by Anne Gracie
Lady Cahill's eyes kindled with anger. "By God, she's trying to palm one of your father's by-blows off on to us!"
"Grandmama!" Amelia blushed, horrified.
"Oh, don't be so mealy-mouthed, girl. You must know your father had any number of bits o' fluff after your dear mother died, and they didn't mean a thing, so don't pretend. But it's nothing to do with us. Your father would have left any base-born child well provided for. He was a gentleman, after all, even if he was a fool! Now toss that piece of impertinence in the fire at once, I say!"
But her granddaughter had forgotten her blushes and was avidly reading on. "No, wait, Grandmama, listen to this."
And being as I was her old nurse even if some as did say I wasn't good enough to be nurse to Vicar's daughter it falls to me to let you know what my girl has come to being as you was godmother to Miss Maria her poor sainted mother. . .
Lady Cahill sat up at this and leant forward, her eyes sharp with interest.
. . . and her only remaining child so now there be nothing left for her but to Take Service her not willing to be took in by myself and truth to tell there be little enough for me alone so I beg ye Milady please help Miss Kate for as the Lord is my witness there be no other who can yours truly Martha Betts.
"Do you know any of these people, Grandmama?" said Amelia curiously.
"I believe I do," said her grandmother slowly, picking up the letter and scanning it again. "I think the girl must be the daughter of my godchild Maria Farleigh—Maria Delacombe as she used to be. She married a parson and died giving birth to a daughter . . . must be nigh on twenty years ago. She had two boys before that, can't recall their names now, and I lost touch with the family after she died, but it could be the same family."
She peered at the address. "Is that Bedfordshire I see? Yes. Hmm. No kin? What can have happened to the gel's father and brothers?'' Lady Cahill frowned over the letter for a short time, then tossed it decisively down on a side table.
“What do you mean to do, Grandmama?''
Lady Cahill rang for sherry and biscuits.
Amelia's husband arrived and they all went in to dinner. Over cream of watercress soup, Lady Cahill announced her decision.
"But, Grandmama, are you sure about this?" Amelia looked distressed. "It's a very long journey. What if Jack won't receive you, either?"
Lady Cahill gave her granddaughter a look of magnificent scorn. "Don't be ridiculous, Amelia!" she snorted. "I have never in my life been denied entrée to any establishment in the kingdom. I go where I choose. I was a Montford, gel, before my marriage to your grandfather, and no one, not even my favourite grandson, tells me what I may or may not do!"
She dabbed her mouth delicately on a damask napkin and poured her sherry into the soup. "Tasteless rubbish!"
Later, as she pushed cailles à la Turque around her plate, she said, "I'll call upon Maria's gel on my way to visit Jack. I cannot let her starve and I'll not allow Maria Farleigh's child to enter into service! Faugh! The very idea of it. Maria's mother would turn in her grave. She was a fool to let her daughter marry a penniless parson." Lady Cahill's eyes narrowed as she considered the shocking mesalliance.
"The Farleighs were a fine old family," she admitted grudgingly, "but he was the last of his line and poor as a church mouse to boot. Church mouse. Parson! Ha!" She cackled, noticing her unintended pun, then fell silent.
She heaved a sigh and straightened her thin old shoulders wearily. She pushed her plate away and called for more sherry.
"Yes, I'll roust the boy out of his megrims and keep him busy." Lady Cahill ignored the Scotch collops, the lumber pie, the buttered parsnips and the chine of salmon boiled with smelts. She helped herself to some lemon torte. "Can't leave him brooding himself into a decline up there in the wilds of Leicestershire with no one but servants to talk to." She shook her head in disgust. "Never did believe in servants anyhow!"
Amelia tried valiantly to repress a gasp of astonishment and met her husband's amused twinkle across the table. For a woman who considered a butler, dresser, cook, undercook, housekeeper, several housemaids and footmen, a scullerymaid, coachman and two grooms the bare minimum of service needed to keep one elderly woman in comfort, it was a remarkable statement.
"No, indeed, Grandmama," Amelia managed, bending her head low over her plate.
