The Earl's Forbidden Governess

The name on the coach ticket was Anne Bell. Eleanor Vale had written it herself, in a hand she had practiced until the letters ceased to look like a confession.

At the last turn of the road, Briarwick Hall emerged from the Yorkshire rain: a long stone house with dark windows, square chimneys, and the sort of confidence that required no ornament. Its west wing stood on a rise above the village. Below, half concealed by autumn trees, lay the ruined roof of the school for which Eleanor had crossed half of England. She had expected her heart to race at the sight of it. Instead she felt the old, precise anger that had carried her through five years of doors closing politely in her face.

The driver put down her trunk beneath a dripping portico. It was a modest trunk, although her mother had owned a much finer one. The better pieces were gone, sold first for her father's medicine and then for her sister Martha's lodging. Inside this one lay two dresses, a French grammar, a copy of arithmetic problems for young ladies, and a folded counterfoil sewn into the lining. She had not dared to bring the original letter in her own pocket. A lady might be searched for a misplaced brooch; a governess could be dismissed without anyone thinking a search an indignity.

The door opened before she had decided whether to knock. A tall woman in a clean black gown assessed her gloves, trunk, and wet boots with the dispassionate intelligence of a magistrate.

"Miss Bell? I am Mrs. Rowe, the housekeeper. You are later than expected."

"The axle required attention outside Thirsk. I sent a message from the inn."

"It reached us. Messages are often more punctual than people." Mrs. Rowe moved aside. "Come in before you drown."

The entrance hall smelt of beeswax and extinguished coal. A portrait over the stairs showed the previous Earl of Ravensmere, a broad-chested man with pale eyes and one hand on a rolled map. Eleanor knew that face. It had appeared at the edge of a newspaper account that named her father a thief. The portrait was better painted than the newspaper engraving. Its subject looked no kinder.

"His lordship will want to see you," Mrs. Rowe said, catching the direction of her gaze. "The little miss has rejected two governesses since Easter. I do not flatter you with an easier welcome."

"I did not expect one."

"A useful beginning."

Mrs. Rowe led her along a corridor that grew less grand with each turn. A servant took the trunk upstairs. Eleanor passed a room where men were counting tallies against a ledger as thick as a prayer book. On its black cover a label read ESTATE, 1812. She slowed so abruptly that Mrs. Rowe looked back.

"Are you unwell?"

"Only cold."

The housekeeper's expression told her that cold did not usually make a person stare through doorways. "There is a good fire in the schoolroom."

Before they reached it, a child's voice rang from behind a door. "I will not say the capitals of all the counties. Nobody knows the capitals of counties, and half the counties should not exist."

"Miss Pembroke," Mrs. Rowe called. "Mind your language."

"I am minding geography, Mrs. Rowe. It is geography that is absurd."

The door opened a fraction. A dark-eyed girl looked from behind it with a streak of blue ink on her cheek. Eleanor guessed twelve, perhaps thirteen, with a thin anxiousness at the mouth that no amount of defiance could conceal. Lucy Pembroke held a drawing of the house and its surrounding fields. She had marked the streams in blue and the boundary walls in red. It was a remarkably good survey for a child.

"You are the new governess," Lucy said. It was an accusation, not a question.

"I am Miss Bell."

"Miss Turner cried when I told her she was wrong about the Battle of Hastings. Miss Croft said a young lady ought not to argue. Which sort are you?"

"I suppose we shall discover that together. Was Miss Turner wrong?"

"She said Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye. You cannot prove it."

"That is an excellent objection. A picture may tell us what somebody wished to be believed. It does not always tell us what happened."

The girl blinked. For the first time she looked less ready to attack. "You may come in," she said, as if the room were hers by grant of the Crown.

The schoolroom contained maps, a battered pianoforte, and a long window overlooking the gardens. Its shelves were filled with handsome books arranged by size rather than subject. A pair of muddy boots stood beneath the table. Lucy's drawing, now flattened under a ruler, included a narrow path from the east gate to a group of low buildings marked OLD SCHOOL.

Eleanor kept her eyes from that phrase with an effort.

"Miss Bell," said a man's voice behind them, "I hope you are not already being examined on the death of Harold."

The gentleman who entered did not resemble his father, except in the eyes. He was tall and spare, his coat well cut but not new, with rain clinging to the shoulders. His hair was darker than the portrait's. He carried a packet of documents under one arm and had the tired air of a person who had forgotten his last meal.

"Lord Ravensmere," Mrs. Rowe said, with a curtsey. "Miss Bell has arrived."

Eleanor curtseyed. He inclined his head, not with warmth but with attention. It was disconcerting to be looked at as if she were a person whose answer might matter.

