Nell let the most recent letter from her brother Colm drop into her lap and stared out of the latticed window at yet another dull spring morning. She wished it would get on and rain, but instead they endured day after day of grey skies and chilly gloom. Local farmers were shaking their heads and making dire predictions about the harvest; seeds couldn’t sprout and grow without warmth or water to sustain them and only the crows seemed likely to grow fat this year. Colm said nothing of his own worries about this unremitting gloom in his letter, but between his recently inherited estates and those he oversaw for their uncle, the new Duke of Linaire, he must be anxious as any right-thinking landowner about the dire state of the land. The ducal acres were sadly neglected and Colm’s own estates without a true master for a decade and a half, so Nell read between the lines and concluded that Eve had got him to London to enjoy the life of a wealthy and recently married aristocrat for a few weeks to escape all that heavy responsibility for a while.
Nell smiled at the thought of her beloved brother charmed into doing what was good for him by his new wife. Even when he knew she was doing it, he let Eve think she had got her way by stealth because he loved her so much and Eve almost glowed with happiness. Nell sighed and felt guilty about the nag of envy she tried hard not to feel. Colm was long overdue some joy after all those weary years of war their late uncle had inflicted on him by buying a commission in the most dangerous regiment he could discover and insisting Colm join it as soon as he was sixteen.
It must be wonderful to build a family with someone you loved and trusted so truly, Nell thought dreamily. Sometimes she longed for such a love so much it hurt, but she refused to make the Earl of Barberry’s land steward the heart of those dreams. Moss would never fall headlong in love with a plain governess and she told herself she didn’t even want him to. She sighed and tried to put the wretched man out of her thoughts, but the dull day outside her window offered no distraction from wondering what sort of young lady would tempt him. To fend off the shocking stab of jealousy such a smugly perfect female could cause her, she let her mind drift back to her childhood instead. Colm’s letter had reminded her how she would read and re-read his every word to enliven the dull days back then. When Colm was sent to school the nursery governess her eldest uncle engaged to keep her out of his way was so stiff and unyielding Nell soon learned not to show her feelings. Tears brought a stern rebuke and an hour in the darkest and most spider-infested cupboard on offer.
Thank goodness Nell was sent to school herself at the age of eight. She might have gone mad locked in that dull world with her stern governess. Colm’s letters and Nell’s discovery that Miss Pitch dosed herself with laudanum most nights saved her from the endless greyness of that stark suite of rooms at the top of Linaire House. Tiptoeing down the backstairs once she could hear Miss Pitch snoring, Nell would creep about the largely closed-up house, discovering the luxury of her uncle’s rooms; the now shabby watered-silk walls of the ladies’ withdrawing room or the leather and velvet of His Grace’s State Dressing Room, and her imagination would run riot. She might tremble at the idea of being caught in her uncle’s private sitting room even when he was far away, but somehow it still fascinated her.
The last Duke of Linaire never came to London in summer when the city was tired and dusty and stank of too much humanity. Nell wondered if he hoped she would be carried off by one of the epidemic fevers that swept through the capital when heat sweltered in narrow courts and overcrowded rookeries. He was so proud and selfish any hint it wasn’t Colm or Nell’s fault their father had brought scandal on the family name would have been greeted with blank incredulity. He was a stupid man born to a great title and hadn’t cared the snap of his fingers for anyone’s comfort but his own.
His next brother, the current Duke of Linaire, was his exact opposite and that was probably why Nell could persuade Uncle Horace to travel to Brussels with her last summer to search for her injured brother on the battlefield at Waterloo. The stench of blood and death and all the appalling sights and sounds would haunt her to her dying day. For most of the day after the battle she and Uncle Horace peered into piles of the sightless dead and tried to avoid looters so eager for plunder they would kill anyone who stood in their way. They asked dazed survivors if they’d seen Captain Carter of the Rifles with desperate hope Colm had survived the carnage. When they were on the point of despairing and going back to the relative safety of the city for the night they finally found him; wounded and already in a high fever, but blessedly alive.
