Page 51 of The Gentlewoman Companion (The Gentlewoman #4)
Louisa’s heart dropped to her belly.
“Young John Pickett sells your milk and eggs now the apples are gone.”
“I have a cow and chickens?” Other than the stable, she had paid little attention to the outbuildings behind the cottage.
“He uses the proceeds to pay himself to keep your cottage, or so says his mother.”
Louisa bit the inside of her cheek, hating to apply for help from strangers. But she must seek to improve her misfortune, even if the Greens had abandoned her. “I need a housekeeper. Do any of you know of a reliable person seeking a situation?” She turned to include the women behind her.
A genteel lady ran her eyes over Louisa’s fine attire and must have decided the ensemble obliged her to respond.
The woman returned a straw hat to its stand and addressed Louisa in a nasal voice.
“Mrs. Keller is a widow looking for an excuse not to move in with her seven grandchildren. Come, I will introduce you.”
Louisa followed the woman out the door and down a street that led away from the noisy market.
“I am Lady Molesworth.” She was handsome, with a double chin and a mincing walk, probably in her forties.
The woman scanned Louisa’s attire, all but drooling over its well-constructed expense.
Likely anxious for a friend of superior status, this woman might judge Louisa’s clothing and assume her to be more genteel than she truly was. “What brings you to Wadebridge?”
Louisa told her again she had come to live at Stillwater Cottage.
“As the preeminent lady in town, I am known to everyone and can present you to the best of our secluded society.” She was becoming breathless, trotting along, taking two small steps for each of Louisa’s. “I’ll keep you from mistaking tares for wheat, you know. Your gown is lovely. From London?”
“Stroud is blessed with a very fine tailor.”
“You are from Gloucestershire? I have never been, but you are not wrong about that tailor. We are sadly not so fortunate, and I must visit London for my wardrobe. You are chaperoned?” She looked around as if an aged aunt might pop into the lane.
“I believed the Greens were at the cottage.”
“You did not inquire beforehand? Under whose guidance did you make such a blunder?”
No housekeeper was worth this conversation. “My lady, a gentlewoman must follow her own path.”
“I disagree. Vehemently. Should you require advice—that is…” Lady Molesworth shot her a sidelong glance, taking Louisa’s measure with more discrimination.
The suspicion glinting in her eyes seemed as delicious to the older lady as the hope of finding a friend of genteel birth. “Who are your people?”
Louisa stopped on the path and turned to face the woman.
She would not be ashamed to outline her heritage or attempt to appear higher in society than she was.
“I am afraid you have mistaken my origins. I am not from Gloucestershire but from Cornwall, the daughter of a squire in Talland. I have recently spent some time in Stroud and London and am come to recover from a misfortune.”
Lady Molesworth clutched her chest. “A young widow, adrift in a sea of grief so deep she left her senses behind, along with her servants. Unmoored and unseeing, she seeks shelter in a desolate cottage.”
La! If novels were dangerous, this woman was evidence enough of that. Louisa considered leaving the whimsy alone, but she was only thirty miles from her father’s home. The truth would eventually make its way over or filter in from London.
She could not live in fear of her life collapsing again. Even if this lady would dramatize the tale and spread it with the delight of a child blowing dandelion fluff into the wind.
Louisa began walking again and stepped around a deep puddle. “These roads do need tending,” she said, giving herself a moment to gather her thoughts and courage. Tight were the cords wrapping around her truth, endeavoring to keep her silent, bidding her to protect herself.
She inhaled and released a slow, deliberate breath, working to loose the tension inside her. If she could not claim her mistake, she was not entitled to the lessons she’d learned. She opened her mouth. “Some months past, my father betrothed me to a man I did not know and did not wish to marry.”
With a few steady words, Louisa told her story.
Though her actions had been shameful, she stated the facts with dignity, forgiving herself for the rash actions of a young, desperate woman.
