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  A MOST UNUSUAL LADY

  Janet Grace

  THERE are none so blind who will not see

  Miss Louisa Stapely defied every description of a lady. But it was mere misfortune which was responsible for many of her misadventures.

  Having rescued her from her most recent mishap, Lord Alnstrop decided to see to it that she had no more. Grateful as she was, Louisa left Lord Alnstrop’s care, over his strenuous objections, to take up a position as governess.

  Though Louisa was happy in her new life, she could not help but feel something was missing. Apparently, Lord Alnstrop felt much the same, for his arrival indicated he had not yet finished with his most unusual lady.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Look!’

  It was Susannah who first noticed the curricle.

  Of course, it would be, Louisa thought irritably, as she rubbed her ribs where her younger sister had caught her with an energetic nudge from her parasol handle, before using that article to point down the lane into the village square.

  ‘I wonder whose it can be?’ Susannah hastened her usually dawdling footsteps over the mud and pebbles. ‘It is nobody local, for I know all the gentlemen’s carriages. It is very smart, and I dare say the horses are as good as anything old Sir Archibald has, or even better. But...’ They were closer now, and she screwed up her eyes in her plump, petulant face, then shook her head, the pale blonde curls bouncing under her bonnet, and pouted disappointedly. ‘There is no coat of arms that I can see.’

  The vehicle under such scrutiny was standing in the spring sunshine in the front yard of the Dog and Donkey, with one of the landlord’s young sons standing proudly at the horses’ heads. It was indeed an elegant equipage, breathing quality and taste without ostentation. Susannah thought it perhaps a little plain, but Louisa found herself studying it with unaccustomed interest, and shook her head decisively.

  ‘It is certainly nothing to do with us, and we cannot be standing here staring like any yokels,’ she said briskly. ‘Now, are you going straight in to the draper’s? Or will you come down to the butcher’s with me?’

  Louisa knew that this would pose her sister a problem. While the draper’s commanded an excellent view of the Dog and Donkey, the butcher’s, further down the street, was known to have taken on a new young man of reputedly godlike proportions, whom Susannah had yet to favour with a flutter of her plump, pouting seventeen-year-old charm. There was a pause while she considered, frowning.

  ‘I will stay in Miss Tissock’s and look at the cottons,’ she decided at last. ‘You can call for me here on your way back.’

  Louisa sighed as she turned away down the street. She found her sister’s attempts to grow up in their restricted social sphere sad, but exasperating, especially now Susannah had started delving into the chest of all the exotic and expensive gowns that had been packed away for the seven years since her own disastrous London season. Today her sister had selected a leaf-green silk walking-dress with elaborately embroidered front panels to the bodice, and which was generously trimmed with rich brown piping and tasselling. It was noticeably too tight for her, and looked out of place in Thesserton village. Louisa, clad in a spotted muslin, which she was determined would do another year for it was not so very worn, had had her dubious comments airily dismissed as merely jealousy, and had decided to say no more.

  Having barely noticed the godlike youth as she gave the butcher his weekly order, and then called in at the baker’s for extra bread to help quell her brothers’ voracious appetites, Louisa walked back to find Susannah waiting excitedly in Miss Tissock’s doorway.

  ‘I saw him, Lu!’ she hissed, grabbing at her sister’s arm. ‘He came out to tell Will Samuels to walk the horses. He is tall and dark and I am certain he must be handsome, though I could not see too well from behind the ribbons and laces. Could we not go and stand and talk to young Will? For surely the man will come out again soon, and maybe he would speak to us.’

  ‘Really, Susie!’ Louisa let her exasperation show. ‘I am ashamed to hear you even planning such vulgar strategies. You must know that no man of any distinction would show interest in a young lady who blatantly loitered with a stable-lad in a transparent attempt to gain his attention. It makes me embarrassed to think of it. Come. We will walk on home.’

  Susannah lingered for a few moments, scowling and jabbing the point of her parasol viciously into the road, poking up the stones. She then reluctantly followed her sister back along the lane towards Thesserton House.

