Elisabeth Fairchild (5 page)

E
laine had not expected to find a woman in the coach. She had seen no sign of her through the rain-fogged window, though it made sense that Lord Wharton would bring a caretaker for the child, a companion.

She was a buxom woman going gray about the temples, with fly-away hair of a particularly undistinguished shade of brown, whose most attractive physical aspects were a merry mouth and laugh-lined gray eyes. Her lap was full of knitting. The needles in her hands flashed rhythmically.

“This is Mrs. Olive, my father’s housekeeper.” Felicity made introductions as the coach jerked into swaying motion, suspending for a moment the needle’s click.

“Do you mean to join us then, dearie?” Mrs. Olive asked in a rather overbearing shout, to compensate for the rumble of the wheels.

“I go as far as Leeds,” Elaine said.

Mrs. Olive leaned forward, hand cupping her ear, knitting balled in her lap. “What’s that, my dear?”

“Leeds.” Elaine said again louder. “I mean to get out at Leeds.”

“Leeds?” Felicity stared at her in amazement, an expression that quickly gave way to furrowed brow and pouting lip.

“Oh my dear!” Mrs. Olive sat back looking both surprised and disappointed. “I have been counting on your company ever since the suggestion was made that a governess must ensure Miss Felicity not fall behind in her studies. Is there nothing we can say to change your mind?”

And so it was a governess he wanted, just a governess.

Mrs. Olive set to work again.

Felicity demanded. “What is in Leeds? I thought you meant to come to Wales. Papa said he would ask.”

“And so he did.”

“But why do you say no? Did he not tell you how most particularly I asked for you?” So worried she looked, young Felicity.

Elaine smiled and patted her hand. “You are kind to have done so.”

“Please, Miss Deering. Please come with us.” Felicity clung to her fingers.
So serious, for one so young. Such a contradiction of outspoken independence and need.

Elaine sighed, searching for words. “I . . . I do not know if it is appropriate for me to accept your father’s kind offer, my dear.”

“But of course it is. Why would it not be?”

Elaine gaze met the older woman’s. One could not explain a monster to the monster’s daughter.

“I know so little of the circumstances,” Elaine skirted the truth.

“Well, my dear, if that is the only obstacle,” Mrs. Olive shoved aside her concerns as swiftly as she shoved aside her stitches. “I can tell you anything you need to know. I have been with his lordship’s family since he was in nappies. He is a good master. In fact, you could not choose a better time to serve him.”

Was there ever a good time to serve a monster? “Oh? How so?”

The older woman’s gaze flickered toward Felicity and back again. “The child brings out the best in him,” she said, and then clapped her mouth shut, and yanked smartly on her ball of yarn, as if there were quite a bit more to be said, but not in front of the child.

“Please, Miss Deering. Say you will stay,” Felicity pled.

“My dear,” Elaine held her arms open, and when her former charge had flung herself into them, she whispered into her hair. “You must learn, my dear, that it is not at all dignified, or ladylike, to beg.”

“I’ve no wish to be ladylike if it means you are to go away.”

“Sounds just like her father, she does,” Mrs. Olive said jovially. “Always claimed he’d no desire to be the gentleman his father would make of him.”

Elaine held Felicity gently at arm’s length. “Felicity. Do not say one thing when you mean another.”

“You sound just like--” She shot a nervous look out the window.

Elaine crooked a finger beneath the unhappy chin. “But you do wish to be a lady, my dear. And dignified. I know you do.” She turned her attention to Mrs. Olive. “What was he like as a boy, Felicity’s father?”

Felicity sat forward, hunger in her eyes. “Yes. What was he like?”

Mrs. Olive smiled, all of the lines in her face engaged. “Well, my dear, your father was in many ways very much like you: headstrong, full of energy, convinced he was right and the rest of the world entirely wrong. His poor parents did not know what to do with him. Not at all of the same temperament, you see.”

“What else? What did he like to do?”

“Riding. No one in the county had ever seen a lad take so fast to a saddle. Neck or nothing, over the walls and fences he went, after foxes and hares. All sorts of sports. Rough and tumble. Up he’d get after every fall, dust himself off, give it another go. It all seemed to come so naturally to him. He was a fine figure of a lad, turned the head of many a local girl.”

