The Cinderella Governess

Chapter Four

‘Miss Radcliff.’ Sir Rodger waved her over to him with a book as she came downstairs from the schoolroom. Frances and Catherine were upstairs with their mother discussing the house party while Ava and Anne were with their nurse, giving Joanna a brief rest from her duties.

‘Yes, Sir Rodger?’ She’d hope to take a walk in the garden. It appeared her plans were about to be waylaid by her employer. She wondered what he wanted of her. He’d barely said two words to her during her time here except to scold her in front of others or question the quality of her education.

‘Since it appears you have nothing to occupy you at present, I’d like you to return this book to Vicar Carlson.’ He handed her the tome, the blue cuff of his favourite coat sprinkled with food stains. With his wild grey hair frizzed out on either side of his head, he appeared more like some forgotten grandfather than a wealthy baronet. His dog sat beside him, its drool dripping on the stone floor. ‘While you walk, think about how you can better manage the girls. I won’t pay for a governess who has no control over my daughters. Do I make myself clear?’

Joanna’s fingers dug into the leather binding. She wanted to tell him the girls’ obstinacy wasn’t her fault but his since he rarely reprimanded them. Instead, she summoned up her best prim-and-proper governess stance to answer with all the deference required of her position. ‘Yes, Sir Rodger. I’ll deliver the book at once and consider what you’ve said.’

She dipped a curtsy and walked away, indignity making her insides burn as she left the house and headed down the drive. Sir Rodger employed slothful maids, a crotchety butler and a cook who couldn’t warm bread, yet he threatened to fire her? She snapped a thin branch off a poorly pruned topiary and swiped it at the air in front of her. It would take nothing short of an exorcism to drive out the wilful streak in the Huntford girls. She’d already employed every trick Madame Dubois and the other teachers had taught her, but nothing had worked. Without the support of their parents, there was little Joanna could do to make them mind. Her failure was almost assured.

She made the sharp turn on to the small path which led into the woods and to the narrow road traversing it. The woods covered the corner of land marking the boundaries between Huntford Place, Pensum Manor and Helmsworth Manor. She and the girls often walked here during their daily outings to study botany and geology. They were no more obedient outside than inside and it was always a chore to bring them home in time for supper, or with the twins not covered in mud.

Why didn’t Madame Dubois better vet the Huntfords before she sent me here? Or perhaps she’d been so eager to relinquish responsibility for Joanna after nineteen years, she hadn’t cared. Her parents hadn’t cared when they’d left her on the school’s doorstep as an infant without a clue as to who they were, so why should anyone else?

Joanna stumbled over a rock, the old rejection burning in her chest. It was an uncharitable thing to think of Madame Dubois who’d taken her in and been so kind to her, but she couldn’t help it. The loneliness which used to fill her every Christmas when the other girls would go home for the holidays while she remained at the school came over her again. The teachers had done their best to raise and guide her, but with so many students, Joanna had received no special attention, nor had she sought it. The teachers had always praised her for her independence, not realising it wasn’t independence at all, but resignation. There hadn’t been any point asking for something she wouldn’t receive.

The teachers might not have cooed over her, but they’d imparted their knowledge to her, preparing her for her present position. Sadly, it was nothing like what she’d been led to believe it would be, or what she’d hoped. When she’d viewed the house from the mail coach on her first day here, she’d been so excited, expecting to at last experience what it was like to be a member of a true family. It had all been a silly dream, like the one she used to have about her mother returning to claim her.

Joanna flung the branch away. It would be a blow to her and the school if she was dismissed and forced to return to Salisbury without a reference. All the many years of effort, time and work Madame Dubois, Miss Fanworth and the other teachers had put into her would be ruined because of her inability to maintain her first position. In the end she might not have a choice but to leave. Sir Rodger had made his unrealistic expectation of her clear and she didn’t see how she might meet it.

She reached the small brook cutting across a dip in the road and paused on the sloping and muddy bank. Further away, outside the woods, she could hear the river it came from rushing along its banks. A line of flat stones split the small current which ran clear, showing the smooth pebbles and mud at the bottom of the bed. She wanted to sit down on the bank, drop her head in her hands and watch the water flowing past until nothing else mattered.

