The Entrapment
"She's odd," Lady Seaforth conceded to her brother. "But she would be wonderful with the children. She's tediously well-read, at school she knew everything."
He nodded. They were discussing in his sister's elegant London drawing room, for what felt like the thousandth time, the education of his children, a task that now fell on him since the death of his wife. The little-lamented Clarissa had left him with a son and heir of six years old, a daughter of eight, and a babe in the cradle. They were conveniently housed with their grandfather in the country, in the family home in Kent, but they had to be educated. "Sara de Vere is the girl to do it."
"Girl?" he asked gloomily. "I can't have someone who's going to run off with the footman."
"She's past that," his sister declared. "She must be thirty if she's a day. Besides, no one would have her, she has next to nothing."
He smiled. "I wonder what you say about me behind my back if this is how you describe your best friend?"
"You?" she asked. "Oh, rich, titled, cold-hearted."
"I suppose I should be comforted that you say nothing that you would not repeat to my face."
"I would add: lonely."
He shrugged off her concern. "I don't find other people very interesting, that's all."
"Not interesting?"
"Predictable. I always know exactly what they are going to say."
"But you will marry again?"
He laughed. "I find women the most predictable of all."
"Shall I write to Sara de Vere and offer her the post?"
"Yes. She can go to Tonbridge and start at once."
After that, he thought no more about it, paying the wages of the governess along with the other household bills until he received an urgent scrawl from his sister. "Father gone quite mad, marrying Sara de Vere. My best friend! Sack Sara and speak to Father. And write to me."
Wearily, he ordered his curricle to be ready for the journey. He foresaw that the governess would make a scene, and he disliked predictable tears. But if his father had indeed proposed marriage to her, then she would have to be dismissed. A governess could not be the next Lady Charlton.
Charlton Hall stood at the end of a beech-lined drive, nestled among hop fields and apple orchards. Grayson Charlton felt his heart lift as his four bay horses turned in the great stone gates and he knew he was on his own land. He steadied them outside the big red brick Elizabethan hall and the front door opened and his children tumbled out. Behind them, at a run, came a woman laughing and scolding in one breath. She was dressed demurely in a gown of dark blue with a small apron tied neatly around a slim waist. Her dark hair was smoothed back without a ringlet or a curl, and a little cap of white lace kept it tidy at the back of her head. But she did not seem like a governess. The prim appearance seemed like a reining-in of joy. When she glanced up at him, high on the curricle seat, her face was bright and her eyes sparkling. With a quick gesture she commanded the children to mind the wheels, captured Julia's hand and grabbed Charles' coat-tails, anchoring them to the spot as the horses came to a standstill and Grayson jumped down.
He knelt to greet his children and then rose up to say coolly to the governess: "How d'you do. I am Grayson Charlton."
"Of course," she curtsied politely. "I am glad to see you again, sir."
"You two can go with the horses round to the stable," he said to his son.
He was piqued to see that she paid him no attention at all until the children were safe on the driver's seat. "Have we met before?" he asked, looking at her profile.
"Actually, quite often. I came here with Lydia for holidays. Do you not remember me at all?"
"Not at all," he said coldly.
"Oh well, I was most unimportant," she admitted cheerfully. "It is just that I remember you so well, and the beautiful horse you rode, Timpani. I just adored him."
"I still have him. He was a wonderful hunter. Fancy you remembering him!"
She laughed. "I disapproved of you going hunting. Do you not remember? I said a fine horse like Timpani should not stoop to persecute foxes!"
"Did you?" he broke off suddenly, realising that his intimate tone was quite wrong. "Actually, I am here to see you." He preceded her into the hall, and dropping his driving gloves on a little table waited with his arms outstretched for the butler to help him out of his driving coat.
He expected her to be flustered, but she gave a little suppressed choke of laughter. "Oh, I suppose Lydia sent you."
"She writes that you have entrapped my father."
She sighed and put her hand to the library door. "Shall we talk in here?"
