by M C Beaton
The next day, the viscount found he was becoming more bored and more irritable. Getting grateful families out of the workhouse and putting them back in their homes should have given him a warm feeling of philanthropy, but it did not. He felt he was performing a long, tiresome series of duties. The only thing that gave him any slight pleasure as he passed money freely to the poor was that old Mr. Courtney would have been furious. The reason that the viscount passed that long day in ordering repairs to roofs and windows, hedges and walls was a feeling that the sooner it was all done, the sooner he could return to London and enjoy himself.
“Yes, yes,” he said testily as a weeping woman along with her husband and five children were reinstated in their cottage, “I am sure you are very grateful, but you must not kiss my hand. I do not like it. Strive for some dignity, please. You are only being returned to your home.” He pushed open the low door of the cottage. “Where is your furniture?” he asked, looking around.
“The bailiffs took it, my lord,” the man said.
“Of all the miserable old scroungers, Mr. Courtney was the worst. You must have somewhere to sit. Not a pot to cook anything in.” He walked back outside and faced the squad of outdoor servants and workmen who had been following him from cottage to cottage. “The roof needs repair,” the viscount said, squinting up at it. “I want basic foodstuffs for the kitchen here and the necessary pots and pans. I need beds and bedding and furniture. The castle is full of horrible stuff just lying there. Take what you need out of the guest bedrooms and the kitchens and bring it all over on the cart. In fact, you had better load up several carts because we have so many places to restore to good order. You will all be working well after sundown and so you will all get extra wages if you do your work well. Mr. Peterman, this family is Trent, is it not? Very well, take a note. Trent. Everything for the household needed. Ask Mrs. Moody to help you. Where is the next hovel on the itinerary?”
“Becket’s farm, half a mile away. We took Becket and his family from the workhouse.”
“So because of Mr. Courtney’s evil parsimony, one good farm has been lying fallow? Tcha! On we go. Will this day never end?”
And so the golden viscount, who seemed like an angel to families who were being restored to their homes, brushed aside all gratitude. All day long, carts rumbled along the roads from the castle, bearing furniture, food, and pots and pans. “There will be nothing left in the castle,” Mr. Peterman pleaded.
“Good,” the viscount said. “Nasty, gloomy stuff. Great chance to get rid of the lot of it.”
And so the workmen labored busily. A huge four-poster with silk hangings was delivered to the Trents. The posts had to be sawed down so that it would fit into the tiny cottage bedchamber, but the grateful Mrs. Trent took the brocaded silk hangings and subsequently the whole Trent family were to be seen on Sunday, finely dressed in clothes of silk brocade.
Finally, the viscount ended up at the farthest-flung farm on his estate. To his surprise, it appeared prosperous, and the farmer, Mr. Tulley, and his family looked well fed.
Pouring ale, Mr. Tulley said that he had managed to keep the farm at a reasonable rent by threatening to kill Mr. Courtney if he raised it. “He believed me, too,” the farmer said with a grin.
“But the old skinflint would have made even more money,” the viscount pointed out, “if he had made the farms pay.”
“He liked humiliating people,” Mr. Tulley said.
“Like meat and drink it was to him at the end. Liked that better than money.”
The viscount finished his ale and, being offered more, gratefully accepted it. The farmhouse parlor was pretty and bright with flowers. He was reluctant to return to his own gloomy home. For the first time that long day, he remembered Jean Morrison and wondered how she fared in St. Giles.
Jean, to her amazement, had had a successful day. The girls were quiet and obedient. She chose bolts of cloth for dresses for them and for herself. She had meant to choose cloth for gowns that would be suitable for a governess, but the dark little mercers contained an amazing supply of the best French silks and India muslins, and Jean lost her head and shopped for herself as if she were about to make her debut in London.
On her return, she found a dressmaker waiting for her, hired by Mrs. Moody on orders from the viscount. Jean had bought patterns, and together, she and the dressmaker, sitting on the floor of the drawing room that had inexplicably lost all its furniture, planned new wardrobes.
