by Janet Grace
Thus Louisa was demurely dressed, her hair tidily braided and pinned around her head, and her luggage ready with the retrieved bonnet and reticule, far earlier than she felt she could reasonably expect breakfast. She sat for a long time by her bedroom window, staring unhappily across the lawns to the woods beyond. None of her thoughts lightened her expression. When a movement disturbed the tranquil scene before her, and she observed Lord Alnstrop astride a handsome bay horse, and followed by a couple of I red-brown gun dogs, descend the side of the lawns and vanish along a track in the woods, a twist of pain crossed her features. She stared dully for some minutes at the spot where he had vanished, then quietly descended for breakfast.
She had not long taken a bowl of tea and a slice of bread—all she could face despite the-appetising spread of ham, eggs and kidneys in silver covered dishes arrayed along the sideboard—when John appeared, his arm no longer in a sling, closely followed by Henrietta.
‘Oh, Alnstrop left a message for you.’
John looked at Louisa from over the dangerously overloaded plate which he had placed before him at the table. He munched a kidney appreciatively before he continued, quite oblivious of her sudden stillness and pale face.
‘His sincere apologies that he offended you, this was very far from his intention.’
Here John paused and placed a fork, which he had been overloading with ham and eggs as he spoke, carefully into his mouth. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at his two listeners while he chewed, obviously hoping for some explanation of these surprising words from his brother, but meeting with no response he shrugged and finished his message.
‘He regrets having missed you this morning, he has to visit a tenant over at Bedescombe. Though why he has decided that is so urgent, I don’t know. He has known for a week the man must be seen some time—in fact, I thought he would send Horley over; no reason why not. Anyway, he has gone, sends his farewells, best wishes for your journey and future, all that stuff, you know!’
John lost interest in his brother’s vagaries, and addressed himself more seriously to the problems of emptying his plate.
Henrietta spoke quietly to Louisa.
‘I will take you down to the village in the phaeton, as you have the band-box to carry, in time for the stage.’
‘Stage?’ John looked up, profoundly shocked. ‘Travel on the stage when we have rows of carriages out there, positively rotting to their axles for want of use? Ridiculous! Where are you going? Upper Stoneham? I’ll drive you myself. Take the curricle. There’s a grand stretch of road between here and Hedgecombe Bottom, do you know it? I don’t suppose you do, come to think of it, so I ought to show you. Can really spring the cattle, grand larks. I’ll take you. Be a pleasure!’
He grinned at her over his polished plate, and seemed genuinely disappointed when she insisted that she would prefer to travel on the stage as she had planned, be it ever so uncomfortable.
‘I must learn to do what is expected of a governess,’ she said, ‘and I cannot feel that arriving with a windswept flourish in your curricle is likely to endear me to my new employers, or anyone else in their neighbourhood. Just think of the gossip. I know village life. No, I shall arrive respectably on the stage.’
‘Well, I must say this governessing seems to me to be a dashed dreary business. Can’t you set a new style for gallant, gadding governesses to gambol and gallivant gaily? I swear it could become all the rage. Then you would be honour bound to carouse in a curricle!’
He was clearly set to argue the point indefinitely, so Louisa spoke again.
‘I am amazed that you are so determined that I should not travel on the stage. When I remember the “carriage” you escorted me in yesterday morning, the stage should prove a luxurious alternative!’
John was forced to laugh, and Henrietta stepped in to support Louisa.
‘She must do as she believes best, you know. It would be foolish to make her future job more difficult.’
In the event they both accompanied Miss Stapely to the Alnstrop Arms, where the stage arrived with remarkable punctuality. Louisa made her farewells with mixed feelings, aware that she would probably never see either of them again. Henrietta kissed her fondly as she climbed into the carriage to squeeze between the side of the coach and an adenoidal adolescent girl in faded gingham, who in turn sat by a red-faced farmer in an alarmingly garish waistcoat, presumably her father. The opposite seat contained a pinch-faced old lady clutching a basket which appeared to contain a live chicken, to which she crooned softly, a plain-dressed young man, perhaps a clerk, and, spreading over far more than her share of the seating, a vast woman in an overworked black dress who, legs astride and arms akimbo, chins resting on her mountainous bosom, snored loudly in the corner. The clerk shot her increasingly nervous and outraged glances as she settled ever closer against him.