Elaine turned away from the window, away from the view of Lord Wharton on horseback.
Does he turn my head? Does he mean to turn my head?

Felicity wore a serious expression. She echoed Elaine’s thoughts. “Did he turn Penny’s head? And my mother’s?”

“Aye, no denyin’ it.” Mrs. Olive tapped her plump chin, with the blunt end of a knitting needle, thinking, lips pursed.

Elaine felt once again they had touched upon a subject Mrs. Olive did not care to plumb. There was an indefinable tension between the woman and the girl.

“Archery,” Mrs. Olive said, and aiming an imaginary bow at Felicity, her knitting needle an imaginary arrow. “He was very good at targets--your father--and firearms. He learned to load ball and shot ever so fast.”

“Just like Cupid,” Felicity said, and pretended to shoot back.

“Cupid?” Elaine asked.

Felicity nodded enthusiastically, face bright, eyes sparkling. “Papa’s best friend.”

It sounded too fantastic to be true--a Valentine and a Cupid, friends. Elaine turned a quizzical eye on Mrs. Olive.

“Yes, indeed.” The housekeeper nodded enthusiastically. The arrow became knitting needle again as she cast off a fresh row. “They came back from fighting Bonapart together, Valentine and Cupid.”

“Cupid married Penny,” Felicity confided, as if it were important Elaine should know.

Penny. Felicity had spoken more than once of Penny. “She cared for you as a child, did she not?”

Again the uneasiness in Mrs. Olive.

Felicity nodded, and tipped her head so that her hair fell down over her face. “His name is not really Cupid, of course.”

“Shelbourne,” Mrs. Olive said, and then waved her knitting needles, so that the long swathe of stitchery danced in her lap. “Shells.”

Felicity regarded her with puzzled expression.

“Another of your father’s interests as a child.” Mrs. Olive triumphantly delved into a fresh band of color in the knitting. “Brought back a huge collection of the dirty, sand filled things, he did. Learned all of their names, even the Latin. Poured over books for weeks, he did. Made his father very proud. Mounted the best of them in boxes, with labels. I wonder what has become of them.”

What is to become of me?
Elaine clasped gloved hands together, worrying over a loose stitch on her pointer finger, worrying about the loose stitch of her future. Both best mended quickly.

They drove through the crowded, bustling, befogged streets of Leeds. A regular warren of narrow lanes led them through the eastern half of the city, the street changing names from York, to Quarry Hill, which curved into Lady Drive, which became Lady Lane which ended abruptly in North Road, which dog-legged down into Lowerhead Road, which turned into Upperhead Road.

The street names were hard to read in the rain, hard to find on the sides of the buildings where they were posted, but Elaine made a game of it, the good governess--for the moment at any rate.

Felicity called out each find, spelling the words.

We must stop soon. I will have to get down. Get out in the rain. No references. Dear God. No references! And new gloves needed. What am I to do?

The coach stopped at the corner of Guilford Street and Park Row.

Lord Wharton came to the door, and opened it to splattering rain. “We mean to turn south here and cross the river.”

Without me. They will go on without me. What will become of me without references?
So keen those blue eyes, so handsome. A monster has no right to look so appealing in the rain.

His lips were moving. Wet lips. Raindrop beaded. His manner unassuming. Gentlemanly. “Will you go on to Manchester with us, Miss Deering? The city is larger than Leeds, and might offer better opportunity for a position.”

“Do not leave us, Miss Deering. Please.” Felicity sought her hand, wrung it in a child’s urgency of wanting, as if it were a life-line.

Elaine said nothing a moment, considering her charge’s desperation, considering Lord Wharton’s glistening jaw as he regarded his daughter’s wheedling with evidence of distaste. She considered, too, how a man might wish to offer her better chance of a position when she had refused his offer--not a monster.

“You are too kind.”

He tipped his hat, rain in a river, wet locks and dry. Golden hair that turned to dross when drenched. “Not at all.” His gaze was steady--keen, his tone undeniably playful. “I would but give you chance to change your mind, and my daughter additional opportunity to grovel at your feet.”

He meant to reprimand the child with such insult, but she was too young to comprehend his sarcasm.