Futile hatred for the last Duke burned in her gut at that terrible memory. The late Augustus Hancourt, Duke of Linaire, might be dead, but she wasn’t a fine enough Christian to forgive him for putting her brother in harm’s way for eight years of the late war. No... Stop, she couldn’t think of the spindle-shanked monster without being sucked under by hatred and fury even now. She refused to let him matter that much, so where was she? Oh, yes, tiptoeing about Linaire House in the dark and never mind her obsession with Moss the steward that constantly threatened to lure her into an impossible daydream of being a poor gentleman’s wife and forgetting Eleanor Hancourt altogether.
She could still smell the dust and stale air of that grand town mansion when too few servants were kept on to keep it immaculate in the Duke of Linaire’s absence. She could still imagine herself back there, listening for a sign her night wanderings had been discovered. Luckily she was too frightened of the dense shadows of the great city by night beyond the shuttered windows to venture outside, but saw some of it when she stood on a rout chair to peer through a gap.
Sometimes she would creep down the back stairs to listen to the other inhabitants of the half closed-up house. The servants kept on to protect it and wait on her and Miss Pitch would be dozing by the fire or talking in the smaller kitchen where the housekeeper baked her cakes when she and the Duke were in residence. Listening to them discuss when the Duke might return, Nell would wonder why she never went to Linaire Court, deep in the fertile Midlands and far away from dusty, smelly London. She had only seen true countryside from a hackney Miss Pitch hired to visit her parents in Hampstead on a day when the maid who had promised to look after Nell for the afternoon took to her bed. The Pitch family lived in a cottage on the Heath, but seemed happy and less wooden than their eldest daughter. Nell enjoyed Mrs Pitch’s good-natured fussing, until Miss Pitch bundled her back into another stuffy coach for the return journey to grey and gloomy Linaire House. After that the governess seemed to dislike Nell even more and perhaps a woman forced to earn her living resented a child born to privilege, even if there were few signs of it by the time Miss Pitch began her stern rule.
She wasn’t doing well at putting the past behind her and going on with her life as best she could, was she? Folding Colm’s letter to be read again later, she frowned at the dull grey skies outside again and blamed Moss. His arrival here had woken something in her that was better left sleeping. She was content until he came, even if her duty to her charges was an excuse not to accept Colm and Eve’s offer to stay with them and live the life Lord Chris Hancourt’s daughter should have had all along. That duty still existed, but she wasn’t so sure she was the person to carry it out.
She had blossomed at Miss Thibett’s school and perhaps her pupils would do better there as well. Once she was here Nell was too occupied with the struggle to get them to learn anything to wonder if she was the right person for the task. It took news that Lord Chris Hancourt was a very different father to the one his eldest brother had painted and the spectacular fortune Colm inherited at five and twenty to make her think again. Miss Hancourt was a catch on the marriage mart again, or she would be if the ton knew where to find her. Her father added her more modest fortune to the blind trust he had set up to protect her maternal grandfather’s riches from his greedy eldest brother and Lord Chris’s last gamble had paid off spectacularly well. Nell had a dowry that put all the Selford girls’ portions added together in the shade. Now Moss was here another layer of uncertainty was plaguing her and he’d laugh himself hoarse if anyone suggested she might have a voice in his future, so why was she so reluctant to bid him goodbye if she went to the capital and forgot about Miss Court’s duty?
‘Miss Court, where are you?’ Caro’s voice sounded anxious. ‘The carriage is at the door and we’re all ready for church,’ she called and Nell felt guilty about even thinking of leaving Berry Brampton House. Pushing the girls’ absent guardian into sending her charges to Miss Thibett’s Academy for Young Ladies instead of looking for a replacement governess could be a betrayal and she hastily pushed Colm’s letters back into her writing slope.
‘Coming, Caroline,’ she called and tied the ribbons of her dull bonnet before taking a glance in the square of mirror on the mantelpiece to make sure she looked as dull and unremarkable as ever before picking up her prayer book.
‘I was afraid we’d be late. Do you think Mr Rivers will attend church this Sunday?’ Caro asked when Nell appeared in the hall. Bad enough that Lavinia sighed over every man she came across without Caro becoming infatuated with Lord Barberry’s dashing half-brother.
‘If he follows the Roman Catholic faith he will not be able to,’ she answered, wishing him and his reluctant host at Jericho right now.
‘Oh, no, all his family are Protestant—I asked him.’
‘Are they indeed? That makes your family’s attitude to his mama even less understandable,’ Nell said before she could stop herself.
‘That’s what I always thought,’ Caro agreed quietly.