John, helping Louisa into her place, gave a great snort of laughter as he surveyed her companions.
‘Personally, I preferred the fish!’ he commented, and winked at her.
In her last glimpse of them, as the coach pulled forward with a jolt, they were waving cheerfully, totally unconcerned by the astonishment they were occasioning in Alnstrop village at this unheard of mode of conveyance for their friends.
At Upper Stoneham Louisa alighted at the Green Dragon Inn, a respectable house of some size, where the landlord was happy to send a boy to Stoneham Grange to inform Mrs. Addiscombe of Miss Stapely’s arrival. He served the new arrival a glass of lemonade in the parlour, and set himself to discover all about her. Louisa, accustomed to the curiosity a newcomer evoked in a country life, was unresentful, but quite relieved when a smart dogcart and groom arrived to carry herself and her band-box to Stoneham Grange.
CHAPTER TEN
A fortnight later it seemed to Louisa that she had been at Stoneham forever, and her incredible adventures were but so many fantasies she must have read some time between the pages of a gothic novel. This air of unreality did much to dull the pain of memories—one cannot grieve for long over a fictitious hero, she told herself. Not that the Grange’s new governess had much time for idle thoughts. Her days had been fully occupied with her new job. There was just now, however, a welcome lull.
Louisa was sitting at a desk in the schoolroom, elbows resting on the polished wood, chin on hands, gazing out of the window at the gardens and surrounding park, all tastefully planted with young trees. The Grange was modern, and extravagantly laid out, an opulent reminder that Mr. Addiscombe had made a great deal of money in the City.
She glanced conscientiously round the room. The four children in her charge were labouring intently, and in a blissful silence, with the promise of a nature walk when their tasks were complete. The two boys, Clifton, a sturdy eight-year-old, and Geoffrey, at seven the baby of the family, she had found woefully untutored. They were now intent upon pothooks and fine-looped uprights, Geoffrey’s tongue protruding, small and pink, between his lips as he manoeuvred the squeaking pencil over the slate.
The girls, Isabel and Jane, who, at eleven and ten, considered themselves very superior to their brothers, sat on either side of the far window to gain a good light for their stitching. Each was working a sampler of letter shapes and stitches, beginning with the alphabet in minute cross-stitch, first in capital letters, then small. Each was to complete four letters before the promised walk, and they were trying hard to do so. Isabel worked with her characteristic unswerving, unhurried determination, which brooked no interruption until the task was complete. Jane, by contrast, alternated periods of wistful daydreaming with bouts of anxious and frantic activity, stabbing the cloth and yanking the thread in haste to catch up with her sister. Louisa regarded the top of Jane’s head with rueful affection. She was a more appealing child than Isabel, but her governess could foresee blood, sweat and tears stitched into this sampler.
Louisa reflected on her meeting with their father. He was a strange, eccentric man, irritated by his family, over whom he acted the petty tyrant, a
nd spending almost all his days shut up in his study, claiming a great interest in all things natural and scientific. He had interviewed her with a gruff abruptness bordering on rudeness.
‘Come in! Come in! Don’t dither in the doorway!’
She had entered and walked to the desk, set by the window in a room darkened by walls which were entirely lined by shelves of books and display cabinets. These were cluttered full. Stuffed birds and animals, insects impaled on pins and earnestly labelled, skulls, stones and fossils jostled each other for space. There seemed to be a curious lack of intelligent order in their arrangement, and Louisa, glancing round while her employer pointedly ignored her, found herself wondering how much of the assortment Mr. Addiscombe had collected and identified himself. She was quietly amused to discover later from Mrs. Rudge, the housekeeper, that he had bought the entire collection, complete with library books, from a house sale. This, she was told, was at the time he had finally given up work in the City altogether, and wished his connections with trade to be quietly forgotten. He wished to immerse himself in a gentlemanly hobby.
