The Silent Governess Read online

  “Olivia . . .” he said, sounding almost offended. “I think you know the answer to that.”

  Chapter 49

  Of my Arithmetic I was very fond, and advanced rapidly.

  Mensuration was quite delightful, Fractions, Decimals

  and Book keeping.

  —MISS WEETON, JOURNAL OF A GOVERNESS 1811–25

  Olivia waited nervously in the entry hall of the former Meacham estate, now in the possession of Sir Fulke Fitzpatrick.

  A quarter of an hour after he had been shown into a room down the corridor, Lord Bradley reemerged, in the company of two men. After a few low words were exchanged, the two men crossed the corridor with the merest glance in her direction and then disappeared into another room. Lord Bradley turned to face her, and she hurried across the marble floor to meet him.

  He cleared his throat. “I have good news and rather trying news both, I am afraid. Herbert is in town for the trial. He and his solicitor have agreed to allow you to see the books in question.”

  “And the trying news?” Olivia whispered.

  His blue eyes were somber. “You have one hour, Olivia. It is all I could manage.”

  She swallowed, then nodded. “Pray for me.”

  “I shall. I am.” He squeezed her hand, then opened the door for her.

  Olivia entered an ornate library, where alabaster busts stared blindly from atop tall bookcases of mahogany and brass. A claw-footed table sat at the middle of the room, while fringed chairs of velvet huddled closer to the marble chimneypiece. Above it reigned a gilt-framed portrait of a lace-bosomed dowager, who looked down at Olivia in marked disapproval. Ignoring her, Olivia stepped to the table and sat down. Three books lay before her, illuminated by four tall sash windows. She prayed that old glass slate in her mind, murky from lack of regular use, would come back to her once more. She opened the books in order and slowly ran her finger down the columns, figuring and checking as she went. Everything seemed in order. Almighty God, please help me. . . .

  An hour later, the door opened. Olivia closed the last book and rose. Into the library walked not two men but seven. Lord Bradley; a black-haired young man she guessed must be Herbert Fitzpatrick; his father, Sir Fulke; the solicitor she had glimpsed earlier; Mr. Smith, the constable; the local magistrate; and another man she did not recognize.

  Lord Bradley stepped in the breach between Olivia and the cluster of men. “Sir Fulke, this is Miss Keene, Simon Keene’s daughter.”

  Standing before her was the proud gentleman from the Crown and Crow, now a dozen years older. The years had not been kind to him.

  His thin lip curled. “Ah . . . the little trained monkey, all grown.”

  She felt Lord Bradley stiffen beside her. “Sir Fulke . . .”

  Olivia doubted the man even heard Edward’s steely warning.

  “How fate played into his hands,” Sir Fulke continued. “That I should purchase his master’s estate and that my own steward would keep him on. How Keene bided his time, earning my steward’s trust, learning his way about my business and about my books, then when he was confident in his position, he struck, thinking I would never be the wiser. Well, now fate delivers her cruel twist, and he is caught in his own trap.”

  Olivia met the man’s gaze. “I might say the same of you, sir.”

  He smirked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I am very glad your solicitor and our constable are here today, as well as the local magistrate,” Olivia said. “Fate, I believe, is still at work.”

  “You talk nonsense, ghel. If you think to confuse me with riddles, you are quite mistaken.”

  Olivia forced a smile and changed tack. “I am glad to see you looking so well, Sir Fulke,” she began. “Mr. Smith told me you suffered a hard blow to your head. He thought you might have taken a fall. Down a pair of stairs, perhaps.” The second smile came more easily. “It was kind of you not to inform the constable where you were injured. For that might have looked very bad for my father.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “For the highly esteemed Mrs. Atkins says she found you in our home, unconscious.”

  As she’d hoped, he did not challenge Mrs. Atkins’s word. Everyone in the village respected the midwife. Most had been delivered by her, or entered the world into her hands. Sir Fulke could not have lived in Withington long and not known how highly she was regarded.

