The Silent Governess Read online

  “Ah well, never hurts to ask, as they say.” He extracted a cigar from his coat pocket. “Now, you must excuse me. This cigar is demanding to be smoked, but my sister forbids me to do so indoors.” He turned, then paused to add, “It has been a pleasure as always, Miss Keene, though I fear I dominated the conversation just as abominably as I did when you were mute.”

  The next morning, Edward gestured Miss Keene into his study and closed the door behind her. He began quietly, “Miss Keene, do be careful about my cousin.”

  “Mrs. Howe?”

  He frowned. “I meant Felix. I have noticed the way the two of you . . . talk . . . together.”

  She lifted her chin. “I am allowed to talk now, am I not?”

  He pursed his lips. “Yes, and you have obviously made quite an impression on him, but . . . ” He took a step closer and lowered his voice. “Take no offense, Miss Keene, but you are not the first governess he has . . . shown interest in.”

  She lifted her stubborn chin. “Never fear, I did not flatter myself that I was. At all events, he seems a pleasant enough young man.” She hesitated. “Most of the time. You might treat him more kindly.”

  “Kindly? Felix and I get on perfectly well.”

  “He thinks you disapprove of him.”

  “Disapprove of him?” Edward frowned. “He told you that?”

  She nodded. “Though I ought not to have broken his confidence.”

  Edward admitted, “Some of his habits and manners are not to my liking. But I don’t disapprove of him as a person.”

  When she didn’t respond, he looked up and found her regarding him thoughtfully. “What?”

  “Are you unhappy?”

  Edward felt irritation surge. “Why would you ask that? Did Felix suggest it?”

  She shrugged.

  Edward detested the thought of Felix and Miss Keene discussing his character. And finding it lacking. “I may be a bit dour of late, what with . . . everything.”

  “But even before . . . everything . . . were you really happy?”

  He thought for a moment and felt a wave of pain threaten to spill into consciousness. He pushed it away. “What an odd question, Miss Keene. And quite inappropriate, do you not think?”

  He realized he was doing it again, referring to her status to put her in her place, to stop her provoking questions. He saw the quick look of hurt replaced by sparks of anger and, yes, disappointment in her eyes. She didn’t say “hypocrite,” but he heard it anyway and could not argue.

  At the end of her first week as governess, Olivia made her way belowstairs in hopes of seeing Mrs. Moore, even though she knew she ought not do so. Doris and the hall boy stood in the passage, and Olivia heard the pleasant chatter of teasing voices and girlish giggles. Approaching them, Olivia saw kitchen maids Sukey and Edith in the stillroom, and realized the four of them were together enjoying a respite from their work.

  “Careful, girls, there’s a lady among us,” Edith warned.

  “Oh, shut up, Edie,” Doris said. “She’s only doing what any of us would do, given the chance.”

  “Wouldn’t see me with my nose in the air, no matter.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Olivia walked past without a word.

  “If she is standoffish, I don’t blame her,” Doris hissed. “She don’t make the rules. How would you have liked it if that last governess, that sour-faced Miss Dowdle, had tried to join in with the lot of us belowstairs?”

  “Not at all, but she was a regular governess. A right snob.”

  Dory’s attempted whisper followed Olivia down the passage. “But Miss Livie is one too now. A governess, I mean, not a snob. And it isn’t done, is it? She cannot have it both ways.”

  Though thankful for Dory’s championing of her character, Olivia was relieved to enter the sanctuary of the kitchen.

  There Mrs. Moore looked up from her receipt book and straightened. “Liv—Miss Keene. I am surprised to see you.”

  Olivia sighed. “I was afraid you would not be happy to see me. No one is, it seems.”

  “Now, now, love. No need to play the martyr. I am happy enough to see you, but governesses usually don’t venture belowstairs.”

  “But I am not a usual governess, am I?”

  “Certainly not. Never knew one so clever nor so kind.” Mrs. Moore’s eyes twinkled.

  Olivia smiled. “Would you mind if I sat with you for a few minutes?”

