Barbara Metzger (3 page)

Having seen the lieutenant pocket the money, then exchange winks with Clarice, Rosellen found it almost impossible to forgive the officer. She wrote that she would try, for the sake of her immortal soul and his.
I am dying,
she wrote,
and I shall never have known a kiss from a man who loves me, thanks to your machinations.
Surely there was a special place in Hell for sinners like him. She'd look into it, if Dawe didn't change his devil-may-care ways. Old Nick mightn't care how many innocent young women the lieutenant ruined, but Rosellen Lockharte definitely did. If not for him and that foul, fetid kiss, she'd never have ended up at Miss Merrihew's Select Academy for Young Females of Distinction. And extinction.

Now
there
was a letter Rosellen was literally dying to write.
Dear Miss Merrihew, I am dying, and I never held a child of my own.
She'd held the younger girls when they were crying with homesickness, the older ones when they would have torn each other's hair out. But that was not the same. Perhaps Miss Merrihew wouldn't care about Rosellen's unfulfilled maternal instincts, since the old harpy seemed to have none herself. Rosellen crossed out the line rather than begin on a fresh sheet. She was running out of paper as well as time.
Dear Miss Merrihew, I am dying and I never had a paid vacation.

First she thanked the dried-up old stick for giving a young, untried instructor a position. For six months, on trial, without pay. Who knew what would have happened to Rosellen otherwise? She might have gone home to her father, married one of the local sheepherders, and lived another forty years. Then she thanked Miss Merrihew for not giving her leave to visit her ailing papa. Rosellen couldn't have afforded the coach fare anyway and might have been accosted on the highways. The gray uniform that came out of her salary, the mandatory poor-box donation, the coal for the teachers’ sitting room that was mined from their wages, Rosellen thanked her employer for them all and felt better about herself than she had in years. She even thanked the clutch-fisted crone for moving her to the attic room after Rosellen had tried to better her position. The room was freezing in winter, stifling in summer, and too low-ceilinged for her to stand in, though the single, ill-fitting round window did have a lovely view of the school's fenced-in rear yard.

Her employment at the school had consisted of “Yes, Miss Merrihew” and “No, Miss Merrihew.” Rosellen was amazed she had a tongue left after biting down on it to keep the angry words from spewing forth. Well, no more. She had nothing to lose by telling Miss Mirabel Merrihew that she was a cheeseparing chowderhead who knew less about educating young women than Rosellen knew about electricity.

For two pages Rosellen wrote, ignoring the commotion on the other side of the screen. She turned the sheets over and scrawled two more pages about how a proper school should be run, right down to the quality of meats served at table, the sanitary conditions of the kitchens, the books in the library, and the moral virtues that should be part of every young lady's education. Why, if the parents of Miss Merrihew's students ever found out how little their daughters were actually taught or how likely they were to suffer from food poisoning, they'd never send them. They would certainly never enroll their daughters, she concluded, if they knew Miss Merrihew's scurvy brother paid calls after dark, and not to say prayers either. That attic room
did
have a good view.

I am dying, Mr. Merrihew, and I never got to see the prince.
The other teachers got to lead class trips to Brighton or to chaperon students to their summer homes during the long vacation. Not Rosellen. The Reverend Mr. Merrihew had convinced his sister that Miss Lockharte was too immature, too irresponsible for such plums. Too unapproachable, more like. Rosellen's conditions at the academy had deteriorated from unpleasant to unbearable after she had rebuffed the caddish cleric's advances. When she died, she was going to watch out for the other girls at the school, Rosellen warned that son of pond scum now. She'd make sure he didn't sneak any more schoolgirls out at night as he'd done to poor Vivian Baldour, who'd been sent home in disgrace. Miss Baldour, Rosellen had heard, was hurriedly married off to the Earl of Comfrey, a man who was older than her father.

My dear Lady Comfrey, I hope this finds you in better straits than mine. I wish to beg your pardon for not protecting your innocence more vehemently whilst you were in my charge. I hope you find happiness and fulfillment in your marriage.
Miss Baldour would have been better off with a chimney sweep than she'd been with Mr. Merrihew, whose aim seemed to be to compromise some wealthy chit into an advantageous marriage. Advantageous for him, at least. Miss Baldour's father was too downy, or the Earl of Comfrey was too eager to get an heir, one way or the other. The girl shouldn't have had to suffer for falling for a rake's practiced promises, and him in holy orders! Papa would have been aghast.

