It took the arrival of someone new-preferably someone titled-to titillate the spirits of these people, Freyja thought with a great inward sigh as they left the Pump Room to return home for breakfast. She had surely made a dreadful mistake in coming to Bath. She would be insane within a fortnight-within a week! But she remembered the alternative-being at Lindsey Hall, awaiting the imminent announcement from Alvesley-and decided that she must somehow bear her exile for at least a month. Besides, it would be unmannerly to leave the Holt-Barrons so soon.
She could not, however, endure another morning of shopping. She made the excuse of some unwritten letters not to accompany Charlotte and her mother and did indeed, as a salve to her conscience, sit down at the escritoire in her room and write to Morgan, her younger sister. She found herself describing what had happened at the inn where she had spent a night on the way to Bath, embellishing the story considerably, though indeed the bare facts were sensational enough in themselves. Morgan would appreciate the humor of it all and could be trusted not to show the letter to Wulfric.
Wulf would certainly not be amused.
It was a lovely day for early September, if a little breezy. Freyja thought wistfully of a ride-the hills beyond Bath were made to be galloped among. But if she sent a servant to hire a horse and waited to have it brought around, Charlotte and her mother might already have returned from their shopping trip before it came and there would be a great deal of fuss over sending a groom with her for protection. She had never been able to endure having servants trailing along behind her while she rode. She decided to walk instead, and set out alone as soon as she had changed, her dark green walking dress swishing about her legs as she strode down the steep hill from the house on the Circus. Her bushy fair hair was confined in a coiffure that was almost tame beneath her feathered hat, which sat jauntily to one side of her head.
She strode through the center of Bath, nodding at a few acquaintances and hoping that by some ill fortune she would not encounter her hostesses and be forced to spend the rest of the morning in the shops with them, took a shortcut through the Abbey churchyard past the Pump Room and the Abbey itself, turned to walk along the river, and then noticed up ahead the very grand Pulteney Bridge, which she had forgotten, since she had not been in Bath for many years. On the other side of the bridge, she remembered now, was the splendidly wide and elegant Great Pulteney Street. And were not Sydney Gardens at the end of that?
She had not intended to walk quite so far, but she felt as if she were drawing air deep into her lungs for the first time in days, and she had no desire to return to the house just yet. She turned to walk across the bridge, looking briefly in the little shop windows as she passed, and then discovered that memory had not deceived her. A short distance ahead of her stretched one of the most magnificent sights of an admittedly magnificent city.
At the end of Great Pulteney Street she turned onto Sydney Place, intending to cross over to the Gardens. But then she noticed the sign indicating that Sutton Street was to her left and frowned and stopped abruptly. It did not take more than a few seconds to realize why that name sounded familiar. It was on Sutton Street that Miss Martin had her school for girls. Freyja hesitated, grimaced, hesitated again, and then struck off firmly along Sutton Street. She even knew the number of the house.
Five minutes later she was standing in a shabby genteel parlor, awaiting the arrival of Miss Martin herself. This was definitely not a good idea, Freyja decided. She had never come here in person before or written-or even allowed her solicitor to use her name.
Miss Martin did not keep her waiting long. She was as pale and tight-lipped and straight-backed as Freyja remembered her. Her dark gray eyes looked as steadily into Freyja's as they had ever looked, but now she dared to look with hostility only barely masked behind civility.
'Lady Freyja.' She inclined her head but did not curtsy. She did not offer a chair or refreshments or express surprise or gratification. She did not point at the door and order her visitor to leave. She merely looked, an expression of polite inquiry in her face.
Well, Freyja thought, she liked the woman the better for it.
'I heard that you had a school here,' Freyja said, masking her own embarrassment with more than usual haughtiness. 'I was passing by and decided to call on you.'
Asinine words!
Miss Martin did not dignify them with a reply. She merely inclined her head.
'To see how you did,' Freyja added. 'To see if there was anything your school was in need of. Anything I could provide.'
It was amazement that was in Miss Martin's eyes now-and far more open hostility.
'I am doing very well, I thank you,' she said. 'I have both paying pupils and charity pupils and several good teachers. I also have a benefactor who has been both kind and generous to me and to my girls. I have no need of your charity, Lady Freyja.'
'Well.' Freyja had taken note of the barely concealed shabbiness of the place and decided that the benefactor was not nearly generous enough. Or that the person acting for the benefactor had different notions than his employer of what adequate funding was. 'I thought it worth making the offer.'
'Thank you.' Miss Martin's voice quivered with an emotion her person did not show. 'I can only hope that you have changed in nine years, Lady Freyja, and that you have come here out of a genuine goodness of heart rather than out of a malicious hope of finding me desperate and destitute. I am neither. Even without my benefactor's generosity my school is beginning to pay its way. I certainly do not need your assistance-or any further visit from you. Good day. My pupils are missing their history lesson.'
A short while later Freyja was walking in Sydney Gardens, her heart still beating erratically, her ears still ringing from the rebuke and the obvious dislike with which it had been delivered.
It must not be a fashionable time to be here, she concluded with some relief. She passed very few other people as she walked the meandering paths, and no one at all that she knew. This was not, she supposed, the place to be walking without a maid trailing decently along behind. But she had never cared about the proprieties and at this particular moment she was very glad indeed to be quite alone. She sat on a rustic bench for a while, close to an ancient oak, feeling the sunshine on her face and the merest suggestion of autumn in the air, and watching a pair of squirrels foraging around for anything visitors to the park might have left behind by way of food. They were remarkably tame. But she sat very still anyway. She did not want to frighten them away.
She had frightened away a whole string of governesses when she was a girl. She had never taken kindly to being confined, to having to do as she was told, to giving her mind to lessons she found excruciatingly boring, to accepting the authority of insipid gentlewomen. She had been a horror, in fact.
Wulf had always found her governesses other employment after dismissing them or accepting their resignation,