‘And ’tis my opinion he wouldn’t know a kitchen cockroach if you stuck one under his nose!’ Mrs. Rudge had sniffed disparagingly.
‘Hurrumph!’ He had glared up at Louisa from under bushy brows, not bothering to move from his seat, or even lift the finger that marked his place in the vast tome spread before him.
‘How do you do, Mr. Addiscombe?’ she had replied, icily.
‘So you are this Miss Stapely whom Mrs. Addiscombe has had so much to say about? Glad you have arrived at last. Perhaps now we will have a little peace.’ He had frowned and drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Scientific study! That is what they need. Not all this namby-pamby sketching and music my wife talks about. A strong understanding of the natural sciences. Boys are fools, all boys, and mine seem to be worse than most. But one day they will be men, and I shall wish to converse with them on subjects of interest to myself. I shall expect them to have a good understanding of the world the good Lord has bequeathed to us, and all His creatures. You will begin such studies now. It is never too early, you understand, never too early.’ He had glared ferociously at her.
Although startled, Louisa had had no intention of betraying as much to this pompous, opinionated man.
Certainly, sir,’ she had replied coolly. ‘And your daughters?’
He had appeared to have forgotten their existence, and to count them for little when reminded.
‘Ah. Hurrumph.’ He had paused, and the scowl had deepened. ‘I leave that entirely for their mother to decide. That will be all, Miss Stapely.’ He had bent immediately over his book.
Astounded at the man, she had departed, and could only be thankful that she only encountered him at the evening meal, which she was expected to attend with the family.
Mrs. Addiscombe had proved very different from her husband, though hardly more intelligent. A kindly, well-intentioned, silly woman, her ideas seemed chiefly formed by the endless succession of novels that made up her daily entertainment and intellectual stimulus. Although she thought she was fond of her children, she found their presence an irritating interruption to her reading time, their demands a source of aggravation. A string of imagined ailments, however, ensured that she had constant reasons for keeping them at arm’s length, when she could dote on them enthusiastically from a safe distance. Friends and neighbours considered her to be an exceptionally devoted parent. Applied to for guidelines on the girls’ schooling, she had been predictably unhelpful.
‘Oh, whatever you think, my dear Miss Stapely. Seeing as who you are, I am quite trusting you to know all the right things, and quite how everything should be managed. All the things an exclusive young lady should know these days, and how to go on in the best society. Well, from your family you will know all that. Just whatever you think fit.’ This attempt at thought had proved too much. She lay back on the chaise-longue and slowly raised a plump white hand to her forehead.
‘Just one of my dizzy spells,’ she quavered weakly. ‘Please, my vinaigrette...’ She gestured vaguely at the little table nearby, her eyes closed. Louisa found the tiny bottle from amid the clutter of books, letters, comfits, glasses, fruit and handkerchiefs. ‘So kind... and perhaps you could hand me the bowl of grapes? They are so refreshing.’
Leaving the doting mother suitably fortified against life, Louisa had retired with mixed emotions. Her sympathy for the children was great, neglected as they were by both parents, but at the same time this neglect gave her an almost unrestricted freedom to teach them and order their days as she chose, unsupervised by any critic. This pleased her, and she had found planning their work an absorbing challenge.
‘I have finished, please, Miss Stapely.’
Clifton approached, offering his slate with his left hand, and shaking his right vigorously.
‘It makes my fingers sore.’
‘A little more practice will soon remedy that, Clifton.’ Louisa smiled, and he groaned.
‘Yes, that is very neat. Well done. Though still shaky on those ‘S’s. You shall practise again tomorrow.’
She walked over to study the progress of the other three, who were finishing off as hastily as possible. Jane flinched, frowned and sucked her finger.
‘Clifton, please go and tell Georgiana we will be leaving for our walk in fifteen minutes, if she would care to accompany us. She did mention that she would like to come.’
‘Yes, Miss Stapely.’
The boy ran off willingly. Their elder stepsister, child of Mrs. Addiscombe’s early, brief marriage to a man of good family but presumably little sense, who had rapidly departed this life’s responsibilities, was a favourite of the younger children. Louisa was finding her role of companion to be much less arduous than she had anticipated.
