Georgie Lee – The Cinderella Governess (страница 10)

She reached the small brook cutting across a dip in the road and paused on the sloping and muddy bank. Further away, outside the woods, she could hear the river it came from rushing along its banks. A line of flat stones split the small current which ran clear, showing the smooth pebbles and mud at the bottom of the bed. She wanted to sit down on the bank, drop her head in her hands and watch the water flowing past until nothing else mattered.

No, I can’t give up. There had to be a way to succeed, she only needed to find it and soon. She stepped on to the first rock and then the next one. She almost slipped off the third when it tilted beneath her weight. She threw out her arms to regain her balance, then hurried to the far bank. She didn’t need wet boots on top of her present troubles.

Reaching the other side, her resolve began to fade. She didn’t want to continue with this errand, or her time at Huntford Place. Finding a way to make the girls behave seemed as impossible as finding her mother, but she couldn’t give up. She’d write to Miss Fanworth about what to do and ask her not to tell Madame. Perhaps she’d have some suggestions for Joanna.

In a clearing up ahead, the grey-stone vicarage with a tilted chimney releasing a tendril of pine-scented smoke came into view. Over the low roof rose the square spire of the church behind it, squat against the scattered clouds filling the September sky. This wasn’t the church she and the family attended on Sunday in town, but a living on Helmsworth Manor which served the Marquis of Helmsworth, his staff and the tenants in the small village a mile off.

She heaved a large sigh as she entered the front garden, too upset to summon her usual steadfast cheerfulness. Let Vicar Carlson see her surly and ill-tempered, she didn’t care. A tangle of chrysanthemums, mallow and weeds choked both sides of the slate walk leading to the sturdy door. She knocked lightly on the wood and listened for the answering footsteps of the vicar or a housekeeper from inside. The rustle of the wind through the surrounding trees were the only noises which greeted her.

She leaned off the steps to peer in the front window. Inside was as untidy as the garden with stacks of books piled on every surface. It appeared more like the messy studio of their old art master, Signor Bertolli, than the neat and orderly abode of a vicar. Leaning away from the window, she caught her pinched expression reflected in the glass.

Taking another deep breath, she forced the crease between her eyes to soften and the impassive look she’d perfected during the last four weeks at Huntford Place to return. No one needed to know anything was wrong with her, especially not a stranger. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Few people gave a second thought to a lowly governess.

A few more minutes passed while she waited for someone to return. She tapped the book against her hand. It was clear there was no one here. She could leave the book on the step and be on her way, but she couldn’t risk it being damaged. Sir Rodger had given her an errand and she must do it well. She didn’t want to fail at every task she’d been set to here in Hertfordshire.

She tucked her skirt under her legs, about to sit down and wait, when the whinny of a horse from behind the house caught her notice. She followed the vicarage around to the back. A horse was tied to a tree in the small graveyard between the house and the church. An older man stood before one of the headstones, staring down at the brown grass surrounding it. He was heavyset but tall, with grey hair slicked back above a proud forehead. Sadness left deep creases in the smooth skin and drew down the lines around his mouth, adding years to his face. He held his hat in one hand as he reached out to trace the etched and weathered headstone in front of him. It was pitched to one side from age, but the small bunch of violets laid on its curving top set it apart from the others.

He hadn’t seen her and she didn’t want to interrupt his contemplation. She was about to go, but he clenched his fist in his mouth in a stifled sob. She was afraid to approach him, to interrupt his grief, but she couldn’t leave him alone any more than she could have the new girls who used to cry during their first night at the school.

She approached him, the dry grass crunching beneath her boots and announcing her presence. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Yes, just an old man weeping over the past.’ He rubbed the moisture from his eyes with his fingers then dropped his arm and at last looked at her.

Joanna gasped. His eyes were the same colour as hers and just as vivid.

‘Jane?’ he whispered, dropping his hat. His face went white beneath his grey hair with the same shock Isabel had worn the time she’d come down from the attic claiming to have spied a ghost. In the end it had been nothing more than an old dress dummy covered in dust.

‘No, I’m Miss Radcliff, the new governess at Huntford Place.’ Joanna was eager to ease his alarm the way she’d eased Isabel’s.

He continued to stare at her and she studied his round face and the slender nose set over full lips. Something about him seemed familiar but she’d never seen the gentleman before.

‘Of course you are, how silly of me.’ The slight ruddiness along his cheeks returned as he plucked his hat off the ground and settled it over his hair. ‘You must forgive an old man his foolishness. You reminded me of someone I loved very much.’

Joanna took a cautious step back.

‘My daughter,’ he clarified. ‘You look very much like she did at your age, with the same hair and eyes. The resemblance is remarkable.’

He rubbed his round chin, his previous melancholy threatening to overcome him again.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but Sir Rodger asked me to return this book to Vicar Carlson. Do you know when he’ll return?’ Despite the stranger’s kindly manner, she wanted to be done with this errand, to enjoy the solitude of the long walk back to Huntford Place. She needed the quiet to gather herself before she was thrust back into the pit of she-vipers and their indifferent parents.

‘Vicar Carlson? Why, that’s me.’ He didn’t seem too sure but it wasn’t her place to question a clergyman.

She handed him the book. ‘I won’t disturb you any longer. I’ll be on my way.’

‘No, please stay. You seem troubled.’

She ran her foot over the patch of tall grass in front of her, trying to bite back the worries which had followed her through the forest. At school there’d always been Grace, Rachel or Isabel to commiserate with. She’d written to them, but with each of the girls facing their own trials in their new positions, she’d understated hers. She didn’t want to burden them with her problems. She needed to speak to someone, anyone or she’d run mad.

‘I’m having difficulty in my new position.’ It was all she was willing to hazard with this stranger. ‘The girls won’t listen and Sir Rodger is threatening to dismiss me if I don’t control them, but I can’t.’

He winked at her. ‘Dealing with the Huntford girls, I’m not surprised. They could use a firm hand and much better parenting. I had the entire brood at a Christmas party once, a long time ago when they were very young. They nearly tore up the music room with their wild behaviour.’

‘The twins almost set the curtain in the sitting room on fire yesterday. They’re unwieldy heathens.’

Vicar Carlson tossed back his head and let out a laugh as rich as a church bell.

She clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified by what she’d just said. He might tell Sir Rodger and she’d find herself on the next mail coach to Salisbury. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about them so, but be grateful to have a position.’

She didn’t feel grateful, but exhausted.

‘Don’t be sorry for speaking the truth. I promise I won’t say a thing to Sir Rodger about his precious offspring,’ he reassured her with all the authority of a man used to speaking from the pulpit. ‘It’s the duty of a vicar to help those who are burdened.’

‘Burdened doesn’t begin to describe it.’ She paced back and forth, hands flapping at her sides with her agitation as she explained to him everything about her conversation with Sir Rodger. His willingness to listen unleashed the torrent of words she’d kept inside her for the past month. She even told him of Frances’s two instances with Lieutenant Foreman and the impossible position she now found herself in. ‘If I’m sent home, the people who cared about me the most will be disappointed.’

‘You mean your family?’ he prodded.

‘I don’t have a family, not a real one. My parents, whoever they were, left me for the school to raise when I was a baby,’ she nearly whispered the words as she stopped to face him. It was the first time she’d admitted her illegitimacy to a stranger. It wasn’t something Madame Dubois or any of the teachers had ever mentioned. A few days before leaving the school, Madame Dubois had cautioned her about revealing it in her new position, though the warning hadn’t been necessary. Joanna knew how the world viewed illegitimate children. ‘The teachers at the school raised me.’