Mary Balogh - A Chance Encounter

Five days after she had sent her advertisement to the newspapers, Elizabeth began to look for a reply. She had none by the morning post, but a messenger in the early afternoon brought word that a Mr. Chatsworth was at the local inn and would be pleased to interview Miss Rossiter that same afternoon for a position as governess.

"Pray do not go, Elizabeth," Louise begged when she was shown the letter, "or send word that your services are no longer available. Indeed, we need you here and we love you."

John was white-faced. "Indeed, love," he said, "Louise is right. We know you are wretchedly unhappy and we cannot do much to ease the pain. But at least here you know that you are with loved ones."

"I am not at all unhappy," Elizabeth replied brightly. "On the contrary, I look on this as a new adventure. Unknown people, an unknown place. It is what I need. I thank you both for your concern, but it really is unnecessary. This is your home, but it is mine no longer. I have to find my own place."

They were forced to let her go. She declined even to let John accompany her to the inn, but drove herself in the gig. She wore her best governess clothes, the gray silk covered with a gray cloak to ward off the chill breeze, and a matching bonnet.

Mr. Chatsworth was lodged in the only private parlor the inn boasted, a tiny, smoke-blackened room, usually used by the landlord's more-favored patrons for their gambling card games. Elizabeth knocked on the door and closed it behind her when she was called inside.

Her prospective employer was a tall man, portly, fashionably dressed, his hair curled high at the front. He leaned with studied casualness against the mantel and studied her minutely from head to foot through a quizzing glass.

"Mr. Chatsworth?" she asked.

He inclined his head. "Miss Rossiter?"

She dropped him a curtsy.

He waved her to a chair beside the table and began the interview. His home was in Yorkshire, Elizabeth learned, where his invalid wife and two young sons lived. He was a mill owner and wished to give his sons all the advantages that he had not had as a child: a governess for a few years, public school after that.

It would not be an easy job, Elizabeth knew. She judged the man to be conceited, with a grudge against the noble class who had birth and breeding even if they did not have his wealth. He would be the sort of man who would treat his servants as inferiors in order to convince himself of his own superiority. She had also been uncomfortably aware all the time they talked of his eyes roving over her body. She judged that at some time in the not-too-distant future she would have to repulse his lecherous advances.

Yet when Mr. Chatsworth made her a firm offer of employment at the end of a half-hour, Elizabeth accepted. What was the point of waiting for a more pleasant post? There was no such thing as pleasure in life for her anymore.

"I wish to leave here before ten o' clock tomorrow morning," Mr. Chatsworth announced. "May I expect you to be ready, Miss Rossiter?"

"I shall be here by then, sir," she assured him.

"I shall look forward to furthering our acquaintance on our journey," he said, taking her hand in his plump and moist one and squeezing it rather hard.

Elizabeth refused to think during the drive home. Yorkshire would suit her fine. She would be far away from all the places and people she had ever known. She knew that she should be uneasy about making a journey of a few days alone with a stranger. John and Louise would probably try to insist on sending a maid with her. Perhaps she would even allow herself to be persuaded if it would make them feel better. She really did not care. Not anymore. It was safer not to care. Already she felt better than she had felt for several months.

The butler was in the hall when Elizabeth let herself into the house.

"Are Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter indoors?" she asked him, removing her bonnet and throwing it down on a table.

"In the drawing room, ma'am, taking tea," he said. "And, er…"

"That is all right," she said. "I shall join them there."

Elizabeth donned the mask of cheerfulness that she had worn at home now for five days and opened the double doors of the drawing room.

John and Louise, one at either side of the unlit fireplace, Louise looking bright-eyed, John acutely embarrassed, were indeed taking tea. But the Marquess of Hetherington was not. He was standing very much as Mr. Chatsworth had stood when she had walked in on him earlier, except that his stance looked genuinely relaxed. He had one elbow propped on the mantel and one booted leg crossed over the other.

His blue eyes met Elizabeth's across the room and he smiled.

Elizabeth did not relinquish her hold on the handles of the doors. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"It seems that you ask me that every time we meet," he said, "and I always have the same answer. I wish to talk to you."

"I have no interest in anything you may have to say to me, my lord," she said coldly, "and I have nothing whatsoever to say to you. Good day."

She stepped backward and began to close the doors in front of her.

"Elizabeth," Hetherington said, and he was still smiling, "how rag-mannered you have become. I have traveled so far just to see you, and you refuse to grant me even a few moments of your time."

Elizabeth deliberately stepped inside the room and quietly closed the doors behind her. She crossed the room until her own blazing eyes looked directly into his intense blue ones.

"I understood that you were busy, my lord," she said. "Pardon me, it was extremely busy, was it not, John? I understood that you were to write to me when you had more leisure. Have you found yourself with a great deal of leisure, my lord, so much so that you have found the time to pay me a personal visit? Pardon me for not being quite overwhelmed by your generosity. You are at least five days too late. I do not believe, Robert, there is anything you could say to which I would deem it worthwhile to listen."

He tipped his head to one side and regarded her closely. The smile was gone from his lips, though it was still in his eyes. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

Elizabeth clamped her teeth together and glared back at him.

"I believe she is referring to that letter you had your secretary write," Louise said timidly.

"Carson?" he said, frowning and turning his gaze on Louise.

She nodded.

"You have had a letter from Carson?" he asked Elizabeth, looking at her closely once more.

She continued to stare stonily at him.

"Why did he write to you, love?" he asked gently. "I was unaware that he even knew of your existence." He turned to Louise when it became obvious that Elizabeth was not going to answer him. "Do you know what this is all about, Louise?" he asked.

She looked hesitantly, first at her sister-in-law and then at her husband. "After Elizabeth had written to ask you to come here," she said, "she had a letter from your secretary to say that you were too busy either to write or to visit, but that you would write as soon as you were able."

"You asked me to come?" he said, turning back to Elizabeth in wonder.

When she still did not answer, the rest of what Louise had said seemed to penetrate his mind. Unexpectedly, he chuckled. "Carson was my father's secretary," he explained. "He was more like a parent to me when I grew up than my own father was. Now he seems to feel that every female has designs on my title and my fortune, not to mention my person. He has taken it upon himself to protect me. This is not the first time I have had evidence that he has discouraged bold females in my name."

"You mean you knew nothing of Elizabeth's letter?" John asked stiffly.

Hetherington looked at Elizabeth as if it were she who had asked the question. "Do you not know me well enough," he asked, "to know that I would have come to you as fast as horse could gallop at any time I had received such a letter from you in the last six years?"