‘I expect they were good and right-thinking people otherwise,’ Nell replied and wondered where such clumsiness would take her next.
‘Grandfather used to shout a lot and call us girls names. I’m so glad Papa took us to sea with him because Grandfather used to say no girl was of use or decoration and he’d rather be dead than cost a dowry when some fool wanted to wed one of us.’
‘Then he needed to beg forgiveness on his knees before he met his maker and was forced to account for his sins. Poor little Lavinia.’
‘Vinnie tries to pretend it wasn’t so bad being left here by her mama. It was wrong to leave her child with a bad-tempered old man if she didn’t have to though, wasn’t it, Miss Court?’
‘Between you and me, yes, Caro. You can be very wise sometimes.’
‘I’m quiet, Miss Court, I notice things and people often forget I’m there,’ Caro said with a shrug that said a little too much about her life here since her father’s death.
‘Maybe, but not everyone puts what they overhear to such good use. I shall try to be a little more patient with Lavinia in future.’
‘And goodness knows, you’ll need to be,’ Caro admitted with a fleeting hug for her governess that warmed Nell’s heart as they walked to the side door to wait for the other girls to finish dressing in their best for church.
* * *
‘Good morning, Miss Court,’ Moss greeted quietly and made Nell jump. She had found out the carriage was about to drive away to the inn yard down the street with Georgiana’s prayer book and best handkerchief on board. ‘Your footman asked me to give these to Miss Georgiana, but I expect you feel the lack of them more acutely than she will until she has need of them.’
‘True, she does tend to live in the moment,’ she said absently and wondered why, even blunted by gloves, his touch sent a frisson she didn’t want to think about through her when he passed them over with a perfunctory bow and a shadow of his usual mocking smile.
‘Where else is there?’ he observed lightly and offered her his arm.
‘There is the future and all the unforeseen consequences leading away from what we do today. Thank you for your offered escort, but, no, thank you, Mr Moss,’ she said primly, ignoring his offer to help her into the Selford family pew as if she was precious to him, or many years older than three and twenty.
Much good it did her to refuse his escort, she decided crossly. She could almost feel his amused gaze on the back of her head as he meekly took his place in the lesser box pew allotted to Berry Brampton’s upper servants behind this one and all that kept them apart was an inch or two of good English oak. She tried not to know he was scrutinising her best bonnet above the partition as if its fearsome respectability amused him. If Mr Rivers had a lady Nell could remove herself from the Selfords’ box and sit with Moss the steward, Parkins the butler and Mrs Winch, housekeeper and her official chaperon. Since that gentleman was young, handsome and free as air Nell had to join him and her charges in the family pew. Somehow Mr Rivers didn’t feel a threat to her good reputation. The Earl’s little brother was like a large and amiable young dog, not quite fully grown and only half-tamed, but well disposed towards the world and ready to believe it felt the same way about him.
Mr Rivers sang lustily, prayed dutifully and listened as patiently as any man could to Mr Clennage’s rambling sermon, so she couldn’t blame him for this feeling of being uneasy in her own skin. It was the sound of Mr Moss’s rich baritone voice that sent a flutter of prickly consciousness down Nell’s back. Then there was her irrational suspicion his attention was fixed on the back of her head again, despite the day and the place. She sat rigid and uncomfortable in her well-cushioned seat and, try as she might, couldn’t recall the thread of the vicar’s homily to save her life. And that meant she would have to think of a diversion when Mrs Winch tried to discuss it with her and the girls tonight.
Lingering outside the church door when the service was over was a price a governess must pay for having four young charges with friends to greet and exchange news with, amidst the quieter gossip and making of plans their elders indulged in. Nell felt as if the whole congregation knew how hard she must try not to look at Moss. She made sure they went opposite ways through the groups of parishioners waiting for carriages or husbands, or wives and children. At last she managed to get all her charges shepherded into the largest of the Berry Brampton coaches for the journey home, long after the other servants had left and Mr Rivers and Mr Moss mounted their fine steeds and headed back to the land steward’s house for whatever food such fit and healthy young gentlemen needed after a hearty breakfast.
* * *
‘Faith has been wicked,’ Mrs Winch whispered in Nell’s ear once the girls were upstairs putting off their bonnets and shawls and finding indoor shoes. ‘You had best come to my sitting room and find out what she’s been up to, Miss Court, if that’s convenient.’