  Olivia said, “Is it not possible that you very naturally blame Simon Keene for that injury, and that is why you seek such a stern penalty? The very revenge you accuse my father of taking?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I suppose you might have fallen down our stairs, but why you would be abovestairs in our house, where the only rooms are my bedchamber and the old schoolroom, I cannot guess. Is there some reason?”

  He stared at her coldly. “No reason I can think of.”

  “Then is not another explanation more plausible? Were you not, in fact, struck from behind? By some scoundrel too cowardly to fight you face-to-face?”

  He made no answer, but there was a wary gleam in his eye.

  “It would explain a great deal,” Olivia continued. “It would explain why Simon Keene left the village so soon after, as though a guilty man. A fire iron can do a lot of damage. More than any fall down stairs.”

  “Perhaps, Davies,” Sir Fulke said to his solicitor, though his eyes remained on Olivia, “we ought to add assault to our list of charges.”

  “He admits it, then?” Mr. Smith, the constable, asked.

  “Actually, no,” Olivia said. “Though I have blamed him these many months for a violent act. As you have blamed him.”

  “Ah!” Sir Fulke’s muddy eyes lit. “Perhaps you seek a bit of revenge yourself. A cruel father, was he?”

  She smiled sweetly. “Nothing to you, I am sure.”

  He studied her, uncertain of her meaning.

  “I suppose you had just come to our house to bring my mother more needlework for your dear wife,” Olivia continued. “And perhaps Simon Keene burst in and hit you from behind, driven by jealous rage. And you never knew what hit you. You awoke later to find yourself in Mrs. Atkins’s office, where she had taken you to recover.”

  “She saw nothing?” he asked, selecting a cigar from a wooden box on the table and idly rolling it between his fingers.

  “Do you mean, did she see my father strike you? Sadly, no.”

  “Miss Keene,” Edward interrupted. “I do not see what . . . this cannot help your father.”

  “I only want the truth to be revealed,” Olivia said. “Does not the truth set one free?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Sir Fulke interrupted, “My own memory of those events—head injuries being what they are—is vague, Miss Keene,” he said dismissively. “When I awoke, I found myself rather in a fog. I thought Mrs. Atkins told me I had fallen down stairs, but I may have mistaken the matter. I later learnt I had been unconscious for more than a day.”

  With the help of copious amounts of laudanum, Olivia thought.

  “It must have been as you said,” Sir Fulke said, warming to the notion. “Your father found me in his home, assumed the worst, and struck me down like the coward he is.”

  Olivia grimaced. “But do not forget, sir, you gave your attacker just cause.”

  Again those muddy eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “You see, the reason someone struck you from behind—I do not deny that part—was because when this person entered our home, he or she found you violently strangling my mother.”

  “Preposterous!”

  “I agree it sounds so,” Olivia said calmly. “And in fact, for the longest time, I believed this fiend, bent on destroying my dear mamma, was my own father, to my shame. But it was not. He was in Cheltenham, in the company of your own steward.”

  The seventh man, the one she had not recognized, nodded his agreement. “That’s right, miss.”

  Sir Fulke’s lip curved i
n a feline smile. “Miss Keene, your tale-bearing astounds me! You ought to be a writer of novels. You have missed your calling with all that arithmetic nonsense.”

  Olivia sighed. “If only it were a fiction. But for me it became a nightmare that has haunted me for months.”

  “If not your father, who?” Sir Fulke asked. “Do you claim some passing tramp or thief struck me?”

  She stole a glance at Edward. “I have been mistaken for both in the past. But, no.”

  “Who, then?” Mr. Smith asked, while the magistrate leaned forward in his chair, watching her closely.

  “I stayed late at Miss Cresswell’s that evening, tutoring two pupils who had fallen behind. I came home to find chairs overturned and glass smashed against the grate. I heard my mother call out in panic and ran to her bedchamber. It was quite dark, but light enough to see a man with his hands around my mother’s throat, squeezing hard. I know what that feels like now. Sharp pain, lungs burning, the surety of death any moment . . .”

  “Rubbish, the lot of it!” Sir Fulke exclaimed.