Then dinner was served to her in the dining room, which was still furnished, but the viscount did not arrive. Jean was told that the library was also still furnished, along with the tale of the viscount’s generosity to the cottagers, went there with the girls after dinner, and announced she would read to them.
Amanda and Clarissa stared at her in dumb fury. They had had a terrible day. The thought of new gowns bored them. Having to be polite for a whole day, a thing neither could remember having done before, was tiresome and exhausting. And now she was going to read to them.
But mindful of the viscount’s threat, they settled down in the library.
In St. Giles Jean had bought three volumes of one of the latest novels. Although the girls were obviously in need of moral instruction, she was sure they would simply fall asleep if she tried to read a book of sermons. The first thing, Jean decided, was to get them interested in any form of literature, and Jean guiltily admitted to herself she had also bought the books for her own enjoyment.
She started to read. Amanda and Clarissa, slumped side by side on the sofa, listened, at first stifling yawns and then with growing interest. When the headless monk walked down the stairs of the castle in Italy and Lady Felicity swooned in the prince’s arms, they sat up. Jean read on while the girls leaned forward, finally hanging on every word.
A footman came in, lit a log fire in the grate, and retreated quietly.
An hour later the door opened and the weary viscount walked in.
He stood for a moment, surveying the scene. Jean Morrison was reading steadily, the light from an oil lamp above her head shining on her magnificent hair. The fire crackled cheerfully, and Mrs. Moody, inspired to artistic talent by the increase in wages, had filled bowls around the room with scarlet and red roses.
Jean saw him and stopped reading. “Go on,” the twins cried in unison.
“Tomorrow,” Jean promised with a smile. “I did not realize how late it was, my lord. Bed for you, young ladies.”
“Stay, Miss Morrison,” the viscount said. “Amanda and Clarissa, you will find a lady’s maid waiting for you. She is not very well trained, but she will do for the moment. Treat her with courtesy.”
Amanda and Clarissa went out and closed the door, and then went slowly up the stairs. “If she’s going to read us them adventures, why get rid of her?” Clarissa asked.
“Silly, we’ve got to do our lessons, ain’t we?” Amanda remarked. “We’ll soon be able to read them ourselves. No governess is going to tell us what to do. Besides, she is only a governess and she shouldn’t be sitting with the master. Get ideas above her station. Think he’ll ruin her?”
“Don’t think he sees her as a woman and that’s a fact,” Clarissa commented.
In their bedchamber a burly-looking woman was waiting for them. She silently brushed their hair, got them ready for bed, and tucked them in. Clarissa felt guiltily that it was pleasant to be cared for, and she liked her new clean hair that felt silky to the touch. But she adored Amanda and everything that Amanda said or did must be right.
“Did you have any trouble with them today?” the viscount was asking Jean.
“No, they behaved very well, my lord, and I am convinced they are good at heart. I gather that a great deal of furniture has gone from the castle to the cottagers.”
He told her of his day while her green eyes glowed with admiration.
“You are very good.”
“I am motivated by my own interest. I have been studying the accounts. Mr. Courtney inherited a fortune t
o begin with and then made more over the years by gradually raising the rents. In the past few years the power of making people miserable far outweighed the pleasure of money.”
“How dreadful! It is no wonder that Amanda and Clarissa have turned out the way they are.”
“I think, on the contrary, they were treated with indulgence by their father. That is what ruined them. They were allowed to do and say as they liked and not one servant was allowed to reprimand them. I think they have inherited their father’s—if he was their father—love of power to cause misery.”
Jean looked at him uneasily. “I feel you are too harsh. I know they behaved disgracefully by pushing me in that tarn, but I cannot help feeling that a horsewhipping was the wrong sort of punishment.”
“They were not horsewhipped.”
“But the screams of anguish … the cries for help.”
“They were enduring a bath. Cleanliness is a form of refined torture to their minds. They have been unusually meek and biddable since, but that may be because of my threat to hand them over to the authorities if they stepped out of line again. Nonetheless, you should be on your guard at all times.”