  She continued to trail behind, so it was only by chance that Louisa, hearing the sound of hoofs and carriage-wheels rounding the bend of the lane behind them, turned and looked back just in time to see her sister fake a melodramatic start of alarm, twist, and fall with exaggerated anguish at a safe distance from the horses’ hoofs.

  The elegant curricle, for such, naturally, it was, ground to a halt, and the driver sprang lithely down into the road, adjuring his horses to ‘stand’, in the tones of a man who expected to be obeyed. He knelt down at Susie’s side, a hand outstretched to support her.

  Louisa arrived at the scene in time to see Susannah, having clutched the man’s hand to raise herself a little, gazing deep into his eyes all the while, suddenly collapse again with her head resting heavily against the muscular buckskin-clad thigh. As a faint, it was strong belied by her very rosy cheeks.

  Shamed embarrassment and outraged fury fought together in Louisa’s breast.

  ‘Get up this instant, Susie!’ she commanded in a taut voice, altogether ignoring the owner of the buckskins, for she could think of no way to address him. ‘I know you are not truly fainting, but if you are, you should know that I don’t happen to have smelling salts about my person, and thus will be forced to fill my bonnet with water from this rather foul ditch to throw over to revive you!’

  She would have done it, too, so angry was she, but Susannah’s furious eyes flew open. The curricle’s owner, however, while gently assisting Susannah to sit up, was regarding Louisa with considerable amusement.

  ‘I could never have allowed it,’ he remarked with gravity, ‘even in such a worthwhile cause. I would have been honour bound to donate my hat!’ The laughter in his eyes belied his solemn tones as he looked from Louisa down to Susannah. ‘So I am delighted to see you somewhat recovered. I deeply apologise, though, if my horses startled you. Perhaps I can assist you up? And you must allow me to drive you home.’

  Susannah, simpering distressingly under these attentions, made an agonised fuss over a supposedly strained ankle as she allowed herself to be half lifted into the curricle.

  ‘Allow me to help you up too, ma’am.’

  Louisa started in surprise.

  ‘No! No, there is really no need. I am quite unhurt and well able to walk. Besides, there is not room. I can direct you to our house.’

  She felt unaccountably panicked. His eyes were very blue, she noticed irrelevantly, and crinkled with little laughter-lines at the corners when he was amused. His very dark hair was cropped uncompromisingly short, and his lips and chin showed the firmness of determination and authority.

  He was speaking to her gently.

  ‘There is really no help for it, my dear. You cannot possibly allow your sister, for I presume she is your sister, to travel with me unaccompanied, and, with a little care, room can easily be made for three. Come, now.’

  Louisa walked reluctantly to the curricle.

  His touch as he helped her up the step into the high-slung vehicle was firm and strong on her arm, making nothing of her weight. Susannah loudly proclaimed that, feeling so faint, she could not possibly move from the centre position or she might sway and fall out, so without commenting Louisa thankfully squeezed herself up against the far edgeboard of t
he vehicle. She told herself firmly that she did not care at all that her muslin was so worn.

  Susannah was keen to point the way, prattling on with painful naiveté about the size of Thesserton House, their position in the village, and their grandfather Lord Luddenay, giving a picture very far from the truth.

  Tense with shame at her sister’s behaviour, Louisa stared ahead, watching the twitching of the horses’ ears, but her eyes strayed back along the reins to rest upon the man’s hands as he mastered the animals. The long, tapering fingers moved with deft strength to turn the horses neatly into Thesserton House drive. The dappled shadows of the beech tree branches moved over the fine movements of the sinews on the backs of his hands—the browner hands of the country gentleman, not the pampered, scented white hands of the rich city dwellers, the affected fops.

  ‘Isn’t it so, Louisa?’

  Susannah’s elbow nudged into Louisa’s arm, scattering her thoughts with a start, but luckily she wanted no answer and rattled on, leaning forward to point out the house ahead of them.