“Oh, yes. Do stay.” Her clutching fingers were hot.

“Indeed, my dear,” Mrs. Olive coaxed, clicking off stitches with the same persistent rhythm as the rain on the roof. “You cannot truly want to get out in this dreadful wet, can you?”

It was true. Elaine did not want to get out of the warm, dry coach.

She did not want to set about the odious tasks of finding a place to stay, a place to advertise for a position. She did not want to face the prospect of weeks without a position, weeks worth of interviews. And yet she must. Eventually. Her life would be much changed by the absence of references, and none of it for the better, but she must stiffen backbone and take her future into hand. What future? Which future? One without monsters. Was there such a place for her, such a station?

In looking at Felicity, she saw herself as a child, and had no desire to leave her charge in such a desperate state. Too much did the child wring her heart. Too ill-equipped did the father seem to be able to comfort her.

Papa
, she thought, as she had thought many a time since his unfortunate end,
how could you leave us in so precarious a situation? Did it never occur to you the depths to which your daughters might fall?

Daughter to a monster. She had not known, any more than Felicity.

“Manchester it is, then.” She met Wharton’s satisfied nod--the sudden gleam in his deceptively beautiful eyes--with a ready, “Most kind, my lord.”

“Say it often enough and I may begin to believe you.” He slammed shut the door. “We shall stop in Dewsbury to eat.”

T
hey crossed the River Aire, and the freshly dug trench where a canal was under construction, then into the lonely, windswept moors for a wet hour and a half before stopping, as promised, at Dewsbury. Lord Wharton saw to their feeding at an inn--an ancient inn. Squat and strong, it had the look of having always been where it stood. It was made of the local yellowish stone, with a peeked roof, and ceilings and doorways built in an age when men were shorter. Valentine Wharton was forced to duck his golden head rather than bang noble forehead on the lintel. Elaine much feared for the crown of her bonnet.

It was a local haunt, not much used to strangers, it seemed. Heads turned as they entered. They were eyed head to toe as intruders. The tap man made a bit of a fuss in seeing them to a private room.

Wharton brought with him a brass-bound box from beneath one of the coach seats. It went unopened until the tap man tried to bring to the table a pitcher of the local ale. The box was lifted then, and placed conspicuously in the center of the table.

“I prefer hot water,” his lordship said, a trifle too politely, wearing the walled off look Elaine had begun to expect of him. A wary monster.

The tap man’s face fell. “Come, sir,” he cajoled. “You will be wanting a sip of our local brew. It is quite famous in this part of the country.”

Mrs. Olive eyed the exchange with pursed lips and worried eyes.

Wharton clicked open the clasps on the box, and threw back the lid. “A pot of hot water,” he repeated, still polite, but with an undeniable edge to the words, as hard as the glint in his eyes.

“Just a wee dram, my lord?” The tap man was persistent.

Mrs. Olive looked as if she were mightily tempted to say something, perhaps to box the tap man’s ears. But her master did not appear to be the sort of fellow to bear lightly interfering servants. She bit down on her lower lip, and balled the corner of the tablecloth in her lap.

I remember mama holding tongue, that same fear in her eyes. The fear of father’s temptation.

Felicity fell very still, watching her father, just as Elaine had once watched her own father, tongue caught between her teeth, tension riding her jaw. Hoping against hope.

Wharton’s voice rose only slightly, and yet his tone and manner were not to be argued with. “I’ve a very good Darjeeling here, my good man, and would indulge my party in a cup as we eat your best meat pies, sausages, bread and butter, vegetable sides, and apples, have you any.”

The tension that had gathered in the room dissipated in an instant, like the steaming breath of the horses led past fogged windows.

“Ah!” The tap man’s brows rose. “Of course, my lord. If you will, we have a fine cauliflower, and taties and ham.”

He went away happy with all that had been ordered.

His lordship stood by a window, gazing outward, the muscles of his thighs still tensed, as if he were prepared to . . . run? Do battle? Elaine could not be sure. What she was sure of was that Mrs. Olive warmed her hands by the fire with a most satisfied expression, humming a little tune under her breath.

Impatient with the wait, as only a child can be, Felicity asked Elaine, “Are you hungry? I am quite famished. Hear my stomach growl?”