“Her clothes are made genteelly but with dignity… I hope not inconsistently with her station in life.”
PRIVATEEDUCATION:APRACTICALPLAN FOR THESTUDIES OFYOUNGLADIES.
ELIZABETHAPPLETON. 1815.
The drab brown or the snuff brown?
Charlotte held up her two finest teaching gowns and perused them. Hideous, both of them, but the snuff in particular had become so loose on her, she resembled an empty flour sack.
“The left one,” mumbled her uncle from the tatty sofa within her bedchamber. “It brings out the green of your eyes.”
“Thank you, Marmaduke.” So she folded the drab and thrust it to her portmanteau along with two other frightful frocks – a dismal grey and a dingy corbeau – although considering her garden abutted one of the duke’s paddocks, she could always nip back home for another gown. “Next…”
Two petticoats, three pairs of stockings, stays…
“Will you bring me back a present from your travels?” asked her uncle.
No matter how many times she’d told him about her being a governess, dearest Marmaduke never remembered and instead thought her leaving to gad around London or visit the coast for some air.
“What would you like?”
Two brown ribbons, Mama’s hairbrush, the necklace Marcus had gifted her on her sixteenth birthday,three combs…
“A cat. A black one.”
Charlotte blinked, twisted and took a step forw–
A drop of water landed on her nose. She shifted the bucket with her foot. “Why a cat?”
Uncle scratched his white beard with gnarled fingers, hair standing in tufts. Today he wore a banyan of jonquil yellow. “I kept one in India and I do believe I rather like them.”
Fair enough.
And for once she may be able to grant his wish as there were numerous cats in the barn, and numerous mice, not that he’d likely remember by Christmas. She sighed and went to stand beside him, placing a soft hand to his shoulder. “I shall try my best, dearest Marmaduke.”
He seized her fingers and squeezed. “Thank you, Mary.”
Charlotte closed her eyes against the twinge of tears as he often called her by her late mother’s name, his sister.
“Although,” he continued, “I don’t see why you have to wear such shabby gowns. I’ve pots of money.” He frowned. “Somewhere.”
Biting her lip, she crouched in front of him. If there had been any money, it was all gone now. A meagre pension from the Royal Society was the sum total. “No matter, Uncle. I wouldn’t want to get ink all over expensive silk gowns, would I?”
“S’pose,” he muttered, patting her fingers with blue-veined hands.
She rose to buss his forehead and resumed packing. Marmaduke had once been a great explorer, travelling the world – Brazil and India – but as his hair had whitened, so his mind had started to drift.
At first, he’d lived with a cousin, but two years ago Marmaduke had been dropped off by the stagecoach at her then employer’s abode in the next valley, scared, confused and alone, a note in his trembling hands stating that the cousin was to marry and there was no room for him.
With his lapses of memory, a nurse was required, and she knew some would send him to an asylum. But he was gentle and kind, and during her childhood he’d always brought her a present from his travels – maps and shawls. In more lucid moments, he was a joy to talk to and she wished she could spend more time with him. His nurse, Hannah Munro, however, was a good companion for him, with family in Ambleside; all of which meant Charlotte refused to sell this house to Marcus, who likely just wanted direct access to the River Rothay which ran along the boundary.
Why she wasn’t sure.
Perchance he was panning for gold.
A knock came and their lone maid-of-all-work poked her head around the door. “A lady to see you, Miss. A young lady.”
Charlotte frowned. “A young–”