  The dark cropped head turned and he caught Louisa’s eye, with a faint, discounting shrug, and a rueful but reassuring smile. He took the curricle across the weed-strewn gravel with a flourish, and pulled up at the front door.

  Mrs. Crabtree, now housekeeper and cook, but at one time nanny to all the children, who seemed to manage everything in the house with the help of a motley assortment of girls from the village, hurriedly opened the front door.

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear! Now, what’s all this?’

  Louisa jumped down unaided while Susie made great play of her need for assistance.

  ‘Susie fell and hurt her ankle,’ Louisa explained. ‘This gentleman kindly assisted us home.’

  A sprained ankle was firmly in Mrs. Crabtree’s province. With much clucking and tutting she bustled the limping Susannah into the house, calling to the kitchen for water and bandages.

  Louisa turned to the gentleman.

  ‘I must thank you for your kindness and forbearance,’ she said stiffly, ‘and apologise for my sister’s foolish behaviour. She is young and somewhat thoughtless ... though that is no excuse for such a display.’

  He raised a hand lightly.

  ‘You make too much of it. It is nothing. Do any of us achieve maturity without some gaucherie that will later cause us to blush? I am sure I could not claim it. But I must go. I have already been delayed in the village here, and am long overdue.’ He took her hand. ‘Goodbye.’ He held her hand a little long for mere courtesy, a faint frown in his eyes. He seemed about to speak further, but did not. He turned to go.

  For some reason, Louisa stood watching the curricle until it was out of sight. As it turned the last bend among the beech trees that hid it from view he turned and, seeing her, raised his whip in a brief salute before he vanished.

  Vanished from sight, vanished from her life, vanished into that great world of Polite Society that she no longer seemed to have any part in. And she did not even know his name. Somehow, amid all her sister’s melodramatics, introductions had been forgotten. She would certainly never see him again.

  As Louisa turned emptily into the house, a decision that had been hovering, half made, in her mind for days resolved itself. Life at Thesserton held little for her, and now suddenly it seemed to hold less. Her choice, finally, was made then. Though she little knew what chance would hold in store.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Mama, I must speak to you.’

  Mrs. Stapely, sitting in the dining-room of Thesserton House, looked up apprehensively from her bowl of tea, a finger of toast suspended dripping in her hand, as Louisa placed the apricot she had been turning in her fingers with a small, determined thud on the table, and sat a little straighter.

  ‘I must speak to you of my plans for the future.’

  Her mother gave a nervous smile.

  ‘Oh, my dear, you are going to accept Mr. Sowthorpe! Well, I won’t say he would be my first choice for you, my love, but I am so very pleased to think you will be settled. And so near home, it is most convenient for us all. Why, only a thirty-minute walk—I declare I shall see you every day. No, don’t interrupt. You are quite right to make your decision now, and indeed I honour you for it, my love. You can no longer be picking and choosing at twenty-six, and must take a sensible course for the future. A family of your own will be a great comfort, though I believe Mr. Sowthorpe to be a good sort of man; indeed, I know no ill of him. And as for his pigs, why, you will find it is an excellent thing for a man to have an interest that keeps him out of the house. Many gentlemen take a keen interest in their crops and livestock nowadays; it is quite the thing.’

  With a sigh of affectionate exasperation, Louisa seized the pause in which her mother, noticing with distaste the limp, cold toast still clutched between her fingers, put it aside and took some fresh.

  ‘You make this very difficult for me, Mama, but no, I am not going to accept the excessively repeated offers of Mr. Sowthorpe. And it is not his passion for pigs I object to. Indeed, it is fair to say I would sooner accept the pigs without the man than the man without the pigs! So please, Mama, don’t tease me over it.’ The already abused apricot thudded on to the table again and split.

  ‘I am sorry—’ Louisa stood and began to mop with her napkin ‘—but I am going to be a governess.’

  Glancing to see why the storm had not immediately broken over her head, she saw her mother open-mouthed in shock and for once bereft of speech. Anxious but determined, she continued.