  Mrs. Moore patted the stool beside her. “A lonely life, is it? With only the young ones and Nurse Peale about.”

  Olivia nodded. “Nurse Peale isn’t much for talking. When she does, she mostly repeats remembrances of the past. Tales of Lord Bradley from his nursery days.”

  “Not diverting?”

  “A little. But not the same as talking with you.” She squeezed the dear woman’s plump hand.

  Mrs. Moore winked. “What you won’t say to get one of my lemon biscuits.”

  On her way back upstairs, Olivia walked directly into the path of Judith Howe. The woman looked from the door through which Olivia had just emerged to Olivia’s no-doubt-telling red face.

  “Miss Keene. I know you were one of the servants for a brief time, but I had hoped the experience had not affected you to a marked degree. I realize you have never been a governess before, so allow me to enlighten you on the proprieties. . . .”

  Olivia swallowed as she listened, realizing she had paid her last visit to dear Mrs. Moore.

  Chapter 25

  The lower lake is now all alive with skaters,

  and by ladies driven onward by them in their ice-cars.

  Mercury, surely, was the first maker of skates. . . .

  —S.T. COLERIDGE, THE FRIEND, 1809

  One afternoon in February, Edward stepped into the schoolroom only to find Miss Keene and the children about to step out, bundled in coats, caps, mufflers, and gloves.

  “Where are you all bound for?”

  “We are going ice-skating,” Audrey said. “Do come along!”

  “Ice-skating? I have not strapped on skates in years.”

  Andrew tugged his hand. “Come along, Cousin Edward, do.”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion where my old skates might be.”

  Miss Keene pulled the largest blades from the trunk with a flourish and held them before him.

  “How . . . fortunate,” he grumbled.

  A few minutes later, cocooned in his beaver hat, coat, and gloves, much like the children, Edward led the way as the small troupe tromped through the snow into the village, then along a well-trod path to the mill. He explained that the miller diverted water from the mill leat every year to fill a skating pond behind the mill.

  “Very obliging of him,” Miss Keene said.

  Edward considered this. “I suppose it is. I have never thought of it before.”

  Using an old millstone as a makeshift bench, Miss Keene helped Audrey strap skates to her half boots while Edward assisted Andrew with the same.

  “Wait for me, Andrew, and I shall come out and help you,” Miss Keene called, tightening Audrey’s final strap.

  Edward eyed the blades still lying on the millstone. “Are you not skating, Miss Keene?”

  “Oh no, my lord. I don’t think it would be proper. I only brought that pair in case one of you tore a strap.” She glanced around at the few skaters on the pond. “Besides, I shall be more surefooted in my boots, and more able to lend a steadying hand.”

  “Not fair of you at all,” he said in mock sternness. “Insist I come, then sit out yourself? Come, now. What may not be proper in London or in your prim girls’ school is perfectly proper here.”

  “I . . . Oh, very well. I shall give it a go.”

  “That is more like it.”

  She strapped on her skates before he finished his own, and hurried onto the ice to assist Audrey, who was flailing her thin arms and appeared about to fall. Andrew was busy chop-chopping the ice as he marched along, not falling, but not really skating either.
r />   “Glide, Andrew, glide!” she called.

  Edward skated to Andrew’s side and held his mittened hand. Miss Keene took Audrey’s arm and attempted to steady her while quietly instructing her on proper technique. Suddenly the girl’s arms flailed again—her feet flew out before her and she fell back, taking Miss Keene down with her. They both slammed hard against the ice. Edward gave an empathetic wince and skated quickly over, leaving Andrew to his own devices. He crouched over their prone forms. “Are you all right?”

  “Mortified and sore, nothing more,” Miss Keene quipped, sitting up.

  “I am sorry, miss,” Audrey said, scrambling to her feet and wearing a pained expression.

  “Never mind, Audrey. You shall master it by and by.”