  “I did not think. I only knew I must stop the man and save my mother. Before I knew it, I had grasped the fire iron and struck for all I was worth. I thought I might have killed the man. But I did not. He breathed still.”

  “I was not that man,” Sir Fulke said, with a pointed look at the magistrate. “You said yourself the room was dark and you suspected your own father. He must have heard your mother was entertaining gentleman callers. I had certainly heard the rumor myself, though I, of course, did not credit it.”

  Olivia said coldly, “You lie.”

  “And you would do anything, say anything, to try and spare that vile father of yours. Spin all the tales you like, my dear. But you have no witness save yourself.”

  “I am afraid I do.” She nodded to Edward, who opened the door. Dorothea Keene walked in, regal in striped gown and hat, head held high.

  Every head turned. The constable gaped like a beached fish.

  Sir Fulke instantly paled. “Dorothea!”

  Mr. Smith stammered, “Mrs. Keene, we thought . . . after you disappeared, well, everyone thought the worst. I told ’em Keene would never harm you, but few believed me.”

  “You were right, Mr. Smith,” her mother began. “But Sir Fulke would and did. He tried to strangle me. And I was terrified that when he came to, he would try again—and take revenge on whoever struck him. I felt I had no choice but to send my daughter away that very night and to flee the village myself the next morning, though injured.”

  Sir Fulke’s face was beetroot red. “What lies! Preposterous, the lot of it! The whole family is in on it. I know our magistrate and constable are wise enough to see the truth.”

  Mr. Smith looked like a confused boy. “Why would Sir Fulke mean you any harm, Mrs. Keene?”

  Dorothea Keene took a deep breath and faced the constable and magistrate. “Because I refused his advances. Not once but over and over again for several months. He became . . . obsessed . . . with me, though I never gave him any encouragement.”

  “You did!” Sir Fulke exclaimed, ignoring his solicitor’s staying hand and whispered warning.

  Her mother continued, “He began coming to our house for his wife’s needlework in her stead. I was quite uncomfortable with his calls, but he would not stop. He tried to push himself on me that night, and when I fought back, he . . . he . . . nearly killed me.”

  “Nonsense! Smith, it is all nonsense!”

  Mr. Smith looked flabbergasted and uncertain how to proceed. Sir Fulke’s steward sat silent, as did the magistrate, who watched the proceedings in calculated detachment.

  Herbert Fitzpatrick rose. “I believe her,” he said.

  “Shut up, boy!” his father snapped. “Turn against your father, will you? Always were a weak, useless lad.”

  Herbert flinched, but when he spoke, his voice was calm and cool. “I did not witness the events of that evening, but I was aware of my father’s increasingly frequent calls on Mrs. Keene, and my mother’s distress because of it. It would not be the first time my father has pursued another woman, though I had never known him to pursue anyone so doggedly before.”

  “Shut your trap, boy. You are hereby disinherited. Davies! I want a new will.” Sir Fulke turned toward the door.

  “We are not finished here, Sir Fulke,” Olivia said.

  “Yes, we are,” he said, jaw clenched.

  “There is the matter of the embezzlement charge. I have reviewed the books, and my father did not embezzle from you.”

  “Right,” Sir Fulke sneered. “Who did, then?”

  Olivia looked at the young man beside the solicitor, his pale face framed by the blackest hair. And in his wary green eyes, she saw once more the dread of disappointing one’s father that she recognized in herself, that she recognized from a boy in the Crown and Crow all those years ago. Would, could, this boy, grown now, dare disappoint his father? Own up to the truth which would surely earn his father’s wrath and rejection a hundred times over what a lost contest would have done?

  The young man looked at her then. Really looked. And whether he recognized her or something in himself, Olivia could not know, but he stood up the straighter for it, and his eyes lit with a strange determination, like a soldier marching into certain, but resigned-to, death.