No, I can’t give up. There had to be a way to succeed, she only needed to find it and soon. She stepped on to the first rock and then the next one. She almost slipped off the third when it tilted beneath her weight. She threw out her arms to regain her balance, then hurried to the far bank. She didn’t need wet boots on top of her present troubles.

Reaching the other side, her resolve began to fade. She didn’t want to continue with this errand, or her time at Huntford Place. Finding a way to make the girls behave seemed as impossible as finding her mother, but she couldn’t give up. She’d write to Miss Fanworth about what to do and ask her not to tell Madame. Perhaps she’d have some suggestions for Joanna.

In a clearing up ahead, the grey-stone vicarage with a tilted chimney releasing a tendril of pine-scented smoke came into view. Over the low roof rose the square spire of the church behind it, squat against the scattered clouds filling the September sky. This wasn’t the church she and the family attended on Sunday in town, but a living on Helmsworth Manor which served the Marquis of Helmsworth, his staff and the tenants in the small village a mile off.

She heaved a large sigh as she entered the front garden, too upset to summon her usual steadfast cheerfulness. Let Vicar Carlson see her surly and ill-tempered, she didn’t care. A tangle of chrysanthemums, mallow and weeds choked both sides of the slate walk leading to the sturdy door. She knocked lightly on the wood and listened for the answering footsteps of the vicar or a housekeeper from inside. The rustle of the wind through the surrounding trees were the only noises which greeted her.

She leaned off the steps to peer in the front window. Inside was as untidy as the garden with stacks of books piled on every surface. It appeared more like the messy studio of their old art master, Signor Bertolli, than the neat and orderly abode of a vicar. Leaning away from the window, she caught her pinched expression reflected in the glass.

Taking another deep breath, she forced the crease between her eyes to soften and the impassive look she’d perfected during the last four weeks at Huntford Place to return. No one needed to know anything was wrong with her, especially not a stranger. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Few people gave a second thought to a lowly governess.

A few more minutes passed while she waited for someone to return. She tapped the book against her hand. It was clear there was no one here. She could leave the book on the step and be on her way, but she couldn’t risk it being damaged. Sir Rodger had given her an errand and she must do it well. She didn’t want to fail at every task she’d been set to here in Hertfordshire.

She tucked her skirt under her legs, about to sit down and wait, when the whinny of a horse from behind the house caught her notice. She followed the vicarage around to the back. A horse was tied to a tree in the small graveyard between the house and the church. An older man stood before one of the headstones, staring down at the brown grass surrounding it. He was heavyset but tall, with grey hair slicked back above a proud forehead. Sadness left deep creases in the smooth skin and drew down the lines around his mouth, adding years to his face. He held his hat in one hand as he reached out to trace the etched and weathered headstone in front of him. It was pitched to one side from age, but the small bunch of violets laid on its curving top set it apart from the others.

He hadn’t seen her and she didn’t want to interrupt his contemplation. She was about to go, but he clenched his fist in his mouth in a stifled sob. She was afraid to approach him, to interrupt his grief, but she couldn’t leave him alone any more than she could have the new girls who used to cry during their first night at the school.

She approached him, the dry grass crunching beneath her boots and announcing her presence. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Yes, just an old man weeping over the past.’ He rubbed the moisture from his eyes with his fingers then dropped his arm and at last looked at her.

Joanna gasped. His eyes were the same colour as hers and just as vivid.

‘Jane?’ he whispered, dropping his hat. His face went white beneath his grey hair with the same shock Isabel had worn the time she’d come down from the attic claiming to have spied a ghost. In the end it had been nothing more than an old dress dummy covered in dust.

‘No, I’m Miss Radcliff, the new governess at Huntford Place.’ Joanna was eager to ease his alarm the way she’d eased Isabel’s.

He continued to stare at her and she studied his round face and the slender nose set over full lips. Something about him seemed familiar but she’d never seen the gentleman before.

