Eleanor felt a pang of guilt. If Dottie was spoiled, there was only one person to blame. She took a deep breath. Perhaps there was a small chance they might get out of this unscathed. And it all depended on how much fifteen years of loyal, unstinting service meant to Miss Martingale. “Please don’t blame Dottie, Miss Martingale. She is only being belligerent to shield someone else. The kitten doesn’t belong to her. It’s mine.”
Miss Lurkin collapsed against the wall. Dottie turned to stare at her wide-eyed. Jingles growled.
“I see,” Miss Martingale replied. “Yes, that does make a difference. You may go, for now, Lady Dorothea. We will speak again later. Please release that creature into Miss Pritchett’s care.”
Solemnly, Dottie handed over Jingles. Her dark brows were knit in concern, but Eleanor smiled encouragement at the girl’s trusting gesture. Dottie dropped a less-than-respectful curtsey to Miss Martingale and slipped toward the door. Jingles twitched in annoyance in Eleanor’s grip.
“As for you, Miss Pritchett,” Miss Martingale intoned, “you may collect your things. You are dismissed.”
Eleanor stared at her, feeling as if her stomach had dropped to the soles of her feet. The kitten sank its claws into the bombazine in protest to being held so tightly, but she barely noticed. “What?” she managed in a whisper.
“You know very well how I feel about disloyalty. You have either brazenly ignored the rules of this school and the safety of its residents, or you have shamelessly cozened the girl against my expressed wishes. You had an earlier infraction involving the Darbys, one I chose to overlook against my better judgment because the late earl himself pleaded your cause. You do not have him to hide behind this time. You are dismissed. The matter is closed. Mrs. Williams will have the pay due you through today ready by the time you are packed. Good bye.”
“But,” Eleanor started. Miss Martingale turned her broad back on her. Eleanor looked toward Miss Lurkin in appeal, but the art teacher refused to meet her gaze. Jingles nipped her hand. Absently, she disengaged him and settled him more gently in her arms. She wandered to the door in a daze.
Dottie was waiting for her in the drafty corridor. She flung her arms around Eleanor’s waist and hugged her tight. Jingles mewed in protest at the additional pressure.
“Oh, Miss Eleanor,” Dottie wailed, “I’m so sorry! I heard what she said! What will you do?”
Eleanor reached around the kitten to stroke the girl’s trembling black curls. She should be furious with the child’s willful display, she was sure, but somehow she couldn’t be angry with the heart-felt sobs. “It’s all right, Dottie,” she lied. “I’ll be fine. You mustn’t worry.”
Dottie let go of her, sniffing back tears. “But where will you go?”
“I’ll find another post, I suppose,” Eleanor replied with far more assurance than she felt. Her mind whirled at the thought of leaving Barnsley. She’d lived in the school since her widowed father had brought her there at six years of age. She had never been farther away than the village of Wenwood, some eight miles over the fields. She knew the city of Wells was reported to be about thirty miles in the opposite direction. Perhaps that was where she should go. There must be several girls’ schools there, or someone who needed a governess or nanny.
It struck her suddenly that worse than her own situation was Dottie’s. The head mistress would be sure to withdraw all privileges, and none of the other teachers would dare give Dottie the attention she needed. The child was once more alone at the school. And this time there was nothing Eleanor could do about it.
“Do other schools accept kittens?” Dottie asked hopefully.
Eleanor glanced down at the black kitten who wriggled in her arms. Jingles glared up at her in high dudgeon. Smiling at his utter ferocity, she bent to let him free on the hardwood floor. He scampered away, losing his footing with every other step on the polished wood, until he fetched up against the far wall. There he sat, as if he had intended to arrive at that position all along, and began licking his paw. The king was graciously allowing his subjects a moment to converse in private before attending to his needs. She should be suitably grateful.
The antics of the eight-week-old kitten, the runt of the litter Farmer Hale had called him, had never failed to raise Eleanor’s spirits. Now her smile faded into despair. How was she to find a position with no recommendation, limited funds, and a small black kitten?
As if she had followed Eleanor’s thoughts, Dottie spoke up. “You must take him to my Uncle Justinian. He’ll know what to do.”
