Elizabeth Beacon - The Governess Heiress

‘A true gentleman requires more than looks and a large collection of vanities in a wife,’ Nell replied coolly, pushing the unworthy argument she was well born and a lot wealthier than her eldest charge to the back of her mind. ‘A talent for flirting and dancing won’t fascinate the fine young man you dream of marrying when every second debutante has that as well. Wit and charm, a sincere interest in those around her, a well-informed mind and a compassionate heart make a true lady, Lavinia. Youthful prettiness fades; do you want to end up lonely and avoided since you have no conversation or common interest to keep your husband at your side when you are no longer as young as you were?’

‘Oh, no, Vinnie, imagine how awful it would be to end up like that lady who stayed at the manor last year. The one who bored on and on about imaginary illnesses and how hard her life was until her husband went out of his way to avoid her,’ Caroline exclaimed with genuine horror.

‘What sane gentleman would marry an empty-headed creature for aught but her money?’ Caroline’s elder sister Georgiana added with a sideways look at her least favourite cousin.

‘That’s enough, Georgiana,’ Nell said firmly.

Lavinia was the daughter of the last Earl’s eldest son and senior in status and years, but what did that matter when all four of the old Earl’s granddaughters were stuck here in the middle of nowhere? None of them could inherit the earldom and Nell counted herself lucky that she could only imagine the last Earl’s fury when his youngest son made a runaway marriage to Kitty Graham, still whispered of as the loveliest actress of her generation. Hastily doing some mental arithmetic, Nell supposed Kitty and the Honourable Aidan’s son hadn’t mattered to his paternal grandfather for over a decade. The fifth Earl’s eldest son had a robust heir and never mind if his wife refused to share his bed after the boy was born and she declared her duty done. Since the lady was the daughter of a duke the old Earl didn’t challenge her until the boy was killed in some reckless exploit at Oxford. Then he’d ordered his heir to mend his marriage and even the Duke agreed, so Lady Selford gave birth to Lavinia a year after she lost her son and was declared too fragile for further duty by the doctors. According to local gossip, the lady turned her back on her baby daughter and returned to her family. Nell marvelled at her indifference, but Lady Selford died when Lavinia was seven and Nell doubted the child had set eyes on the woman above once or twice.

At least Georgiana and Caroline seemed to have been loved by their parents, but a sweating fever killed Captain Selford and his wife and Nell imagined the girls had had a stony welcome from their grandfather, since the servants still gossiped about how bitterly he resented his granddaughters for daring to be born female. Only Penelope had escaped the fury of that bitter old man by being born three months after the Earl died, but as a posthumous child of his third son she had been his last hope of keeping the offspring of an actress out of the succession. The latest Earl of Barberry had carried off the family honours in the teeth of his grandfather’s opposition then, but the sixth Earl had done precious little with them. Nell supposed it was better for the girls to grow up without another angry lord glowering at them when he recalled their existence. Lavinia’s old nurse once told her how the old Earl cursed whenever Lavinia crossed his path, so little wonder if she grew up imagining a rosier future for herself. Nell hoped the girl would make a good marriage, but misery awaited her if she wed the first young man who asked her to so she could escape her lonely life.

‘Forty, Miss Court,’ Lavinia said casually at last.

Nell wondered what she was talking about, then remembered the rods and furlongs. ‘Very good, Lavinia. So, Georgiana; how many feet in a fathom?’

‘Even a land sailor knows there are six and we were at sea until Papa died.’

‘You and your stupid sister insist on telling us about him all the time. As if we care,’ Lavinia said, quite spoiling the novelty of joining in a lesson for once.

‘Then why don’t you go and count your rubbishy ribbons, or gaze at your own ugly face in the mirror for hours on end, since you love it so much? At least then we won’t have to look at your frog face or listen to you rattle on about who you’re going to marry this week, Lavinia Lackwit,’ Georgiana scorned as tears flooded Caroline’s wide blue eyes at the thought of what the two sisters had lost when their parents died.

Nell felt sorry for Lavinia when even little Penny glared at her for upsetting the most vulnerable of the cousins and all three looked as if they’d be glad if Lavinia disappeared in a puff of smoke.

‘Georgiana, that’s an inexcusable thing to say. You will stand in the corner until I say you can come out. Lavinia; apologise to your cousin, then copy out the One Hundredth Psalm twice in a fair hand. Maybe that will make you humbler about your own shortcomings and a little kinder to others, but your guardian will be displeased to hear you refuse to make any effort at your lessons and fall out with your cousins.’

‘He doesn’t give a snap of his fingers for any of us and I hate this place and all of you as well. You’re always such good little girls for your darling Miss Court and she’s only a servant when all’s said and done. You make me sick. I hate you all, but I hate Cousin Barberry most. Why should I care what he thinks? I doubt he remembers we exist,’ Lavinia railed at the top of her voice, stamped her feet as if words couldn’t express her anger, then ran out of the room on a furious sob. Nell listened to the sound of her charge thundering downstairs and the garden door slamming with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that her day was about to get even worse.

‘I hope she took a shawl,’ Caroline said with a sympathetic shiver.

‘And I hope she didn’t,’ nine-year-old Penny argued vengefully.

Georgiana flounced to the corner she’d been ordered into with a sniff and a contemptuous glower and Nell tried to do what came next instead of feeling defeated.

‘Georgiana, stay there for ten minutes without saying a word or pulling faces at Caroline and Penelope. I shall ask Crombie to sit with you. Caroline and Penelope, you can read quietly, but you will not tease Georgiana or speculate about Lavinia. As soon as the ten minutes are up you may read as well, Georgiana,’ she told her charges as calmly as she could.

Seeing how impatient Penny’s one-time nurse was about being fetched away from her comfortable coze with the housekeeper, Nell knew they wouldn’t be allowed to riot in her absence. Now she only had to worry about organising a search for Lavinia with the daylight already fading. She gave orders for all the available staff to comb the gardens and parkland, then went outside to search her own section of the shadowy gardens.

* * *

Fergus Selford, Earl of Barberry, rode into the stableyard of Berry Brampton House for the first time in his life and found it strangely deserted. He hadn’t expected a fanfare on the arrival of an errant earl nobody knew was coming. Or much of a welcome even if they did, but it felt a bit of come down to stable his own horse. He owned the dratted place from cellar to rafters, yet he’d settled the tired animal in a convenient stall and retrieved his unfashionable boat cloak from the tack room before he met a single soul.

‘We’re not expecting visitors, so if you’re the new land agent you couldn’t have arrived at a better time, although you’re three weeks late and we had almost given up on you,’ a rather pleasant contralto voice told him from the shadowy doorway. ‘I saw the lamp and heard someone moving about in here as if he had a right to be here. All the stable boys are supposed to be out looking for one of my charges so I came to see if one of them was shirking. Now you’re here we need all the help we can get before Lavinia hurts herself or one of us falls into the ha-ha. You can help me search, since you’ll get lost if you wander about on your own and we’ll have to find you as well.’