  Edward offered Miss Keene his hand and, when she took it, gave a hard tug to pull her to her feet. The lurch propelled him backward, causing him to lose his balance and fall back. And as Miss Keene’s hand was still captured in his, he pulled her forward with him before he could think to release her. He hit the ice first, and Miss Keene fell onto his chest, knocking the air from his lungs.

  Edward opened his eyes, squinting at the blinding sunlight reflecting off snow, and at the disconcerting experience of having the governess draped over his body. If he could but breathe, he thought, the sensation would not be unpleasant in the least. Her blue eyes, wide with shock, met his. For a moment, they simply stared at one another.

  Then Audrey giggled and Andrew laughed out loud, breaking the spell that held them. Miss Keene’s face blushed deep pink and she averted her gaze, quickly pushing herself up and finding her feet with less than her usual grace.

  Andrew, oblivious to their discomfort, continued to laugh.

  “It is not kind to laugh at the misfortunes of others,” Edward grumbled, pinning Andrew with a look of mock severity, which only sent his young cousin into a convulsion of guffaws.

  A quarter of an hour later, Lord Bradley skated beside her. “I see you fooled us all by falling at the outset. You are quite graceful on the ice, Miss Keene.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Olivia had not skated since girlhood, and could still hear Miss Cresswell saying that in her day ladies did not participate in such sport. Pushed in an ice-car, perhaps, but skating . . . ?

  The Tugwell boys arrived, waving and calling greetings. They invited Andrew to join them in a game which involved hitting a ball about the ice with brooms and sticks.

  Audrey sat on a millstone beside George Linton’s niece, who was near her own age, and soon the bonneted heads were close in confidences and chatter.

  The children pleasantly occupied, Lord Bradley and Olivia continued to skate. She relished the gliding freedom, the crisp air, and the rare moment of no demands upon her person.

  “I am glad to see you enjoying yourself, Miss Keene,” he said.

  She smiled up at him.

  “Are we paying you for this?” he teased.

  “Very little.”

  “Ah. Good.”

  “And you, my lord. Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.

  “I believe I am. The experience has become somewhat infrequent of late, but yes, I believe I recognize this emotion as enjoyment.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Take no offense, my lord, but what else have you to do but enjoy yourself?”

  He grimaced.

  Realizing that she had annoyed him, she quickly changed the subject. “You are very involved with the children, more so than many fathers are, and they so enjoy your attention, but—”

  “But it appears strange to you?”

  “I am only curious, not criticizing in the least.”

  He nodded. “Their father was a good friend, as I mentioned, older though he was. A mentor, of sorts.”

  “You feel an . . . obligation, then?”

  He lifted his shoulders as if to shrug off an uncomfortable garment. “Not directly, no. Though how can one help but feel some duty toward children who have lost both father and mother?”

  “I think many ‘help it’ with ease. Look at the foundling homes.”

  He sighed. “You will think me stranger than you no doubt already do.”

  “Impossible,” she teased.

  He looked at her, as though to be sure she was jesting. “Well, nothing to lose, then. You see, when I was a boy of eleven, I made a promise to myself. Wrote it down even.”

  When he hesitated, she looked up expectantly.

  “I know you admire my father, Miss Keene, and I do not deny he has always been exceedingly kind and generous. He is a good man, and I take nothing from him—do not mistake me.”

  “But?” She skated to the edge of the pond and stopped to give him her full attention.

  He stopped beside her. “But he was away in London a great deal. As a member of parliament, he was obliged to spend January through June or even July there. Six or seven months a year. Sometimes longer. My mother and I did spend several seasons in London with him—it was there I first made the acquaintance of Dominick Howe—but still, we rarely saw Father. Even when he was in the townhouse with us, he was always busy with bills or correspondence or what have you. Mother soon grew weary of town life. I think her health was not very good even then. So we stayed home more and more. And even when Father returned to Brightwell Court, he spent more time with his clerk than with me.” He held up his hand. “I am not criticizing, nor seeking pity, Miss Keene, merely showing the situation that inspired me to write a promise to my future adult self.”

  She nodded, and could not help compare his father to hers. He had spent many hours with her, though few of them idyllic—testing her in arithmetic, showing her how to balance the books, how to figure odds, and all those hours at the races and the Crown and Crow. . . .