In telling her truth, not only to this stranger but to herself, she neither excused the past nor denied it.
The telling was an unwinding of fear, of guilt, of the frantic energy that had kept her aloft like a bird too long in flight, wings trembling, heart wild.
In the stillness that followed the confession, it came: the release.
Her shoulders softened, her breath deepened.
She landed—not broken, but whole. She had made a mistake, but she was also all the goodness she had ever created, all the generosity she had ever shared.
Gathering wisdom from the wreckage and leaving the rest behind, she grounded herself, no longer willing to be defined by what had once undone her.
“Well,” Lady Molesworth huffed. “I just recalled. I am expected at the rectory.”
She turned and left Louisa without another word.
Tears burned. Louisa’s throat swelled as she watched Lady Molesworth’s short steps turn away from her. She had not truly expected the woman to accept her, but she was glad to have spoken the truth—a painful but necessary victory.
The church bell tolled the hour—four o’clock. The kitten! Louisa ran for the market stall and found the good woman packing up the day. Beside her a fluffy, white angora lay sleeping in a crate.
“You were almost too late,” the woman said, placing the kitten in Louisa’s arms.
Louisa reached into her reticule to pay for the cat.
“I’ll not hear of it. I’m glad to spare his life.”
“Have you any remaining pies?” Louisa asked.
“Six.”
“I’ll take them. Also, I’m in need of a housekeeper. Do you know where I might enquire?”
“My niece?—”
“Before you volunteer your kin, you should know that I once did something terrible. My reputation may taint whoever serves me.”
“You killed a man?”
Louisa smiled. “Sometimes I wish I had. I was beguiled into attempting an elopement.”
“Bah. We are no strangers to shame.” The woman stopped loading her crate and fisted her hands on her hips.
“My sister became a widow and was left to support herself and her daughter. She worked as a housemaid but was caught with a silver spoon in her apron and more under her bed. If you will employ the daughter of a thief, she’ll take no issue with your desire to end a man’s life. ”
Louisa snorted then broke into a full laugh that loosened any remaining doubt that she could thrive. This new acquaintance was indeed an improvement on her misfortune. “What is your name?”
“Mrs. Cox.”
Louisa introduced herself. “When can your niece begin?”
“Her name’s Jenny. I’ll send her tomorrow morning if it suits you. She is fifteen but a hard worker who makes a fine meal.”
Louisa agreed and with a firm step made her way toward Stillwater, the kitten purring into her neck. No rat waited inside the cottage door, but the cat’s ears twitched, and he jumped from her arms, ready to prowl.
Later, under the warmth of candlelight and a blazing kitchen fire, the cat reappeared with Louisa’s disemboweled nemesis dangling from his teeth.
“Well done, but let’s keep your prize out of the kitchen.
” She offered the cat a pie, which he exchanged for the rat.
Louisa swept the rodent outside and sat close to the fire with a cup of peppermint tea.
The kitty thoroughly bathed himself in front of the hearth.
He stared with regal, golden eyes at his mistress, then with supreme arrogance sauntered to Louisa and leapt into her lap.
She laughed. “I shall call you Hal.” She gathered him to her and kissed the top of his head, his silk-soft coat gliding between her fingers.
A memory, foggy with time, drifted to her mind.
She must have been five or six, for that was when she had contracted scarlet fever.
A bowl of peonies cheered her bedside table.
She reached to stroke the petals and knocked the bowl to the floor.
When her mother entered, drawn by the clatter, she wept.
The bowl had belonged to Louisa’s great-grandmother and was the last of a set.
Later that afternoon, her mother entered the sick room with a stout, aged cat, whose main interest was sleeping. She tucked the cat under the blanket, kissed Louisa’s forehead, and said, “Never forget—I love you. There is nothing you could do to lose that love.”
Louisa continued to pet Hal and settled back into her chair. “Thank you, Mama,” she whispered, “for finding me, for leading me to discover myself.”