Eleanor started. Face Justinian again? She wasn’t sure she had the strength. She had carefully avoided the public sitting room whenever he called on Dottie. Even ten years later, she had not forgotten the shy, gentle young man with whom she had fallen in love. The earl his father had made it clear when he had sent her back to the school in shame that she had no right to tell his son good-day. She could hardly go now and ask him something as important as what to do about her future. It had been all she could do to convince the late earl to keep from having her turned out then and there for her brazen behavior. A penniless nobody, daring to love a Darby? Perish the thought!
“Somehow I don’t think your uncle can help me, Dottie,” she replied as gently as she could.
“Uncle Justinian helps everyone,” Dottie corrected her. “He might even have a post for you himself.”
“Your uncle is still a bachelor, I believe,” Eleanor tried tactfully. “He’ll hardly have use for a governess or a nanny.”
“Take Jingles to him,” Dottie insisted. “He’ll know what to do.”
Perhaps he might at that, Eleanor thought suddenly. At the very least, the staff of Wenworth Place might be prevailed upon to keep the kitten for Dottie, leaving Eleanor with one less impediment to finding another post. She could go to the kitchen door. She wouldn’t even have to see Justinian. And perhaps she could mention to Mr. Faringil, if he was still the butler, that Dottie might need a different school after her confrontation with the volatile head mistress. Perhaps she could even convince him to ask Justinian to bring the girl home. It would certainly ease her mind knowing that Dottie and the kitten were well cared for.
She bent and hugged the girl. “All right, dear. I’ll take the kitten to your uncle. Don’t worry. Everything will come out fine.”
Chapter Two
Justinian Darby, the recently declared ninth Earl of Wenworth, stared at the stack of papers his steward had brought him and sighed. He couldn’t help glancing at the credenza next to the doors to the patio. Raindrops reflected in the cover of a small leather-wrapped portfolio. With the work before him, it would be days if not weeks before he could touch his writing again. He ran his hands back through his hair and bowed his head. How had his brother managed all this and still found time to gallivant all over the Continent? The answer lay before him: his brother had sadly neglected the estates and now Justinian was left to pick up the pieces.
It was hard to be angry with a man who had died in his prime with his devoted wife beside him. He missed Adam and Helena terribly. But the truth of the matter was that Adam had had the training and personality to be a great earl had he chosen to be. And Justinian had the disciplined mind and introspective personality to be exactly what he had planned to be, a scholar. It was duty that found him over a hundred miles from his beloved Oxford, wrestling with matters of enclosures and harvests rather than the lofty realms of literature and philosophy.
Everywhere he looked he found more problems awaiting his attention. His younger brother, Alexander, had refused to resign his commission after the war, staying on in France while their mother despaired of seeing him again. His youngest brother, Jareth, had set himself on the path of a wastrel and just as firmly refused to be pried from the pleasure dens of London. Neither had even returned home for Adam’s funeral. He could count on them only to provide additional headaches.
His niece Dorothea seemed unsettled in the Barnsley School, although he understood from his mother that the girl had been happy there before her parents died. The seven times he had visited over the last three months, he had noted only minor improvements, all of which could be attributed to the child’s fondness for her literature teacher. The head mistress had been adamant that it was inappropriate for him to thank Dottie’s “Miss Eleanor,” as the woman was only doing her job. However, even with her thoughtful efforts, Dottie still appeared tired and depressed to him. She had never spent much time with her parents, yet she seemed to be missing them more than he did.
Upstairs, his mother was nearly an invalid and relied on him for all companionship. He had attempted to get her to hire someone, but she told him in no uncertain terms that she vastly preferred the company of family to that of strangers, however kind or well trained. Dr. Praxton, the local physician, assured him she was healthy enough to rise from the bed if she chose, yet she refused, and nothing Justinian had said or done since becoming earl had persuaded her otherwise.
From the few reports he had uncovered in the little-used library, the estate was also in dire straights. The levees on the River Wen, which flowed along the southern boundary, were crumbling. Unless he devised a plan to shore them up, his crops would be ruined and all his tenants would be flooded from their homes next spring. Of course, that might be a blessing, as these latest reports showed that the houses were in ill repair and barely habitable. His logic told him there was simply too many tasks for one man. A smaller part of him urged him to flee for the halls of Oxford and never look back.
