by Lucy Ashford
‘I was trying,’ she said, ‘to make maths fun.’
He raised his eyebrows. The lad who’d been crawling around the floor emerged just then with a blue peg in his hand. ‘Found it, miss!’ he called triumphantly—then he saw Connor and crept back into his seat. Isobel had adopted that light-hearted, almost flippant look again, though her face was still very pale.
‘Yes, fun!’ she declared. ‘We’re playing a game—it’s called Fox and Geese. I imagine you know it?’
‘No. I don’t know it.’
Undaunted, she chattered on. ‘The person who is the fox—that’s me—has the red peg. The rest are the geese and the geese—that’s the children—can move the yellow pegs and the blue pegs—’
‘And this is a lesson?’ Connor cut in with unconcealed harshness.
Her chin tilted in defiance. ‘We’re practising addition and learning about odd and even numbers. I’ve told the children that if anyone’s dice add up to an odd number, they can move a yellow peg, but if they get an even number, they must move a blue one. And if anyone throws two numbers the same, then I can move the red fox. They’ve picked it up extremely quickly.’ She faced him squarely. ‘I believe I told you that my methods are a little unorthodox, Mr Hamilton. You can’t claim I didn’t warn you.’
The children were watching and listening open-mouthed.
There was no point, decided Connor rather grimly, in making a scene in front of her pupils. So he answered, ‘Would you come outside with me, Miss Blake, for a private word?’
A merry-looking, freckle-faced boy broke in. ‘Sir, Miss Blake’s been teaching us all sorts! We’ve learned the months, too—we’ve been practising them, hard!’
‘Very good,’ answered Connor coolly. ‘Miss Blake. Outside, if you please?’
She followed him to the door, her head held high. And Connor, as he descended the steps into the sunshine, was thinking, Is this games nonsense her way of rebelling against the position I’ve virtually forced her into?
Perhaps the servants were right to complain about her. Demanding that her room be changed, helping herself to food from the kitchen—and now, fun and games in the schoolroom. It looked as if she was going to cause trouble for him every step of the way.
They stood a few yards from the chapel beneath some ancient yews, not far from the memorial stone to her once-proud ancestors. A sudden breeze ruffled her hair, making her look younger and reminding him of the girl she once was. She’d been a rebel even then, because by riding out so often to see him she’d been breaking all the rules of her heritage. Always, she’d had that bright smile on her face—Here I am again!—but he guessed that often she’d been lonely and afraid.
What must it have been like, living with that father? Most likely she’d have known everything that was going on—her father’s gambling, his womanising, his debts. And that knowledge must have been agonising for her.
Suddenly, as they stood out there beneath the yews, Connor wanted to cancel his stupid bargain with Isobel Blake. He’d been a brute to force her into this. He wished he’d never seen her, that day at the midsummer fair...
Something caught at his heart. No. He couldn’t wish that.
Damn it, he didn’t know exactly why, but something had changed in him, the day that he’d noticed her there. Connor had come across numerous women over the years who had used their so-called fragility to try to manipulate him. He was bored by the wiles that had been used by heiresses angling for his affection; he was irritated by their pleas, their tears even.
Without a doubt, he enjoyed the company of a carefully chosen mistress or two—rich women who were safely married, but bored with their husbands, women who thoroughly relished his company in bed and had no foolish dreams of anything more permanent. If they did start making demands on his emotions, he ended the connection swiftly.
But—Isobel. Whether it was the memories that bound them, or her unusual and outright carelessness as to what society thought of her, she had him trapped in a wave of feelings that knocked him sideways.
Deal with it, you fool. And quickly.
He cleared his throat. ‘So,’ he said flatly. ‘The children spent what—an hour?—this morning learning the months of the year. And then you let them play a game?’
‘We spent some time on arithmetic, too.’ She gazed up at him. ‘For example, we worked out how many days are in each month and how many hours are in a week. From that, we calculated how many hours a week their parents work...’