Just fifteen minutes later, Miss Stapely and the children were gathered in the front hall, the children clad in stout boots and neat woollen coats. The girls dangled small stone crocks, begged from the kitchen and given makeshift string loop handles. The boys clutched a colander each. Rags, the boys’ terrier, a dog of great heart but little legs, quivered in anticipation as he sat. They were waiting for Georgiana.
‘We need a net,’ said Clifton gloomily. ‘We shan’t reach anything with only these.’
‘I can reach! I can reach, even if you can’t!’
Geoffrey swung his colander out at arm’s length and balanced on tiptoe, stretching into an imaginary stream.
Clifton regarded his brother’s antics unenthusiastically for a moment, then gently placed his boot on to Geoffrey’s wavering posterior, and pushed.
The resulting crash, clatter and bark brought fierce, hissed rebukes from an alarmed Miss Stapely, and she felt a surge of irritation at the silliness of children. There were times when she would give much for the stimulation of adult company and conversation, such as she had found at ... But it was no use thinking such thoughts.
They were standing in a silent line, apprehensively watching the study door, when Georgiana eventually tripped lightly down the staircase and paused midway to favour them with a smile.
‘Louisa, I am so sorry! I truly did not mean to keep you waiting.’
Georgiana in any circumstances would have been a sight worth waiting for. Blonde curls tumbled in artful disarray about her face and from beneath a straw chip-bonnet. Great blue eyes gazed innocently. Her cheeks held the hint of pink seen blushing on the bud of a white rose, and her red lips, parted slightly, betrayed even pearl-white teeth between. Her powder-blue walking-dress, lavishly trimmed with white fur, was dazzlingly unsuitable for the frog-spawn collecting expedition that had been planned, and she twirled a white silk parasol with a mother-of-pearl handle.
‘Ah!’ commented Louisa, surveying this vision thoughtfully. ‘I perceive that today I am to make the acquaintance of the renowned Mr. Blane!’
With a quick giggle, her finger to her lips, and an anxious glance at the study door, the delightful Miss Lyntrell danced down
the remaining stairs and swept them all along with her out into the sunshine.
‘Hateful Louisa,’ she said, taking that lady’s arm affectionately. ‘How do you always know these things?’
They wandered at a leisurely pace across the gardens, between the formal rose-beds, then beyond on to the lawns.
‘It is just possible,’ Georgiana commented nonchalantly, twirling her parasol to make the tassels fly, ‘that Mr. Blane may be taking the air this afternoon.’
She flashed a sideways smile at Louisa that would have slain the heart of any young buck in the area, then gave an engaging chuckle.
‘Though, of course, I could be mistaken.’
‘No, no, my dear, I have quickly learnt never to doubt your ... er ... instinct in these matters!’ Louisa smiled. ‘You would constantly be proving me wrong. You have such a bevy of local admirers—why, I must have met a round dozen who just happen to be taking exercise when we venture out! Most extraordinary! They must all be amazingly healthy—’
Georgiana giggled and interrupted. ‘And they are all developing a quite remarkable interest in the scientific study of natural history! Did you hear? Alexander Fetton assures me his father has ordered some rare, exotic imported trees for their park, and he intends to collect some of their leaves to bring as soon as possible for you and the children to press! Aren’t you grateful for this disinterested attention?’
Louisa had to laugh at this extravagant gift.
‘But Mr. James Blane—it seems to me you regard him differently from your other admirers?’
Aware that her comments might be resented as an impertinence, still Louisa felt obliged to speak of this. She had quickly seen that Georgiana was in her way as neglected as the younger children, for she lacked anyone in the house who interested themselves in her conduct, her friendships or her aspirations. She had a generous allowance from her father’s family, with which, owing to her mother’s indolence, she was free to choose and order whatever clothes she wished. She was also a considerable heiress, and would come into a very large fortune when she came of age. Taking all this, and the girl’s quite outstanding beauty, into account, it seemed a recipe ripe for disaster.