‘Of course you are, how silly of me.’ The slight ruddiness along his cheeks returned as he plucked his hat off the ground and settled it over his hair. ‘You must forgive an old man his foolishness. You reminded me of someone I loved very much.’

Joanna took a cautious step back.

‘My daughter,’ he clarified. ‘You look very much like she did at your age, with the same hair and eyes. The resemblance is remarkable.’

He rubbed his round chin, his previous melancholy threatening to overcome him again.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but Sir Rodger asked me to return this book to Vicar Carlson. Do you know when he’ll return?’ Despite the stranger’s kindly manner, she wanted to be done with this errand, to enjoy the solitude of the long walk back to Huntford Place. She needed the quiet to gather herself before she was thrust back into the pit of she-vipers and their indifferent parents.

‘Vicar Carlson? Why, that’s me.’ He didn’t seem too sure but it wasn’t her place to question a clergyman.

She handed him the book. ‘I won’t disturb you any longer. I’ll be on my way.’

‘No, please stay. You seem troubled.’

She ran her foot over the patch of tall grass in front of her, trying to bite back the worries which had followed her through the forest. At school there’d always been Grace, Rachel or Isabel to commiserate with. She’d written to them, but with each of the girls facing their own trials in their new positions, she’d understated hers. She didn’t want to burden them with her problems. She needed to speak to someone, anyone or she’d run mad.

‘I’m having difficulty in my new position.’ It was all she was willing to hazard with this stranger. ‘The girls won’t listen and Sir Rodger is threatening to dismiss me if I don’t control them, but I can’t.’

He winked at her. ‘Dealing with the Huntford girls, I’m not surprised. They could use a firm hand and much better parenting. I had the entire brood at a Christmas party once, a long time ago when they were very young. They nearly tore up the music room with their wild behaviour.’

‘The twins almost set the curtain in the sitting room on fire yesterday. They’re unwieldy heathens.’

Vicar Carlson tossed back his head and let out a laugh as rich as a church bell.

She clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified by what she’d just said. He might tell Sir Rodger and she’d find herself on the next mail coach to Salisbury. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about them so, but be grateful to have a position.’

She didn’t feel grateful, but exhausted.

‘Don’t be sorry for speaking the truth. I promise I won’t say a thing to Sir Rodger about his precious offspring,’ he reassured her with all the authority of a man used to speaking from the pulpit. ‘It’s the duty of a vicar to help those who are burdened.’

‘Burdened doesn’t begin to describe it.’ She paced back and forth, hands flapping at her sides with her agitation as she explained to him everything about her conversation with Sir Rodger. His willingness to listen unleashed the torrent of words she’d kept inside her for the past month. She even told him of Frances’s two instances with Lieutenant Foreman and the impossible position she now found herself in. ‘If I’m sent home, the people who cared about me the most will be disappointed.’

‘You mean your family?’ he prodded.

‘I don’t have a family, not a real one. My parents, whoever they were, left me for the school to raise when I was a baby,’ she nearly whispered the words as she stopped to face him. It was the first time she’d admitted her illegitimacy to a stranger. It wasn’t something Madame Dubois or any of the teachers had ever mentioned. A few days before leaving the school, Madame Dubois had cautioned her about revealing it in her new position, though the warning hadn’t been necessary. Joanna knew how the world viewed illegitimate children. ‘The teachers at the school raised me.’

‘And you must be about nineteen?’ He scrutinised her with the same curiosity as when they’d first met.

Joanna nodded, wondering what her age had to do with anything, but she didn’t care. For the first time since her arrival in Hertfordshire, here was someone besides Major Preston who sympathised with her plight. Unlike the major, who was all but forbidden to speak to her, Vicar Carlson could listen and perhaps help. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘As someone who’s supposed to guide his flock...’ he flapped his hand at the church as though he wasn’t certain this was his duty ‘...I’ll tell you what you can do. Headstrong girls like to be in charge. Of course they can’t be with the governess, but they’ll try. The trick is to give them choices, but make sure they’re deciding between two things you want.’