  “I can still see myself, a boy of nine, perhaps,” Lord Bradley continued, “then a boy of ten, then finally eleven, standing with my fishing pole, waiting at the garden door for my father, who had promised yet again to take me fishing—‘tomorrow,’ ‘tomorrow.’ ”

  “He never did?”

  Edward shook his head. “Hunting a few times, a game of chess now and again, but never fishing. I remember Croome came upon me waiting there, pole in hand, when my father finally came out—but only to tell me that he just could not get away. Croome offered to take me. But my father dismissed his offer. I remember feeling oddly sorry for the gamekeeper, though I had never felt anything but fear of the man before”—he grimaced—“or since.”

  Poor Mr. Croome, Olivia thought. An outcast even then.

  “Forgive me. I am going on as endlessly as Mr. Tugwell. All this to say, after that I ran upstairs to the schoolroom, found paper and quill, and wrote myself a promise—to remember what it was like to be eleven years old, to remember what summertime was for, and when I had a boy of my own, to dashed well take him fishing.” He glanced at her sheepishly. “I may have said something stronger, but you take my meaning.”

  She grinned. “Vividly.”

  “I know Audrey and Andrew are not my children, but they are under my roof without a father of their own.”

  “I think it wonderful,” she said, and began skating again.

  He skated after her. “Not every woman of my acquaintance would agree with you.”

  She guessed he referred to Miss Harrington.

  “Have you?” she asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “Taken them fishing?”

  He expelled a breath bordering on a groan. “Everything but that. I confess I never learnt how.” Clearly uncomfortable, he quickly changed the subject. “And your father, Miss Keene? Did he take you fishing, or whatever the girlhood equivalent is?”

  Olivia doubted horse races and taverns were the girlhood equivalent to anything as wholesome as fishing. “I had not really realized it until you described your own childhood, that while my father has many faults, he did spend time with me. Still, my father was . . .” She caught herself. “Is very different from yours. Were I you, I would be grateful i
ndeed for such a father as Lord Brightwell.”

  “I am. But do not idealize him. You know him as he is now, the benevolent grandfatherly sort he has mellowed into.”

  “Are you saying he was once cruel?”

  “No, never cruel. Just . . . imperious, busy, absent. And yours?”

  She decided to risk telling him, realizing he might otherwise think she disapproved of her father for no very good reason. “He took me with him to the local public house and there had me display my arithmetic skills to entertain the other patrons.”

  “He was evidently proud of you. Wanted all the gents to know what a clever girl he had.”

  She bit her lip. That much was true.

  “He also took me with him to horse races. Even to the Bibury Course, not far from here, I understand.”

  “Did he indeed? As a boy, I would have loved such an outing with my father above all things.”

  He was turning everything around on her. Confusing her. “He brought his clerking work home and had me balance the accounts for him. . . .”

  “Astounding! Do you realize how rare a thing it is for a man to educate his daughter in his own profession? A son, yes. My father has groomed me to take over for him one day, so this is something our fathers have in common.”

  She felt her ire and incredulity rising. “Did the Earl of Brightwell teach you to accept wagers and take a handsome portion of men’s winnings? Did he drink too much and throw things when angry?” She stopped herself. Did he not understand what kind of man Simon Keene was?

  “No. That he did not do. Though he did take me to gentlemen’s clubs in London where I was exposed to much the same.”

  Andrew skated between them, grasping a hand of each, and the conversation was abandoned.

  Later, on the walk home, the children ran ahead, tossing snowballs at one another. Though Olivia had never told anyone the story of that most significant of wagers in the Crown and Crow, she felt compelled to do so now. Compelled to have another person judge the situation more objectively than she ever could. Had she really wronged her father? Or had he treated her unfairly? Lord Bradley listened with interest as she relayed the tale, doing her best to tell him the facts without coloring the story to put herself in better light, nor her father in worse. But Lord Bradley did not react as she might have guessed, or would have liked.