Best of luck!
Emma
PS Feeling rather more guilty than I expected, as you do indeed seem lovely. I have enclosed ten shillings, which should allow you to flee on the next train if you must.
PPS Oh! I ought to tell you your name. It is Clara. I do not recall the boy’s name, but I am certain you’ll learn it soon enough.
I stare at the letter. My gaze fixes on two words. The boy.
Emma had been hired as governess to a boy at Courtenay Hall.
Edmund.
In that moment, I forget that I’ve already labeled this a dream. I hesitate, fingers touching those two words.
The boy.
Is it a dream? That’s a rather blithe explanation with little substance to support it. I had not been tired when I boarded the train. I certainly was not fool enough to sleep while alone in a compartment.
I’d deemed it a dream because the situation made no sense. With this letter, it does.
Emma said it was Fate. Obviously, that is a selfish young woman plastering a good face on a bad deed. Yet it could be Fate, could it not? The hand of the Almighty at work? I have suffered, and I know not what sins I suffered for, but now I return, and my suffering has won me this gift of Fate, to be on that train, to be found by that young woman, to be brought home—home—to my son.
As the housekeeper—for I presume Mrs. Landon to be such—enters the coach, I read the letter again, and I do not fail to miss the point about my charge being the child of the former earl’s second son. August is his third. But that is an error easily made.
I tuck the letter away and settle my hands in my lap. “I wish to apologize, Mrs. Landon, for my reticence on the platform. The journey was taxing, and I was not accustomed to the crush of people. It set me quite off balance. I appreciate your guidance in seeing me to the coach.”
She sniffs. “If you are so easily unbalanced, this might not be the job for you, Miss Smith.” She passes a critical eye over me. “You’re a tiny thing. I don’t know what he was thinking, hiring you sight unseen. I told him that the boy requires a sturdy governess with a firm hand. He also requires his father to be at home, not gallivanting about the countryside.”
“The master has an active social calendar, I presume?” That would describe August, though my heart sinks at the thought of him ignoring our child. He had been a far more attentive father than most.
Mrs. Landon sniffs again. “He has almost no social calendar to speak of. He works. Works, works, and works some more. It is most unbecoming of a man in his position.” A brief pause before she grumbles, “Even if it is the family business.”
The family business?
No social calendar?
That would be August’s brother, Harrison, who is indeed the second son. Harrison has three children, but only one, by his second wife, is young enough to require a governess. A son I remember as a little hellion, exactly as both Emma and Mrs. Landon have suggested.
As I deflate, I stop and reconsider. Is this not the better scenario? It sounds as if Harrison isn’t even at Courtenay Hall. If his son is living there, though, that suggests Harrison has made it his residence, which means August will be elsewhere—the brothers do not get on.
Harrison’s son will not recognize me. We’ve barely met. While there will be staff, such as Hugh, who were around in my time, the turnover at Courtenay Hall had always shocked me. Growing up, my family managed to employ a housekeeper and part-time gardener, and our parents instilled in us the value of long-term relationships with staff. That was not an attitude August’s father—or his brothers—shared. August would quietly supplement wages, but that wasn’t enough for many, who also had to contend with poor treatment from the rest of the Courtenay family.
As governess, my primary contact would be with Mrs. Landon, whom I do not know. Might I not, then, tarry a while at the hall? Play the role of Clara-the-governess while I obtain the information I need?
It is a better plan than mine, and I have a young con artist to thank for it.
Enjoy your ill-won gains, Emma, and if I ever see you again, you shall receive my gratitude, how little you might deserve it.
With that, I smile and settle in for the rest of the ride.
6
During my time in the twenty-first century, there were things I never did. Things I dared not do. One of them was looking up historical records of August and Edmund.
I suppose, in hindsight, if I were the truly pragmatic person I believe myself to be, this natural step would have saved me all this subterfuge now. I’d know whether August had remarried and possibly even where he spent his summers these days.
Yet if one researches anything about a person from the Victorian era, one will get their birth and death date appended after their name as a matter of course. I would see the year my husband had died. The year my son died. Perhaps some hearts could handle that. Mine could not.
It wouldn’t matter if they’d both lived to ripe old ages. It would be a reminder that they were dead and dust, buried and forgotten, their fading graves mere curiosities for cemetery walkers.
Still, I had spent over four years living mere miles from Courtenay Hall, which was a historical building, occasionally open to the public. I could not resist visiting. Not the house itself—that risked learning the family history and those dates of death. Instead, I’d wandered the grounds.
I’d visit early enough in the day that most tourists were roaming the house ahead of the crowds. So I had the grounds to myself and fantasized that I was in my own world, just out for an early walk, August still abed, Edmund sleeping after his morning feeding.
Now, as I approach in the carriage, I realize just how desperate I must have been if I could have convinced myself I was back in this time period. Yes, the layout has changed little. To my left is the fountain, the tinkle of water filling the quiet evening air. To my right, the hedgerow maze, dotted with dark lanterns to be lit for a party on a summer’s eve. Gardens everywhere, immaculately tended by a small army of gardeners. Far to my left, if I squint, I can make out the glitter of the moonlight on the man-made lake with the pond closer to the house. And farther still, the endless darkness of my favorite place—the hunting woods and its delightful follies, waiting to be explored anew.
The differences go beyond sight. It is smell and sound and simply the feel of the place. In this time, there is no stink of diesel fuel. No whir of mechanical fans. No distant roar of traffic. With the faint smell of horse and horse by-products, perhaps no one would call the air fresh and, yes, not all those “by-products” come from horses, but it smells clean to me, sharp with the crisp tang of autumn, the chill in the air and the scent of woodsmoke promising warm fires beyond the walls.
Those stone walls loom three stories high. A grand mansion that took a half century to build. The Courtenays were never known for cutting corners, at least not when it came to their standard of living. The house had been designed in the eighteenth century by the most famous architect of the day. Then it’d taken sixty years for the family to accumulate the funds to finish the structure until it stands as it does today with two massive wings, a dozen bedrooms and a main hall that will seat fifty for dinner—a hundred if you don’t mind moving tables afterward for dancing.
I’m gaping up at the house as the coach pulls to a halt. I rise, but a lifted finger from Mrs. Landon stops me. She’s spotted a very nervous maid hovering on the doorstep, and she steps out to speak to her, closing the door against my exit.