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Chapter Seven
“We have no excuse for impropriety in our own conduct. We are professionals.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Cabbage-headed, beef-witted, bacon-brained fizgig, Isabelle scolded.
Her stomach grumbled for breakfast but she merely pounded the pillow upon her face once more and berated herself for allowing Lady Bronwen to rattle her last night.
And for uttering the word “Rendezvous” to her employer like some Haymarket trollop.
She whacked the pillow again. Never in all her years as governess had she overstepped the bounds of her profession.
Quelle stupidité! What had she been thinking!
Too much claret, she groused into the cotton. Too much convivial conversation and then for the duke to suggest she had a home here… It had all combined to leave her as giddy as a debutante in Almack’s.
She must remember her place, all her hard work. A governess might be feted one day and thrown out for insolence the next.
“Imbécile!” she muttered, tossing the pillow across the chamber and–
A luminosity pained her eyes and she squinted, then smashed her lids shut.
Last night she’d not closed the curtains.
So that could only mean…
She twisted her head and hoicked up her eyelids.
Streaming through the sash window was a pure dawn light. No rain or mist or dankness or drizzle.
It sparkled into her eyes – blinding and clear and…
Isabelle sat bolt upright, threw back the coverlet and sprinted across the bedchamber.
Magnificent.
Beyond the gravelled forecourt, where the carriage had drawn up to the portico that first night, was a parterre-styled garden framed by low hedges, no doubt to keep the sea wind at bay. Divided into quarters by a stone path, and with a handsome statue in the middle, each square of the parterre was edged with clipped box and crammed with shrubs and herbs. Squashing her nose to the window, she noted another hedge-bounded garden to the right, filled with fading rose bushes.
Then she lifted her eyes…
To the sea.
It glittered with an almost unworldly silver light, stretching flat into an endless distance, curls of white dancing upon it, and although the sun rose to the rear of the mansion, strands of amber already shredded the sky, attesting to its languid autumnal ascent.
So Isabelle threw off her night-rail, dashed to the wardrobe, wiggled into her chemise and petticoats, laced her stays and struggled into her dress, yanked up stockings skew-whiff, tied garters, pinned her hair and puffed. Then stuck feet in ankle boots, snatched her shawl and hastened for the door.
Today was a Tuesday, so before lessons began with Twenty Ways to Wield a Fan, she had to at least feel the sun on her face.
That curious gate on the stairs had already been removed this morning – though she heard it being placed each night – so she scampered down the staircase, eyes flitting to and fro for mad dogs, just in cas–
“Can one be of assistance?”
Morgan stood guard in the entrance hall and she wondered if he stood there all night like an automaton, propped up against the grandfather clock, awaiting someone to wind them both up each morning – conceivably Mrs Pugh.
“I thought I’d go for a walk before breakfast since there is no rain.”
