Her Ladyship's Companion by Joanna Bourne Read Free Book Online

the meal tonight, I think. Mrs. Carver is a genius with duckling.”
     

Chapter 5
     
    ... rather nasty little lake. I haven’t seen the island because the bridge is boarded off. The ocean is a very different body of water.
    Excerpt from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood to Cecilia Luffington, June4, 1818
     
    Melissa woke before dawn in the darkened bedroom. She padded across to the ruins of the fire. The chill of the morning had condensed droplets of moisture on the tiles around the hearth. Kneeling, she poked at the coals and found a live spark buried under the bed of soft gray ashes. With shavings and a few pine cones she soon had a merry little blaze going. Then she danced across the room to throw open the window, defeating any warmth from the fire. Gusts of cold air blew in, smelling of roses and the sea.
    In the halls she could hear faint clinking sounds. Though it was still dark, the servants were awake and at work. In an hour they’d be banished with their pails and brooms from the main part of the house for the rest of the day, lest the sight of a maid at work offend the delicate sensibilities of one of the family. Now, however, they were out and working like demons in the early-morning gloom.
    Vinton Manor was an L-shaped building. The new wing had been added at right angles from the north end of the main Elizabethan structure. Melissa’s room was in the new part of the house, midway along the inner side. Below her window in the sheltered inner courtyard fancy had placed a walled Tudor rose garden and, a little farther away, practicality had added the kitchen garden, since carrots like blasts of salt wind from the sea no better than roses do. As Melissa watched, a maid in a white apron rose from picking herbs in one of the leafy beds under the pantry windows and carried her cuttings through the kitchen door. A boy emerged from the kitchen a heartbeat after with a bucket of water, which he proceeded to bestow upon a row of vegetables. When he looked up at her with a cheeky grin, Melissa remembered that she was still in nightdress and might soon be required for her own tasks.
    She dressed quickly. Somewhere within the bowels of the house breakfast awaited her. She’d had little to eat the evening before. What remained of her appetite after the very disturbing conversation with Harold Bosworth had been destroyed by Lady Dorothy over the dinner table. Giles and Lady Dorothy had thoroughly enjoyed the heated political discussion, she was sure. If she had been merely a spectator, she might have enjoyed it herself. It was no surprise to find Lady Dorothy in favor of the corn laws (“No reason to starve English reapers just to feed the ones in France”). More interesting to discover that Giles Tarsin discounted any possibility of Bennet’s bill for the protection of climbing boys becoming law (“Bennet’s made too many enemies. They’ll laugh the bill to death in the Lords, even if we get it through Commons again. Damn the man!”). But the countess had a frightening habit of turning suddenly and demanding, “What do you think of that, Miss Rivenwood?” It was calculated to reduce the average companion to a mass of quivering jelly. Melissa was not brought so low, but she’d risen from the table not much more greatly nourished than when she had sat down. Breakfast was, therefore, a matter of more than academic interest.
    Ten minutes later in a long, vaguely familiar gallery, confronted by three different doors, she wished she’d paid more attention to the geography of the house when the housekeeper, Mrs. Ballantyne, had given her the grand tour. She’d made a wrong turn somewhere. This was the old, unused section of the manor. The halls were spotless, slick with cleanliness, the rooms smelled of beeswax and violet pastilles, but every door she opened showed only great hulking ghosts of furniture hiding under holland covers. She wished someone would come along and give her directions.
    A moment later she