by M C Beaton
“Mrs. Delmar-Richardson sleeps in the afternoons between two and four,” Amanda said.
“You appear to be remarkably well informed.”
The twins stood staring up at him.
“Oh, very well, I will ride over this afternoon. Go away now and do something or other.”
Hand in hand the twins mounted the stairs. Amanda stopped on the first landing and turned around. “She took The Perils of Lady Devere with her before she’d finished it. Get her to bring it back.”
“Don’t give me orders,” the viscount snapped, but the twins had continued their upward climb.
Jean was very tired. As usual, her aunt had risen at six in the morning and then had gone for a walk, accompanied, of course, by Jean, who had to walk slightly behind her and carry her fan and shawl. Then over breakfast Jean read from Mr. Porteous’s sermons. After that she had to check the household accounts and go out to the village and question any shopkeepers whom her aunt felt might be overcharging, which was usually every shopkeeper in the village. Back again to watch her aunt take a “light” luncheon. Jean was not allowed any, breakfast and dinner being considered sufficient for her. During luncheon she read the newspapers to her aunt and played the piano to her after the remains of the meal had been cleared away.
Promptly at two o’clock Mrs. Delmar-Richardson would retire to bed, after having looked out a quantity of sewing for Jean.
The sun was shining outside, the weather having cleared after the morning’s rain, but Jean knew she dared not leave her sewing and go out. Her aunt checked every stitch to make sure she had not been slacking.
Jean sighed heavily. This was to be her life from now on. God had decreed it thus. Nothing would ever happen now to change the weary boredom of her days.
The door opened and a maid said, “Lord Hunterdon to see you, miss,” and Jean stabbed the needle into her finger in surprise.
The maid did not wait to see if Jean was prepared to see Lord Hunterdon, for poor relations did not have any social standing.
Jean put aside her sewing and stood up as the viscount walked into the room.
She had comforted herself by thinking of him as some debased satyr, and it was upsetting to see him there, golden and elegant, starched cravat, impeccable morning coat, shining boots, and emanating unruffled calm.
He bowed slightly. He began without preamble. “I am come to offer you the post of governess again.”
Jean’s heart leapt up and then sank when she thought of Nancy.
He studied her downcast face and said impatiently, “My friends have left and, yes, Nancy as well. But although I will not invite any of my … er … pleasures to my home again, I do not wish any more of your moral strictures.”
“Have you cast her off?” Jean’s green eyes looked up at him seriously.
“Yes, if you must know, I have, but that is none of your affair.”
“My lord, what will she do now?”
“Miss Morrison! Oh, very well. If you must know … She plans to accept the protection of Lord Tenbar.”
Jean sighed. “Poor thing. And when Lord Tenbar is tired of her, she will pass to some other gentleman until no one wants her and she is left destitute.”
“You have been reading too many novels. I did not seduce Nancy Cruze. She was a well-established member of the demimonde when I took her on and she knew exactly what she was doing. Unlike her kind, she does not indulge in drink and saves as much as she can. By the time she retires from her profession, she will be a wealthy woman. She will reappear in York or some such place under a new name and set up house as a widow and be a pillar of the community. Now, does that put your mind at rest? For I am heartily sick of the Misses Courtneys’ complaints about your absence.”
“They miss me?” Jean exclaimed. “Why?”
“I cannot begin to imagine. I have much to do. Are you coming or are you not?”
Jean hesitated. Her aunt would never have her back now. Once the twins were safely launched on their Season, her job would be over and she would need to find another and move from household to household until she grew too old and then, unlike Nancy, she would find herself hard put to manage. But better to live for a few years in comfort and to have something to remember than spend her days in this genteel drudgery.
“I will pack my bags, my lord,” she said. “I am not going to wake my aunt, for there would be an awkward scene.”
He nodded. “I will wait for you outside.”
Jean ran to her room and packed feverishly, terrified her aunt would wake and call for her. Two maids helped her down the stairs with her baggage and said, yes, they would tell the mistress she had gone.
