Page 6 of A Lesson in Forbidden Love

“Because, my Lord,” she said, “the interview will go more easily if you do not remember me.”

“Will it.”

“It always does. A Governess with no past is a Governess with no inconvenience. A Governess with a past is –” she searched for the word — “a complication. And complications, in my experience, are dismissed before they are engaged.”

He sat back. He did not take his eyes from her.

“You are very direct, Miss Wharton.”

“I cannot afford to be otherwise, my Lord. Indirection is a luxury, like fresh oranges. I have not availed myself of either for some time.”

She heard herself, and was appalled. Stop talking. Two years of grey kerseymere, two years of yes ma’am and if you please, sir, and here, in fifteen minutes, in a library that smelled of leather and beeswax, in front of a man whose name she had not let herself say even in her own mind, she was emptying her mouth like a girl at her first Ball.

But he was not laughing at her.

He had, in fact, gone still in a particular way.

As though he had recognised something, and was deciding what to do about it.

“Lord Penworthy was your father,” he said.

“Viscount Penworthy, yes.”

“He died — four years ago, I believe.”

“Four years last October, my Lord.”

“I am sorry.”

“Thank you.”

A silence. The fire spoke. The piano above had given up on its scale and embarked on something more ambitious, with one wrong note repeated like a hiccup every other bar. Madeleine found that she could measure her own heartbeat by it.

“My mother,” he said at last, “is fixed on the idea of a Frenchwoman. She believes a French Governess to be the only proper accessory for a girl of twelve in 1818. I told her that Bonaparte is long finished and we need not import his countrywomen any longer to teach our daughters their verbs. She did not find me amusing.”

“Mothers rarely do, my Lord.”

“You speak from experience.”

“From observation.”

His mouth moved again — that small caught-back smile. He tapped one finger, very lightly, against the edge of her letter.

“Sophia,” he said, “is twelve, has lost her father, her elder sister Augusta is just married and gone to her husband’s house in Northamptonshire, and her other sister Cecilia is eighteen and entirely taken up with the prospect of her first Season, and her mother is — my mother. Sophia has had three Governesses in two years. The first did not understand that a child full of grief may not be made to read aloud from the Book of Job. The second understood it, but was a fool. The third was excellent, and married the curate at Hawksmoor in February.”

“A loss.”

“A considerable loss. The curate is not very interesting.”

She did not laugh.

She permitted herself, only, the faintest lift of the eyes.

“I want,” he said, “a Governess for my sister who will know that she is a child first and ‘Lady Sophia’ second. I want a Governess who reads. I want a Governess who will not flinch if she is rude, and not encourage her if she is clever in a cheap way.” He paused. “I am, I am told, very particular.”

“My Lord is entitled to be particular.”

“And you, Miss Wharton — what are you entitled to?”