw. He was wrapped in a glorious Oriental dressing gown, and he smelled faintly of lavender water and soap.
“Why are you crying?” His voice was light and pleasant.
“I was not really crying,” Jean lied. “Something must have got in my eye.”
“Probably the horrors surrounding you,” the viscount said sympathetically. “Coffee is what you need. Strong coffee with a dash of something in it.” He tugged the dusty bell rope, which came away in his hand. “Tcha!” he said in disgust. He opened the door and found himself face-to-face with Dredwort.
“Get coffee, brandy, biscuits,” the viscount snapped. “At the double.”
He returned to the drawing room and sat down. “So this is the drawing room,” he said, looking about him. “Dear me. Sit down, Miss …?”
“Morrison. Jean Morrison.”
“And you are come in answer to my advertisement, in which I clearly stated applications had to be made in writing?”
“Yes, my lord. I live quite nearby and I thought it easier to call in person.”
He held out a white hand. “References.”
“I have not any.”
“Then why should I employ you? Good heavens, the magnitude of the task demands experience.”
Jean looked at him resolutely. She did not have much hope, but she would fight to stay with this god. “I am very well schooled, my lord, in all the social arts.” She talked about her upbringing and why she was so eager to escape from her aunt.
He looked at her sympathetically. “Had a rotten life,” he commented. “Here is the coffee. Put it down on that table next to Miss Morrison, Dredwort, and leave us.”
When the door had closed behind the butler, the viscount said easily, “Now, before you pour that coffee, take off your cloak and bonnet and make yourself comfortable.”
He intended to send her on her way as soon as she had drunk something. He had no intention of hiring a young and inexperienced girl.
Jean Morrison obediently swung her cloak from her shoulders and removed her bonnet. The viscount bit back an exclamation. Her hair was red, bright shining red, that darkish Highland color that often seems to have purple lights in it.
Jean saw him staring at it and flushed miserably. Neither aunt had let her cut it, and it was now tumbling down her back. “I am willing to dye it, my lord.”
“No, sacrilege,” he said faintly, looking in a bemused way at all the waves and curls.
He got up, poured a cup of coffee, and added a strong measure of brandy to it. Jean took it doubtfully. “I have never drunk spirits before, my lord.” She suddenly smiled, a warm, blinding smile. “But I am willing to try.”
The viscount looked around the bleak room and then back to the glowing little figure of this would-be governess. She’d brighten up the place, he thought. Seemed sensible enough. Still …
“There’s a piano over there,” he said. “Do you play?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then play me something.”
The brandy had gone to Jean’s head, and she felt elated and not at all like her usual dull self. She went confidently to the piano and began to play a Haydn sonata, her fingers rippling competently over the keys while the viscount leaned back in his chair. Odd, how a woman at the piano could suddenly make this miserable heap seem like a home, he thought.
When she had finished, he quizzed her about her education and learned to his surprise that she could read Latin and Greek and had a thorough knowledge of what was referred to as the “masculine sciences,” namely mathematics, physics, and chemistry. She then went on to explain that she also knew how to behave in the ballroom, at the dinner table, how to accept or repulse compliments, how to cut people dead, and how to make calls.
He made up his mind. “I see no reason why you should not be put on trial. But before you make up your mind, you had best meet your charges.”
He went to the door. As he expected, Dredwort was standing outside, where he had been listening to every word. “Fetch the young ladies here,” he ordered, “and bring me the account books.” The viscount did not know how much to pay this governess, but he had learned that the twins had had governesses in the past and so that should give him some indication of what to pay Miss Morrison.
Jean waited nervously to meet her new charges. They would, she thought, be very aristocratic, perhaps beautiful. But they were not so very far from her own age and perhaps they could all be friends.
She drank her coffee and brandy in silence while the account books were brought in and the viscount went through them.
“This is ridiculous. Come here, Miss Morrison.” Jean went and stood behind him as he ran a long finger down the page. “Have you ever seen such miserable wages? No wonder the servants are not efficient. Dredwort! I know you are listening outside. Come in!”
He handed the account books to the butler. “Double all the wages o
f the staff immediately and order new livery for the men and dresses for the women.”
A smile dawned on the butler’s fat white face. It creased up until his whole face glowed. “Oh, yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”
“But everything has to sparkle, mind you. Rotten summer. Fires in all the rooms.”