Her luggage was strapped on the back and Jean climbed into the open carriage and sat beside the viscount, who said, “I am going to call on Farmer Tulley on our way back. I ordered phosphates for his fields and want to make sure they have been delivered.”
Jean sat beside him, suddenly very happy. As they mounted a rise, she could see the curtains of rain moving out to sea, and, inclined to be fanciful in her happiness, imagined the rain curtains as being the curtains of a theater, opening on a whole new act in her life.
They drove up to Tulley’s farm. “Wait here,” the viscount ordered curtly. “Certainly,” Jean Morrison replied primly, like any correct governess knowing her place. He tethered the horses and walked into the farmhouse. Jean sat for a few moments in the carriage and then climbed down and walked a little way away, for he had stopped the carriage in the yard next to the dung heap.
She leaned on the fence at the far end of the yard and looked out over the nearest field, which was a carpet of tiny blue flax flowers interspersed with blazing scarlet poppies. It seemed an outrageous burst of color in the normal green and brown of an English farm landscape. Bees hummed among the flowers and a lark sang overhead. Clouds of tiny blue butterflies as blue as the flax flowers fluttered erratically on the lightest of summer breezes. The sun was warm. She untied the ribbons of her bonnet and took it off, enjoying the heat of the sun on her bare head.
She heard a quick footstep behind her and turned. A stout, red-faced woman was hurrying toward her. “I am Mrs. Tulley,” she said, “and you be Miss Morrison, the governess. I said to his lordship that you should step indoors and try some of my lemonade, for it’s a mortal hot and dusty day.”
“You are very kind,” Jean said with a smile.
They walked back together to the farmhouse. “You must tell me all about your life,” Jean said. “I know very little of farming.”
‘“Don’t they have farms in your part of the country, miss?”
“Yes, but not like this, not in the Highlands. It is all heathland and sheep. Very few crops. That is, in the far north, of course.”
Mrs. Tulley led the way into the stone-flagged farm kitchen where the viscount sat at his ease at the scrubbed table. “Here’s Miss Morrison,” Mrs. Tulley said. “I gather she is going back to the castle, my lord.”
He raised his eyebrows superciliously. “Gossiping, Miss Morrison?”
“Her hasn’t said a word.” The farmer’s wife poured Jean a glass of lemonade. “Stands to reason, that’s all. We all heard she had left and now she’s back.”
Mrs. Tulley began to tell Jean of the new pianoforte they had bought and Jean said she would like to see it after she had finished her lemonade. The viscount, as Mr. Tulley was telling him about the delivery of the phosphates, glanced at Jean. What was it Nancy had said? Something about puritanism and passion? Her mouth was certainly beautifully shaped. Could this correct governess ever be passionate? Jean caught his cool blue speculative look and suddenly blushed.
It struck her at that moment that he wasn’t a god, nor a fallen idol either, but a man: a sensual, attractive, highly desirable man.
She rose quickly to her feet and urged Mrs. Tulley to show her the piano. She followed her from the room with a feeling of relief. She must never think of her employer like that again.
It was not … correct
.
Chapter Four
FOR A WHILE Jean found the days pleasant. The girls treated her with as much courtesy as she could expect, considering their characters. But a change came about when Jean finally ran through the small stock of novels available in St. Giles. The viscount sent an order to a London bookseller for a selection of the latest works and so Jean decided to fill in the intervening time by improving the girls’ moral tone with readings from the Bible.
The viscount did not particularly notice the change because he simply liked to relax in the evenings and listen to Jean’s soft Scottish voice, no matter what she read, but the twins were restless and bored and resentful. Jean began to wonder if they were ill, for they began to appear in the schoolroom in the mornings heavy-eyed and listless. They were also becoming unhealthily fat again. She doubted if they would ever possess elegant figures even when they lost their puppy fat, but by carefully monitoring what they ate, she had experienced the pleasure of noticing that their skin was clear and that they were less lumpy in shape than when she had first taken up her post. But now they were spotty, their hair was dull, and their new gowns were having to be let out.
