“I hope you don’t mind!” And a diminutive storm of blond curls and white skirts rushed into her bedchamber trailed by a harassed-looking lady’s maid. “But I couldn’t wait to meet you, Miss Webster. A governess! Just what I need!”
Charlotte had not seen Dinah Lovecott for all of six years. She’d certainly grown and gained some boldness at that school. “Well, we should enact a formal introduction, would you not agree?”
The young lady paused, blue eyes wide and comely as a doll’s. “Oh. Yes, of course.” Her lips pursed but she gave a credible curtsey. “Please excuse my interruption but when I heard the news, I thought to come and see you straight away. I am Miss Dinah Lovecott, the Duke of Shawdale’s ward.”
“And I am Miss Webster. This is my uncle, Mr Wainwright.”
Marmaduke rose to unsteady legs and bowed with a cavalier flourish.
“Yes. We met last week,” declared Dinah with a further curtsey to Charlotte’s uncle. “Looking for someone called Martha in my guardian’s rose garden.”
Charlotte groaned. For some reason that she had yet to deduce, Marmaduke made a regular habit of absconding from the house to wander the duke’s rose garden calling for some unknown woman. Most often clad in only his nightshirt.
“Did you find her?” Uncle asked, hands rubbing together.
“No one was there, Mr Wainwright.”
“Harrumph.” And he rose to toddle from the bedchamber.
“Well, Miss Lovecott,” Charlotte began, “I am pleased you are so eager for lessons.”
In point of fact, never in all her years of being a governess had a pupil appeared so enthusiastic.
“Er…” Dinah’s retroussé nose waggled. “Well…I mean, I am, of course. But it’s more…more that I’m planning to write a book about being a governess.”
Charlotte blinked. “An instructional guide for our profession?”
“Oh, no!” Dinah held dainty hands to heart. “A novel of…romance, the trials of a working woman, glamorous balls and grand dinners and dukes and…romance. LikePride and Prejudiceor…or that other one. But with more dukes…and more romance.”
Charlotte’s lips wobbled.
Little wonder Marcus had choked in his stiff cravat, but if being a governess had taught her anything, it was that the more one denied a young girl, the more they wanted.
“Well, I will try to impart what I can, but a governess’ life rarely includes glamorous balls or grand dinners.”Or romance.“Indeed, a fictional governess novel of romance might be rather difficult as the day-to-day just involves…lessons.”
“Oh…” Dinah’s lashes batted, rosebud lips pursing – she was ridiculously pretty. “But do you not work for haughty yet dashingly handsome dukes or…or arrogant yet dashingly handsome gentlemen, like Mr Darcy?”
She wished.
“More like Mr Collins, I’m afraid.”
“Eugh.”
“Well, help me gather my clothes and we can chat about the school you attended. Did you enjoy it?”
Or did Marcus pack you off there against your will?
“I adored it!” Dinah prodded at the drab brown in Charlotte’s portmanteau with curiosity. “It’s so…quiet here in Ambleside, especially the winter. Did you not find it lonesome growing up here?”
“No, not that I recall.” But then she’d had Marcus. They’d stomped the crags and fells, breathing in the fresh air whipped up from the lakes, and run to the waterfalls close to town, cooling their toes in the pools during warm summers. She missed her fell walks, she realised. The freedom of tramping around, wind buffeting her skirts.
Perchance there would be time this Christmas if snow held off.
It would come though.
Snow always came in the Lakes. It was just a question of when.
“Does your guardian still walk or ride the hills?” Charlotte asked, nosiness getting the better of her.