Mrs Winch was a lady superior to most governesses in breeding and status, but Nell’s position here was better than most young women forced to earn their own keep. She suspected his lordship’s lawyer had made it clear the governess must be treated with respect, so his provisions for the Selford girls’ improved well-being were not undone the moment the Nell arrived, suffered a frosty reception and turned tail. She was made of stronger stuff, but it was a relief not to be bullied and ignored by the servants and the family she worked for, as one of the pupil teachers at Miss Thibett’s school was when she left to look for excitement. Nell hoped she had earned respect for at least staying in the face of the girls’ determination to make her go, but Mrs Winch had never truly unbent towards her. Maybe she thought Nell would presume if she didn’t subtly put her in her place now and again.
‘Of course, the girls are busy putting themselves to rights and at least none of us need worry about lessons on a Sunday,’ she replied and wondered what the girl had done that Mrs Winch could not deal with sternly then forget.
Faith was standing in the middle of the Housekeeper’s Room, twisting her apron between her fingers and looking very woebegone. Mrs Winch briskly ordered her to stop ruining her uniform to add to her sins and the girl burst into tears. The housekeeper told her to stop it this minute and to Nell’s surprise the young maid did exactly that. Nell wondered if she should try such stern tactics on the Selford girls next time one of them indulged in a storm of tears and imagined Lavinia’s scorn or Penelope’s surprise and nearly laughed at the wrong moment.
‘I could hardly believe my eyes when I caught Faith searching the papers in your writing slope when I went upstairs to check the beds had been properly made. I heard an odd noise in your room and thought the stable cat had got in again, but it was even worse than that,’ Mrs Winch said with a stern glare that threatened worse than being scurried outside by the scruff like the poor cat was last time it got ideas above its station.
‘I didn’t mean no harm, Miss Court,’ Faith managed woefully.
‘Then why do such an odd thing, Faith?’ Nell asked.
‘Well, you see, miss, it was because our mam ain’t been well, the baby needs medicine and Pa can’t get no work.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ Nell said and it sounded a tale of woe and all too familiar in these hard times.
‘That’s no excuse, my girl,’ Mrs Winch put in coldly.
‘Well, the lady said she’d pay me five pounds if I found what she wanted when I saw her yesterday on my way back from the village,’ Faith said defiantly. Mrs Winch glared even more ferociously at her and the girl looked about to cry again.
‘What did this lady want you to do in return for such a vast amount of money, Faith?’ Nell asked, wondering when this odd tale was going to make sense.
‘Your letters and papers and any writing in books I could see apart from what should be in them, miss.’
‘Good heavens, what use could any of that be to her?’ Nell said, horror at what her correspondence could reveal making her feel quite faint, but nobody outside her family knew who Miss Court really was, did they? And why would it interest them if they did?
She wondered if Faith had bothered to look inside her neatly folded papers before she did her best to steal them and her heart did a panicked rat-a-tat-tat at the idea she wasn’t as well disguised as she had thought. Moss would see her as a fine lady slumming while she made up her mind how to play her delayed entry into polite society if the truth came out like this.
‘I dunno, miss,’ Faith admitted after a pause for thought. ‘I wouldn’t have agreed to do it, but the apothecary said he’d have us put out on the streets if we didn’t pay him. It’s only a few bits of paper and a book or two, after all, and we do need the money awful bad.’
‘If it wasn’t going to hurt anyone, why did this woman want you to steal Miss Court’s private letters?’ Mrs Winch pointed out with another hard look that said Faith was about to lose her job, whatever Nell had to say about the matter.
The maid wasn’t much older than Penny, who seemed so many years away from adulthood the notion of her working hard from dawn to dusk seemed ridiculous. Poverty brought maturity long before it was due, Nell decided, thanking God her grandmother hadn’t allowed her to be put to work at the same age. And how could she save Faith and her family from being thrown on the parish?
‘Perhaps it would be best if we don’t let this strange woman know you were found out,’ she said, with a warning glance at Mrs Winch to say this was more her business than the housekeeper’s. ‘How did you meet her?’
