My father strode into the entrance hall one morning, greatcoat flapping and mud on his boots, to find me studying the painting of the old manor house that hung at the foot of the staircase. He halted his own forward momentum, head turning so suddenly that I thought he must have spotted something unexpected or startling—I looked around, half-thinking I would find that a horse or a fox wandered into the house and was standing somewhere behind me. But there was nothing there; I was the unexpected thing.
Papa hesitated a moment, and then came forward, nodding at the painting. “It was a poky old place,” he said. “Drafty. Your grandmother had a sentimental attachment to it, but I could not wait to pull it down and start fresh.”
We stood side by side, looking up at the old house, rendered immortal in oil paints. Its stone walls were weathered, its windows very narrow. Large trees grew up all around it, trees that, now, no longer existed.
“The roof leaked here; my father was forever having it patched,” Papa said, pointing. “And there was so little light that we used candles even on the brightest days.” His hand hovered above my shoulder but did not touch down. “I wanted a more comfortable home for myself and my family, but I also wanted to create something befitting the de Bourgh name. When Rosings Park is yours, I am sure you will make your own improvements.”
He let his hand drop then, resting it heavily on my narrow shoulder for a moment. Beside my father, I felt even smaller than usual; at twelve years old, the top of my head reached just past his shoulder. He could have fit more than two of me inside himself.
When Rosings Park is yours . Contradictions clicked against my teeth. Rosings Park was mine; it was the only place, save our brief journey to the seaside, that I had ever known. But the thought that it would be mine —my responsibility—caused a quiver of anxiety inside my chest. And, too, was Mamma’s constant refrain, that my cousin Fitzwilliam and I would marry—in which case, as the law dictated, our two estates would belong to him.
Do you think I can? I wanted to say—meaning, could I do all the things my father did to keep Rosings Park whirring like a child’s top, profitable for us and for the people who worked its land? My cheeks pinked.
But before I could begin to figure out how to voice these thoughts, Papa released me and looked around the hall, as if searching for something. “Why are you on your own?” he said, as if only just noticing. “Where is that pretty little governess of yours?”
“She went to her chamber to fetch a warmer wrap,” I said. “We are going to take a turn in the garden.” I frowned. “Miss Hall is not pretty. Mamma said so.”
My father looked amused. “Did she, now?”
“Yes. She said . . . it is the first duty of any governess, to not be too handsome.”
Papa shook his head, smiling a little; and then his face grew serious. “And how do you like your not-too-pretty governess?”
He never asked my opinion of anything; I felt certain that I must give the correct answer now. “Very much,” I said, but the words were muttered, and my eyes dropped so Papa would not see the lie in them.
But he put his fingers under my chin, tapping there so my head came up. My nostrils filled with the smell of his glove—leather and oil and horse—before he took his hand away. It was the second time he had touched me in only a few minutes; I could not remember when last he had touched me, could only remember brief dry buffs of lips to brow, the occasional, merry tugging of me onto his lap. But that was when I was small; I was becoming a young lady now, or would soon, at least. And Papa was so rarely home now. I thought of his large form galloping away across the fields; even when he was at Rosings, he was never within my reach.
Papa looked at me for a moment. Then he sighed in a way that told me he was ready to move on with his day. His gaze drifted down the hall toward his book room, and I took an instinctive step closer to him, trying to draw his eye back to me. The book room was where Papa and Mr. Colt conducted business; it was not a place for ladies or children.
“Whether you like your governess is immaterial,” he said, looking back at me with clear reluctance. “You have the privilege of a good education. And you will need it. Your husband will have the running of a grand estate, and you will have the running of the household. These stones”—with a motion that took in the house that he had built—“those fields out there, that rich timber—all of it will be yours. You need a sharp mind if you are to help your husband secure the future of this estate for your children, and their children. And on and on.”
Ah, I thought. My husband. My jaw tightened.
And then my father stepped back, closing off from me as surely as if he had already withdrawn to his book room and shut the door behind him.
“We must improve your penmanship,” Miss Hall said.
It was an overcast day and I had been squinting at my embroidery, trying to understand at what point my thread became so dreadfully tangled. I looked up to find Miss Hall grimacing at some lines of scripture that I had copied out for her the day before; she held the paper between her thumb and forefinger as if it were a soiled petticoat.
My body pulsed with indignation—could I do nothing right? Other than mathematics—Miss Hall had taken to giving me increasingly complicated problems to solve, involving bushels of this or that, and all manner of questions about crop yields and the cost of lengths of fabric—our lessons were still mostly exercises in frustration, for both teacher and pupil. Nothing came as easily to me as figuring, and while Miss Hall praised my quickness with numbers—“You’ve a mathematical mind!” she exclaimed just yesterday, making me blush and shake my head, wondering what on earth Mamma would say to hear such a pronouncement—she was quick to remind me that hard work could, if only I let it, make up for a deficiency in natural ability in my other subjects.
“Put aside your”—Miss Hall looked down at my work, lifting one eloquent eyebrow—“embroidery for now. We are going to write letters.”
“Why?” I said, not troubling to moderate my tone.
Miss Hall gave me the same look she gave the embroidery. “Because you need to practice if you are to improve. Lady Catherine”—and here she rose from her chair, moving about the room with confusing swiftness, gathering pens, ink, and paper, setting them out on the table so that she and I would be squared off, facing each other like street fighters—“may have decided that you are above learning to draw or play, but even she must agree that a lady who cannot pen a legible line is a useless creature.”
She pulled out a chair for me, hard enough that the front legs thumped against the floor. I lowered myself into it warily, watching as Miss Hall sat across from me, dipped her pen, and began writing the date at the top of her page in a slow and elegant hand. After a minute she looked up, sighing when she saw that I had yet to write a word.
“What is the problem, Miss de Bourgh?”
My jaw hurt where my back teeth pressed too hard together; I unclenched them with an effort. “I . . . I have no one to whom I can write.”
Something—something—flickered in Miss Hall’s eyes, there and gone too quickly for me to read it. But when she spoke, her voice was gentler than usual.
“Surely you must. You have cousins, do you not? Aunts?”
“One aunt living,” I said. “And . . .” I paused, counting in my head. “Four cousins. But we do not correspond.” Though it was amusing to wonder, if only for a moment, what my family would think if they received a letter from me. I could see the puzzlement on Aunt Fitzwilliam’s handsome face; the baffled panic in my cousins’.
Another sigh, louder than the first. “Very well. You may write to me, if you must—but your hand must be steady, and you must think of something to say. No recitations; your own words, Miss de Bourgh.”
For some reason, the suggestion was startling. My shoulders hunched; Miss Hall must be mocking me.
“Will you write back?” I said. My voice was strange; I had never heard myself sound so hard, or so daring.
Miss Hall considered me for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I will write back.”
I nodded slowly. Miss Hall nodded in return, then bent her head over the letter she had already begun. Watching her, I wondered to whom she was writing; and then I glanced down at my own blank page. I could, I supposed, ask.
I smiled a little, and dipped my pen.