Nannyland

by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

  “—but she’s sponsoring a gala event in Paris next week—save the rhino, you know—and then she’s off to Milan for Fashion Week. She suggests boarding school.”

  My vision of comfortable old Auntie Pam singing lullabies and baking scones deflated, I scowled at him.

  “By next weekend, I promise, I will find a nanny,” he finished.

  A whole week away! It might as well have been a century.

  I realized that John’s face was drawn with weariness and worry, his eyes slightly shadowed and his face scruffy with the beginnings of a beard. “You need to shave,” I told him.

  He ran a tired hand across his chin. “I know. But I never got back to my flat last night. We were working till four in the morning, and I just grabbed a few hours’ sleep on the sofa in my office. I’m shattered.”

  It was my turn to sigh. I understood being overwhelmed at work; all-nighters were far too frequent in the hedge fund business. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll keep your children alive and well for the next week. But beyond that, I can’t make any promises.”

  — – — – —

  John left early the next morning, and I bundled Henry into his football (aka soccer, as I had realized after searching in vain for a helmet and shoulder pads, much to the children’s amusement) kit and drove him to the school field. “Please stay and watch, Jordy!” he begged as we drew up.

  “Oh, fine,” I grumbled. I had been planning a quiet hour in the café on my computer. But his excitement was infectious, and I found myself smiling as I followed him onto the wide grassy field, where a knot of warmly dressed parents stood watching and shouting as their sons pranced out onto the field. I pulled my black, fashionable, but very light peacoat tighter around me and pushed my hideous wool cap, borrowed from the front hall closet, firmly down on my hair.

  “Jordy! Look at me!” Henry shouted. He dropped his soccer ball to the ground and began chasing it, kicking with what seemed like remarkable skill for a six-year-old. Absurdly, I felt proud of him.

  When the game was over—Henry spent most of it on the bench playing video games with his mates, but his team won three to one—he ran over to the sidelines and threw his arms around me. “We won, Jordy! Did you see? Can we call Daddy and tell him about it? Please?”

  For a moment, feeling his sweaty, sturdy little body clutched against mine, I felt a rush of emotion that choked and horrified me at the same time. Gently, I drew away from him. “Yes,” I said. “You can call Daddy.”

  That afternoon it was Katherine’s turn. Jane had agreed to watch the younger children so I could take Katherine for a ride. We walked over to the stables together, me in my smart tawny Ariat jodhpurs and custom-fitted tall boots and Katherine in more prosaic jeans and paddock boots. She eyed me admiringly. “When did you get your boots?” she asked.

  “Not till I was twelve.”

  “Oh. How much did they cost?”

  “The first ones, about twelve hundred dollars. These were custom-made, so they were about thirty-five hundred.” I didn’t add how pleased I was to discover that they still fit, though the zippers were snug around my normally Pilates-toned calves.

  Her eyes grew round. “Wow. You’re so lucky.”

  “I worked very hard to earn this equipment,” I told her firmly. “Riding is very hard work.”

  She tossed her head. “Posie’s loads of fun. You’ll see!”

  I saw, all right; Katherine rode with some skill, but she was much more concerned with her appearance than with the pony. “Do I look good, Jordy?” she kept asking.

  I kept telling her, “You look fine, but you need much more inside leg if you’re going to keep Posie on the course. Come on, Katherine, give him more leg!”

  Finally, she pulled her fat pony off to the side of the ring. “I’m tired,” she complained. “Why don’t you show me?”

  So I did. I dismounted from my tall bay gelding to set up a course that we could jump, and then I settled myself back in the saddle, took a firm grip on the reins, and gently pressed my legs against the horse’s sides. He responded to my touch as if we’d been riding together forever. As we soared across the final jump, me lying almost flat against his back and his long elegant legs stretched gracefully along the jump, I caught sight of Katherine’s awed face out of the corner of my eye.

  I jumped down. “Want to learn to do that?” I asked her.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed.

  It seemed I had a fan.

  — – — – —

  That evening Katherine and Henry, exhausted from their athletic endeavors, went to bed early, and Mary fell asleep in front of the TV. I carried her up to bed, anxious at how slight she felt in my arms, and returned to join Jane in the morning room. She was scowling over some homework.

  “What’s that? Can I help?” I asked, crossing the room to look at her papers.

  She shrugged. “It’s just my stupid history project.”

  “Oh, really? I told you, I love history. What’s your project on?”

  “I like history, too—just not stupid Queen Jane Grey. But my project’s on her. We each have to do a presentation on a king or queen, so the teacher thought it would be perfect for me to do Lady Jane Grey. Isn’t that adorable?” Her tone practically dripped acid.

  “Well,” I said carefully, “irritating, perhaps, to always be lumped with her, but still interesting, I would think. Queen for nine days and then beheaded at sixteen—most people would be fascinated by that.” I knew I was.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  I thought for a minute, then went into the kitchen and dug two Diet Cokes out of my secret stash behind the vegetables. I came back and handed one to Jane, opening the other for myself. Silently, we clinked cans.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know about Lady Jane Grey?” I suggested, sitting down next to her at the table. “Then maybe we can figure out how to make this project not so terrible.”