‘At the Maying, Miss Court. She said she’d come specially to see us dance at dawn and asked if anyone else had read about it in the paper last year. I did, when everyone else was finished with it and it was waiting to go out for the ragman. She said I was a clever girl and walked most of the way back here with us. Then she said she was here to find out something important for the Government and what a pity I couldn’t work for her as I was already working for his lordship.’
‘Five pounds is too much even for a key to his lordship’s strongroom and I’m sure you wouldn’t give her that even if you knew where to find it,’ Nell said.
The quality of her unknown enemy seemed shoddy as she wondered who would think such an outrageous bribe could go unnoticed if Faith succeeded and her family suddenly paid off their debts. It sounded like the work of a pampered lady, used to casually splashing out large sums of money to get the best service. Might such an exotic creature be behind this odd business? Nell had nothing worth stealing and she shifted uneasily as it occurred to her that a bored society lady might be curious enough about the Hancourt heiress to step outside her luxurious life for a few days to unmask her.
‘No, miss, that I wouldn’t. Our mam will be fit to be tied when she finds out what I’ve done as it is.’
‘Well, you let her down very badly, Faith. I shudder to think how hard it must be for her to feed your brothers and sisters already and if you lose your job it will be even harder.’
‘I know, miss,’ Faith mumbled miserably.
Nell reminded herself she was dealing with a child and the woman who had approached Faith to carry out such furtive mischief should take the blame, not an urchin barely old enough to be let out from behind her mother’s skirts.
‘If I overlook this disgraceful affair and beg Mrs Winch to keep you on, will you promise me not to tell anyone you were caught searching my room? If this lady asks, say you haven’t been able to get into my room without being caught and tell me at once.’
‘I ain’t very good at lying, miss.’
‘You seem a little too good at it to me, Faith, but perhaps you’d rather Mrs Winch sent you home?’
‘Oh, no, miss,’ the girl said with an uneasy look at the stony-faced housekeeper. ‘We’d be put in the poor house in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
‘I suggest you bear that in mind if you ever see this lady again,’ Nell warned with a pleading look at Mrs Winch to persuade her to agree.
‘And you’ll swear never to do anything wicked again if you want to stay in this house another minute, Faith Roberts,’ the lady ordered, presenting the girl with her own bible to make it a sacred oath.
‘I swear, ma’am,’ the girl said, her hand on the holy book and as solemn an expression as even Mrs Winch could wish on her tear-streaked face.
‘Then go about your duties and don’t say a word to anyone,’ the lady said briskly. ‘I shall be watching you like a hawk from now on.’
‘Thank you, ma’am, Miss Court,’ the girl gasped and bolted for the door before either of them could change their minds.
‘Give me one good reason why I should not turn her off anyway,’ Mrs Winch demanded as soon as the door was shut behind the shamefaced girl.
‘It would alert this woman her plan has been thwarted and I’m afraid she’ll try again by some means I may like even less.’
‘It’s very odd. Have you many enemies who take such a close interest in your private affairs, Miss Court?’
Nell felt she was under as much suspicion as poor Faith. ‘I have no idea who is behind this folly, but I must find out if an attack of mania or mistaken identity led her to move against me like this.’
‘I don’t see how keeping Faith in a position she has shown herself unworthy of will do that.’
‘Nor do I at the moment, but it will give us time to think.’
‘I’m not sure I want to. We live in dark times, despite the peace, and there are rogues enough in the world without a thief living under his lordship’s roof. I hope none of your relatives are Jacobins to account for it if the Government really do need to see your correspondence, Miss Court.’
‘You know very well that my brother was an infantry officer for many years and was wounded at Waterloo. I took French leave to find him and drag him off the battlefield, so my family would never side with anyone intent on overthrowing our Government when he put his life at risk every day of his service to his country.’
‘True; and I’m sorry to have doubted you, but this is a very strange business. We need wise masculine counsel if we’re ever to sleep easily in our beds again.’
‘You think I should write to my brother?’
‘No, that would take too long. We must consult Mr Moss. He is his lordship’s representative and has a strong arm and a clever mind. He may see something in this dark business we cannot. Don’t shake your head at me like that; if you wish me to keep that girl on after she agreed to search your belongings for money, I insist you confide in Mr Moss.’
‘Very well, but I can’t meet a man in private and I refuse to discuss it in front of the girls.’
‘Leave it to me,’ the formidable housekeeper said with enough iron in her voice to steel a whole regiment of nervous housemaids.