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Chapter Two
“One’s dress is more handsome than fine; more neat than showy; one’s clothes are made genteelly, but within extremes.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Could a governess wear buttercup yellow for her first day?
Clad in chemise and stockings, Matilda studied her wardrobe, praying that a monotonous brown or overcast grey might spring from the froth of colour.
All the sorrowful mourning gowns worn after her parents’ tragic deaths had been replaced with startling shades of yellow silk by her guardian cousin a year past. Some young ladies might have been only too pleased – but he’d informed Matilda that with her petite stature, obscuring spectacles and dull conversation, she required all the help she could muster.
Charming.
Presently, Cousin Astwood was at some dissolute house party in the countryside, but before his butler and minions could awaken this morning, she was stuffing all she could into a small carpet bag. Most had already been filled with life’s essentials:
Three packets of filched tea leaves as, after all, she had no idea of a governess’s allowance – if any.
Miss Appleton’s wholesome tome on education – she sensed she would need it.
One bar of her favoured soap.
The solicitor’s address for when she reached one and twenty.
Undergarments and two gowns of a darker shade – a saffron and nankeen, which could almost be described as brownish…yellow, but crucially both could be buttoned up without the assistance of a maid.
The gilt cherub mantel clock chimed the approaching dawn so she swiftly donned the buttercup gown, hoping a shawl might smother its vivacity. Then without further ado, a last frock was shoved into the bag, its silk billowing in puffs of golden beige.
Besides that, she thought dismally, heaving the bag shut, she owned little to her name.
Matilda peered around her beloved bedchamber at the well-thumbed books, elegant paintings and dainty writing desk.
Yet none of these items were hers. Even the books, she now realised. They all belonged to Cousin Astwood, a crawly toad as a child who’d shattered her spectacles and ripped her diaries, but now as viscount and her guardian, strutted like a mangy peacock.
Still, she’d considered him a harmless creature till of late, when he’d packed her great-aunt off to Wales and commenced introducing her to potential husbands – raddled old aristocrats who pinched her cheeks, leered at her bosom and requested to view her teeth. At first, she’d refused and acted the termagant, but in recent weeks…
Her cousin was becoming impatient: his grip pinched and bruised, marriage demands spat in hate, plum face contorting with anger.
She was…scared. Fearful of his rising temper.
Tales of abduction, ravishment and forced marriage by pistol abounded, and she could not tell truth from fiction.
Only that Cousin Astwood frightened her.
That before he’d left for the countryside, he’d shaken her hard and yelled she was chattel, to be used at his will, to be sold at his will. Auctioned off like a goat for sacrifice in that marriage contract she’d discovered to the Earl of Sidlow, a gentleman who’d cornered her in a closed room and outlined her marital duties, pinching her with skeletal fingers and attempting to kiss her using his…
She could scarcely bring herself to think upon it.
But now she would do all within her power to avoid a sentence of marriage to such a revolting roué.
Of course, a boxing academy was not her ideal choice of sanctuary, it being likely to contain pugilists, but after eight posted employment applications, Mr Hawkins had been the sole replier, and surely a governess remained secreted away in the schoolroom all day, teaching things, and should not have to stumble upon…muscles.
A bird groggily cheeped the first signs of dawn, so she shrouded her slight frame in her father’s ancient cloak and snatched up the carpet bag along with a cloth smothered in pig fat.
Opening the bedchamber door, she peered out – silence, yet a bated one.
Astwood had replaced all her parents’ staff with his own and they’d clearly been told to keep an eye on her. Purely her lady’s maid had remained in her service, but at Matilda’s behest yesterday, and with one of her gold bangles to sell and a promise to write, her maid had taken the stagecoach to family in Wiltshire, far away from questions as to her mistress’s forthcoming disappearance.