He was looking at her in frank disbelief. ‘Are you sure? I saw no evidence of this on the blackboard.’
She met his eyes defiantly. ‘That’s because I don’t need the blackboard to work the figures out. The children use counters and their slates, but I just use my head. I always liked arithmetic.’
And he suddenly remembered how once Isobel, at the forge, had been glancing at the book Connor’s father kept of income and outgoings. ‘These figures are wrong,’ she’d pointed out. ‘Your father has missed a whole day’s earnings from the weekly total—do you see?’
Isobel was right—and quick though Connor was, he’d needed to use pencil and paper to make the calculations. She had done it all in her head.
What an extraordinary person she was. What a liability she was.
He cleared his throat, aware that two of the children were peeping out from the chapel doorway. ‘I think it best, Miss Blake,’ he said, ‘if you concentrate on rather more conventional lessons from now on. If you’re not careful, your pupils will take advantage of you.’
‘If they don’t enjoy themselves,’ she pointed out calmly enough, ‘then they simply won’t turn up. And they are learning, even though it might not be conventional.’
He felt his jaw tighten. ‘If you say so.’ He indicated the open chapel door. ‘Perhaps you’d better return to them and continue with this morning’s lesson.’
‘Or what’s left of it,’ she retorted sweetly. She made a mocking half-curtsy. ‘Your most obedient servant, Mr Hamilton.’ And she turned to go.
But just at that very minute there was the sound of yapping and a bundle of white fluff came hurtling towards them—Little Jack, with Elvie racing along behind. ‘Connor!’ Elvie was calling. ‘Grandmother told me I could come out to meet you!’ Elvie came to a halt, breathless. ‘Miss Blake, how do you do? Connor, Grandmother said to remind you that we are due to visit Mr and Mrs Phillips and their family in Chipping Calverley for lunch today.’
Connor groaned inwardly—and he judged by Elvie’s expression that she wasn’t entranced by the idea either. ‘I’d not forgotten. Don’t you like the prospect, Elvie?’
The little girl hesitated. ‘They are very polite, I suppose. They play the piano and recite poems. But they don’t have any fun.’ She looked hopefully at Isobel. ‘Couldn’t Miss Blake come with us?’
Connor wasn’t sure how to point out that an employee did not make social visits alongside her superiors—especially if she was determined to make a damned nuisance of herself. It was Isobel who broke the awkward silence by saying, with her light laugh, ‘I really won’t have time to come with you, Elvie. I’ll have so much to do to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson with the children.’
‘Yes,’ Elvie eagerly blurted out, ‘and I hope you’ve been having fun with them, Miss Blake, just like we did last week...’
Her voice trailed away.
Connor felt the sudden anger explode. ‘Last week? Do you mean your day out by the river?’ Elvie looked utterly dismayed. He turned to Isobel, his expression dark with disbelief. ‘Am I really to understand, Miss Blake, that your trip with Elvie involved meeting with those children?’
She only hesitated fractionally. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘A deliberate meeting? Is that why you took such a large quantity of food from the kitchens?’
Again the hesitation. ‘Yes.’
‘
And this was your idea, Miss Blake? On your very first day at Calverley Hall?’
He was aware of Elvie moving slightly at his side. ‘Yes,’ said Isobel for the third time.
Connor dragged in a deep breath. He said to Elvie, ‘Run off home now, will you? And tell your grandmother I’ll be back very soon.’
Elvie cast one last, distraught look at Isobel and left, with Little Jack at her heels. Connor turned back to Isobel. ‘Miss Blake, what possessed you to take Elvie to meet the Plass Valley children? My God, this is beyond a joke...’
‘I apologise.’ She faced him squarely. ‘If you wish, you may have my resignation immediately.’
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘Damn it, no. But—how could you? You know they’re entirely unsuitable company for her!’
‘Perhaps as you were for me?’ she said steadily. ‘Or so they told me. But I, as you must have realised, took absolutely no notice.’