"Don't hunch over your dinner like that, girl," snapped the old woman. "Lord, I don't know how this generation got to be so rag-mannered. It wouldn't have been tolerated in my day."
The knocker sounded peremptorily, echoing through the small empty cottage. This was it, then, the moment she had been waiting for and dreading equally. The moment when she stopped being Kate Farleigh, Vicar Farleigh's hoydenish daughter, and became Farleigh, maidservant, invisible person.
Now that the moment had come, Kate was filled with the deepest trepidation. It was a point of no return. Her heart was pounding. It felt like she was about to jump off a cliff . . . The analogy was ridiculous, she told herself sternly. She wasn't jumping, she had been pushed long ago, and there was no other choice. . .
Squaring her shoulders, Kate took a deep breath and opened the door. Before her stood an imperious little old lady clad in sumptuous furs, staring at her with unnervingly bright blue eyes. Behind her was a stylish travelling coach.
"Can I help you?" Kate said, politely hiding her surprise. Nothing in Mrs Midgely's letter had led her to expect that her new employer would be so wealthy and aristocratic, or that she would collect Kate herself.
The old lady ignored her. With complete disregard for any of the usual social niceties, she surveyed Kate intently.
The girl was too thin to have any claim to beauty, Lady Cahill decided, but there was definitely something about the child that recalled her beautiful mother. Perhaps it was the bone structure and the almost translucent complexion. Certainly she had her mother's eyes. As for the rest . . . Lady Cahill frowned disparagingly. Her hair was medium brown, with not a hint of gold or bronze or red to lift it from the ordinary. At present it was tied back in a plain knot, unadorned by ringlets or curls or ribands, as was the fashion. Indeed, nothing about her indicated the slightest acquaintance with fashion, her black clothes being drab and dowdy, though spotlessly clean. They hung loosely upon a slight frame.
Kate flushed slightly under the beady blue gaze and put her chin up proudly. Was the old lady deaf? "Can I help you?'' she repeated more loudly, a slight edge to her husky, boyish voice.
"Ha! Boot's on the other foot, more like!"
Kate stared at her in astonishment, trying to make sense of this peculiar greeting.
"Well, gel, don't keep me waiting here on the step for rustics and village idiots to gawp at! I'm not a fairground attraction, you know. Invite me in. Tush! The manners of this generation. I don't know what your mother would have said to it!"
Lady Cahill pushed past Kate and made her way into the front room. She looked around her, taking in the lack of furniture, the brighter patches on the wall where paintings had once hung, the shabby fittings and the lack of a fire which at this time of year should have been crackling in the grate.
Kate swallowed. It was going to be harder than she thought, learning humility in the face of such rudeness. But she could not afford to alienate her new employer, the only one who had seemed interested.
"I collect that I have the honour of addressing Mrs Midgeiy"
The old lady snorted.
Kate, unsure of the exact meaning of the sound, decided it was an affirmative. "I assume, since you've come in person, that you find me suitable for the post, ma'am."
"Humph! What experience do you have of such work?"
"A little, ma'am. I can dress hair and stitch a neat seam." Neat? What a lie! Kate shrugged her conscience aside. Her stitchery was haphazard, true, but a good pressing with a hot flatiron soon hid most deficiencies. And she needed this job. She was sure she could be neat if she really, really tried.
"Your previous employe
r?"
"Until lately I kept house for my father and brothers. As you can see . . ." she gestured to her black clothes ". . .I am recently bereaved."
“But what of the rest of your family?''
This old woman was so arrogant and intrusive, she would doubtless be an extremely demanding employer. Kate gritted her teeth. This was her only alternative. She must endure the prying.
"I have no other family, ma'am."
"Hah! You seem an educated, genteel sort of girl. Why have you not applied for a post as companion or governess?"
"I am not correctly educated to be a governess." I am barely educated at all.
The old lady snorted again, then echoed Kate's thought uncannily. "Most governesses I have known could barely call themselves educated at all. A smattering of French or Italian, a little embroidery, the ability to dabble in watercolours and to tinkle a tune on a pianoforte or harp is all it takes. Don't tell me you can't manage that. Why, your father was a scholar!"
