by Edith Layton
“No, no, my dear,” Miss Comfort answered coolly, when she could, when the earl had steered her to sit and pressed his hand against her shoulder to signify she should remain so. “No,” Miss Comfort said then with remarkable control, for even as she spoke, Mrs. Haverford and Lady Malverne appeared wide-eyed in the doorway, “no, not at all. I think, in the end,” she said, her voice shaking only a little, “it was rather because I liked you too well.”
When the boys had been sent off to keep Lord Burton and his crew from the vicinity, with a tale of a sleepwalking servant to swear by, and the door had been closed against any other curious souls who might have heard the stir, Miss Comfort sat in a great chair. She held on to the glass of water the earl had gotten her as though it were her sanity itself, and quietly and reasonably explained her imposture. So sensibly and calmly did she speak that despite the hour, the strange circumstances, her madly disordered hair and bizarre nightrobe, with its bit of sheet cobbled onto its neck to improvise a ghostly cowl, she had presence, poise, and a certain terrible dignity.
“I resented you at first, my child, as why should I not have,” she asked rhetorically, “when it seemed obvious to me that your advent meant my decline? I’d lived with the Haverfords for eight years. Eight years ago, my dear, you were not yet a woman, Lord Malverne was still in shortcoats, our dear Sally had not yet been born. That is eight years, if you wish to find a means of measuring it. I’d grown to care for Roberta deeply, and had envisioned ending my days with her. Yet, you forced me to see that which I had forgotten, what a governess-companion ought never to forget, which is that she is not a member of the family, and so, unlike a disagreeable or infirm mother, daughter, or grandmother, she must leave when her usefulness is done.”
Victoria knew only too well what Miss Comfort was saying and thought she was the only one who did, but Mrs. Haverford spoke at once, anger almost overriding the sorrow in her tone. “But, Comfort, I told you, and told you again, that I wanted you with us, no matter how long Victoria stayed on.”
“So you did, Roberta.” The older woman nodded, as though Mrs. Haverford were an especially apt pupil who’d gotten a difficult problem right. “And I’d begun to believe you, but then I took to watching Miss Dawkins, and that was when the plan to frighten her away took hold in my mind. I decided it was imperative that you leave here, child,” she said seriously, gazing at the young woman in her nightrobe, sighing then, “but because of what I saw in you, and what I saw when I looked in my mirror.
“I was,” the older woman said then, raising her chin, looking so imperious that it was as if her bizarre raiment fell away and she were clothed in regal robes, “once young, and once very lovely. I know,” she said with a hint of laughter in her thin voice as she glanced to the earl, “that is scarcely believable, and that any old wreck of a person may say it if there’s no one to gainsay it. But it is nevertheless true. I never lie. Not overtly.”
But the smile fell away as she continued. “Yes, so I was. I had fair hair and a fair face and form to go with it, and I was not unremarked by the gentlemen. I’d once worked for a noble family, you recall my telling you, Roberta, long before I took any of the succession of unexceptional positions I held before I volunteered to come to you. And, I might say now, after all those tedious posts, I’d decided that it was a choice of coming to you or going to my eternal rest. Although I admit that had I left the planet as I planned to then, I suppose I too would have been doomed to eternal roving like the poor Lady Ann I impersonated. But I was disappointed with life.
“There’d been a gentlemen, you see,” she said proudly, “in that noble house, and he was a nobleman, handsome, clever, and all any woman could ask. And I’d loved him. For fifteen years. For fifteen unswerving, devoted years, although I knew that as I was a servant, there was no hope for any lasting alliance between us. When he died, there was nothing left for me, no matter where I went. And I did not want that to happen to Miss Dawkins.”
“Ah, poor Comfort,” Mrs. Haverford cried. “But Cole would never compromise a good young woman.”
“I understand,” Miss Comfort retorted a little testily, “but that was precisely part of the problem. My gentleman never compromised me either, you see.”