‘Like studying French or Geography?’

‘Exactly. Make them think they’re in charge, even when they aren’t.’

‘I’ve never heard anything like this.’ And if it helped, it might be her last hope of staying on and making Madame Dubois proud.

‘I used to do it with my daughter, though it didn’t always work.’ He looked to the headstone with the violets. Sadness crossed over his expression like a cloud in front of the moon. ‘After my wife died, I spoiled Jane. It made her headstrong. The older she grew, the more obstinate she became, like me.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

He smiled at her, tender like the fathers used to be with their daughters before they left them at the school. ‘Don’t be. Her troubles are passed now, but yours aren’t and we must focus on those.’

He offered her a few more suggestions on how to deal with the girls.

Then, in the distance, the bells from the village church began to ring. She didn’t want to leave the vicar or the tranquillity of this corner of the world, but she must. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. Thank you so much for your help.’

‘It was my pleasure. Please, feel free to return whenever you want. I’m often here reading during the day. I like the quiet. And good luck with your students.’

‘Thank you and goodbye.’

Joanna hurried down the path towards Huntford Place. The shadows of the trees didn’t consume her as they had on the walk here. It was the light coming through the branches she noticed instead. She didn’t dread facing the girls, but looked forward to it with a new resolve, eager to try Vicar Carlson’s suggestions, confident for the first time in days she might at last settle into her position.

She was well along the path when male voices from somewhere up around the bend caught her notice.

‘Why are you trying to stop me from visiting him?’

‘Because you don’t understand the situation.’

Joanna crept cautiously forward and peeked around a thick oak tree in the bend of the road. Up ahead, two men had dismounted and now stood arguing while their horses grazed nearby. Joanna’s fingers tightened on the smooth bark. It was Major Preston and his brother, Lord Pensum.

‘If you expect me to linger in your shadow, doing nothing except waiting for providence to make me an earl, you’re mistaken,’ Major Preston countered.

‘Now you know what it’s like to be me.’ His brother grabbed the reins of his horse from where they dangled below the animal’s nose. Lord Pensum stepped into the stirrup and threw one leg over the top of his horse. ‘You think I have all the advantage, but I don’t. Then again you’ve never been able to look beyond yourself and all your need for aggrandisement to realise it.’

I shouldn’t eavesdrop. Trying not to be seen, Joanna crept through the thick underbrush filling the U-shaped bend, determined to slip past the feuding brothers. She winced with each snapping twig and rustle of leaves, trying not to draw attention to herself, but it was almost impossible. She was just on the other side of the large oak tree, about to step onto the path, when someone grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back. Lord Pensum galloped by on his grey horse, narrowly missing her as she hit the solid chest of the man behind her.

‘Are you all right?’ Major Preston’s chin brushed her temples as he spoke, his voice as tight as her insides.

His firm arm against Joanna’s stomach made her heart beat faster than the near collision with the horse. She leaned deeper into him and his fingers twitched against her hip. She reached behind her, ready to grasp his thighs and steady herself like she would against a wall after a shock. Before her fingertips could touch the buckskin of his breeches, she clutched the side of her dress, her breath catching as he shifted against her. She peered up into his dark eyes made more severe by the alternating shadows and sunlight piercing the branches overhead. If she tilted her head, closed her eyes, she might experience his firm lips against hers.

‘Miss Radcliff?’ Major Preston nudged, easing his hold on her.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ She stumbled out of his grasp, mortified at almost losing her head over him. ‘Much better, in fact, for not being ground into the forest floor.’

‘I’m glad I could keep you from becoming one with the fallen leaves.’ He smiled as he bent over to pluck his hat off a bush. His breeches pulled tight over his buttocks when he dipped down then rose, towering over her like the oak above them. ‘May I escort you back to Huntford Place?’

Joanna jerked her attention from his thighs to his face. To walk with him would mean the opportunity to listen to his commanding voice and enjoy more of the conversation they’d indulged in last night. It also risked them being seen together. It might be innocent, but people wouldn’t regard it as such and her position with the Huntfords was already at risk.