Rags-to-Riches Bride. Mary Nichols

attention.’ She turned to Diana and scrutinised her carefully, her gaze ranging from her sensible boots, her simple black dress and three-quarter-length coat to her wide-brimmed bonnet, which hid most of her face. ‘Take that bonnet off, girl.’

      Diana did as she was told, to reveal lustrous red-gold hair which she had attempted, not very successfully, to drag into a knot at the back of her head. The old lady gave a secretive little smile, which puzzled Diana. ‘You will hide that under a suitable cap when you are at work, my dear, and you will wear a plain gown, long-sleeved and buttoned to the neck, otherwise you’ll do. John, you may send for Stephen now.’

      Mr Harecroft picked up a bell from his desk and gave it a vigorous shake. Almost at once the young man who had conducted Diana upstairs entered the room and was told to find Mr Stephen Harecroft and ask him to come. He looked at Diana as he turned to obey and gave her a smirk, which told her he had been listening on the other side of the door. Lady Harecroft had said she could deal with unwarranted attention and she must demonstrate that she could. She gave him a haughty look and replaced her bonnet.

      She was wondering if she ought to leave, but she had not yet been appraised of her duties or told her hours of work and remuneration. She was not even sure that Mr Harecroft would give her a job after Lady Harecroft had gone. He had certainly said nothing that indicated he would, had said very little at all, leaving the talking to his grandmother. She sat with her hands in her lap and waited.

      Stephen Harecroft was a younger version of John, in his early twenties, Diana guessed. He had similar clear blue eyes and a shock of pale gold hair with just a hint of red. ‘You sent for me, sir? I was busy checking that last consignment of silk. It’s not up to the same standard as the last batch. We shall have to have words with our suppliers.’ He turned to the old lady, his face lighting up with pleasure. ‘Great-Grandmama, you here? How are you?’ He bent to kiss her cheek.

      ‘Perfectly well, boy. I want you to escort me back to Hare-croft House. I will stay with you tonight and go home tomorrow.’

      ‘A pleasure, but who brought you?’

      ‘Richard, but he’s gone to a meeting. He will join us for dinner.’

      ‘A meeting?’ Mr Harecroft queried. ‘With whom?’

      The old lady shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’

      ‘Something to do with his book, I dare say,’ Stephen said. Suddenly seeing Diana, he stopped. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am.’ This with a bow. ‘I did not see you there.’

      ‘Miss Bywater is coming to work here,’ Lady Harecroft said.

      ‘In what capacity?’

      ‘Clerk,’ his father said.

      The young man did not trouble to hide his astonishment. ‘But—’

      ‘No buts, Stephen,’ her ladyship said. ‘Miss Bywater is in every way suitable and she needs to work, so you will do all you can to help her.’

      He looked from his great-grandmother to his father, one eyebrow raised in a query. His father shrugged. It seemed to Diana that the old lady’s word was law and, however much they might disapprove, they dare not go against her. She watched as the young man escorted his venerable relative from the room, then turned to face Mr Harecroft.

      ‘Ahem…’ he began, twiddling a pen between his fingers. ‘I assume it is no good asking you for references?’

      ‘No good at all, sir, but I am willing to demonstrate my ability.’

      He reached into a drawer and drew out a ledger, opening it at random. ‘Add that column of figures, if you please.’ She did so. After he had checked her accuracy, he asked her to work out seven and a half per cent of the total. This done, she was required to copy a column of figures. If he had hoped to catch her out, he was disappointed. The speed with which she came back with the correct answers startled him. ‘My father set me practising on the bills of lading on the ships he commanded,’ she told him. ‘I also worked out the percentages of the prize money for each member of the crew. It was Papa’s way of teaching me mathematics.’

      ‘It seems to have worked,’ he murmured. ‘What else did he teach you?’

      She was relaxed enough to laugh. ‘Oh, so many things. How to steer by the stars, the tides and ocean currents, the geography of the ports where we called, what they imported and exported, what it cost and what it fetched when it arrived in England, some of the culture. He is a very knowledgeable man.’

      ‘But now unable to work himself?’

      ‘That is correct.’ She shut her mouth firmly on expanding on that. She did not want him to know about her father’s drinking. It was something of which she was ashamed, ashamed most particularly because she could not coax him away from it. And bullying him only made him angry. He was her father, he would tell her, she had no right to question what he did.

      ‘I will give you a month’s trial. Your pay will be thirty-five pounds per annum and you will work from eight in the morning to seven at night from Monday to Friday and from eight until two on Saturdays. The men are given an allowance for a suit of clothes, so you shall have enough for two gowns. Grey, I think. Is that agreeable?’

      ‘Yes, thank you, but I would like to be paid at the end of each week, considering I am to live at home.’

      ‘Very well.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘You can no doubt compute how much that will be yourself.’

      ‘When shall I start?’

      ‘Tomorrow.’ He opened a cash box and extracted three guineas which he offered to her. ‘For your dresses. They will remain the property of the company.’

      She rose to take the coins and put them in her purse, then thanked him again and left. He did not ask anyone to escort her off the premises, assuming she would find her own way down to the shop floor. Only when she was safely out into the arcade did she let out a huge breath of relief and allow herself to smile. She had done it! Sheer effrontery had paid off. At least for a month. She had no doubt Mr Harecroft expected to be able to say at the end of that time that the experiment had not worked and he must part with her. She had to disappoint those expectations, which meant not only being as good as the men he employed, but better. At the end of the month she must have made herself almost indispensable.

      And she did. At the end of the trial, he was obliged to admit she had earned her pay and told her she could stay. She was still there a year later.

      So that she would not distract the men she worked in solitary splendour in a little cubby hole on the second floor. Luckily it had a window which looked out onto the street at the back the shop, which she could open to let in a little air. She was doing that one hot day in June 1838, when she spotted the Harecroft carriage drawing up outside. She leaned out to see who had arrived and saw Lady Harecroft being escorted into the building.

      Diana had not seen her ladyship since she joined the company the year before, and assumed her great age had precluded any more uncomfortable coach journeys from her home in Berkshire. But here she was. What had prompted her make the trip, especially in the heat of summer? There was no need for her to come shopping; anything she needed could be sent to her.

      In the time she had been working at Harecroft’s she had discovered a great deal about the business and the hierarchy of the family who ran it. At its apex was the redoubtable dowager Lady Harecroft. Her husband, plain George Hare-croft then, had made his fortune in India where he worked for the British East India Company. Returning with his pockets jingling, he had not only married Lady Caroline Carson, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Earl of St Albans, but, when Britain’s textile manufacturers forced the end of the East India Company’s monopoly of trade with the subcontinent, had set up Harecroft Importing and Warehousing from premises on the docks, which still belonged to the company and still figured largely in its affairs. Two years later his uncle died without issue and he became the second Baron Harecroft and inherited Borstead Hall near Ascot in Berkshire.

      ‘Everyone expected