  “No one embezzled from you, Father,” he began. “But I took it, to keep you from wasting the family’s last shilling on gaming and women. You have not given Mother and me enough to live on these last years, so I felt within my rights to take what was needed to pay the bills and keep my mother in the comfort she deserves. Disinherit me if you like—here stands your solicitor at the ready. I have invested wisely. From the interest earned, I can now support Mother and myself—if not in grand fashion, respectable at least. Which is more than I can say for you. Your affairs are in a sorry state indeed, and it does not take an accomplished clerk to figure that out.” He turned to Olivia. “Though it did take an accomplished young woman to discover I did it—and to give me the courage to own up to it.”

  “But . . . ! How dare you,” the older gentleman blustered. “I shall disinherit you indeed. Cut you off!”

  Herbert said dryly, “Disinherited twice in a single day. How extraordinary.”

  The steward cleared his throat. “Sir, if I may. The sum your son invested is all that is keeping the family from debtors’ prison. Perhaps leniency is in order?”

  “He shall never lay his thieving hands on my money.”

  “What money, Father?” Herbert said. “We have already established your debts outweigh your assets and the investors are dropping like scales off a rotting fish.”

  Sir Fulke glowered. “And whose fault is that?”

  “Yours, sir.”

  “These rumors and now charges of embezzlement have done it. It is on your head. Yours!”

  Herbert looked at his father coldly. “So be it. But Mr. Keene goes free.”

  “Why should he?”

  “Because he is innocent,” Olivia’s mother said. “And because if you drop all charges, the rest of this sordid business will remain our secret.”

  The constable objected. “Mrs. Keene, are you sure you want to let him off? I could have him—”

  “Quite sure, Mr. Smith.” She turned cold eyes on Sir Fulke. “That is, unless he ever comes near me again.”

  Herbert Fitzpatrick offered Olivia his arm and escorted her from the room while the magistrate, Mrs. Keene, and Sir Fulke sealed the bargain, with Edward, the steward, and the solicitor acting as witnesses.

  In the hall, Herbert withdrew a single gold guinea from his waistcoat pocket and pressed it into Olivia’s gloved hand. “This is yours, I believe, Miss Keene. You won that long-ago contest and you won today.”

  “I think we both won,” she said. “Thank you for speaking out.”

  Pulling his gaze from her hand, he looked up ruefully. “Would you have let me keep silent, had I not?”

  She smiled gently bu
t shook her head. “I have been silent long enough.”

  Chapter 50

  It was all the romance of the nursery and

  the poetry of the schoolroom.

  —HENRY JAMES, THE TURN OF THE SCREW

  The carriage made its way to the far end of Northleach, to the mottled grey-stone prison and magistrate building known as the House of Correction. The arched doorway was flanked on either side by imposing two-story walls.

  Edward waited in the carriage with her mother, while Mr. Smith offered Olivia a hand down. The constable led Olivia through the magistrate’s building and into a small visitors’ room near the keeper’s house. Then he disappeared, taking the magistrate’s order with him.

  Several minutes later, a keeper opened the door and Simon Keene shuffled into the room, head bowed and hands clasped together in front of him as though manacled, though no physical restraint bound him.

  Her father looked up and started. Clearly no one had told him who had come to see him. Nor why.

  “Livie! I did not think to ever lay eyes on you again.”

  Her heart was so full to see him that for a moment she could not speak. When she did not, his hopeful expression faded.

  “Come to say good-bye?” he asked dully. “Or to rail at me once more?”

  “Neither.” She sat at the table and gestured her father toward the second chair across from her.

  He slumped down. “Surely you’ve heard I’m done for. It’s the noose for me. Or transportation. Fatal the both of them.”

  “No. You are being released. Did they not tell you?”

  He frowned. “Are you dreamin’, girl? Out to raise my hopes and dash them as I have disappointed you time and time again?”

  “You are innocent.”

  “Ha! I did not embezzle a farthing, but I am guilty of far worse. It is why I don’t care what they do to me now—I have made peace with my maker. I wish I might have told your mother how sorry I am. Begged her pardon—yours as well. If you might forgive me, I could die content enough.”

  “I do forgive you,” Olivia said. “And I hope you will forgive me.”