“Aye.”
“You must like it here then.”
“Must I?” he muttered, his voice deep and filled with a mixture of boredom and irritation. “Aye, I expect I must. If you say so, that is.”
I sighed and sat back in the seat, unwilling to engage with him if he was going to be so cantankerous. Father, in addition to his dislike of Americans, the French and the Italians, had not cared greatly for the people of Norfolk and I knew that Heckling, who was certainly no Barkis and was proving himself entirely unwilling, would have irritated him greatly. During his time at the Norwich museum he had found them suspicious and discourteous, although it was possible that they simply did not care for the idea of a young Londoner arriving in their town to do something that a local boy could perhaps have done just as well. It was a coincidence that we should both spend time working in this county and I wondered whether I might have a chance to visit the museum that he and Mr. Kirby had established together, little more than fifty miles away.
Sitting back now, I watched as the scenery, what little I could see of it anyway, passed by. The carriage was rather comfortable and I was glad of that. A thick blanket had been left on the seat and I laid it across my lap, settling my hands atop and feeling quite contented. As the roads over which we passed were rather bumpy it would have been a much more difficult journey had not the seating been so exquisite, which gave me every reason to believe that my employer was a man of substantial means. I fell to thinking about H. Bennet and the life that I was going towards. I prayed that the home would be a happy one, that the Bennets would be a loving couple and that their children, however many there might be, would be kind and welcoming. I had no home of my own now, after all, and assuming that the employment worked out and they took to me as I hoped to take to them, then Gaudlin Hall might be where I resided for many years to come.
In my mind, I pictured a large house with many rooms, something rather palatial, with a spiralling driveway and lawns that went on as far as the eye could see. I think I based this entirely on the fact that my host’s name was Bennet and I associated this with the young lady at the heart of Pride and Prejudice. Her story had resolved itself in an extraordinary mansion, Mr. Darcy’s home at Pemberley. Perhaps these Bennets would have earned similar good fortune? Although of course Elizabeth and her sisters were part of a fiction and this, the house that I was travelling towards, was not. Still, as I reached out and ran my hand against the thick fabric of the carriage seat, it did pass through my mind that they must be moneyed at least, and that should mean that Gaudlin was something special.
“Mr. Bennet,” I said, leaning forward again and wiping my face, for a thin drizzle of rain had begun to fall. “He is in business, I suppose?”
“Who?” asked Heckling, holding fast to his reins, keeping a close eye on the dark road ahead.
“Mr. Bennet,” I repeated. “My new employer. I wondered what he does for a living. Is he in business perhaps? Or …” I struggled to think of an alternative. (I barely even knew what “in business” meant, other than the fact that a great many men seemed to describe themselves thus and seemed unwilling or unable to define the term in more intelligible ways.) “Is he the local Member perhaps? I understand that a great many wealthy families offer the head of the household to Parliament.”
Heckling deigned to turn now and he fixed me with an irritated expression. Truthfully, he looked at me as if I was a dog, scampering about his feet, desperate for attention, yapping and pawing at him when all he wanted was to be left alone with his thoughts. Another in my position might have looked away but I held his glance; he would not intimidate me. I was to be governess, after all, and he was merely the Gaudlin man.
“Who be he?” he asked finally in a contemptuous fashion.
“Who be who?” I replied, then shook my head, annoyed by how quickly I was adopting his Norfolk style. “What do you mean by who be he?” I asked.
“You said Mr. Bennet. I don’t know any Mr. Bennet.”
I laughed. Was this a trick of some sort? A game that he and the other servants had invented to make the new governess feel ill at ease? If it was, it was cruel and malicious and I wanted no part of it. I knew from teaching my small girls that if one showed the slightest sign of vulnerability at the start then one was lost for ever. I was made of stronger stuff than that and was determined to show it.
“Really, Mr. Heckling,” I said, laughing a little, trying to keep my tone light. “Of course you do. He sent you to collect me, after all.”
“I were sent to collect you,” agreed Heckling. “But not by no Mr. Bennet.”
A sudden rush of wind forced me back in my seat as the rain started to fall in heavier drops and I wished that Heckling had brought the covered carriage rather than the open one. (Foolish girl! I was still adrift in my notions of Pemberley. In my mind there was an entire fleet of carriages waiting at Gaudlin Hall for me, one for every day of the week.)
“Did the housekeeper send you then?” I asked.
“Mr. Raisin sent me,” he replied. “Well, Mr. Raisin and Miss Bennet anyway. Between them, I s’pose.”
“And who, pray tell,” I asked, “is Mr. Raisin?”
Heckling stroked his chin and, with the approach of evening, I could see the manner in which his dark whiskers were turning to grey in the moonlight. “Lawyer fellow, i’nt he,” he said.
“A lawyer?” I asked.
“Aye.”
I considered this. “But whose lawyer?”
“Gaudlin lawyer.”
I said nothing, simply placed these facts together in my mind and considered them for a moment. “Mr. Raisin is the family solicitor,” I said, more for my own benefit than his. “And he instructed you to collect me from the station. Well, who is this Miss Bennet then? She is the master’s sister perhaps?”
“What master?” asked Heckling and, really, I had had quite enough by now.
“The master of Gaudlin,” I said with a sigh.
Heckling laughed, then seemed to think better of it. “Ain’t no master of Gaudlin,” he said finally. “Not no more. Missus took care of that, di’nt she?”
“No master?” I asked, wondering what ridiculous game he was playing with me. “But of course there’s a master. There must be. Who is this Miss Bennet if not some relative of the master? Why, she is the one who employed me, after all. I assumed she was head of the household but according to you she holds no such position.”
“Miss Bennet were now’t more than a governess,” he said. “Just like you. Now’t more, now’t less.”
“But that’s ridiculous. Why would the governess advertise for a new governess? It’s quite beyond her responsibilities.”
“She were leaving, weren’t she?” explained Heckling. “But she wouldn’t go till she found someone new. I took her in carriage to t’station, she got out, told me to wait, said you’d be along shortly and here you are. To take her place. Winnie here din’t have more than ten minutes to rest.”
I sat back, open-mouthed, uncertain what to make of this. It sounded ridiculous. According to this man, this driver, Gaudlin Hall had no master, my position had been advertised by the previous incumbent, who, upon knowing that I had arrived in the county, saw fit to leave it immediately. What sense could such a thing make? I decided the man must be mad or drunk or both and resolved not to discuss this with him any further and simply sit back, keep my own counsel, and wait until I arrived at our destination, at which point matters would surely be explained.