Page 24 of A Winter’s Romance
P rudence was not to witness how Lord Windon played his part two days later to perfection, for she was consigned to the schoolroom as usual, endeavoring to impress upon Anne the necessity of learning her French verbs, while Nurse kept Henry occupied with a puzzle near the window. The schoolroom, located on the third floor at the back of the house, overlooked the stables, and it was when Prudence was again explaining to her recalcitrant charge that a lady must not only speak French but read it as well that Henry let out a little shout. All eyes turned to him as he leapt from his chair and pressed his nose to the window.
“He’s come back! Look at that sorry nag Papa’s given him—nothing like his Calliope, but she’s got a strained hock. She’s a prime goer—his lordship let me meet her. He’s a right one!”
Prudence came to stand beside him, her dignity still smarting over Lord Windon’s attack on her looks two days before. Seeing his lordship astride her uncle’s chestnut, magnificent in his greatcoat and shining hessian boots, she sniffed and turned away .
“Really, Henry, you ought not to use such vulgar phrases. I am persuaded you hardly know what you are saying.”
“’Course, I do!” he cried, turning with a pout. “What do you know? You’re only a female.”
“Now, Master Henry,” remonstrated Nurse, “that’s no way to speak to Miss Stowe. She knows enough to be a governess, I’ll remind you, and that’s enough for you!”
Smiling her thanks, Prudence looked again to Henry, who was craning to watch the horseman dismount and hand his mount off to a groom. “You must mind your manners and come back to the table, Henry.”
He merely clung to the glass. “There’s another gentleman—that’s Mr. Benchley! What’s he doing here? Devilish irregular!”
“Henry!” cried Nurse and Prudence in unison, as the latter hastened once more to the window.
Henry hunched a shoulder, blushing. “Papa says it—why can’t I? Besides, it’s not as though it’s a proper curse.”
Not heeding this, Prudence looked out to see Honoria’s Fred, who had been inflexibly denied the house only last month, swinging down from his horse as easy as you please. She inhaled sharply, wondering what Aunt Tyndall would do now, and what Lord Windon had to do with it. From the apparent camaraderie between them, his lordship had brought Mr. Benchley back with him from his ride. Was he aware of the mischief he was making?
Shaking her head in consternation, she turned back to the table where Anne had been reluctantly conjugating, only to find the chair empty and the door to the corridor open.
“Oh, dear me!” she cried, hastening to the door. “Where has she gone? ”
Nurse wrung her hands. “Right down to see the ladies, unless I’m mighty mistaken, Miss Stowe.”
Prudence sagged, sure she was right. Only this morning at breakfast, Anne had been lamenting that she would never learn to be a lady without a proper one to be an example to her, and how unjust that there were several fine ladies in residence but she was never to be in company with them.
“Watch Henry,” she adjured Nurse before hurrying down the corridor to the back stairs, wondering anxiously what her aunt would do to her for allowing Anne out of her sight. When she reached the door of the drawing room, she stopped, too anxious to do more than peek in.
There were several ladies and some gentlemen, arranged in groups of two or three about the room, working at tying balls of mistletoe and arranging pine boughs. The interest of these employments had been supplanted, however, by the young girl who stood simpering in the middle of the room, clinging to her mother’s skirts and using all her wiles to encourage an invitation to stay.
“You are very pretty, ma’am,” Anne said to one of the ladies, who tittered appreciatively and glanced sidelong at a gentleman near her. “I should like to be as handsome as you someday. May I sit beside you?”
Lady Tyndall chided her in a carefully indulgent tone, “Oh, you are a naughty, naughty girl, Anne. It is not time for you to come away from the schoolroom. What will the ladies think of you? I declare, they will imagine you are allowed to run wild like a hoyden, when it is only that your governess is horridly remiss. ”
Prompted to action by this declaration of her incompetence, Miss Stowe stepped forward. “There you are, Anne! Forgive me, Lady Tyndall. I will take her back to the schoolroom instantly.”
Lady Tyndall’s syrupy smile became rigid and she murmured in a low voice, “Yes, you will, Prudence. I wonder only that she was allowed to leave it in the first place. You know my wishes concerning the children during this house party. I am seriously displeased.”
“Forgive me, ma’am,” said Prudence again, bowing her head. “I fear Anne slipped out while I was attending to Henry. It will not happen again.”
“If you value your position, it had better not,” was the acid reply.
