Dangerous Lord, Innocent Governess. Christine Merrill
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just as fast to spread rumours of what they had interrupted.
As she looked at the three flights of stairs in front of her, she wished her parents could see what penance she had set for herself. Several weeks of hard work, with not a single ball, musicale or country outing to break the monotony. It had been exhausting just meeting the family and making arrangements for the position.
She suspected it was likely to be more difficult, once she began the duties she had been hired for. Although she knew nothing of teaching, she must begin proper lessons directly, or someone would become suspicious.
Unless there was no one who cared enough to suspect her. If the governess here normally ate with the children, in the absence of a governess, did anyone eat with them at all? It seemed unlikely that their father would come upstairs and take his meal if there were perfectly good rooms for that purpose on the ground floor. And she had been introduced to no nurses or servants who had charge over them.
It appeared that they were left to their own devices. She knew little of children, other than that she had recently been one. And in her experience, too much freedom meant an opportunity for mischief, and the fostering of wilful ideas that would make the job of governess to the Coltons a difficult one.
Her candle trembled a little as she climbed the last flight of stairs, and she regretted not investigating her sleeping quarters in daylight. With its lack of windows, the narrow stairwell would be intimidating, both day and night. She certainly hoped that the room above had some natural illumination, for to be climbing from darkness into further darkness would lead to unnecessary imaginings that would make for a difficult first night.
She opened the door, and was relieved to see a bright square of moonlight from the small window opposite her. She walked across to it, and looked up into a brilliant full moon, which seemed almost close enough to touch. The ground below was distant. The shrubs and trees casting shadows that were sharp as daylight in the white light from above, giving the whole an unworldly quality, as though a day scene were rendered in black and white. She turned and looked at the room behind her, which was lit the same way.
If she were a real teacher, she might know how great an insult she was paid by these accommodations. She was all but sleeping in the attic. Half the ceiling of the room slanted, to make the space unusable for one so tall as she. Her trunk had been pushed to that side, next to the small writing desk, which held a dried-up inkwell and the stub of a candle. On the other side there was a bed, pushed in front of a door that must lead to further attic rooms. That they’d placed furniture in front of it was the only assurance given that she would not have other servants tramping through her private space when bearing things to storage. There was no proper wardrobe, only pegs for her dresses. A small mirror hung upon the wall. And that was all. If she wished for a chair for the writing desk, she would need to steal one from another room, just as she suspected the intended chair had been stolen from hers.
She sat down upon the bed and tested the mattress. It was lumpy and narrow, and certainly not what she was used to. But if one was tired enough, one could sleep anywhere. She was already at that weird combination of exhaustion and wakefulness that one got sometimes when overtired. Enervated, but not sleepy. Perhaps a book from the library would provide the necessary soporific. The light in the room was almost bright enough to read by even without a candle, and she had no curtain to block it out.
She took up her candle again, and came back down the flights of stairs to the brightly lit ground floor, and the familiar feeling of warmth and civilisation. She found a volume that she did not think too dreary from the rather intellectual holdings of the Colton library. She wished that Clare had been alive to greet her when she arrived. Then she could stay here reading before going up the stairs to a fine guest room, secure in her place as a visitor in this house, and not an intruder.
When she turned to go back to her room, it suddenly occurred to her that two choices were open to her. She had taken the servants’ stairs to the ground. Surely, as governess, she was closer to family than serving maid, and entitled to use the main stairs? It would mean a flight in the open, postponing the stifling darkness that led to her room.
But it would also mean a trip down the nursery hall, past the children’s rooms, before she reached the stairs to her room. She suspected it was her duty to check on them, and make sure that they were all snug in bed, resting for the next day.
Her duty. If she were really the governess, her time would not be her own. She would be responsible for the watching of the children, morning and night. The needs of the family must always come before her own.
Until such time as she revealed the truth about Clare’s death. Then she need answer to no one, least of all the murderous Lord Timothy Colton. Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin the charade of watching his children. Tonight, she would have one last night of her own, no matter how mean the comforts might be.
So she went to the end of the hall and opened the door to the servants’ stairs. The stairwell was narrow, and the rise steep. The first flight was just as black as the stairway to her room. She took a firm grip on her candle, tucked the book tightly under her arm so that she could grasp the handrail for safety, and began her ascent.
She could not help the chill feeling and the shiver that went through her, alone in the dark with only her candle for company. The hall doors were shut tight on all the landings, cutting the regular pathway of the servants off from the rest of the house, as though they were mice in the walls, and not a part of the household at all.
She started as she heard a door above her open, and someone else beginning a descent. The person was beyond the bend in the stairs, so she could not yet see who it was. It was ridiculous to worry, but she was suddenly taken with the notion that when she arrived at the next landing, there would be no one on the stairs above her. The ghostly footsteps would walk through her, with only a passing feeling of icy air.
What a foolish notion. More likely, it would be a footman on his way to the kitchen, or someone else sent on an errand. She would round the next corner and find nothing unusual. But she could not resist calling a hoarse ‘hello?’ into the darkness.
The space around her got suddenly darker, as though a candle around the corner, barely able to cut the gloom of the stairwell, had been extinguished.
Did the person above her mean to keep their identity a secret? There was no point in it, for she would come upon them with her own candle in just a few more steps.
But the footsteps had stopped as well.
She could feel her own steps falter at the realisation, before plucking up her nerves and continuing her climb. She rounded the bend in the stairs and kept climbing, eyes averted, before working up the nerve to look up at the silhouette of a man, looming on the flight above her. He was not moving, just waiting in stillness for her to pass him.
This was not normal behaviour, was it? For though it might make sense to wait while another passed, it made no sense at all to do so in silence. It turned a chance meeting into a threatening situation. Or perhaps it was only her imagination. She proceeded up the stairs, hand on the rail and eyes focused on the shadowy face of the man in front of her, watching the features sharpen in focus with each step she took.
Then she gasped. ‘Lord Colton.’
‘Miss Collins.’ He did not move. And although she had not thought him a particularly large man, he seemed to fill the stairwell in front of her, blocking her progress. ‘What a surprise to find you creeping about the house so late at night.’
His tone was insulting, and she caught herself before responding in kind, remembering that he was her employer, not her equal. ‘Merely coming back from the library with a book for my room. It is sometimes difficult to sleep in a strange place.’
‘And since you are educated, you sought solace in a book.’ In the flickering candlelight, his smile looked like a sneer.
She nodded.
‘Very well. But you had best be careful on your way. Stairs can be dangerous.’
What did he mean by that? Was it a threat? And why threaten her, for he hardly knew her? What was