to feel grateful. She could not remember anyone going to such trouble to see to her well-being, at least not since her mother had died.
But on the very day of that wretchedly pathetic little funeral, she had discovered that it was no use sitting about waiting for somebody else to look after her. Her father had taken to the bottle; if she had not swiftly learned to shift for herself, she would have starved.
And half a lifetime of facing neglect, of having to be self-reliant, was not going to dissipate under the meagre weight of Mr Jago’s disapproving frown!
The coach lurched to a halt, rocking as the driver jumped down from his box. She tore her eyes from Mr Jago’s disapproving ones to follow the driver’s progress across the yard to the inn door.
He had one of those voices that carried. Even from this distance, she could hear him berating the landlord for not stopping lone females from going wandering about the countryside in foul weather—in such highly colourful terms that she wondered whether she ought to be covering her ears. She was quite sure she ought not to know what half those terms meant. And Mr Jago, to judge from the way he shifted in his seat and cleared his throat loudly, was alive to her embarrassment, but at a complete loss to know what to do about it.
He ought, of course, to have got out and told the man to mind his manners.
Although perhaps not. She was merely a governess now, and not worthy of much consideration. She had to content herself with displaying her disapproval by glaring out of the window at the driver as he instructed the ostlers to stow her trunk in the boot at the back of the carriage.
She hoped she would not have to have too many dealings with this bad-tempered man. She thought it unlikely. A governess would not have much to do with the outdoor staff.
Thank goodness.
Having strapped the trunk in place with a violence that had the whole carriage jerking, and which to her mind seemed completely unnecessary, the driver whipped up the horses and the carriage lurched out of the yard at a cracking pace. She grabbed for the strap as they rattled down the lanes she had so recently trudged along, with a speed that had both passengers bouncing around the interior.
Wonderful. She was going to arrive at her first proper job in a state of bruised, chilled exhaustion! She had so wanted to impress her employers with an image of neatness and competence. Instead, she had the feeling that if this nightmare ride continued for much longer she was going to tumble out of the carriage looking like something the cat had dragged in.
What was more, if she had been a delicate sort of female, she had the notion she would promptly go down with a severe chill and take to her bed. The Captain might well have taken some pains to procure a closed carriage for her, to prevent her from getting the wetting that her independence of mind had ensured she got anyway, but he had not thought to equip it with a hot brick. No, there was not so much as a blanket to keep off the chill that was seeping through to her bones.
She had been far less uncomfortable outside! At least the activity of walking had kept her warm, whereas now, sitting still in her wet clothes in the unheated confines of the carriage, she was starting to shiver.
Yes, if she were not as tough as old boots, the incompetent Captain would be summoning a doctor for his new governess, within hours of her arrival.
Perversely, cataloguing the fallibility of her new employer went a great way to consoling her for her uncomfortable physical state. Like all men, he had decided he knew what was best, without either consulting, or informing, her what he was about. And his plans, like the plans of every man she had ever met, had been woefully inept. As well as being deleterious to the health of the female they intended to dominate.
She gripped the strap a little harder, bracing her feet against the opposite seat as they flew over the potholed, rutted road.
Oh, how she hoped some of his children were girls. She would thoroughly enjoy teaching them to think for themselves. To warn them that though men thought they were the superior sex, they were not to be trusted, never mind depended on!
She had cheered herself up no end with a series of similarly subversive plans by the time the carriage finally slowed down, to make a sharp turn between two gateposts topped with stone acorns. And the smooth glide along the short, but impressively maintained, driveway came as a welcome respite to her bruised posterior.
Mr Jago opened the door, got out and extended his arm to help her alight.
Aimée found herself standing on a neatly raked gravel turning circle in front of a three-storeyed, slate-roofed house.
The front door opened, and three men in a livery that consisted of dark blue short jackets, and baggy white trousers, which made them all look vaguely nautical, came tumbling out. One of them, a bow-legged, skinny man with eyes that each seemed to work totally independently of the other, came scampering up with an umbrella, which he unfurled with a flourish, and held over her head.
Far too late, of course, to do her any good, but it was a lovely gesture. She smiled her thanks and the man grinned back, revealing a set of teeth that appeared to have been stuck into his jaws at random.
‘I am taking the carriage straight back to Sir Thomas,’ the driver bellowed, shattering the feeling of welcome that had briefly engulfed her.
‘Get Miss Peters’s trunk and see her settled!’ he barked at nobody in particular. Yet one of the men ran directly to the boot of the carriage, unstrapped her trunk, hefted it on to his shoulder and trotted with it to the house. Her eyes widened in amazement. It had taken two sweating ostlers to manhandle it into the rear boot of the stage when she had left London, yet he was treating it as though its weight was negligible.
Mr Jago waved his arm in the direction of the front door. ‘Welcome to your new home,’ he said.
With the bow-legged man holding the umbrella over her, the support of Mr Jago’s arm, and the way the other two men stood each to one side like a guard of honour as she trod up the three shallow steps to the front door, Aimée almost felt like a queen being escorted into her palace.
She shook her head at the absurd notion. It was only the latest in a string of strange fancies that had popped into her head today. The certainty that she had been forgotten, when in fact her new employer was going out of his way to help her, the conviction that the piraticallooking coachman he’d sent was a Bow Street Runner, and now, the odd feeling that had not Mr Jago frowned at them so repressively, the oddly liveried staff here would have burst into applause as she alighted from the coach.
She raised her hand to her brow. Perhaps she was sickening for something after all. Her nerves had been strained almost to breaking point over the last few weeks. And her journey from London had seemed never-ending, because of the persistent feeling that at any minute, somebody was going to point at her, and cry ‘There she is!’ and drag her ignominiously back again.
And yet, here she was, her muddy boots staining the strip of carpeting that ran down the centre of the highly polished wooden floor of The Lady’s Bower. And the front door was closing behind her.
Shutting her off from her past.
Oh, they would keep on looking for her for a while, she had no doubt of that. But nobody, surely, would ever guess she had managed to get herself employment as a governess. Or if they did, by some peculiar quirk of fate, pick up her trail, she was surely not worth following this far north. Not all the way into the wilds of Yorkshire!
She had done it.
She had escaped.
And suddenly, the realisation that, against all the odds, she had reached her chosen hiding place came over her in such a great rush that she began to shake all over. The room shimmered around her, the heat, which had seemed so welcome only seconds before, now stifling her.
Tugging at the ribbons of her bonnet, she tottered to the staircase, sat down heavily on the bottom tread and bowed her head down over her damp knees.
She was not going to faint! There was absolutely no need to.
Not now she was safe.