thought out…
She broke off, panting, as Guy held up both hands placatingly and leaned against the edge of the kitchen table. ‘It is not ill thought out. I know exactly how and where to do it and have not the slightest intention of being caught.’ He held up his hand again as she opened her mouth to disabuse him of any delusion that this was a comforting assurance. ‘And as for being a
‘I had noticed,’ Hester snapped.
‘I am gratified,’ he responded smoothly, apparently intent on provoking her into reaching for the skillet, which stood temptingly to hand. ‘Now, I will send over a footman again tonight at about ten o’clock. I imagine your people will be in and out of the kitchen until then. We do not want to show our hand yet by securing the secret door. In fact, tonight is the night when six roses are due, is it not? That should keep the Nugents suitably distracted, trying to find a way to deposit them. Do you not like the idea of paying them back in their own coin, sweetheart?’
Hester was too cross for the endearment to register. She was also, she realised, very chilly. ‘It is freezing in here. The front door must be open. Susan!’
The front door was indeed open. Hester pushed it to. ‘You must have left it open when you came in. Oh, no, I was forgetting, you came round the side because we were all at the back. Where are they all? They must have gone out and not pulled it shut.’
‘I can hear voices in the kitchen.’ Guy put his hand on the door handle. ‘I must be off, but before I go, how is young Ackland’s shoulder?’
‘Much better. It seemed to heal all of a sudden, although he still favours it a little and I will not let him lift anything heavy.’
‘Ah, the benefits of youth. Goodbye, my dear.’ And he was gone, leaving Hester prey to a very mixed bag of emotions indeed.
She mulled them over as she closed the door behind him and walked back to the kitchen. Anxiety over his plan to break into Winterbourne Hall warred with a warm, selfish glow of happiness that his sister was not staying with him yet and she had a few more days of his company.
The three members of her household were busying themselves with an air that Hester could not help but find suspicious. It was not until Susan said casually, ‘His lordship’s gone, then?’ that the penny dropped. They had gone off, leaving her alone with him quite intentionally.
‘Yes, he has,’ she responded robustly. ‘And where did you all vanish to, might I ask? Maria, you are supposed to be chaperoning me-did you think you were matchmaking?’
That reduced Miss Prudhome to blushing incoherence and Jethro simply to blushes. Susan, however, stood up for herself. ‘And what if we were? He’s a fine gentleman and he likes you very well indeed.’
‘And you know-and Jethro knows-exactly why I cannot think about marrying a gentleman, ever. Do you not?’
‘What do you mean, Hester dear?’ Maria emerged from behind her hands where she had retreated in guilty confusion. ‘An earl would be a very splendid match, hut not out of the question for a gentlewoman and the daughter of a distinguished officer.’
Hester sank down at the table, her legs suddenly too weary to support her. It was time to tell Maria the truth and if she decided she could no longer act as companion to someone with Hester’s reputation, then that was simply a judgment upon her for not being frank at the outset.
‘Let us go into the sitting room, Maria.’ Somehow this warm kitchen was too informal for the confession she was about to make, ‘Susan and Jethro know what I am going to tell you: I can only reproach myself for not having been frank with you from the outset.’
Bemused, Miss Prudhome followed her employer and sat in the chair opposite Hester’s, her hands clasped anxiously in her lap, the flickering firelight sparking off the jet brooch she wore.
‘When my father died I came back to England,’ Hester began painfully. She had never had to tell this story to anyone and it felt as though it were being wrenched from her now. ‘He was not able to leave me well endowed, and I had no surviving relatives, but he had left me instructions to go to an old army friend of his, Colonel Sir John Norton, in London. I went, hoping he would be able to recommend me to a suitable employer so I could become a companion.’
She told the story, seeing her own emotions reflected in Maria’s face: pity and shock at the realisation of the colonel’s condition; amazement, then rejection of his proposal and finally approval of the compromise they had reached together.
‘John only had a few relatives, and they had neglected him for many years, obviously feeling that a dying man, however gallant, was no concern of theirs. With no other heirs, they had no reason to fear he would leave his money elsewhere.
‘But after my arrival, it took only days for those distant relatives to scent my presence and descend upon Mount Street. The ensuing row was an epic and Sir John’s cousin, her husband, her two sons and their wives swept out of the house, having convinced themselves that he had fallen prey to a fortune-hunting hussy and that I had settled into the house as his mistress with an eye to his money.’
She sighed, wondering yet again if there was anything that could have been done at the time to stop the damage. But she had been too proud, and John too furious, to beg their understanding.
‘If they had taken themselves back to the country it might not have mattered so very much, but instead they settled in their town house and proceeded to spread the news of the colonel’s shocking liaison.’
‘I found myself pointed out in the lending library and the few callers Sir John had been used to fell away abruptly. At the fashionable milliner’s where I had begun to take my custom I found they had too much work on to oblige me and the ladies of households where I called to take up letters of introduction from my father’s commanding officer were never at home to me.’
Maria gasped in outrage. ‘How bigoted, how unjustified!’
Hester shrugged. ‘Can I blame them? I do not know. Reputation is such a fragile thing. My world closed in to the Mount Street house and my companionship with Sir John. I tried not to think about what I would do when he died, for my portion was small and the scandal had put paid to any hopes of becoming companion to anyone else.’
‘But I should have known better. He left me a legacy in his will. Not a fortune, for most of his wealth was entailed on his cousin’s son, but a very respectable competence, which, with what my father had left me, means I am able to support the appearance of a gentlewoman.’ She broke off and smiled. ‘Where, that is, no one knows of my reputation.’
‘And because of that reputation, even if it is quite undeserved, you cannot accept an offer from a gentleman,’ Maria stated sadly.
‘Not an honourable offer, that is for sure,’ Hester added wryly. ‘But I should have told you at the beginning, Maria; it was wrong of me not to. You might well have decided you did not wish to be associated with me-you may still feel that way.’
‘Never!’ Miss Prudhome leapt to her feet and hastened to hug her startled employer. ‘You
Hester found she could not speak and contented herself with leaning over and squeezing Maria’s hand gratefully. The little spinster was so kind. If only she thought Guy would be as understanding if she told him frankly of her past. But, of course, that was asking too much. He was a leading member of society, a man with a reputation and a standing. He might take someone with a besmirched reputation as a mistress, but never as a wi- as a friend, Hester corrected herself hastily.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