Her pencil was nearly down to the nub and she didn't have another in the desk, but Rosellen wasn't finished yet.
Dear Lord Vance,
she wrote, trying not to press so firmly on the page,
I am dying, and I never even owned a dog.
She knew she was repeating herself, but she was growing weary. Besides, Lord Vance, one of the school's local patrons, was a sportsman with his own pack of hounds. He'd understand, but Rosellen could not fathom what the man was doing calling after midnight through the back gate. Her little round window revealed him tying his horse behind some trees, then skulking through the shrubbery.

Whatever the man was doing, it couldn't be any good. If he thought that the heavenly hosts knew of his clandestine visits to Miss Merrihew's rooms, perhaps he'd stay at home with his wife. At the least, he should consult mad King George's physicians. Miss Merrihew, indeed!

By the close of Lord Vance's letter, Rosellen was yawning, struggling to keep her eyes open. Not yet, she begged, not yet. She had two more letters to complete before she could write
finis
to her life.

My dear Susan, I could not leave this mortal plane without bidding you farewell. I might never have had a beau or a babe or seen a balloon ascension, but I did have a friend.
Here Rosellen had to stop to blow her nose and blot a fallen tear from the paper. She could hardly see what she had written, through the moisture in her eyes and the ever-increasing weakness. Her fingers were numb and cold. Just a little longer, she begged whoever might be listening. Attila the Hun lived to be over forty; surely Rosellen the Writing Instructor could be granted another hour.

Miss Susan Alton was the only girl at Miss Merrihew's to befriend Rosellen when she arrived at the school. Kindness seemed the rarest commodity at the academy, scarcer even than a decent meal, until Susan smiled at her. Mere months apart in age, they were worlds apart in upbringing, yet Susan was not too proud to accept the disgraced parson's brat as a companion. Granddaughter to a duke, sister to a viscount, Susan was used to the ways of Society and refused to permit gossip and innuendoes to color her affection. The bumblebroth at the Maplethorpe ball could have happened to any green girl, Susan swore, especially one without a mama to advise her or a male guardian to protect her. Susan had her brother, Wynn, and was sure no here-and-thereian would trifle with her affections or her honor whilst the formidable Viscount Stanford was nearby breathing malevolence and loading his Mantons.

Perhaps gentle Susan's kindness was the cruelest rub of all, for she'd offered hope and handed Rosellen heartbreak. When Rosellen had been at Miss Merrihew's for six months, Susan Alton had already been there for two years. She was looking forward to her come-out that spring. Rosellen had nothing to look forward to but at least two score more years of drudgery and disrespect. She'd grow old and ink-stained, her gnarled fingers permanently curled around a pen, her voice coarsened by a lifetime of carping, “Ladies, mind your uprights."

But Susan had an idea. Her mother was an invalid, especially when it suited her to cry off from dreary musicales and mandatory morning calls. The Dowager Viscountess Stanford was still a leading light in the
belle monde,
but she was not up to accompanying her young daughter to museums and libraries and shops, picnics to Richmond, or boat rides to Vauxhall. Susan was going to need a companion, and who better to fill the position than her own dear Miss Lockharte?

Rosellen was in alt. Not only would she escape the penny-pinching of her employer and the petty meanness of the other instructors, but she'd have hope again, hope of a life for herself. She'd be in London, where anything was possible. Oh, she didn't dream that some wealthy peer would take one look at her turquoise eyes—her only claim to glory, actually—and declare himself smitten.

No, Society gentlemen were too far above her touch and too low in her esteem, after her last encounter with the breed of care-for-naughts. She thought only to find herself in the vicinity of a clerk or a secretary or a younger son, anyone who might wish a good housekeeper, a loyal wife, a loving mother for his children. He needn't be wealthy or titled or well placed in the ton. Rosellen's requirements were simple: the gentleman had to be kind, with a modicum of learning, and he had to be able to afford a wife. Was that asking too much? Rosellen didn't think so, and neither did Susan, who promised there were scads of such likely candidates in the vicinity of Stanford House, Grosvenor Square. Her brother had contacts with the War Office, with his investment bankers, with his estate managers. Her mother knew everyone else.