“Why is there no one in the lodge?” Jean asked, emboldened by brandy and success.
“Mr. Courtney turned them out. Mr. Hannay and his family.”
“And where are they now?”
“In the workhouse, my lord.”
“This is quite dreadful. Get them out of the workhouse as soon as possible. Get builders or whatever you need to repair the place and the gates. I have an agent, do I not?”
“Mr. Peterman over at St. Giles.”
“Get him. I want him now.”
“Very good, my lord.”
“Wicked old man,” the viscount said, meaning Mr. Courtney. He suddenly pasted a strained smile on his face. “Why, here are the girls. Girls, make your curtsy to Miss Morrison, your new governess.”
Jean looked at the twins and her heart sank. They were both small and fat with black greasy hair and malicious little black eyes. Their dresses were dirty and they smelled abominable.
They curtsied and then stood hand in hand, staring at her. “The one with the eyebrows is Amanda,” the viscount said, and Amanda did indeed have black eyebrows across her brow in a straight bar. “T’other is Clarissa.”
“Your hair is awfully red,” Clarissa said. Her voice had a strong country accent.
“Your first lesson,” Jean said firmly, “is not to make personal comments. Perhaps, my lord, the girls will show me the schoolroom while one of your servants fetches my belongings from my aunt. She is Mrs. Delmar-Richardson of Peartrees, Gunshott.”
“That will be done,” the viscount said. “The housekeeper is Mrs. Moody. I will send her to you and she will show you to your quarters. Girls, take Miss Morrison to the schoolroom.”
The girls trudged out and Jean followed them. They led her up to the top of the house. The schoolroom had a little-used look. It was cold and dusty. It contained a teacher’s desk and two pupils’ desks.
“We may as well begin by getting to know each other,” Jean said. “Sit down.”
“Enjoy yourself while you can,” Clarissa said. “We’ll soon get rid of you.”
Jean ignored that. She opened the lid of her desk and saw that it contained sheets of paper, pens, and ink. She selected two steel pens, a bottle of ink, and two sheets of paper.
“Now,” she said, placing everything in front of them, “you will both begin by starting to write, ‘A lady should never be rude.’”
They stared at her in dumb insolence.
But Jean Morrison was full of unaccustomed brandy and Jean Morrison was suddenly determined to fight every inch of the way to stay with the golden viscount. She saw a cane standing in the corner of the room. She picked it up and brought it down with a crash across Amanda’s desk. Green eyes blazing, Jean Morrison ordered, “Write!”
Chapter Two
THERE WAS A SHOCKED SILENCE in the schoolroom. Then the girls dipped their pens in the ink bottle and began to write, slowly and painfully. Jean read, “A lady shude never be rood.”
She put down the cane, ashamed of her own outburst. Poor girls. Poor semiliterate girls. “No, no,” she said gently. “I will write it correctly for you and you may copy it.” In firm copperplate she wrote down the phrase just as the housekeeper came into the room. “Miss Morrison,” Mrs. Moody said, “I am come to show you to your room.”
“Continue writing, girls,” Jean ordered. “Fifty times. That one sentence.”
Mrs. Moody was delighted with this new governess. Jean thought of herself as plain and would have been startled to know that the servants put down their sudden increase in good fortune to the effect of her feminine charms on the viscount. As she followed the housekeeper downstairs and along a corridor on the second floor, Jean could hear the house coming to life. The servants were all hard at work.
She was shown into a large bedchamber with a high bed, high because it had five mattresses, four of horsehair and straw topped with a feather one. The bedroom had obviously just been cleaned and a fire was burning in the fireplace. Fresh jugs of water had been placed on the toilet table.
“We hope you will be very happy here,” Mrs. Moody said. “But be warned, miss, them hellions upstairs have put rout to I dunno how many governesses.”
“They are unfortunate, that is all,” Jean said. “What was old Mr. Courtney like?”
“A bit strange,” the housekeeper said cautiously. “Got tighter and tighter with money.”
“He must keep a generous table, however,” Jean said. “The girls are too fat.”
“Well, I’m blessed if I know where they get the money from, and that’s a fact,” the housekeeper said. “Always stuffing themselves with chocolates and sugarplums. But it wasn’t from any feeding they got from old Mr. Courtney.”
Jean picked up her trunk and put it on the bed. “I will just leave my clothes out on the bed, Mrs. Moody. I do not want to leave my charges alone too long.”
