Chapter One
“You cannot possibly mean to go to Yorkshire in October.”
Lorraine Weston folded another sensible grey dress into her battered trunk and did not look up at Mrs Whitmore, who stood in the doorway of the governess’s modest chamber with an expression that suggested Lorraine had announced plans to sail for the Arctic.
“I am afraid I do mean it, ma’am. The summons was quite urgent.”
“But the girls will miss you dreadfully. Arabella has only just mastered her French conjugations, and poor Cecily—”
“Will continue to improve under Miss Fletcher’s capable instruction.” Lorraine tucked her hairbrush beside her stockings with practised efficiency. Three years of moving between households had taught her to pack quickly and travel light. Sentiment, she had learned, weighed more than any trunk. “You were kind enough to engage her last month precisely for this eventuality.”
Mrs Whitmore’s mouth pursed. She was not a cruel woman—merely one who found change inconvenient, and departures something of a personal affront. “This Duke of Ravenswood. You have never met him?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And yet you race off to the moors at his beck and call?”
Lorraine permitted herself a small smile as she closed the trunk’s lid. “He offers triple the usual salary for a governess of my qualifications—for a temporary engagement of perhaps three months.” She met Mrs Whitmore’s eyes with the pleasant directness that had served her well in drawing rooms where she was neither quite servant nor quite guest. “I should be a fool to refuse.”
What she did not say:And I have been a fool quite enough for one lifetime.
Mrs Whitmore sniffed, but her resistance was already crumbling. Triple salary was the sort of argument that penetrated even the most steadfast maternal attachment to one’s children’s educational continuity. “Well. I suppose if it is only three months. You will write?”
“Of course.”
“And you will return to us when this mysterious duke has found a permanent solution for his ward?”
His ward.A child, the letter had said. A boy of six, recently orphaned, whose grandparents were delayed in India and could not retrieve him for several months.The Duke required someone capable of managing the child’s care and education in the interim. Someone who could begin immediately. Someone who would not ask too many questions about why he was offering so extraordinary a sum for so ordinary a position.
Lorraine had questions, naturally. She simply could not afford to ask them.
“If the position remains available,” she said carefully, “I should be glad to return.”
***
The coach that carried her north was not uncomfortable, though neither was it warm. October had arrived with a vengeance that year, the summer that never came giving way to an autumn that felt like penance. Lorraine wrapped her cloak more tightly about her and watched the countryside transform beyond the rain-streaked window—gentle southern hills flattening into the broad, bleak expanse of the Midlands, then rising again into something wilder. Starker. Yorkshire.
She had never travelled so far north. Her father had spoken of it sometimes, in that wistful way he possessed when describing places he would never afford to see.
Wild country, Lora. The sort that makes you feel your own smallness.
He had meant it as praise, she thought. Her father had always loved anything that reminded him of perspective.
Her father had been dead these three years, and Lorraine had learned a great deal about perspective since.
The coaching inn where she spent the night was clean but cheerless, the sort of establishment that catered to travellers passing through rather than those with any wish to linger. Lorraine ate her modest supper alone in a corner of the common room and tried not to think of the letter tucked inside her valise. Not the Duke’s summons—that was merely business.
The other letter.
The one she had received a fortnight earlier, forwarded through three households before finally reaching her.
Dear Sister, it had begun, in Lydia’s careful copperplate, and Lorraine had known at once that nothing good would follow those words. Lydia wrote only when she wanted something—or, more precisely, when her conscience had accumulated more guilt than it could comfortably ignore.
I hope this finds you well. Arthur and I are lately returned from Bath, where the waters did wonders for his constitution…
Two pages of meaningless pleasantries before arriving at the point:
I have enclosed a small token of our appreciation for your continued discretion in family matters. Pray do not hesitate to write if you find yourself in need.