He followed her, still amazed at her composure. She stood at the window where she could watch for the children returning from the stables. "Your father was so kind as to make me an offer of marriage. I took a day to consider, for politeness' sake - and then I refused him."
"Refused him?" He was astounded.
"He must have written to Lydia at once. I suppose he assumed, as I see you all did, that I would accept. But I did not. Perhaps her letter, calling off the panic, is on its way to you now?"
"I don't panic," he corrected her stiffly. "But I was concerned."
She said nothing.
"Why would you refuse him? It would be a gold mine for you."
"Perhaps. But I am not in the mining business."
He knew himself to be snubbed. "I can't believe that you mean to turn him down. He is a man of great wealth and family, the Charltons have been here for four hundred years. You were at school with Lydia, you know what sort of a name you have been offered. You know the size of the estate."
"Oh, I was quite counting on being Lady Charlton," she said with a flash of temper. "I only pretend to love the children to entrap their grandfather..." She caught her breath. "I beg your pardon. I should not speak so. But you don't understand: what you are suggesting is an insult to me. I earn my living by selling my education, not myself."
"Not many women would think themselves insulted by the prospect of a most advantageous marriage."
"Yes, but I have chosen to earn my own living, to pursue my own studies, to live my own life. I am not a servant or a wife."
"I pay you like a servant and I naturally assumed you would rather be a wife."
She smiled at him, as if he had said something foolish. "Yes. That is what most people think. But I am something else altogether."
"What?"
"A free woman."
The simple words shocked him deeply. What could she mean by it? What sort of woman would refuse to be either servant or wife? "At any rate, I take it you will leave now? You can hardly want to live here after Lydia has complained of you to me? After I have come to make sure that the idea is quashed?"
She shook her head. "I wouldn't leave the children just because Lydia had a touch of the vapours."
"It was hardly that!"
"It is a fuss about nothing," she said gently. "Go and ask your father."
As he went to his father's study, it occurred to him that not in ten years had anyone told him what to do. And from her, he found he did not mind it.
"What's all this about?" he asked, strolling in to shake his father's hand.
"Oh, Lydia told you," his father said. "I should have had more sense than to write. But it never occurred to me that she would turn me down."
"Wouldn't occur to anyone," his son agreed. "Ridiculous. Improper too. I'd have expected her to jump at the chance to be Lady Charlton."
His father waved him into a chair on the other side of the fireplace, passed him a cigar, and there was silence while together they cut the ends, smelled the leaf, and carefully lit up.
"Good," Grayson conceded. "So what's it all about?"
His father waved his hand. "Pretty woman, good company, sweet nature. Knew she was poor as a church mouse, thought I'd do her a favour, give her my name, let her mother the children, sit at the end of my table and make the place look brighter. You know."
Grayson shook his head. He did not know.
"Proposed. Made it clear to her she was lucky. Told her she had to stop writing..."
"She writes?" Grayson exclaimed in horror.
"Very clever woman, I'm afraid. Told her there would be no more pamphlets about the rights of women. Told her she would be Lady Charlton and I would be kind to her." He gave a short laugh.
"What happened?"
"She told me a thing or two."
His son waited.
"Told me that God had given her a brain in her head and she would use it. Told me that she would think and write as she damned well pleased. And finally - for she is a bit of a darling - told me that she would be the light at the end of my table anyway. Said she wanted to see the children growing up. Said that they need a mother and that she is the closest they have."
"Lydia sent me to sack her," Grayson remarked.
His father waved a thick cloud of cigar smoke from his face so he could see his son. "Don't do that," he said firmly. "She's the best thing that ever happened to those children. They're doing astronomy with her, think of that! Julia likes mathematics!"
"A bluestocking!" Grayson exclaimed sceptically. "What d'you think she's going to teach Julia?"
"Not to be a fool like your sister," his father said, conceding nothing. "You talk to her, my son. She might surprise you."
