An Indelicate Situation (The Weymouth Trilogy)

©
Lizzie Church 2012 all rights reserved.

Cover illustration by John Amy,
ebookdesigner.co.uk
, based on a painting detail from
‘The New Spinet’ by G Kilburne
(1839
-
1924)
. With grateful thanks to
Ocean Youth Club (
http://www.hmspickle.org.uk/
) for their kind information about naval sloops.

Maggie
was a governess. She had not been born to be a governess. There had been no overarching destiny which demanded that she beco
me a governess. She didn’t even
particularly want to be one, although
,
at least as far as she was concerned
,
she was putting every effort into doing a good job.
But
a
governess she was,
whether she wanted to be or not,
and
a
go
verness she now expected to remain
.

In her more morose moments – of which, unfortunately, she was
currently
experiencing quite a few – she could not help but feel
a little
aggrieved at the twists and turns of fate which had led her, unknowingly, into the
little schoolroom on the first
floor of a
large but miserable town
house o
n Weymouth
’s busy
water
front
when, for the first seventeen years of her life, she had lived in every expectation of owning such a property herself and of employing another friendless female in what had tur
ned out to be an unenviable situa
tion like her own.

For unenviable it most certainly was. For one thing, the two six
-
year olds whom she had primarily been employed to teach – at least until their little brother and sisters were old enough to join
them in the schoolroom
– were two of t
he most obnoxious young mischief makers
that
ever
she
’d
had
the misfortune to
encounter
. William, a sadistic little child, took no greater delight than in tormenting every living creature – human or animal – that was unfortunate enough to happen to
get in his way
, while Augus
ta was such a saucy
little madam
that even her own papa was hard put to make a passable show of demonstrating any regard for her whatsoever. For another thing, their mama was scarcely any better.
U
nimpressed by everybody’s consequence save her own,
Mrs
Wright
had turned out to be
one of the more haughty sort of
females
whose family had
recently
climbed in social status and was determined both to climb still further and to do everything in its power to prevent anyone else from
doing
the self same thing
.
Stylish
and blonde, she had obviously appeared quite captivating in her youth – quite captivating enough, certainly, to attract and entrap the
suave Mr Wright during her third
triumphant
Season up in Town. But the years – and several l
aying
-
ins – had not been particular
ly kind to her and the
appealing expressions of
twenty
or
one and
twenty had unfortunately been subsumed by the so
mewhat less appealing affectation
s
and excess of chins
of a haughty grande dame
on the wrong side of
thirty
. She mouthed every word – ponderous
ly
and pedantic
ally
– as if all her listeners were far too stupid to understand anything spoken naturally,
or
at speed. She insisted on being of the first in every change of fashion, as soon as she became aware of it, whether it suited her
particular figure or snow white complexion
or n
ot
. And now that the
trim
figure of her girlhood had gradually metamorphosed into the more matronly shape of a
self
-
indulgent
several
-
time mama
it is sad to report that the thin muslins and high waistlines
which were
just then at the height of fashion no more suited her than did the turbans and
nodding plumes
with which she customarily adorned her head.

But even worse tha
n
all of this – even worse than the
miserable house, the
horrible children and their equally
odious
mama – Maggie was
beset by
an even greater evil which, though she was perfectly well aware of
it
, she was feeling p
articular
ly helpless
to
surmount
. This evil
had taken
the form of
the good
Mr
William
Wright
, so
-
called master of the
whole
infuriating household
. Not that Mr Wright was an evil man in himself
– or, if he were, she had seen nothing so far to make her suppose that he might
be
. He was not sadistic, like his eldest son; he was not spoilt and precocious like his
eldest daughter; he was not haughty
and patronising like his wife. No, he was none of these things. Perhaps it might have been better
for her had he been so. No, Mr
Wright was not a horrible man. Indeed, h
e was
a perfectly ami
able man
. In an otherwise miserable household Maggie had instantly discovered that he was a most attractive man – a dangerously attractive man – and that, from the way in which he constantly followed her with his eyes whenever they found themse
lves in the same room together – which happened far more
often
than she could reas
o
nably expect it to do
-
she felt certain that he found her to be an equally attractive young woman.

She was surprised at – and slightly annoyed with – herself for these singularly unexpected sensations
. After all, they were being
elicited by
a man who was,
to
put
it bluntly
, nearer forty than thirty and rather self complacently settled in his ways. She could see that Mr Wright had probably been an extremely handsome individual not too many years ago but by now a certain propensity to over
-
indulgence – in fine food, fine wines (preferably French, when
ever
they could be had) and
in
taking his ample leisure in the company of gentlemen of a similar age and disposition in the most e
xpensive gentlemen’s haunts in T
own – had s
tarted to
reveal itself
in his
inc
reasing girth
, the slight sag to his cheeks and neckline and some tell
-
tale creases across his face. But his temper was good – remarkably so, Maggie felt, considering the
incessant
attack
s
made upon it
by his
acerbic
wife and terrible children – and he at least had the goodness of heart to treat her like a person rather than a
somewhat
annoying appendage to the
younger members of the
Wright family. And for someone as alone and friendless as Maggie had been – well, perhaps it was scarcely surprising that she had so quickly
,
so
unresistingly
and
so
totally
succumbed to his charms
that she
was now condemned to spending a
lmost every moment of every day,
and
even parts of the
night
as well
, in
pining for his attention and wishing that he w
ere
free.

Mr W
right
’s papa and mama having finally obliged him by departing this world the previous year within a very few days of one another,
he had
at long last
been
enabl
ed
to inherit a reasonable competence with which to indulge his
charming
wife and bring up his
a
dorable
little
children. Indeed, his papa had surprised him
,
and irritated
his wife
,
very much by living for as long as he had, given that he had almost died at the hands of the French in the great battle of
the First of June in 1794
(but which, in its turn, had resulted in such a wealth of prize money for the sailors inv
olved
that it had enabled him to retire immediately with his wife and children to a comfortable – though rented – new
town
house overlooking
the water on
Portsmouth harbour
side
). But he had gone at last and William had inherited the prize, succumbing
unresistingly
to his wife’s gentle demands that they buy
themselves
a property rather than renting all their lives, and standing firm only in his insistence that they do so in Weymouth, in which town he was assured of being able to purchase a very much grander property for his money than at almost any other fashionable resort across the
whole of the
south of
the country
. And so, scarcely six
weeks after being employed as their governess, Maggie had found herself being moved along with her
pupils and
employers from all that was familiar
to her
in North London to everything that was strange and new
to her
in Weymouth
. That had been in
m
id-
March
– a particularly desolate time
of year
for
removal to
a seaside resort, she had found, and not one guaranteed to present the place at its best. But now that
July
had arrived, and together with it the sunshine and the visitors once again, she was at least beginning to discover that Weymouth, though certainly unable to match the delights of London at its best, did have a number of advantages all of its own. For one thing, it was much smaller than London, though with all the facilities that one might reasonably expect of a resort town by the sea – including a couple of decent circulating libraries (important for a young lady like her who was
particularly
partial to a good read – and, more
specifically,
to
a
thrilling
read in the form of a
sentimental
novel or t
wo
), a well supported
little
theatre,
elegant
assembly rooms,
tantalising
shops and
fragrant
coffee rooms – and this, together with the most central position of the house selected by Mrs Wright from the advert
isement
s
she had found
in
the most recent editions of
‘
The
Gazette
and Herald’
, enabled her to get to most of the places that she
c
ould
possibly
wish to visit, on foot.