If not, Susan swore, if every man in London was deaf, dumb, or poor, Rosellen could stay on with her as the young lady's paid companion. Then she could be governess to the five children Susan wanted, after Miss Alton found her own Sir Lancelot.
He,
naturally, would be everything Rosellen's humble
parti
was not: well born and well breeched. And devastatingly attractive, Susan insisted. Rosellen wasn't sure about the five children, or the emphasis her friend was putting on the gentleman's outward appearance instead of his inner character, but she didn't care. So long as he could afford to pay her fair wages, enough that she might have a pension and a cottage of her own someday, Susan could marry a troll. A nice troll, of course, for sweet Susan deserved no less.

Rosellen was like a parched wanderer lost in the desert. Susan was the guide pointing toward the oasis. Except the water hole disappeared when Rosellen approached it. Was Susan's affection just a mirage then? Rosellen didn't want to believe so. It was easier to accept that Miss Alton was a pretty widgeon with more hair than wit. Susan hadn't foreseen any problems, but she hadn't an ounce of intellect. Rosellen hadn't remembered that when she gave her notice to Miss Merrihew and packed her bag. And Susan hadn't remembered that she needed her brother's approval before hiring a companion.

The viscount had arrived to fetch his sister home from school in a great flurry of outriders, with Miss Merrihew curtsying so low, her brother had to haul her back to her feet. With one wave of his manicured hand, the viscount ordered the bags packed. With another wave he declined to take tea with the toadying twosome. With a third and final flick of his lace-edged wrist, he dismissed his sister's new companion.

"Absurd” was all he said, with a sneer, before turning his caped back on Miss Lockharte and all her aspirations. She might have been an ant on his picnic cloth, a speck of lint on his elegant superfine sleeve. She might have been the dust beneath his feet in the academy's courtyard for all the notice he gave. He didn't say she was too young, too inexperienced, too unworldly. He didn't know that her reputation was tarnished. He didn't care. “Absurd.” He'd been able to destroy her life with one word. Now that
was
absurd.

To her credit, Susan had argued with the arrogant aristocrat. “But, Wynn, I'll be all alone in London, with no friends. Miss Lockharte will be excellent company."

"Don't be ridiculous, brat. We're related to half the ton. Now get in the coach. I am meeting friends at Epsom."

In shock, Rosellen wondered if Lord Stanford had an appointment to gamble away enough blunt to feed her father's parish for a lifetime, including the sheep. Or perhaps the impatient peer was going to rendezvous with his mistress and shower her with diamonds and rubies.

Susan could only wave her white handkerchief out the carriage window and swear she'd write. Rosellen could only stare after the departing coach, there in the carriage drive, amid her shattered dreams and her belongings. All she possessed fit into a satchel, and her mother's writing desk, which she clutched to herself now, as a talisman. She had no money, no references, and no position left at Miss Merrihew's.

Susan hadn't acted out of malice, Rosellen knew. She was simply weak and a woman. Susan hadn't stood up for Rosellen; now she was in danger of succumbing to another of her guardian's dictates. Rosellen's hurriedly penciled letter exhorted Miss Alton to be strong-willed on her own behalf, lest that same overbearing brother force her into an unwanted marriage. The contemptuous cad had runed Rosellen's life; she didn't want to see him destroy Susan's future also.

No, Susan Alton had not been intentionally cruel. Her brother, Viscount Stanford, was another story altogether. Rosellen would never forgive his toplofty lordship, no, not even if her soul burned in Hell for all of eternity for showing no mercy. She'd meet the dastard there, she trusted, and tell him what she thought of such arrant disregard for the feelings of others, such arrogant uninterest in the lives of those less blessed. But why wait till Judgment Day to tell Viscount Stanford that she thought he was slime?

Rosellen might have been beneath his haughtiness's notice that day in the courtyard, but she'd get his attention now, in her final letter. Her pencil was worn so small, she could barely hold it in her numb fingers. With shaking hands she unstoppered the bottle of ink and sharpened her quill. She'd rather plunge the penknife in the varlet's black heart, she thought, but giving Viscount Stanford a piece of her mind—the last piece—was the best she could do. If he had any brains at all, and someone in that wealthy, influential family must, she considered, he'd mend his ways. Perhaps Susan would reap some of the benefits.