As everyone in the room stared at her in confusion, she went on, more rue than pride in her voice now. “He was entirely noble. I was entirely safe in his household. He’d sigh at me, look at me longingly, he’d go to his wife’s bed with a backward glance at me, he’d go out to his mistresses and his revels after yearning over me, and then come back to spend long hours discoursing with me, feeling noble, no doubt, at how he’d withstood temptation with me. But I was in his thrall nonetheless. It would have been nobler perhaps had he made me his true mistress, not his chaste one. For when he’d gone, I had not even memories, only regrets. I cannot say with certainty if that is true either. After all, I was what I was, and could be no other thing. But I didn’t wish such a fate for Victoria, who was incontestably a good and lovely creature. And who seemed, daily, to be becoming as I was. Hence”—she laughed, more wildly now—“as you see, a ghost for a governess. A governess for a ghost.
“And it’s likely,” she went on, quickly regaining control, as though she realized what her audience was thinking, “that it was just as I’ve taught children for a generation: a lie leads to worse lies. For had I not feigned illness so as not to be sent away, I would not have been closed in my rooms for days, and would not have fretted and become restless, or heard the children speculating on Victoria’s fear of ghosts, and after hearing of the hidden passages in the manor, would not have discovered the same sort of secret corridors, obviously long forgotten, linking the nurseries, schoolrooms, and upper servants’ rooms here in the Hall. And so would never have had the means to attempt my wild ruse.”
“The first earl disliked seeing servants in the corridors as much as the Ludlows do,” the earl put in quietly. “He had passages constructed so that his children might be cared for by ‘unseen’ hands. The man deserved ghosts. It was the librarian who told me of it, having found a reference in one of the Hall’s oldest histories,” he added almost apologetically.
“So you knew?” Miss Comfort asked.
“I thought I did.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t believe Miss Dawkins would walk my midnight halls—there was no reason for it, when she knew too well she could have me back in a trice with a word. The children might have been suspects, but Alfie banished the idea with one look at me. Still, I hesitated to drop a word to save you further exertion for fear of offending you if I were wrong, for I couldn’t imagine why you’d terrify Sally.”
“Unfair, my lord,” Miss Comfort said, turning very white. “I never suspected she’d be in here, as I never expected to encounter your mama and the boys in the hallway. It was all for Miss Dawkins.”
“And so it was all wasted,” the earl said softly, “for I’m going to marry her, Miss Comfort. I’ve asked, she’s agreed, but I didn’t dare let it out for fear it was dislike of her that was spurring our ghost, and I didn’t wish to make matters worse.”
“How could they be?” Miss Comfort laughed brokenly. “At least for me. I congratulate you, but I’m not sure, no, I’m not sure at all that it makes me feel very much better, though of course I’m pleased for her. But as for me?” Her voice trailed off; she looked very old and pensive, but there was too much excitement in the room for anyone to notice.
“Oh, how splendid!” Mrs. Haverford cried, embracing Victoria, embracing her son, even, in her delight, embracing Lady Malverne.
That lady stood very still, and when the earl cocked a brow at her continued silence, as his mother began to look very put out at it, she spoke slowly and thoughtfully.
“I can’t say I’m delighted,” Lady Malverne mused. “No, Roberta, I cannot. For I’d plans for him and a certain heiress. No doubt it will be difficult for me to live down the fact that he’s marrying his governess. An Earl of Clune and a governess…” She shook her head doubtfu
lly. Then, “Oh,” she cried at once, as though she’d crossed a sharp tack in her ruminations, suddenly appearing very animate and very like her son Theo, “the very thing! It will do, my lord. Congratulations,” she said in a sprightly manner, taking his hand and pressing it, before pressing her cool cheek to Victoria’s flushed one and almost singing, “my fondest felicitations, it will do!
“For it occurs to me,” she said happily, “that it is like to be the most shocking thing Clune will ever do in all his reign as earl. He is the most disastrously sober fellow, a somber footnote to the history of all those riotous predecessors of his. Those of us, his relatives who live in society, rue it, you know, for if nothing else marks him as not born to the title, and a par…” But there she paused just before her lips formed the complete word “parvenu,” and aware that she’d been about to stumble, she pulled her thoughts up and said, “Ah…perfect. This will make him appear to be much more in the direct line, you see.
