Squaring her shoulders, Kate took a deep breath and opened the door. Before her stood an imperious little old lady clad in sumptuous furs, staring at her with unnervingly bright blue eyes. Behind her was a stylish travelling coach.
“Can I help you?” Kate said, politely hiding her surprise. Nothing in Mrs Midgely’s letter had led her to expect that her new employer would be so wealthy and aristocratic, or that she would collect Kate herself.
The old lady ignored her. With complete disregard for any of the usual social niceties, she surveyed Kate intently.
The girl was too thin to have any claim to beauty, Lady Cahill decided, but there was definitely something about the child that recalled her beautiful mother. Perhaps it was the bone structure and the almost translucent complexion. Certainly she had her mother’s eyes. As for the rest … Lady Cahill frowned disparagingly. Her hair was medium brown, with not a hint of gold or bronze or red to lift it from the ordinary. At present it was tied back in a plain knot, unadorned by ringlets or curls or ribands, as was the fashion. Indeed, nothing about her indicated the 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 Midgeiy”
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