He stared at her, speechless. I was different, he could have tried to say. But was he? Might she be quite right, and he wasn’t different to those children who would be waiting for her inside the chapel?
Before he could think what to say, she was speaking again. Shrugging, even. ‘Of course, you are right, Mr Hamilton. It was very wrong of me to take Elvie to meet the children and you must act as you see fit.’
He sighed. ‘I am not going to call a halt to this venture now. If we tell the children that the school is finished, they’ll never attend any sort of schooling again.’ Once more he indicated the open door of the chapel. ‘You’d better continue with what’s left of your lesson. And the less said about that outing with Elvie, the better.’
She nodded and Connor felt like the clumsiest bully on earth.
But damn it, she’d acted in the most reckless fashion! Taking Elvie to meet with the Plass Valley children, ordering Elvie no doubt to keep silent about it! And yet he still couldn’t help but have his emotions tugged by her. By her outright dignity, despite all that beset her. Despite all that was said about her...
Isobel, who’d been standing beside Connor very white and still, was at last turning to go. That was when he realised a scrap of paper had fallen to the ground. He picked it up. Someone had been writing the days of the month and struggling with them, it appeared. The early attempts were incorrect and had been crossed out—Janury. Januery...
And then Isobel was almost snatching the paper from him.
‘That’s from my lesson,’ she said swiftly. ‘I told you—we’ve been learning the months of the year and some of the children found it rather difficult. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back inside—’
He stopped her by grasping her wrist. ‘But that writing—surely it doesn’t belong to a child!’
‘Your hand,’ she whispered. ‘You’re hurting my wrist, Mr Hamilton. Please let go.’
And he did; but as he released her, he saw that her bright smile had vanished and instead there was on her face was an expression that shook him to his very core—because it was a look of utter despair.
He watched her hurry back inside. And before she closed the door, he heard her say cheerfully, ‘Very well, children. Shall we learn some history next? I’m going to tell you a story that I’m sure you’ll love...’
Connor cursed silently. This time, he was really angry with her. How dare she take Elvie to meet the Plass Valley children? Was it yet another act of deliberate mischief-making? He knew how quickly she’d antagonised the household staff, but to have involved Elvie in such a foolish jaunt almost straight away was going too far! Hopefully Laura would never find out. He ought to have dismissed Isobel on the spot...
But he hadn’t. Why on earth not?
Rubbing his hand across his temples, Connor Hamilton acknowledged that she drove him mad. Whenever he tried to point out the error of her ways—indeed, the outright foolishness of some of her actions—she was always ready with some careless retort, some act of defiance.
And yet he couldn’t help but notice that when she forgot to put on her bright smile and to produce those swift quips of hers, she looked lost. Quite lost. And then it was he, Connor, who was aware of his usual rock-steady composure shifting beneath him, as if the ground he was on was suddenly crumbling, cracking even. It always happened, whenever she was near. It was almost, he thought, like laying his plans for some new feat of engineering—you had to be sure of all your equipment, of all your calculations, and above all that your foundations were rock-solid—but where Isobel Blake was concerned, all his uncertainties seemed founded on quicksand.
Connor led his horse slowly into the Hall’s courtyard, feeling as if he was tearing himself away from a situation that was actually becoming perilous. He realised that something about her was enmeshing him in its coils: her quick tongue, her flash of a cool smile and above all that sudden look of vulnerability. The haunting sadness ever-present in her eyes—always she blinked it swiftly away, but not before something inside him had surged into life: the basic male impulse to stand at her side and defend her against the whole world.
And then—to kiss her.
He ought never to have begun all this. He ought to let her walk away right now—but he found he couldn’t bear the thought of it. And he didn’t like to consider the implications of that.
Chapter Eleven
Isobel continued with the lesson till noon, then she bade the children farewell. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow, miss!’ they called out as they left one by one.