“There is the matter of pin money for them,” Jean said. “Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, I will give you a sum each quarter for them, and you can give them money when the occasion demands it. I assume they have not had any since their father died.”
“And yet their room was full of boxes of chocolates and sugarplums,” Jean mused. “I took it upon myself to give all the sweetmeats to the staff. I wonder where they got the money to buy such a quantity?”
“Probably had a great deal left over from whatever allowance their father gave them. Do you plan to diet them—like Byron—on potatoes and vinegar?”
“I am sure with exercise and normal, healthful meals, they will soon be a more pleasing shape.”
“I see the piano has been moved down here,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Play something for me, Miss Morrison.”
She obediently went to the piano and began to play. When she finally looked around, the viscount was fast asleep.
Jean went over to him and stood for a few moments, looking down. It was odd to think of a man as being beautiful, but the viscount had an extraordinary beauty. His golden hair was tumbled over his brow. She half put out a hand to smooth it back from his brow. His eyes opened, and he stared up at her sleepily.
Jean snatched her hand back and stammered out, “Good night” before fleeing from the room.
Chapter Three
DURING THE TWO WEEKS that followed, Jean Morrison was happier than she had ever been before. The days were cloudless and warm and full of activity. In the mornings she would start teaching her two charges at eight o’clock promptly and continue until noon, when a cold collation would be served in the schoolroom. In the afternoons she would supervise riding lessons for the girls, having learned, to her surprise, that they did not know how to ride.
There were a few nasty little battles in the early days because Amanda and Clarissa blamed their horses for every fall and would have thrashed the poor animals had they not been forcibly restrained by Jean and the grooms. Slowly they mastered the art and came to enjoy it. After the riding lessons, there were fittings for their new gowns and then some piano practice.
Jean looked forward to the highlight of the day, which was dinner, when she could sit across the table from the viscount and listen to his pleasant voice. And after dinner they would retire to the library and Jean would read to them all, the viscount finding it more pleasant to listen to her soft Scottish voice than to sit in solitary state in the dining room with the port decanter.
He did feel at times ludicrously like a settled family man, watching the glow of Jean’s bright hair in the lamplight and seeing the now-slimmer twins sitting, holding hands, listening intently to every word. Their reading skills had improved immensely, but, like the viscount, they enjoyed Jean’s readings although they could not for the world have admitted such, telling each other that it was as well to see the governess earned her keep.
The viscount was also beginning to bask in a rare feeling of achievement. The ins and outs of agriculture were daily becoming more interesting. He also found himself thinking more of cottagers as people and less as some rare breed of cattle who had to be kept in good coat. A school was going to be built on the estate and also a small church, the nearest church being in St. Giles. He had been surprised to find that Jean Morrison thought it his duty to hold a service on Sunday mornings in the hall of the castle for the servants and tenants, and he had amiably complied although looking forward to the day when the church would be completed and some vicar would take the burden of religious instruction off his hands.
To his surprise, the vicar of St. Anne’s in St. Giles refused point-blank to come to the castle and undertake the religious instruction of the girls. He said he was too busy, and even the offer of generous funds for his church would not sway him. The viscount could only assume that the girls’ bad reputation had spread into the town.
On one such evening, stretched out in a comfortable chair, he listened to Jean’s voice and wondered idly what his friends were doing in London. Now that the castle was being refurbished and most of the dust and gloom swept away, London seemed less of a desirable place.
And then he heard the sound of carriages outside followed by a great knocking at the door.
“Who can be calling so late?” he asked as Jean stopped her reading and looked up in surprise. The twins suddenly looked at each other and exchanged smiles—long, slow, secretive smiles.
Dredwort entered. “Some gentlemen have arrived and an … er … lady, my lord.” He presented the viscount with four cards.
“Show them in,” the viscount cried, reading only the first card, that of Lord Charnworth.
His three friends came sailing into the room, propelling Nancy Cruze, his mistress, in front of them. Nancy was in full fig—scarlet gown cut as low as the nipples, glossy brown hair, paint as thick as stage makeup on her pretty little face.