“An Earl of Clune,” she said to Mrs. Haverford’s mystified expression, “is always scandalous. It’s expected of him, it’s fitting. My dear Roberta, rejoice with me. I can hold my head up again in society—there is a tale to be told of him now.”
“So pleased,” the earl commented, his dark face becoming cold, even as his mother drew herself up to defend her new daughter-in-law, “to be able to live up to my name without having to despoil dozens of maidens or youths. How fortunate that I met Victoria before I might have had to find some really exotic addiction. Although I might have taken up with some fille de joie and then married my mistress, would that have done?” he asked coolly, a bit of steel in his voice as he sent one significant glance toward his new fiancée.
“That would have been going too far, my lord,” Lady Malverne said, after meeting his eye and acknowledging his stern hint by nodding slightly before saying, “gossip being one thing, infamy another.”
Aware that he had won a concession, for in the circles Lady Malverne traveled in, a governess was actually rated a rung lower than a mistress, the earl decided to end the night’s conversation before shock produced further gaucheries. As though in silent agreement, the ladies began to file out from Victoria’s room.
Mrs. Haverford supported Miss Comfort and said, as they neared the door and she put her arm round the older woman so that servants might not see the odd nightrobe she affected, “But you will stay on, Comfort, that is essential.”
Miss Comfort paused.
“I think it would be better if I did go to my cousin Emma’s for a space,” she said softy. “I’m well off now, you know, and can afford to lord it over her there. I need time to sort matters out. I was very foolish, you know.”
“But, Comfort,” Mrs. Haverford protested.
“My dear Roberta,” Miss Comfort replied haughtily, with an ironic smile, “my name is actually Mary. Mary Clothilde, to be precise, as my mother was French, you see. But you never knew that fact, and have forgotten the other. That was only correct after all, for related or not, I was only a servant to you. But it’s been a great many years since I last answered to my own name. Yes,” she remarked quietly, putting her head to the side as though listening to an echo of her words, “yes, I believe I should go for a space, yes.” And she left the room very slowly, as one who is indeed, as she must have been, very weary.
When no one but the earl and Victoria were left, he smiled at her and asked simply, “Can you sleep?”
“No,” she replied
“Good,” he said. “We’ll see the sunup together. Throw on a robe to prevent talk, we’ll meet in the morning room to satisfy propriety, and then, although we still can’t do all I’d wish, yet we’ll talk all we please. And we’ve a great deal to talk about. I think fifty years might be able to encompass it all. Now, I’ll settle Theo and his crew, and see you there very soon.”
The earl took the stairs as quickly as one of the boys might have, but when he reached the music room to rout the ghost-hunters there, he was surprised to find it unnecessary, since a sleepy Theo and his two weary friends, a vastly contented Lord Burton, and a glum Alfie and Bobby, were clearly already on the move, leaving even as he entered.
“Ah, there you are, my lord, we waited for you. Thank you so much,” Lord Burton said with satisfaction. “It was the thrill of a lifetime. I shall be eternally grateful, and when my article appears in our little journal, be sure I’ll send you a copy.”
“Capital show, Cole,” Theo agreed over a vast yawn, as his friends nodded agreement, “although can’t say I’d care to see it if I were all alone. Still, smashing place, this. Great fun,” he said as he dragged himself up the stair to ready himself to sleep until noon, and his companions straggled after him.
“They never heard nothing Comfort done,” Alfie said in disgust when they all were lost to sight. “Too busy down here. They say as they saw a ghost here. A young and beautiful lady all in shining white, they said. Fairly killed themselves with excitement, and drank themselves silly afterward congratulating themselves for it. Prolly a trick of the lightning, I say. Oh no, they say, Lady Ann, to the life. Or death. People,” Alfie said shrewdly, “believe what they want in this old life, don’t they, my lord?”
“Indeed,” the earl agreed, “but I’m grateful for it, lad. Comfort’s got enough on her plate as it is. Now, off to bed, chaps, well done.”
He turned to leave them and hasten to the morning room, when Alfie said softly but imperatively, halting him in his tracks.
“Ah, no, my lord. I can’t. Bobby, you get yourself up and kip out. I’ll come later. I’ve got to have a word with his lordship.”