"You have come a considerable distance," he said. "Mrs. Reed writes well of your instruction."

Mrs. Reed had known Eleanor's mother and had signed the recommendation after a long argument about the use of a borrowed surname. Her letter was genuine in every respect except one. Eleanor felt the dishonest part of it as keenly as a splinter.

"Mrs. Reed has been generous, my lord."

"She states you are not easily discouraged. Lucy will test that claim."

"Then I hope she will be thorough."

The corner of his mouth changed. Lucy noticed it, too, and gave Eleanor a new look, as if she had performed a difficult trick.

"I have two conditions," the Earl continued. "My niece is not to be punished for asking questions, and she must be taught to distinguish a fair argument from impertinence. We have failed her in both particulars."

"Then perhaps the distinction should be taught to the adults as well," Eleanor said before she could prevent herself.

Silence spread across the schoolroom. Mrs. Rowe's eyebrows rose. Lucy grinned. The Earl regarded the woman he had employed by correspondence for one measured second.

"It may prove a costly lesson," he said. "But I suspect you are correct."

He asked about her curriculum, her French, and the time she allowed for music. Eleanor explained that she would teach history as inquiry rather than recital, arithmetic through accounts and maps, and reading through discussions Lucy could not escape by saying the book bored her. The Earl listened without interrupting. When he asked whether she intended to give the child mathematics beyond simple household reckoning, she said yes. A flicker of interest replaced his weariness.

"I should have liked such a teacher," he said at last.

"No, Uncle Julian," Lucy declared. "You should have argued with her and both of you would have been dismissed."

"You may be right, imp." He set the packet on a chair, then addressed Eleanor again. "My niece has suffered two losses within a year. I do not expect you to mend them. I ask only that you do not mistake grief for vice."

In that unadorned sentence, Eleanor glimpsed the man beneath the title. The impression troubled her more than his father's portrait. It would have been easier to deceive someone she could despise.

After he left, Mrs. Rowe showed her a narrow bedchamber between the schoolroom and the family apartments. The window opened onto the roofs of the service court. Her meals, Mrs. Rowe explained, would ordinarily be taken alone or with Lucy; she was neither expected downstairs with the servants nor invited to dine regularly with the family. Eleanor had known the arrangement in theory. Standing in the room with her gloves still damp, she understood the exact shape of that solitude.

"There is a bell for the maid," Mrs. Rowe said. "Do not ring it needlessly. Lady Augusta visits next week, and his lordship dislikes disorder when she comes."

"Does Lady Augusta live elsewhere?"

"Mostly in Bath. She was his lordship's father's second wife. She likes this house best when she has not been in it for long."

Eleanor thanked her. Once the door closed she opened her trunk, lifted the lining, and touched the little paper hidden under the seam. It bore two figures, a signature, and a date: 17 November 1812. Those figures had driven her father from his profession. Somewhere in this house another piece of paper explained why.

From the corridor came the Earl's low voice giving instructions about winter rents. He spoke of roofs, of seed, of men who could not pay until the next market. Eleanor pressed her palm to the trunk until the shaking stopped. Compassion now did not undo harm then. Nor, she reminded herself, did the son necessarily know the father's sins.

She spent a further quarter of an hour listing the books she had seen in the schoolroom and the sums she could teach without making a display of knowledge. It was the first practical act of her new employment. The paper steadied her. A person who lived by wages could not afford to neglect the work for which she was paid, even when a second purpose lay beneath it.

She wrote Mrs. Reed's name at the foot of the page and stopped. The widow had put her own reputation into a reference because she believed Matthew Vale had been wronged. Eleanor must not let that kindness become the instrument of another injury. When she eventually told the truth, she would tell Julian precisely what Mrs. Reed knew and what she had not known. The promise was little comfort tonight, but it was one she could keep.

She had come to Briarwick as Anne Bell. Before she left, she meant to make them speak Eleanor Vale's name without shame.

There was a second resolution she did not put into words. She would not use Lucy Pembroke as a key to her uncle's cabinets. The child had lost her parents and already acquired the habit of treating affection as a thing that might be withdrawn for a wrong answer. Eleanor would teach her honestly, even while living under a false name. It was a distinction with more comfort than logic, and she knew it. Nevertheless, she began that night by drawing up a list of books and exercises that would occupy the next fortnight whether the hunt for the records succeeded or not.

When the house clock struck ten, someone walked along the passage and hesitated at her door. The footsteps went away. Eleanor supposed it was Mrs. Rowe inspecting the candles. She later learned that Lucy had come with a question about the stars and had lacked the courage to knock. A good teacher, Eleanor thought as she blew out the light, might be worth a great deal even to a house that had done her family wrong.