  She smiled slightly. “Are you bribing me with a Diet Coke?” she asked.

  “Is it working?” I countered.

  She took a sip and considered. Then she started talking.

  Chapter 11

  “LADY JANE GREY was born on the twelfth of October, 1537,” Jane recited. “Her parents were Lady Frances Brandon, niece of Henry VIII, and Henry Grey. Her great-grandfather was King Henry VII, whom everyone hated because he was just a jumped-up accountant, but that put her in line to the throne after Henry VIII’s children. She had two younger sisters, Katherine and Mary.”

  I yawned ostentatiously.

  Jane looked up from her papers. “See? I told you she was boring.”

  “Tell me something interesting.”

  “We have the same birthday. My birthday’s the twelfth of October, too. Next week.”

  I sat up straighter. “Really? That is interesting.”

  “No,” the girl retorted. “It’s weird.”

  “Tell me something else that’s interesting, then.”

  “Well . . .” Jane shuffled through her papers. “Her mother hit her.”

  “Really? She was abused?” I remembered reading a historical novel about Queen Jane’s cruel parents, but I’d just thought it was the author’s imagination. As a teenager, though, I had wallowed in self-pity and taken great pleasure in silently condemning poor Jane’s heartless mother, so much like mine. (Of course, my mother was more removed than cruel, but I was only fifteen and had a lively imagination.)

  “I don’t know about abused, but her mother hit her and was really mean to her. Her parents made her marry Guildford Dudley even though she hated him. And then on their wedding night, he—” She paused, blushing.

  “He what?”

  “He made her . . . you know.” Jane’s hands twisted nervously in her lap, and I stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. “You know,” she repeated. “And she hated it. S
he ran away from him, and her parents forced her to go back.”

  “Do you mean he had sex with her? But Jane, they were married.”

  “So? He still can’t, you know, force her!”

  “Well, of course not. But in the sixteenth century, the main purpose of a royal marriage was to beget a male heir; they both would know that. Surely Jane’s husband would expect her to cooperate?”

  Unexpectedly, my thoughts flashed back to Lucian. “Just lift up your skirt,” he had hissed into my ear, his breath hot and panting.

  “Oh, Lucian, no, I don’t want . . .”

  We were pressed together in the tiny washroom off his office; he had texted me a 911 urgent message and I had raced in, my heart pounding with anxiety: Had the Fed finally raised interest rates? I needed to short my positions immediately—

  Instead, Lucian had grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the small room.

  “I want you,” he’d muttered, pulling up my skirt. “We just made twenty-four million on the Blackwell’s deal, and I’m hot. We’re hot!”

  Briefly, I had stopped fighting him. “Twenty-four?” I had breathed. “Really?”

  Taking advantage of my distraction, he had torn away my panties and forced himself inside me. The cold, hard sink had pressed painfully into my back, and his rough hands had left bruises on my arms.

  When it was over, my eyes had been perfectly dry. I had wadded up the shredded panties and tucked them into my purse.

  “God, you’re hot,” Lucian had said with satisfaction as he did up his pants.

  Now, that was what it meant to force a woman. And why, oh why, had I let him do it?

  With an effort, I brought myself back to the present. “Anyway, how do you know this?” I asked. Could five-hundred-year-old primary sources really be that explicit?

  “Oh, everyone knows it! Jane was a really boring girl; she loved to study, and all she cared about was religion. She wrote these incredibly long and dull letters about religion to old church people all over Europe.”

  “That’s not so—”

  “And when she died, she wrote a letter to her sister Katherine the night before. Do you know what it said?”

  I shook my head.

  “She told her sister that she should spend the rest of her life preparing to die! Can you believe it? I mean, who talks to her sister that way?”

  I had to smile at the girl’s indignation. “Put like that, Jane does seem a bit of a goody-goody,” I admitted. “But how do you know it’s true?”

  “Everyone knows it,” she repeated stubbornly. “It’s in the books.”

  My smile widened. “I can’t resist a challenge like that. So I have a dare for you: We spend a week researching Lady Jane Grey. One week, that’s all I ask.”

  A calculating look crossed the girl’s face, and once again I sympathized with my long-suffering mother and nannies. “If I’m right,” she said, “and you find out that Jane was really a prig, you will never nag me about riding again. Agreed?”

  “But if I’m right and she turns out to be much more interesting,” I retorted, “then I get to give you a riding lesson. Agreed?”

  Jane hesitated, then gave me a decisive nod. “Deal,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  “ ‘LADY JANE Grey,’ ” I typed into Google the next morning. Three million hits. But www.ladyjanegrey.com seemed promising.

