A Chance Encounter (27 page)

Elizabeth slept for the rest of the night, somewhat comforted by her decision to do something.

Her plans were disrupted the following morning, however, by the arrival of a letter from Hetherington Manor. Elizabeth knew as soon as John came into the breakfast room and handed it to her, that it was not from Robert. But she broke the seal feverishly and spread the letter out on the table. It was a short, terse note from his secretary, telling her that his lordship wished to inform Miss Rossiter that he was extremely busy at present and was unable either to answer her letter or to pay the requested visit, but that he would do the former when he found himself at more leisure.

Elizabeth sat, stunned, reading the note over three or four times without realizing that she did so. John came up quietly behind her and read it over her shoulder. He reached down and took it, folded it, and put it away in his pocket.

“Perhaps you were right,” he said wearily, seating himself beside her at the table. “Perhaps I should have taken you to Hetherington. Maybe the message in your letter was not clear enough. What do you wish to do, love? I am entirely at your disposal.”

When Elizabeth looked up at him, her face was flushed and her eyes flashing. “What do I wish to do?” she repeated. “Nothing! Nothing more, John. I would not speak to the Marquess of Hetherington now if he came through those doors at this moment on his knees. I must give him audience whenever it is his gracious pleasure. I was forced to allow him to bring me here when Jeremy was sick; I had no choice in the fact that he stayed here for days disturbing my peace; I was forced to speak with him and suffer his insults and his unwelcome advances after William had gone to him. I must suffer all these things because I am merely a wife. Yet when I request a meeting with him on a very important matter, I do not even merit a reply in his own hand. He gives me a set-down by way of a secretary. No more, John. I have done with that man.”

“Steady, love,” he said soothingly, laying a hand on her arm. “Let us be very sure this time. I shall go to see him. He will hear my explanation, I warrant you.”

“If you take one step in his direction, I will never speak to you again,” his sister cried, pushing back her chair and getting to her feet. “I would be most obliged, John, if I never hear his name in this house again.”

She swept out of the room, leaving her brother scratching his head in perplexity. A visit to his wife's bedroom, where he shared her breakfast and a lengthy consultation, did nothing to solve the problem. After six years of misunderstanding and bitter hard feelings, it seemed that this marriage was not going to be easily resurrected.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, had gone to the drawing room, taken paper, ink, and pens from the desk there, and returned to her own room, where she was soon busy drafting a notice to several London newspapers offering her services as a governess. She would personally see that the notices went out with that day's mail, she decided, so that they would appear in print in two days' time. She resolved to take the first post offered, especially if it was far away from London.

Five days later Louise was still watching the driveway for Hetherington and looking through the day's mail for a letter from him. She was convinced that the other letter had been a mistake, that somehow he would come and allow Elizabeth to tell her story. She was convinced that love would triumph in the end.

For his part, John was still in a quandary. He felt he owed it to his sister this time to help her, to find out Hetherington and explain to him what her letter must have only hinted at. Surely the man would want to come himself to see her if he knew the truth. On the other hand, Elizabeth had very specifically begged him not to have any contact at all with her husband.

Elizabeth was the only one who was not troubled. Since the morning when the letter had arrived, she had blocked Hetherington from her mind and her heart. With a cheerfulness that alarmed her brother and sister-in-law, she helped Louise with household duties, played with Jeremy, and prepared for her own return to service. She had bought several yards of gray wool material and was making herself some serviceable gowns. Although it would be several months before her hair would be long enough to be forced into its old, severe style, she found that she was able to coil the curls at the back so that her appearance became somewhat less frivolous.

Five days after she had sent her advertisement to the newspapers, Elizabeth began to look for a reply. She had none by the morning post, but a messenger in the early afternoon brought word that a Mr. Chatsworth was at the local inn and would be pleased to interview Miss Rossiter that same afternoon for a position as governess.

“Pray do not go, Elizabeth,” Louise begged when she was shown the letter, “or send word that your services are no longer available. Indeed, we need you here and we love you.”

John was white-faced. “Indeed, love,” he said, “Louise is right. We know you are wretchedly unhappy and we cannot do much to ease the pain. But at least here you know that you are with loved ones.”

“I am not at all unhappy,” Elizabeth replied brightly. “On the contrary, I look on this as a new adventure. Unknown people, an unknown place. It is what I need. I thank you both for your concern, but it really is unnecessary. This is your home, but it is mine no longer. I have to find my own place.”

