The Heiress In His Bed. Tamara Lejeune

lady!” Dobbins protested. “You can’t go to London alone.”

      “I wouldn’t really be alone, Dobbins. I’d be in my carriage, with my driver, my footmen, and my postboys.” She grimaced suddenly in annoyance. “And I might as well hire a brass band, flambeaux, and jugglers! I can’t very well blazon the fact that I’m taking my business to London! York would be so hurt.”

      “We could go on the stagecoach,” Dobbins said eagerly. “You’d have to take me with you then, for there’s highwaymen and bold kidnapping rakes all along the Great North Road! Now, where’s that pretty little toasting fork your ladyship found at the silversmith’s…?”

      To Viola’s amusement, Dobbins hunted through the open boxes on the table until she found the toasting fork. “See how sharp it is?” she cried, extending the telescoping handle and testing the tines with a finger. “I’d stab anyone who got near your ladyship.”

      “Give me that,” Viola said, disarming her maid. “You are incorrigible, Dobbins,” she went on, collapsing the silver handle. “No, I couldn’t go on the stagecoach. Ladies don’t travel by stagecoach, and besides, York would know I was on it. My people would feel abandoned.”

      “They’d get over it,” grumbled Dobbins. “Everyone goes to London, my lady. It’s not a crime. We could take the Night Mail!” she said suddenly, lighting up. “It stops here in the dead of night, so no one would see us.”

      “Ladies, Dobbins, do not avail themselves of such vulgar modes of travel,” Viola said severely. “We do not depart in the dead of night like criminals.”

      “There’s a young lady in the taproom right now with a ticket on the Night Mail,” Dobbins argued. “I heard Mrs Reynolds talking about it.”

      “Nonsense,” Viola said stoutly. “Gentlewomen do not sit in common taprooms, and they certainly don’t travel on the Night Mail. You are mistaken, Dobbins.”

      Dobbins looked mulish.

      Viola sighed impatiently. “I can see I shall have to get to the bottom of this,” she said crisply. “Let Mrs Reynolds come before me. I’m sure you must have misunderstood what you heard, Dobbins. As sometimes happens when one eavesdrops,” she added severely.

      The landlady appeared in all haste, smelling of onions and trembling in fear. “My lady!” she cried, curtseying madly. “I trust that everything is to your ladyship’s satisfaction?”

      “Ah, Mrs Reynolds. My maid tells me there is a lady in the taproom,” Viola said, chuckling at the absurdity, “but I am certain this cannot be so.”

      Mrs Reynolds’s face turned as red as a beef heart.

      Viola frowned. “Is there a lady in the taproom?” she demanded.

      Mrs Reynolds began a fresh round of curtseying. “I beg your pardon, my lady! I had nowhere else to put Miss Andrews, your ladyship having taken both the private parlors.”

      “You make it sound as if I burgled them,” Viola complained. “I would have given up the other parlor before I let you put a gentlewoman in a common taproom. In any case, no gentlewoman I know would allow herself to be put in a taproom.”

      “It’s poor little Mary Andrews,” said Mrs Reynolds.

      “I know Mary Andrews!” Viola exclaimed. “My brother gave her father the living at Gambolthwaite upon my advice.”

      “The vicar’s been dead six months,” said Mrs Reynolds.

      “Yes, I know,” Viola replied dryly. “I just found a replacement for him. I am not so out of touch with my people, Mrs Reynolds, that they can die without my knowing of it.”

      “No, my lady,” said Mrs Reynolds, chastened.

      “And so you put Miss Andrews in the taproom!” Viola shook her head. “That will not do, Mrs Reynolds. Desire her to come up to me at once, and bring us a fresh pot of tea—she will need it after her ordeal. And what’s all this nonsense about her traveling on the Night Mail?”

      The last question was asked too late to receive any reply from Mrs Reynolds, who had bolted from the room almost in advance of her orders.

      Presently, Miss Andrews appeared. She was a thin, little person with a scrubbed face that might have been pretty if its eyes and nose had not been so red from crying. Her bonnet looked like an upside-down coal scuttle, and her black bombazine dress was uncommonly ugly. Viola, who believed in being well-dressed, even in times of the greatest adversity, was offended by this poor showing, but, remembering the sylphlike young girl in sprigged muslin that Miss Andrews once had been, she said kindly, “Come in, child. Don’t be afraid. It is I, Lady Viola.”

      “I’m sorry to be such a bother, my lady,” the girl whispered, choking back a sob.

      “You couldn’t bother me if you tried, dear,” Viola said briskly. “I can’t believe you were in the taproom. Indeed, I am ashamed of Mrs Reynolds for putting you there.”

      “But Mrs Reynolds has been so kind to me,” protested the girl, taking a few courageous steps into the room. “I’m sure I don’t deserve it. You see, I have no money.” As she spoke, she kept her enormous brown eyes fixed on her shoes. Viola found all this cringing highly insulting. Anyone would have thought the child expected Lady Viola to eat her!

      “Do sit down,” said Viola with determined kindness. “Help her, Dobbins,” she added, as Miss Andrews showed no signs of knowing how to operate a chair. “Now, then,” Viola said brightly when the unhappy girl was seated. “It’s Mary, isn’t it? Mary Andrews?”

      The brown eyes flew up in amazement, then crashed down again. “Indeed, your ladyship is very k-kind to remember me,” she stuttered, her eyes streaming. “I never dreamed you would.”

      “A good memory is hardly an indicator of kindness,” Viola said dryly, drawing a look of sheer terror from the brown eyes. “However, I am not an ogre, I hope,” Viola added quickly. “Now, then, my dear, what’s all this about you going to London on the Night Mail?”

      Miss Andrews’s story emerged in a veritable flood of tears. The gist was that she was being sent to London to live with an aunt whom she had never met. “To own the truth, there was a rift between my father and my aunt some years before I was born. Papa did not approve of the man she married, and even after he died—my Uncle Dean, I mean—Papa could not forgive her. I fear my aunt is not quite respectable, but I have nowhere else to go!”

      “If she isn’t respectable, you cannot live with her, my dear,” Viola said instantly.

      “No, my lady,” Mary agreed, her eyes and nose overflowing again. “But my mother—my stepmother, I mean—says that I am too stupid to be a governess, and what else can I do?”

      “Are you too stupid to be a governess?” Viola asked politely.

      “I don’t think I am, my lady,” Mary answered. “My father educated me himself in all the classical subjects. Perhaps,” she went on, plucking up her courage, “if your ladyship could recommend me to a good family…”

      Viola spoke bluntly. “My dear girl, all the Latin in Sweden could not save you from the scorn of high-spirited English children if you cannot keep your waterworks under good regulation. You have no natural authority, and authority is a quality essential in a governess. I could not, in good conscience, recommend you to anyone as a governess.”

      The courage Mary had just plucked up vanished as if it had never been plucked up at all, and a fresh waterfall of tears began to flow down her soggy, red face.

      “Why can’t you remain with your stepmother?” Viola asked impatiently.

      “She has a place to live with her cousin in Gloucester, but she cannot take me. Her cousin is not a wealthy man, and I am no relation to him.”

      “I see. Well, perhaps your Aunt Dean is not so bad,” Viola suggested.