Yes, but I was just a girl and not worth educating in his eyes. In her efforts to control the anger at the cross-questioning she was receiving, it did not occur to Kate to wonder how the old woman would know of her father's scholarship. If Mrs Midgely wished Kate to be educated, Kate would not disappoint her. Some women enjoyed having an educated person in a menial position, thinking it added to their consequence.
"I know a little Greek and Latin from my brothers—'' the rude expressions "—and I am acquainted with the rudiments of mathematics. . ." I can haggle over the price of a chicken with the wiliest Portuguese peasant. It suddenly occurred to Kate that perhaps Mrs Midgely had grandchildren she wished Kate to teach. Hurriedly Kate reverted to the truth. It would not do to be found out so easily.
"But I cannot imagine anyone offering a tutor's position to a female. I have no skill with paints and have never learnt to play a musical instrument. . ." No, the Vicar's unwanted daughter had been left to run wild as a weed and never learned to be a lady.
"I do speak a little French, Spanish and Portuguese."
“Why did you not seek work as a companion, then?''
Kate had tried and tried to find a position, writing letter after letter in answer to advertisements. But she had no one to vouch for her, no references. Someone from Lisbon had written to one of her female neighbours and suddenly she was persona non grata to people who had known her most of her life. It hadn't helped that the girl they remembered had been a wild hoyden, either. There were many who had predicted that the Vicar's daughter would come to a bad end. And they were right.
Life in service wouldn't be so bad, she told herself. As one of a number of servants in a big house, she would have companionship at least. A servant's life would be hard, harder than that of a companion, but it was not hard work Kate was afraid of—it was loneliness. And she was lonely. More lonely than she had ever thought possible.
Besides, a companion might be forced to socialise, and Kate had no desire to meet up with anyone from her previous life. She might be recognised, and that would be too painful, too humiliating. She had no wish to go through that again, but none of this could she explain to this autocratic old lady.
"I know of no one who would take on a companion or governess without a character from a previous employer, ma'am."
"But surely your father had friends who would furnish you with such?"
"Possibly, ma'am. However, my father and I lived abroad for the last three years and I have no notion how to contact any of them, for all his papers were lost when . . .when he died."
"Abroad!" the old lady exclaimed in horror. "Good God! With Bonaparte ravaging the land! How could your foolish father have taken such a risk? Although I suppose it was Greece or Mesopotamia or some outlandish classical site that you went to, and not the Continent?"
Kate's eyes glittered. Old harridan! She did not respond to the question, but returned to the main issue. "So, do I have the position, ma'am?"
"As my maid? No, certainly not. I never heard of anything so ridiculous."
Kate was stupefied.
"I never did need a maid anyway, or any other servant," the old lady continued. "That's not what I came here for at all."
"Then. . .then are you not Mrs Midgely, ma'am?" Kate's fine features were lit by a rising flush and her eyes glittered with burgeoning indignation.
The old lady snorted again. "No, most decidedly I am not."
"Then, ma'am, may I ask who you are and by what right you have entered this house and questioned me in this most irregular fashion?" Kate didn't bother to hide her anger.
Lady Cahill smiled. "The right of a godmother, my dear."
Kate did not return the smile. "My godmother died when I was a small child."
"I am Lady Cahill, child. Your mother was my goddaughter." She reached up and took the girl's chin in her hand. "You look remarkably like your mother at this age, especially around the eyes. They were her best feature, too. Only I don't like to see those dark shadows under yours. And you're far too thin. We'll have to do something about that."
Lady Cahill released Kate's chin and looked around her again. "Are you going to offer me a seat or not, young woman?"
This old lady knew her mother? It was more than Kate did. The subject had been forbidden in the Vicarage.
"I'm sorry, Lady Cahill, you took me by surprise. Please take a seat." Kate gestured to the worn settee. "I'm afraid I can't offer you any refresh—"
"Never mind about that. I didn't come here for refreshments," said the old lady briskly. "I'm travelling and I can't abide food when I'm travelling."