“I’ll gladly send the maids up to put everything away for you.”
“That will not be necessary.” Jean did not want the servants to see how plain and unfashionable her wardrobe was. She dismissed the housekeeper, quickly spread her small stock of clothes out on the bed, and arranged her brush and comb on the toilet table.
Then she went back to the schoolroom. It was empty. The girls had written only three blotted lines each. She rang the bell and told a footman to send the servants to look for them. Then she waited a half hour before deciding to go to her room andput her clothes away. The rest of her things should be arriving shortly.
She opened the door of her room and then stood, shocked, on the threshold. All her clothes had been cut and slashed and left in ribbons on the bed. Her brush was burning merrily in the fireplace along with what she gathered was the remains of her comb.
She went to a chair by the window, sat down, and clasped her knees to stop them from trembling. If she told the viscount, he would pay her for the damage and then he would probably dismiss her, as she could not maintain discipline—which was just what the twins wanted.
Jean thought of the golden viscount and of the kind way he had given her his handkerchief. She still had it. She took it out and spread it on her lap, her fingers caressing the monogram.
No, she thought. She was not going to be trounced by that couple of fiends. She carefully packed the ruined clothes back into the trunk and climbed up to the schoolroom, carrying it.
The twins were sitting at their desks, writing busily. Jean rang the bell and asked for a workbasket to be brought to the schoolroom.
The twins wrote on, heads down, the picture of innocence.
“Now,” Jean said grimly, “we will have a lesson in sewing. Put aside your writing and bring your chairs next to me. It is of no use protesting your innocence. You wrecked my clothes and you will repair them.”
She drew out two of the slashed dresses. “One each. You will repair the slashes with neat stitches. Your work will be ripped out and you will start again if it is not neat enough. Begin.”
Clarissa got up, walked over to Jean, and slapped her full across the face while Amanda cheered. Jean slapped Clarissa back with all her force.
“You bitch!” Clarissa said with a tinge of admiration in her voice.
“Begin!” Jean ordered, picking up the cane which she had no intention of using except in self-defense.
They stitched and stitched, clumsy, painful stitches. Jean duly ripped them out and set the twins to the task again. After they had been working for two hours, Jean looked out of the window and saw the sun was shining.
“We will go for a walk,” she announced, “and then we will resume again on our return. Fetch your cloaks and bonnets.”
Soon all were walking away from the
house, Jean behind and the twins in front, their heads together, whispering, and occasionally looking back at her. Jean was determined to enjoy the sudden good weather. They walked through the gardens at the back of the house and down to a curve of white sandy beach. Great glassy waves curled and broke on the shore. “This is beautiful,” Jean said.
“I prefer Peter’s Tarn, inland. It’s more beautiful,” Amanda volunteered.
Glad of some sign of aesthetic appreciation from one of these horrible girls, Jean asked eagerly, “Is it far? Could you take me there?”
“Not far,” Amanda said laconically, and the twins turned inland. After a mile they came to the tarn, or small lake. It was almost a complete circle and as smooth as a mirror. Two weeping willows dipped their long branches into the water. The air was still and warm and sweet. Jean stood on a flat rock overhanging the water and looked down.
“It is indeed so very beautiful,” she said. “How deep is it, do you think?”
“Have a closer look and you’ll find out,” Amanda said from behind her.
And then with one almighty push, she sent Jean flying over the edge and into the water.
Arm in arm Amanda and Clarissa strolled off, deaf to the cries for help that were coming from the tarn.
“That’s got rid of her,” Amanda said. “Know’d it wouldn’t take long. Silly bitch.”
“Had a good bit o’ spirit, though,” Clarissa pointed out. “Think her’ll drown?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.”
The viscount looked appalled at the little trunkful of slashed clothes Mrs. Moody had brought down from the schoolroom. “I’m telling you, my lord,” Mrs. Moody said, “them’s that governess’s clothes what she had placed on the bed of her room. Those fiends must have cut them up. Did Miss Morrison say nothing to you of it?”
“No, Mrs. Moody. She will be recompensed, of course. Where is she now?”
“Well, that’s the trouble, my lord. John, the second footman, said as how he had seen her go out for a walk with Miss Amanda and Miss Clarissa. Now, them other governesses, they usually took one of the men along for protection.”