She sent for a physician, who prescribed Dr. James’s powders after diagnosing a temporary disorder of the spleen. The next afternoon Amanda and Clarissa, who had been barely attending to their studies in the morning, begged leave to be allowed to take a nap. Left to her own devices, Jean went out for a walk. In the distance she saw the tall figure of the viscount, supervising the work of a team of gardeners and laborers who were landscaping the gardens. She walked a little nearer, hoping the viscount would call to her and perhaps discuss his plans for the gardens with her, but he was too absorbed in his work and so she turned away and walked around the back of the house and down through what used to be terraced gardens and were now a riot of weeds, to the beach.
The day was still and overcast. Large glassy waves curved onto the beach and fanned out slowly over the sands. The weather was close and humid and there did not seem to be a breath of air. Jean felt sad and listless. On such a day when she had time on her hands, she became acutely aware of her situation, that she was only a governess, a paid servant. All she had to comfort her was a wicked little dream at the back of her mind that her aunt in Edinburgh, who was extremely rich, would die and leave her all her money so that she, Jean Morrison, would become a lady of independent means, a lady with a dowry, a marriageable lady.
She walked beyond the point on the beach where she had previously veered off to follow the twins to the tarn. There were large jagged rocks at the end with only a strip of beach in front of them. The tide was out, so it would not normally be possible to walk past this outcrop. A sea gull screamed harshly, and suddenly, as the shadow of the rocks fell over her and to her right, another sea gull seemed to answer. She looked up and about, but could see no birds in the still, gray landscape where the only moving thing was the slow rise and fall of the ocean. She walked around the outcrop and found a stretch of cliffs and a series of caves. Looking nervously back, for she did not want to be cut off by the sea should the tide come in, she went into the first of the caves to explore. It was large and empty with a smooth, sandy floor. Festoons of green and wetly glittering seaweed hung down from the rocky walls. A splash of color near the cave entrance caught her eye, and she stooped down to examine it. There were several sweetmeat wrappings fluttering to and fro in the breeze that had suddenly risen outside. Out of the damp sand protruded the edge of a box. Jean dug with her fingers until she had pulled a wet and soggy cardboard box lid from the sand. She sat back on her heels and looked thoughtfully on her find. It looked as if someone had eaten the chocolates or sweetmeats and then buried the evidence, but the tide had washed the sand away and some of the exposed wrappings that were now fluttering and scurrying like mice over the cave floor had been dried after the tide had receded. It might be the twins. And yet, if they were not under her supervision, Betty, the maid, kept a close eye on them. But it would explain their increased weight and spotty faces if they had been creeping out from the castle to buy sweetmeats. She frowned down at the box and wrappers. She picked up one of the wrappers. It had a few slight traces of chocolate in the wrinkles of the twisted paper. Only the most expensive of confectionery was boxed, and the confectioners in St. Giles did not sell such delicacies, only things such as toffees or fudge, licorice laces and candied nuts. Only a small proportion of the population of the British Isles had tasted chocolate sweets, although more were familiar with the breakfast drink. When an English general had escaped from the Jacobites in Scotland and his carriage seized, it was found to contain boxes of little rolls of chocolate. But the Highlanders thought it must be medicine and so sold the loot, claiming it to be a wonderful salve for wounds. So if the Courtney girls had indeed been eating such chocolate, where did it come from and when did they eat it?
At night, thought Jean suddenly. That explains the tiredness and heavy eyes. They would deny it only if she accused them of it. She must return to the castle and take a nap herself, and so be prepared to spend the night watching the door of their bedchamber.
The sound of waves outside the cave sounded closer. She hurried out.
The tide had turned, and long, smooth waves were already sweeping up to the base of the outcrop, driven by a stiffening breeze. She removed her shoes and stockings, carried her bonnet over her arm by the ribbons, kilted up her skirts, and ran.