  ‘Not just as a governess, you know, but as a most superior companion to the eldest daughter as well. Indeed, I am to live entirely as one of the family and they are offering an extravagant wage. Aunt Honoria maintains that Mrs. Addiscombe is thrilled at the chance to have Lord Luddenay’s granddaughter under her roof!’

  Mrs. Stapely recovered her powers of speech abruptly.

  ‘I might have known your Aunt Honoria would have her nose in this hare-brained, cluck-headed idea. It is outrageous—but she would not care for that, would she?’

  Aunt Honoria, who was actually Louisa’s great-aunt, the sister of the said Lord Luddenay, had always been regarded by Mrs. Stapely’s conventional soul with deep mistrust. A gaunt, elderly, hook-nosed eccentric,, bluntly outspoken, but of generous independent means, she lived with her ageing servants and a tribe of wheezing pug dogs. She was also Louisa’s godmother, and took what Mrs. Stapely deemed an unnecessarily keen interest in the girl’s welfare. In fact, her income would be Louisa’s after the old lady’s death, though she would undoubtedly take a perverse pleasure in living to be a hundred.

  Mrs. Stapely drew her jaundiced thoughts back to her daughter, to see her holding out a letter.

  ‘It is from my aunt. Please read it.’

  With a disgruntled sniff and a darkly suspicious frown her mother took the outstretched sheet of stiff paper and studied the crabbed hand.

  My Dear Louisa,

  Don’t blame you at all, needing to escape. Did the same at your age, but I could afford my own household and my fool brother could never stop me. Those who were shocked—well, be damned to them! I would have you here if it would help, but it would be no life for a girl, and the dogs hate disturbance. So I have found you a family as you asked, and, if you can stomach life as a governess, they will probably do for you. The Addiscombes, of Stoneham Grange, Upper Stoneham. Mrs. Addiscombe will write to you immediately. I met them in Bath last year, talking of finding a governess then, and someone to show the eldest girl how to go about in society. Mrs. Addiscombe is a silly woman, but good-hearted, is flattered by my acquaintance and can hardly wait to parade my brother’s granddaughter around. You will come to no harm there, but if you can’t stomach them, come to me.

  Your affectionate aunt, Honoria

  P.S. Minnie has four more pups. Three beauties, one ailing runt. Needs drowning.

  Louisa began to speak before her mother had drawn breath to comment. She clutched her hands together earnestly.r />
  ‘I know it is an impossible letter. Aunt Honoria at her worst. But she does mean it kindly. Please understand, I cannot just stay here and dwindle into old age. I must try to do something for myself. It is not that I don’t love my family and my home. I do.’

  She glanced out of the window across the gravel sweep to the lawns and the great cedar, where she and her sister had often sat reading or sewing while their little brothers scrambled in the branches overhead. Beyond, in the paddock, a stand of elm trees was, as it always seemed to be, raucous with the shouts of rooks. It was a sound that, with the lulling murmur of pigeons and the calling of bells from the squat church tower, had filled her room each morning back to her earliest memories.

  ‘I want to do this for you all. I had my chances and made nothing of them. The others deserve theirs. Susannah deserves a season in town, and the boys need schooling. I know you hate us to speak of Papa, but I also know how little he left you when he died. If I take this place I can send money home, for I shall have no need to save, and you can see how generous Mrs. Addiscombe is.’

  She handed her mother another letter.

  ‘I believe that if I were out of the way, Susannah’s godmother might give her her season, don’t you think, Mama?’ Louisa, however, was not to hear her mother’s opinion just yet. The door burst open and Richard and Thomas flung themselves breathlessly into the room.

  ‘Still at breakfast?’

  All rosy cheeks, fresh air and virtue, they raided the dishes on the sideboard.

  ‘We ate hours ago. We took the ferret out to the warren beyond Crooked Meadow. Great sport. We left the rabbits in the kitchen for Mrs. Crabtree.’

  As boots scuffed and chairs dragged back Mrs. Stapely escaped. She gathered up the letters and her dignity. Straightening the lace bonnet over her faded fair curls, she hid the hurt her daughter’s words had caused her and spoke quietly.