Jean Morrison rose to her feet. “Clarissa and Amanda,” she ordered in a cold voice, “come with me.”
“But we ain’t been introduced yet,” Amanda said, her little black eyes dancing with mischief.
“That will not be necessary. Do as you are bid!” And thrusting the girls before her, Jean left the room, her head held high.
“Who was that ladybird?” Mr. Trump asked.
“The governess of distinction,” the viscount replied with a rueful look. “But what brings you all here?”
“Your letter,” Lord Charnworth said with a laugh.
Nancy wound her white arms around the viscount, but he gently pushed her away and demanded, “What letter?”
“Paul’s got it,” Mr. Trump said, and Mr. Jolly produced a crumpled letter from his pocket and handed it over.
The viscount read it carefully. “I did not write this,” he said. He turned it over and examined the broken seal. “But it’s my seal and a fair approximation of my handwriting, too. Not that I am not glad to see you, although you are come at an awkward time. I have so much work to do.”
Nancy pouted prettily. “I thought you was pining for me.”
“But of course. But not here, not now. You must realize the circumstances. Demme, who wrote that letter?”
He rang the bell and ordered wine and cakes for the party and for bedchambers to be allotted to them, and then asked Dredwort to fetch Miss Morrison.
The butler was gone some time, and when he returned, he said with a wooden face, “Miss Morrison begs your pardon, my lord, and says she would prefer to speak to you in private. She awaits you in the drawing room.”
“Things have changed,” Mr. Trump drawled. “Getting your orders from a governess?”
“Wait here. I will not be long.” The viscount strode out and mounted the stairs to the drawing room. Jean was waiting there for him, a trifle pale, but composed.
“Miss Morrison,” he began, “I am deeply grateful to you for the change in Amanda and Clarissa, but it is not your place to summon me.”
She looked at him solemnly. “I have no objection to appearing before your friends, but I must do all I can to continue to improve the sadly debased morals of Amanda and Clarissa. Should I stoop to be on familiar terms with what is obviously a female of the demimonde, I should not be setting them a good example.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “You may find your little innocents were instrumental in bringing that ladybird here.” He thrust the letter at her. “Read this.”
She quickly scanned it and then raised puzzled green eyes to his. “I do not understand.”
“I did not write it. It is a forgery.”
Jean looked at the letter again. “Although the girls are much improved in literacy, they could never have achieved this, and how could they know whom to write to?”
“If you will remember, they asked me for the names of my friends and I mentioned the three downstairs. If they did not write it, then they must have asked someone to do it for them.”
“But that would require a degree of planning and villainy surely beyond two young girls. And they have hardly been out of my sight.”
“Except when you are asleep.”
“Give me the letter and I will tax them with it. But you must understand my position, my lord. While that lady is in the house, I cannot allow either myself or the girls to come near her. I did not think it customary to have such persons in one’s family home.”
He was suddenly very angry. “Don’t dare take that high moral line with me, Miss Morrison.”
She gazed at him stubbornly. “Oh, take your meals in the schoolroom in future,” he snapped. “Your long face would put a damper on any party.”
Jean stayed where she was for a long time after he had left. She felt she was looking down at pieces of clay strewn about her feet. Her idol had toppled off his pedestal. She was not in love with the viscount, but in the preceding days she had hero-worshipped him. It was not only his good looks that had seduced her aesthetic senses, but his goodness to his tenants. He had said that his openhandedness to the cottagers had been self-interest. Estates well run were profitable estates. She had put that down to manly modesty, that he was veiling his goodness. Now she had to believe him. A man of principle would have turned that painted harlot from his doors. As Jean thought of the “painted harlot,” tears rolled down her cheeks. She had had an illusion of a home during the past two weeks. Now it was shattered. She hoped for a moment that there would be nowhere for these unwelcome guests to sleep and then remembered that new beds had been delivered only two days before, modern beds without posts or hangings, although canopies of a sort were being made to be fitted over the heads of the bed later.