That evening, dressing for dinner, Grayson thought that she had already rather surprised him. He stood before the pier glass to tie his cravat and then suddenly checked as he remembered a serious, dark-eyed girl who one summer had argued that hunting was cruel. He remembered that she had stood on the mounting block before the whole hunt and told him that all creatures were the work of God and that he had no dominion over them. He opened the door and went down the stairs laughing at the memory, and his father looked up from the fireplace in the hall and said: "She's a funny little darling, isn't she?" which, unfortunately, was quite what he was thinking.
Of course, however charming she might be, the situation could not continue. A sharp note from Lydia the next day reminded him that in the real world fox-hunting was the lifeblood of the country, bluestocking women were rightly despised, and that a disgraced governess must leave at once.
Regretfully he sent a note to the schoolroom to tell her that he would drive her to the evening mail coach himself and thought that he must be as foolish as his father to wish she could stay.
She climbed into the curricle red-eyed as his groom strapped on the little bag. He tried to distract her on the way to Tonbridge by asking her to explain the thinking of Mary Wollstonecraft, and her replies were so challenging and interesting that he found he was hoping, absurdly, that the journey would last for longer when, just at that moment, he felt a terrible lurch and all he could do was to grab her to his side and hold her to him, as with a creak and scream of breaking wood, the wheel on the forehand came off, and the curricle toppled lopsided into the road and was dragged by the plunging horses to a standstill. He struggled to help her up, but when he put his foot to the ground, he exclaimed in pain. "Damn, my ankle."
"Is it sprained?"
"Broken, I think."
There was nothing for it, but the groom would have to ride one horse and lead the others to the nearest farmhouse, get a wagon and come back for them. "But you cannot stay here alone with me," he fretted. "It's getting dark, we have no chaperone."
"I can't ride bareback," she pointed out. "And we don't even know how far it is to the nearest village."
"Your reputation..." he exclaimed. An evening alone with him would blacken her name completely.
"Half-ruined anyway, according to Lydia," she reminded him. "But there is no reason for anyone to know."
"If anyone were to see us, I should have to offer you my name. We would have to be married."
She seemed to have no grasp of the horror of her situation for at this she gave a gurgle of laughter and said: "Oh Grayson! Lydia would faint clean away. You would be entrapped."
Then there was nothing they could do but wrap the rug from the carriage around their shoulders and talk as the sun went down and the moon came out, and he forgot to listen for the sound of the groom coming back with a wagon and instead worked at making her laugh, enchanted by the sudden light that came to her face. It grew dark and her head nodded. It seemed natural and easy to make her comfortable by putting his arm around her, and when she turned up her face to ask him how late it was, he kissed her.
He woke to the noise of wheels, his swollen foot throbbing in pain, and saw, to his utter horror, not the wagon from the nearest village but a great carriage with a crest of arms emblazoned on the door. He recognised the livery of the Duchess of Salford, notorious gossip and snob, as the expensive glass window of the coach slid down and the Duchess put out her bonneted head and said, "Grayson Charlton! What on earth?"
He rose as best he could on one foot, Sara de Vere helping him up, her arm disastrously around his waist, her hand in his. "Your Grace!" he said. "We have had an accident."
Her sharp old eyes went from Sara to him. "So I see. You and...?"
The silence lasted for what felt like a small eternity. "May I present Miss Sara de Vere, my sister's friend and... er... my betrothed," he said.
Both the Duchess and Grayson Charlton heard the little gasp and the exclamation of denial; both were too well bred to notice it.
"You don't have to," Sara hissed at him. "We can say that my maid is with us. We can make something up. We can get out of this."
He smiled down at her and she suddenly knew that everything in her life was going to be different. "I don't want to get out of it. I find I want to marry you. Say yes, Sara."
She hesitated.
"You kissed me, you are compromised," he warned her. "And think of it: you will be Charles and Julia's mother. You can teach her Latin, and you can try to make me give up hunting." His heart leapt as he heard her giggle. "You can be
a free woman. And you will be Lady Charlton."
"Now that is all that I want," she said. "Have I really entrapped you?"
"I am entrapped," he assured her. "Utterly."