  Oh, dear. Maybe Jane was right; her ancestress did seem to be a prig. I scowled at the portrait of a sanctimonious young maiden, inscribed with this inspiring poem:

  Young, beautiful and learned Jane, intent

  On knowledge, found it peace; her vast acquirement

  Of goodness was her fall; she was content

  With dulcet pleasures, such as calm retirement

  Yields to the wise alone;—her only vice

  Was virtue: in obedience to her sire

  And lord she died, with them a sacrifice

  To their ambition: her own mild desire

  Was rather to be happy than be great;

  For though at their request, she claimed the crown,

  That they through her might rise to rule the state,

  Yet the bright diadem and gorgeous throne

  She viewed as cares, dimming the dignity

  Of her unsullied mind and pure benignity.

  by William Hone (1780–1842)

  Oh, crap. Good . . . pure . . . unsullied . . . learned . . . virtue . . . Crap, crap, crap. Surely there must be more to the wretched queen than this. I stiffened my spine, reminding myself that serious research meant much more than an hour on Google. I dug back in with renewed resolve.

  But the facts seemed to be solid. Jane had indeed mastered four languages by the time she was thirteen. A passionate religious reformist, she carried on a voluminous and hideously boring correspondence with Protestant churchmen throughout Europe, who celebrated her as a martyr after her execution. (Queen Mary had offered her mercy if she would just agree to convert to the Catholic faith, but Jane declined.) She did seem to be the victim of both parental and spousal abuse; she complained to a sympathetic visitor of her parents’ cruelty, and she fled her husband on their wedding night, only to be dragged back the following day by her infuriated in-laws. She most definitely collapsed into a faint upon learning that she was queen.

  Poor girl. But it was hard to feel the proper amount of sympathy for a sixteen-year-old girl who had, the night before her execution, written to her thirteen-year-old sister, Katherine, urging her to “despise the flesh” and spend her remaining days on earth preparing for a virtuous death.

  My Jane was right: Lady Jane Grey was a prig.

  — – — – —

  I was relieved to close my computer with a decisive click as my cell phone began to chirp. I had ensconced myself in His Lordship’s private office, which commanded a high-speed Internet connection and a stunning view of the surrounding hills and river. No wonder my thoughts often wandered to the absent lord, as I spent most of my time in his inner sanctum.

  And now he was calling me. My stomach jolted as I picked up the phone.

  “Jordy?”

  Well, who else would be answering my cell phone? “Hi, John,” I said unenthusiastically. He usually called at night to speak to the children and issue instructions: “Please tell Cook to prepare real meals for the children; Henry tells me he had fish fingers last night and the night before,” or my favorite, “Could you please assist Katherine with her maths homework?” We both knew that “assisting Katherine with her maths homework” meant either doing it for her or sitting by watching her twirl her hair, stare into space, and occasionally ask if we were done yet. Katherine was our very own version of the Barbie someone had misguidedly given me in my youth, who wore a taffeta dress and upswept hair and chanted, “I hate math!” I had beheaded the doll after a week.

  Now John said, “I hope you are well?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I affected as little interest as he did.

  “I have just interviewed Nanny Number Five, and I’m afraid the task may be more challenging that I originally assumed.”

  “Why? What was wrong with her?” Honestly, how much worse than me could she be?

  He cleared his throat. “She, um . . .”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, John. Spit it out.”

  “What an unattractive phrase,” he said. “She spoke no English—despite the assurances from the nanny agency that her English was excellent—but managed to express in Serbian dialect that sharing my bed would be a distinct perk of the job.”

  I paused, considering. “Was she pretty? Maybe it would be a perk for you, too.”

  “Jordy!” he exclaimed.

  “You have to find someone,” I snapped. “And you left them with Deirdre, for God’s sake! It doesn’t get much worse than that.”

  �
��I am well aware of my poor judgment,” he said sharply. “But thank you for reminding me. At any rate, I am ringing to warn you that it may be another week before I find someone suitable to replace you.”

  “John, I’m not ‘suitable,’ either,” I retorted.

  “I’m aware,” he said drily. “I suspect, though, that you are better than you think.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Look, Jordy, this may be hard to believe,” he said finally. “But I really am doing the best I can. This isn’t easy for me, either, you know.”

  I thought of his parliamentary all-night sessions, and his dead wife, and his four motherless children. I refused to feel sympathy; that way lay disaster. So I said a curt “Fine!” and flung my phone back on the desk.

  The poor silly girl: Sleeping with this particular Englishman would certainly not be my idea of a perk! Then I thought of Henry in the lake and Mary coughing helplessly, and softened. Until John found a qualified nanny, I was the only thing that stood between those children and disaster.

  — – — – —

  So the next morning, I drew a deep breath and opened the laptop. I had never done a bad job at anything, and I wasn’t going to start now. If I had to be a nanny, then by God, I would be the best nanny Lord John the Icy had ever seen. I started making a list of research topics and opened an Evernotes file titled Nannyland with subheadings for each topic: childhood asthma, local driving schools, schedules for children, managing busy mornings, boy-crazy tweens, video games and young boys . . .

  This could not possibly be more difficult than managing a billion-dollar trading desk. Even if the new file headings looked a little incongruous next to my latest research into Guangdong oil derivatives contracts, euroyen interest rate history, and Singapore interest rate arbitrage, this was my job right now, and research had always been my secret weapon.

  So I spent several hours on research and note-taking, until it was time to pick up the children. As I saved my notes, I glanced up and stared at the portrait of John and wondered again about him as a lover or husband. He certainly was not the man of my dreams, but there was a certain something. . .