Then Lady Tyndall’s eyes widened, her gaze over Prudence’s shoulder. “Lord Windon! Dear me, you are back so soon from your ride. You find us a trifle out of order, and no doubt are wondering why the nursery seems to have come to be in the drawing room! Miss Stowe was just collecting my sweet little Anne, who was curious about the ladies.”
“Quite,” said his lordship, his gaze lingering only a moment upon the governess as he took in the scene before him. “Very tempting, all this loveliness.”
Prudence closed her eyes tight against the wave of mortification that rose up to color her cheeks. All this loveliness did not, she was sure, include herself, dowdy scarecrow that she was.
“Yes, sir,” said Anne, turning her wide blue eyes innocently upon this new potential ally. “I so wanted to sit and admire them, only Miss Stowe insists I must conjugate French verbs. ”
There was a titter of sympathy from the ladies, and good-natured laughter from the men. Lord Windon glanced to Lady Tyndall and seemed to make a decision, returning his gaze to Anne.
“Lived by two rules as a boy,” he said solemnly. “Always obey Mama, and always attend to your lessons.”
“Oh, that’s too bad, Windon!” cried a lady, but she was drowned out by calls of, “Hear, hear!” from the gentlemen.
Lady Tyndall, taking courage at this, said with smiling firmness to Anne, “You may come down after your dinner, my dear, and sit with us while the gentlemen are at port. But French is exceedingly important for a young lady to master, and so I cannot allow you to miss your lessons, even as a treat. Miss Stowe knows my sentiments well, and ought to have taken them more to heart.”
Another titter echoed around and Prudence, unable to lift her eyes, murmured, “Certainly, ma’am,” and took her charge’s hand to lead her from the room.
At that moment, however, another gentleman appeared in the doorway. Lady Tyndall, her indulgent gaze rising from her daughter to wither into indignation at sight of him, turned an alarming shade of red, and Prudence trembled for Fred’s well-being. Before her ladyship could do herself or anyone else an injury, however, Honoria leapt up from where she had been sitting on a sofa and ran to greet the newcomer.
“Mr. Benchley! Oh, Lord Windon has brought you back to sit with us! How charming! It has been an age since I have talked with you. How is your mother? Still recovering from her bad chill? ”
She led him back to the sofa and chattered away, to the endless consternation of her mama. Lord Windon, apparently feeling himself obliged to explain, said smoothly, “Ought to have informed you, ma’am, beg pardon. Had such a fine time with old Benchley that I couldn’t leave him behind. Thought he could come back and continue the visit here. Friend of the family, I’m persuaded. Known Miss Tyndall since the cradle, or some such. Knew you couldn’t object.”
This was true enough, as Prudence observed from sideways glances at her aunt and Lord Windon. Lady Tyndall did not dare to gainsay the viscount, who was her most honored guest, even though he had so easily and innocently overturned her cherished ultimatum that the odious nobody Benchley should never darken her doorstep again.
After some moments of inward struggle, Lady Tyndall produced a smile. “Certainly, my lord! Certainly. Mr. Benchley is a near neighbor, to be sure. Had I even an inkling that he was known to you, I should have invited him to be of the party, but I had not, you know, naughty boy! A pity you made no mention of it before, for I have already made up the numbers at table, and cannot think of fitting another gentleman in. Poor Benchley cannot stay to dinner, and it is too bad, for he must ride home in the dark. But there really is nothing to be done. You apprehend, I am sure.”
Looking as though he did not in the least apprehend, Windon nevertheless smiled and said, “To be sure, Lady Tyndall. Never ask it of you—Benchley had no idea of staying to dinner. But I would take it as a personal favor to me if he was invited for the ball. Tells me he knew nothing of it. Told him I was sure it was a mistake. Made sure he’d be on the list—near neighbor, you know. Miss Tyndall informs me all the neighborhood is invited.”
Lady Tyndall stood as though frozen into a statue—all but the muscles in her jaw, which seemed unable to calm themselves. At last, she said, “An unfortunate mishap, I assure you. Mr. Benchley was always to be invited—how odd that his invitation did not reach him! What a fortuitous thing that you went to visit—that you are acquainted with him at all, my lord—so that we would not be deprived of his company, and perhaps have been made to understand something entirely erroneous by his neglecting to attend.”
“Glad to have been of service, ma’am,” said Windon, bowing with ineffable grace and advancing into the room.