Isobel nodded cheerfully. ‘Goodbye, Mary—don’t forget your sunbonnet! Goodbye, Peter—I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. Goodbye, Reuben. You’ll all be here tomorrow, won’t you, at nine?’
‘’Course we will, miss,’ called Harry, their spokesperson.
She stood by the door, her hand raised in farewell until they were out of sight. Then she went back inside and sat at the desk, motionless. The crisis she’d been dreading had arrived even sooner than she’d feared.
She’d been intelligent and inquisitive as a child. She was eager to learn from an early age, reading simple texts before she was four and enjoying mathematics, too, loving the way everything fitted.
But she was an atrocious speller.
The problem had begun when she was six and her governess had sternly told her mother, ‘I’m afraid your daughter has an issue, Lady Blake. You see, she uses her left hand to write.’
Her mother had been horrified. ‘Then she must be stopped. By whatever means you think necessary!’
And Isobel realised that this was a terrible secret which must, at all costs, be concealed. She had tried desperately hard to use her right hand, as her governess instructed, but her handwriting was abysmal. Secretly she used her left hand, but one day she was caught and her governess fetched a leather strap and bound her left hand behind her back. ‘You mother has ordered me to do this,’ she said.
And so Isobel used her right hand, but her writing was crude and unacceptable, and her spelling skills suffered, too. Whole words and sentences became muddled up in her brain, with each letter taunting her as if it had a life of its own. Her reading was perfect, her capacity for mental arithmetic quite astounding, but no one was interested in that.
She was nine when her mother died, so the scolding stopped and the governesses stopped after a while, too—her father refused to pay for them. But the damage had been done.
And she’d agreed to be a teacher! In her stupidity, she’d thought she could cope with this—after all, it was only for a few weeks. Connor had issued his ultimatum—‘You challenged me to help them, Miss Blake. Well, I’m handing that challenge over to you.’ And his generosity to her friends the Molinas had forced her hand, but now it looked as if she might fall at the first hurdle.
She stared almost blindly at the empty tables and the blackboard she’d wiped clean.
What else had Connor wanted the children to learn? He’d talked about weig
hts and measures—oh, no, yet more long and difficult words! Her brain already over-tired, she went to the bookcase and found a primer with pages full of measurements—feet, rods, furlongs, acres. Pulling a sheet of paper towards her, she began slowly copying the words one by one.
* * *
She didn’t realise how the time had gone by until the door opened and Susan the maid came in.
‘Beg pardon, miss, but it’s well past one o’clock. Mrs Lett’s been expecting you to take lunch with us in the servants’ hall these last few days. And she wants to know, will you be coming there today?’
Isobel rose to her feet. Lunch? She’d simply done without it—and in the evenings she’d eaten in her room. ‘Could you possibly bring me something here, Susan? That is, if it’s not too much trouble?’
‘Not at all, miss.’ Susan bobbed a little curtsy, then hesitated by the door. ‘Miss Blake, they say how this was your home when you were younger. And it’s a real shame that you’ve lost all this. You must have been broken-hearted...’ She pulled up, blushing furiously. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not my place to say it, I’m sure. Begging pardon, miss.’
And she was gone. Isobel sat down again slowly. Did Susan but know it, her memories of those last years at Calverley Hall were so painful that she’d all but blotted them out. Memories of how after her mother’s death her father’s life had sunk further and further into ruin as he drank and gambled with his friends for night after night. Memories of his debtors virtually laying siege to the Hall, which was why he’d taken Isobel to London when she was eighteen. ‘You’ve got to make a good match,’ he’d told her. ‘You’ve got to bring some money into the family—do you understand?’
London. A rented house in down-at-heel Bayswater. The awful Mrs Sparlet dragging her to one party after another. Doors often being slammed in their faces. She recalled her father’s increasing desperation and his final illness only two months after their arrival in the city. He was still being hounded by debtors on his deathbed. Viscount Loxley had actually been Isobel’s saviour—but no one would believe that.