“It’s very late,” the earl said, with some futile yearning, looking down at Alfie as his brother flew up the stair. “Wouldn’t tomorrow do as well?”—all the while knowing, from knowing his man, that it was only wishful thinking on his part.
For, “No, my lord,” Alfie said very sadly, shaking his head. “I can’t sleep on it one more night, sir. It’s like a lump won’t go down when I swallow. It’s like a rock in my pillow. I’ve got to say it now, or bust.”
“It’s a night for revelations,” the earl sighed. “Let’s have done with all of them, then. Have a seat, Alfie, and we’ll have it out in a twinkling, as the tooth-drawer says.”
When Alfie didn’t smile in reply, the earl said gently, “Come, lad. It can’t be so bad as all that.”
“It can, my lord,” the fair-haired boy answered, now seeming very young, now seeming his true age at last as he shuddered in the thin late-night air, and looked up at the earl hopelessly. “And it is.”
16
The music room seemed to hold an extra silence, as rooms will when a large company has lately left them. The earl offered the boy a seat, but Alfie only shook his head, sending his light hair dancing, and stubbornly held on to the back of a chair, as though that would be a moral as well as a physical prop in what he clearly looked to as a coming ordeal.
But the earl sat, lowering himself into a green tapestried chair, so that his eyes would be on a level with the boy’s own worried ones. Then he crossed his legs, and with a lazy ease of manner that belied both his impatience to be gone to his lady and his growing worry about what the boy wished to disclose, he said, “Come, Alfie, it’s late, I’m quite old, you know. Out with it before I grow too old to care.”
“You’ve dealt square with us, no one could be better to us. It’s not right not to tell you,” Alfie said tersely.
“Probably not,” the earl agreed. “Is it that you’ve done away with one of my guests? I might reward you, Alfie, but don’t try to up the price by drawing the matter out.”
“Please, sir,” Alfie said, his own face white as a ghost’s might have been in the scant remaining light in the room.
“All right, Alfie,” the earl said, now all seriousness, almost as somber as the boy, “I understand. I’ll be silent until you’re done. But go on with it, please.”
“I wanted to tell you from the first…almost from the first,” Al
fie amended, “but time passed, you know. And I told myself it didn’t matter. Until today, when you said you was going to make us your wards. Even then, everything kept happening to keep my mind off it, keeping the others away from Miss Victoria’s rooms, hunting down Comfort, I’d all but forgot it again. But tonight Lord Burton was going on about his ghosts again. He was saying as how they listened to everything went on in a house, which was why Lady Ann appeared where people were waiting for her. He said that if they could read minds, why, they could say ‘Boo!’ to you in your sleep, and save themselves the trouble of haunting, but as they couldn’t, they had to listen sharp to everything everyone said. He called them ‘silent company.’ It were interesting drivel, my lord, but that ain’t it.
“’Cause then he said something important, and it fair killed me. He said that nothing is ever lost in this old world, everything has an ‘aura’ or an ‘emanation.’ And so even a secret never dies, since even if only a wall hears it or sees it, it’s recorded and down, somewhere, so someone can always ferret it out. And then I knew I couldn’t hide the truth no more, and that I’d only make myself sick for trying.
“I think, my lord,” he said then, an expression of such naked vulnerability on his face that the earl scarcely recognized him, “that you’re such a fellow as wouldn’t give us up for what I have to say. You mightn’t make us your wards no more, no. But I believe”—and here he paused, as if to reassure himself of the truth of what he said—“I do believe you’d never give us up entirely for it.”
“Thank you,” the earl said softly, knowing the best compliment he’d ever received in his life when he heard it, even if he didn’t know its reason for being, or if it would even turn out to be true.
“Our mama, she wasn’t no seamstress,” Alfie said in a rush. “No, nothing like. Which ain’t to say she din’t try it, but she was no good at it, so when she came to town after our da died a few years back—and he was a sailor, my lord, and they was married, I got their marriage lines still—she turned to the only sort of work a female with three kids to grow could do down there where she wound up, with no penny in ’er pocket.