Gallant Waif. Anne Gracie

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СКАЧАТЬ slightest acquaintance with fashion, her black clothes being drab and dowdy, though spotlessly clean. They hung loosely upon a slight frame.

      Kate flushed slightly under the beady blue gaze and put her chin up proudly. Was the old lady deaf? “Can I help you?” she repeated more loudly, a slight edge to her husky, boyish voice.

      “Ha! Boot’s on the other foot, more like!”

      Kate stared at her in astonishment, trying to make sense of this peculiar greeting.

      “Well, gel, don’t keep me waiting here on the step for rustics and village idiots to gawp at! I’m not a fairground attraction, you know. Invite me in. Tush! The manners of this generation. I don’t know what your mother would have said to it!”

      Lady Cahill pushed past Kate and made her way into the front room. She looked around her, taking in the lack of furniture, the brighter patches on the wall where paintings had once hung, the shabby fittings and the lack of a fire which at this time of year should have been crackling in the grate.

      Kate swallowed. It was going to be harder than she thought, learning humility in the face of such rudeness. But she could not afford to alienate her new employer, the only one who had seemed interested.

      “I collect that I have the honour of addressing Mrs Midgely.”

      The old lady snorted.

      Kate, unsure of the exact meaning of the sound, decided it was an affirmative. “I assume, since you’ve come in person, that you find me suitable for the post, ma’am.”

      “Humph! What experience do you have of such work?”

      “A little, ma’am. I can dress hair and stitch a neat seam.” Neat? What a lie! Kate shrugged her conscience aside. Her stitchery was haphazard, true, but a good pressing with a hot flatiron soon hid most deficiencies. And she needed this job. She was sure she could be neat if she really, really tried.

      “Your previous employer?”

      “Until lately I kept house for my father and brothers. As you can see…” she gestured to her black clothes “…I am recently bereaved.”

      “But what of the rest of your family?”

      This old woman was so arrogant and intrusive, she would doubtless be an extremely demanding employer. Kate gritted her teeth. This was her only alternative. She must endure the prying.

      “I have no other family, ma’am.”

      “Hah! You seem an educated, genteel sort of girl. Why have you not applied for a post as companion or governess?”

      “I am not correctly educated to be a governess.” I am barely educated at all.

      The old lady snorted again, then echoed Kate’s thought uncannily. “Most governesses I have known could barely call themselves educated at all. A smattering of French or Italian, a little embroidery, the ability to dabble in watercolours and to tinkle a tune on a pianoforte or harp is all it takes. Don’t tell me you can’t manage that. Why, your father was a scholar!”

      Yes, but I was just a girl and not worth educating in his eyes. In her efforts to control the anger at the cross-questioning she was receiving, it did not occur to Kate to wonder how the old woman would know of her father’s scholarship. If Mrs Midgely wished Kate to be educated, Kate would not disappoint her. Some women enjoyed having an educated person in a menial position, thinking it added to their consequence.

      “I know a little Greek and Latin from my brothers—” the rude expressions “—and I am acquainted with the rudiments of mathematics…” I can haggle over the price of a chicken with the wiliest Portuguese peasant. It suddenly occurred to Kate that perhaps Mrs Midgely had grandchildren she wished Kate to teach. Hurriedly Kate reverted to the truth. It would not do to be found out so easily.

      “But I cannot imagine anyone offering a tutor’s position to a female. I have no skill with paints and have never learnt to play a musical instrument…” No, the Vicar’s unwanted daughter had been left to run wild as a weed and never learned to be a lady.

      “I do speak a little French, Spanish and Portuguese.”

      “Why did you not seek work as a companion, then?”

      Kate had tried and tried to find a position, writing letter after letter in answer to advertisements. But she had no one to vouch for her, no references. Someone from Lisbon had written to one of her female neighbours and suddenly she was persona non grata to people who had known her most of her life. It hadn’t helped that the girl they remembered had been a wild hoyden, either. There were many who had predicted that the Vicar’s daughter would come to a bad end. And they were right.

      Life in service wouldn’t be so bad, she told herself. As one of a number of servants in a big house, she would have companionship at least. A servant’s life would be hard, harder than that of a companion, but it was not hard work Kate was afraid of—it was loneliness. And she was lonely. More lonely than she had ever thought possible.

      Besides, a companion might be forced to socialise, and Kate had no desire to meet up with anyone from her previous life. She might be recognised, and that would be too painful, too humiliating. She had no wish to go through that again, but none of this could she explain to this autocratic old lady.

      “I know of no one who would take on a companion or governess without a character from a previous employer, ma’am.”

      “But surely your father had friends who would furnish you with such?”

      “Possibly, ma’am. However, my father and I lived abroad for the last three years and I have no notion how to contact any of them, for all his papers were lost when…when he died.”

      “Abroad!” the old lady exclaimed in horror. “Good God! With Bonaparte ravaging the land! How could your foolish father have taken such a risk? Although I suppose it was Greece or Mesopotamia or some outlandish classical site that you went to, and not the Continent?”

      Kate’s eyes glittered. Old harridan! She did not respond to the question, but returned to the main issue. “So, do I have the position, ma’am?”

      “As my maid? No, certainly not. I never heard of anything so ridiculous.”

      Kate was stupefied.

      “I never did need a maid anyway, or any other servant,” the old lady continued. “That’s not what I came here for at all.”

      “Then…then are you not Mrs Midgely, ma’am?” Kate’s fine features were lit by a rising flush and her eyes glittered with burgeoning indignation.

      The old lady snorted again. “No, most decidedly I am not.”

      “Then, ma’am, may I ask who you are and by what right you have entered this house and questioned me in this most irregular fashion?” Kate didn’t bother to hide her anger.

      Lady Cahill smiled. “The right of a godmother, my dear.”

      Kate did not return the smile. “My godmother died when I was a small child.”

      “I am Lady Cahill, child. Your mother was my goddaughter.” She reached up and took the girl’s chin СКАЧАТЬ