As he passed toward the sofa where Honoria happily sat with her lover, Lady Tyndall’s countenance—which only Prudence was privileged to perceive—transformed to one of thunder. Her gaze snapping to the hapless governess, she growled in an undertone, “Why are you not gone? I believe it was not Anne’s curiosity but yours, Prudence, that led her here. Do you so miss being in respectable company that you will inflict your degrading presence upon us? It will not answer, for you have fallen too far! Do not be getting ideas above your station, I warn you. Now get out of my sight!”
Prudence scurried from the room, Anne protesting all the way down the corridor, but the scene in the drawing room had been too mortifying for the governess even to think to remonstrate with her.
As Gripson divested him of his boots and socks, Windon sat in the wing chair and gazed into space, ruminating on the dashed uncomfortable mess he had been thrown into. The Tyndall household seemed all in a muddle, and he could hardly congratulate himself on promising to assist in sorting it out. Indeed, his part today had scarcely seemed to help matters at all. Lady Tyndall, if he didn’t miss his mark, was likely to burst a blood vessel if anything more untoward happened at her party, and Windon feared there might be a scene or two yet to come.
To a gentleman steeped in his own habits and cares, altruism did not come naturally. Certainly, he did the civil at all times, and performed gentlemanly feats of gallantry with alacrity, but Miss Tyndall’s situation was unique in his experience. As was Miss Stowe’s, and it was to her that his thoughts had turned more and more as the days went on, much to his discomfiture. Indeed, the trials and travails of a governess had never much entered his head before now. It was somewhat discomposing, therefore, to find that he could not keep this particular governess from his thoughts.
He certainly hadn’t liked how she had been treated this afternoon by her aunt. He had overheard the horrid insinuations the woman had made as he had come into the room, and had caught some of the scathing words that had sent Miss Stowe flying from it. The governess’s discomfort had been a great strain on his sangfroid—it had taken all his breeding not to rake down Lady Tyndall on the spot, for he wouldn’t treat a dog with such disdain, much less a beautiful woman. But Miss Stowe, he reminded himself, was no longer to be regarded as a beautiful woman—she was a governess, and according to Society, this prohibited her being anything but a dowd.
He stood to allow his valet to remove his coat and waistcoat, then dismissed him and pulled at his neckcloth, endeavoring to recollect some details of his own governess, and those of his friends. What he remembered corroborated what he had lately been told: all of them plain, drab, resigned things, if he wasn’t mistaken. Miss Dooley—was that his governess’s name? He had been so young when he went off to school, scarcely older than Henry, to be sure. Miss Dooley, he thought it was, was beak-nosed and thin, with steel-grey hair and fierce black eyes. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall what she had worn—her memory was swathed in grey and black, with only a trace of a white lace collar he thought she must have worn to church.
Every other governess he’d ever seen was the same—he hadn’t paid enough attention to notice much of what they looked like, only that they were plain, drab, spare females, and nothing to trouble himself over after he had left his own schoolroom behind. How odd that he should be troubling himself over Miss Stowe.
But Miss Stowe was nothing like any other governess he had known. His memory of her at Lady Foxham’s ball was fuzzy at best, but he could still envision her as he had seen her at the inn—rosebud lips, brown eyes glowing, chestnut curls peeping from her hood. And her pelisse, while it covered her from neck to toe, was cut fashionably enough of fine wool to be quite alluring. It ought not to be forbidden that she wear such things, if she had them. But perhaps she had borrowed them from her cousin, which meant she had none of her own. It didn’t much signify, for Miss Tyndall had assured him it was out of the question for Miss Stowe to even attempt good looks, and after Lady Tyndall’s derisiveness today, Windon was inclined to agree, more’s the pity. Dashed waste of good looks only to give them an airing on holidays .
As he removed his breeches and climbed into bed, several snippets of conversation regarding Miss Stowe’s situation swam in his mind. She was a poor relation—it was not her place to attempt to attract gentlemen meant for her cousin—she must not be a burden—she was grateful to be a governess. Now that was a travesty if there ever was one—so incomparable a beauty, grateful to make herself plain as a doorpost and to hide every charm, only to please a cat of a woman who didn’t even have her best interests at heart!
The connoisseur in him was pained, much as an art lover would be pained to find a masterpiece cut from its frame and hidden in a dusty old attic. But more than that, his sense of honor smarted at having added to her distress. She scarcely dared look at him now, for fear of raising her aunt’s jealousy. What could he do? The art lover would rescue the painting, but Windon could hardly rescue Miss Stowe—could he?