Someone moved silently into his peripheral vision. He did not have to look up to guess it was Faringil, his butler. He stifled another sigh, trying once again to find an ounce of patience for the man. Faringil had the dignity and bearing of the butler to a great earldom. His thick hair, now a snowy white, was always pomaded in place. His posture was erect, his gaze serene. When he looked down his bent nose and set his thin lips together, the other servants scurried to do his bidding.
However, Justinian had only recently noticed how utterly deferential the man could be. Faringil entered a room as if he tiptoed toward a death bed, gliding to a spot just to one corner of his master and waiting patiently to be noticed. He paused respectfully before speaking and waited to be granted permission to continue. Both habits only served to further Justinian’s frustrations.
“Yes?” Justinian dutifully asked.
“Sorry to disturb you, my lord.”
Justinian waited. The butler waited as well. Justinian grit his teeth and took a deep breath. “What is it, Faringil?”
“There is a woman at the door,” the butler replied calmly. “She claims to be from the Barnsley School.”
A sense of foreboding struck Justinian, and he rose, dreading his butler’s next words. “Has something happened to Dottie?”
“I do not believe so, my lord,” Faringil replied with measured calm, and Justinian felt himself relax. The butler’s next statement only served to make him tense again. “However, the woman appears to be ill and isn’t very coherent.”
Justinian frowned. If it were merely another request for donations, he would have had Faringil refer the woman to his steward. However, if Faringil wasn’t certain the woman wasn’t here about Dottie, he should probably handle the matter himself. “I’ll see her, then. Is she in the sitting room?”
Faringil wrinkled his nose, making him look a bit like a rabbit. “Certainly not, my lord. I would not bring an ill person into the house, not with her ladyship’s delicate constitution.”
“My mother is safely in her room, a story above us,” Justinian replied. “Somehow I doubt any infection could pass through the floor to reach her.”
“Yes, my lord, of course,” Faringil said, but Justinian knew the butler was placating him. Annoyed more than he should be, he allowed the man to lead him back through the corridors to the kitchen, where the woman waited.
Eleanor huddled miserably on the oak bench that stood in the many-windowed breezeway between the back coaching yard and the kitchen. For the fourth time since setting out from the Barnsley School she wondered what had possessed her to agree to take the kitten this far. True, it was only five miles across the fields from the school to the house’s rear door, but she somehow hadn’t reckoned on the rain. She also hadn’t reckoned on the sodden state of the fields or the fact that she had to walk the whole way with all her possessions in a carpet bag Miss Lurkin had been persuaded to part with and carrying a black kitten who only wanted to escape. He had actually slipped through her grip twice, forcing her to drop the bag and prevent him from conquering the muddy grain. As a result, she was soaked, filthy, and thoroughly tired.
Mr. Faringil had not recognized her, which she supposed was something for which to be grateful. Unfortunately, the man had also been unable to comprehend what she was asking and had gone off to seek assistance. To make matters worse, she seemed to have developed a sudden case of the sniffles.
Jingles poked his head out of her cloak, where she had put him for safe-keeping, and rubbed his wet head against her chin. She sneezed six times in rapid succession. For once, she succeeded in startling the little tyrant, sending the kitten cowering back under her cloak. Unfortunately, the sneezes did her no more good, leaving her feeling bleary eyed and exhausted.
Something moved in her peripheral vision, and she grabbed her bosom to make sure Jingles hadn’t gotten farther than her waist. She was certain kitten claws could do no damage to the flagstone floor at her feet, but she wasn’t going to take any chances that Lord Wenworth might take the kitten in dislike. She felt the comforting wiggle in her lap and patted him through her sodden cloak.
Someone cleared a throat. Looking up, she saw that Mr. Faringil had returned with a tall gentleman. Even though her eyes refused to focus, her heart told her who it was. Clutching the kitten to her, she rose and dropped an unsteady curtsey. Her only hope was that he might not recognize her any more than the butler had.