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Chapter Two
“When we give a child a book to peruse, we ought to have two subjects in view: the improvement of her heart, and of her mind.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Somewhere in Wales. October.
Isabelle choked back a shriek as the stagecoach rattled over a cobbled bridge, her elbow clattering the unpadded side, buttocks bouncing on the less-than-cushioned seat.
“I’ve had worse, I have,” the bespectacled lady seated beside Isabelle boasted to a female companion opposite, her Welsh brogue a wonder of melodic peaks and troughs. “The Exeter mail coach of May twentieth. We had to stop at Winterslow Hut to drop off some mailbags when the coach driver’s leg – the left, if I remember rightly – was mauled by an escaped lioness from a touring menagerie.”
“How awful,” acknowledged the other.
“Yes, indeed. We were delayed by four hours.”
Isabelle shuddered and returned her eyes to her well-thumbed book.
She ought to be perusing Miss Appleton’s venerable tome.
Perhaps taking notes.
Underlining pertinent quotes.
Forming lesson plans.
But she despised carriages, shadows of the dark past clutching at her, so for the entirety of this six-day journey she had read…and re-read. And read again the only words that could transport her to another place.
A place where bygone sorrow could not abide.
She tipped her book to the window’s meagre light and caressed a finger over Byrne’s verse…
I wait. I tremble. I yearn,
Yet to me she cometh not.
I lust. I languish. I burn!
Yet to me she cometh not.
Such ardent words and Isabelle shivered, for her secret pleasure was a love of romantic poetry – an indulgence she kept from all, as who would employ such a fanciful governess? They’d think her head was filled with cotton fluff or that she’d have amorous inclinations for the master of the house.
Yet she adored wild Byron and romantic Keats, sensual Byrne and impassioned Shelley.
Snuggling as best she could into the corner squabs of the coach, Isabelle read on…
For my love is of the night,
A sifting shadow forgot.
I seek. I beguile. I fight!
Yet to me she cometh n–
“I was on that Swansea stagecoach of February ’08 when it lost its way in that terrible snowstorm.”
Isabelle snapped her book shut as the other lady tutted.