"Why did you come here, ma'am?" Kate asked. "You've had little contact with my family for a great many years. I am sure it cannot be chance that has brought you here just now."
Shrewd blue eyes appraised her. "Hmm. You don't beat around the bush, do you, young woman? But I like a bit of plain speaking myself, so I'll put it to you directly. You need my help, my girl."
The grey-green eyes flashed, but Kate said quietly enough, "What makes you think that, Lady Cahill?"
"Don't be foolish, girl, for I can't abide it! It's clear as the nose on your face that you haven't a farthing to call your own. You're dressed in a gown I wouldn't let my maid use as a duster. This house is empty of any comfort, you can't offer me refreshment— No, sit down, girl!"
Kate jumped to her feet, her eyes blazing. "Thank you for your visit, Lady Cahill. I have no need to hear any more of this. You have no claim on me and no right to push your way into my home and speak to me in this grossly insulting way. I will thank you to leave!"
"Sit down, I said!" The diminutive old lady spoke with freezing authority, her eyes snapping with anger. For a few moments they glared at each other. Slowly Kate sat, her thin body rigid with fury.
"I will listen to what you have to say, Lady Cahill, but only because good manners leave me no alternative. Since you refuse to leave, I must endure your company, it being unfitting for a girl of my years to lay hands on a woman so much my elder!"
The old lady glared back at her for a minute then, to Kate's astonishment, she burst into laughter, chuckling until the tears ran down her withered, carefully painted face.
"Oh, my dear, you've inherited you mother's temper as well as her eyes." Lady Cahill groped in her reticule, and found a delicate lace-edged wisp which she patted against her eyes, still chuckling.
The rigidity died out of Kate's pose, but she continued to watch her visitor rather stonily. Kate hated her eyes. She knew they were just like her mother's. Her father had taught her that. . .her father, whose daughter reminded him only that his beloved wife had died giving birth to a baby—a baby with grey-green eyes.
"Now, my child, don't be so stiff-necked and silly," Lady Cahill began. "I know all about the fix you are in—"
"May I ask how, ma'am?"
"I received a letter from a Martha Betts, informing me in a roundabout and illiterate fashion that you were orphaned, destitute and without prospects."
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sp; Kate's knuckles whitened. Her chin rose proudly. "You've been misinformed, ma'am. Martha means well, ma'am, but she doesn't know the whole story."
Lady Cahill eyed her shrewdly. "So you are not, in fact, orphaned, destitute and without prospects."
"I am indeed orphaned, ma'am, my father having died abroad several months since. My two brothers also died close to that time." Kate looked away, blinking fiercely to hide the sheen of tears.
"Accept my condolences, child." Lady Cahill leaned forward and gently patted her knee.
Kate nodded. "But I am not without prospects, ma'am, so I thank you for your kind concern and bid you farewell."
"I think not," said Lady Cahill softly. "I would hear more of your circumstances."
Kate's head came up at this. "By what right do you concern yourself in my private affairs?"
"By right of a promise I made to your mother."
Kate paused. Her mother. The mother whose life Kate had stolen. The mother who had taken her husband's heart to the grave with her. . . For a moment it seemed that Kate would argue, then she inclined her head in grudging acquiescence. "I suppose I must accept that, then."
"You are most gracious," said Lady Cahill dryly.
"Lady Cahill, it is really no concern of yours. I am well able to look after myself—"
"Pah! Mrs Midgely!"
"Yes, but—"
"Now, don't eat me, child!" said Lady Cahill. "I know I'm an outspoken old woman, but when one is my age one becomes accustomed to having one's own way. Child, try to use the brains God gave you. It is obvious to the meanest intelligence that any position offered by a Mrs Midgely is no suitable choice for Maria Farleigh's daughter. A maidservant, indeed! Faugh! It's not to be thought of. There's no help for it. You must come and live with me."
Come and live with an aristocratic old lady? Who from all appearances moved in the upper echelons of the ton? Who would take her to balls, masquerades, the opera—it had long been a dream, a dream for the old Kate. . . It was the new Kate's nightmare.
For the offer to come now, when it was too late—it was a painful irony in a life she had already found too full of both pain and irony.