When she gained the smooth crescent of beach below the castle, she slowed her steps and finally stopped, looking with pleasure out to sea. The sky above was clearing rapidly to a deep intense blue, and the breeze was whipping and chopping at the surface of the water, making it dance with a myriad of lights.
She sat down in the sand and stretched her wet feet out to dry.
The library windows overlooked the beach. The viscount stood looking down at the small figure far below on the beach which he knew was Jean Morrison by the splash of fiery red that was her hair.
He felt hot and sticky and gritty, for he had helped in some of the work. He had half a mind to go and join her, but at that moment Dredwort entered and announced he had callers and with a little sigh the viscount said he would change and then join them in the Green Saloon, which was next to the library and had just been painted and refurbished.
Jean, returning slowly from the beach a half hour later and planning to have that nap, was met by a footman who told her that Lord Hunterdon had callers and that she and the Misses Courtney were to present themselves in the Green Saloon.
She went quickly up to the twins’ bedchamber. They were having their hair braided by Betty and had already been changed into clean gowns. Jean went to her own room and washed and changed into one of her new gowns, brushed and arranged her curly red hair in one of the new Roman styles, and then, satisfied with her appearance, went to collect the twins.
A maid had told Jean that the callers were Lord and Lady Pemberton who had estates on the other side of St. Giles. Jean, entering the Green Saloon with the girls in front of her, realized at last her new position in the social pecking order. Her gown of India muslin, high-waisted, white with little gold corn ears embroidered all over it, she suddenly knew was too fashionable for a governess, as Lady Pemberton raised her quizzing glass and gave Jean a long, slow stare of disapproval. While the twins were introduced, Jean went quietly to a chair in the corner by the window and sat down demurely although her heart was racing. For Lady Pemberton had brought her daughters with her, pretty daughters, marriageable daughters. One, the elder, Letitia, aged nineteen, had dark brown glossy curls, a little pouting mouth, and a curvaceous figure. Her sister, Ann, aged eighteen, had chestnut hair, a thinner figure, and an air of glacial superiority. Lady Pemberton was a small, fussy woman, overdressed, overjeweled, overberibboned. Lord Pemberton was tall and thin and angular with a long, sad face and weak, watery gray eyes.
Letitia was flirting with the viscount, telling him that the whole county was dying to meet him, while sis
ter Ann adopted an Attitude, one arm outstretched and the other to her brow. Jean wondered acidly what it was supposed to represent.
“Of course, we were not on calling terms with Mr. Courtney,” Lady Pemberton said, “and when he married a servant, well, enough said on that subject. We are gratified to have such an elegant member of the ton among us, Lord Hunterdon, and we are called to ask you to dine with us next week. A turtle dinner.”
“Good,” Amanda said, finding her voice. “We like turtle.”
Lady Pemberton favored her with a wintry smile. “You are still too young, my child, to be out. Perhaps another time.”
“Ain’t you asking us?” Clarissa demanded.
“You really must get that governess of yours to correct your grammar.” Lady Pemberton gave a brittle laugh. “Now, Lord Hunterdon, I am sure you will favor us with your presence. We have a further incentive. We have a house guest. None other than your cousin, Mr. Devenham.”
“Mr. Devenham is really quite charming,” Letitia murmured, fluttering her eyelashes at the viscount while Ann changed to another Attitude, supporting her chin on the backs of her hands and staring nobly into space.
“How very kind of you to ask me,” the viscount said, “but could I possibly visit you at some later date? You will see from the upheaval in the grounds and in the house that I am in the midst of improvements.”
“Come, come, Hunterdon,” Lord Pemberton said. “We’re talking about dinner. Can’t carry on with work in the evening.”
“Oh, but I do,” the viscount said ruefully. “I work from dawn to dusk, I assure you. But I shall call on you quite soon.”
Lady Pemberton gave him a baffled look and then her eyes swung around to where Jean was sitting. Was that overfashionably dressed governess with the ridiculous color hair the reason for the viscount’s reluctance to accept invitations? It was well known he had already invited a Cyprian to his home, although he had quickly got rid of her.