They were forced to let her go. She declined even to let John accompany her to the inn, but drove herself in the gig. She wore her best governess clothes, the gray silk covered with a gray cloak to ward off the chill breeze, and a matching bonnet.

Mr. Chatsworth was lodged in the only private parlor the inn boasted, a tiny, smoke-blackened room, usually used by the landlord's more-favored patrons for their gambling card games. Elizabeth knocked on the door and closed it behind her when she was called inside.

Her prospective employer was a tall man, portly, fashionably dressed, his hair curled high at the front. He leaned with studied casualness against the mantel and studied her minutely from head to foot through a quizzing glass.

“Mr. Chatsworth?” she asked.

He inclined his head. “Miss Rossiter?”

She dropped him a curtsy.

He waved her to a chair beside the table and began the interview. His home was in Yorkshire, Elizabeth learned, where his invalid wife and two young sons lived. He was a mill owner and wished to give his sons all the advantages that he had not had as a child: a governess for a few years, public school after that.

It would not be an easy job, Elizabeth knew. She judged the man to be conceited, with a grudge against the noble class who had birth and breeding even if they did not have his wealth. He would be the sort of man who would treat his servants as inferiors in order to convince himself of his own superiority. She had also been uncomfortably aware all the time they talked of his eyes roving over her body. She judged that at some time in the not-too-distant future she would have to repulse his lecherous advances.

Yet when Mr. Chatsworth made her a firm offer of employment at the end of a half-hour, Elizabeth accepted. What was the point of waiting for a more pleasant post? There was no such thing as pleasure in life for her anymore.

“I wish to leave here before ten o' clock tomorrow morning,” Mr. Chatsworth announced. “May I expect you to be ready, Miss Rossiter?”

“I shall be here by then, sir,” she assured him.

“I shall look forward to furthering our acquaintance on our journey,” he said, taking her hand in his plump and moist one and squeezing it rather hard.

Elizabeth refused to think during the drive home. Yorkshire would suit her fine. She would be far away from all the places and people she had ever known. She knew that she should be uneasy about making a journey of a few days alone with a stranger. John and Louise would probably try to insist on sending a maid with her. Perhaps she would even allow herself to be persuaded if it would make them feel better. She really did not care. Not anymore. It was safer not to care. Already she felt better than she had felt for several months.

The butler was in the hall when Elizabeth let herself into the house.

“Are Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter indoors?” she asked him, removing her bonnet and throwing it down on a table.

“In the drawing room, ma'am, taking tea,” he said. “And, er. ...”

“That is all right,” she said. “I shall join them there.”

Elizabeth donned the mask of cheerfulness that she had worn at home now for five days and opened the double doors of the drawing room.

John and Louise, one at either side of the unlit fireplace, Louise looking bright-eyed, John acutely embarrassed, were indeed taking tea. But the Marquess of Hetherington was not. He was standing very much as Mr. Chatsworth had stood when she had walked in on him earlier, except that his stance looked genuinely relaxed. He had one elbow propped on the mantel and one booted leg crossed over the other.

His blue eyes met Elizabeth's across the room and he smiled.

E
lizabeth did not relinquish her hold on the handles of the doors. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“It seems that you ask me that every time we meet,” he said, “and I always have the same answer. I wish to talk to you.”

“I have no interest in anything you may have to say to me, my lord,” she said coldly, “and I have nothing whatsoever to say to you. Good day.”

She stepped backward and began to close the doors in front of her.

“Elizabeth,” Hetherington said, and he was still smiling, “how rag-mannered you have become. I have traveled so far just to see you, and you refuse to grant me even a few moments of your time.”

Elizabeth deliberately stepped inside the room and quietly closed the doors behind her. She crossed the room until her own blazing eyes looked directly into his intense blue ones.

“I understood that you were busy, my lord,” she said. “Pardon me, it was
extremely
busy, was it not, John? I understood that you were to write to me when you had more leisure. Have you found yourself with a great deal of leisure, my lord, so much so that you have found the time to pay me a personal visit? Pardon me for not being quite overwhelmed by your generosity. You are at least five days too late. I do not believe, Robert, there is anything you could say to which I would deem it worthwhile to listen.”

He tipped his head to one side and regarded her closely. The smile was gone from his lips, though it was still in his eyes. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

Elizabeth clamped her teeth together and glared back at him.

“I believe she is referring to that letter you had your secretary write,” Louise said timidly.

“Carson?” he said, frowning and turning his gaze on Louise.

She nodded.

“You have had a letter from Carson?” he asked Elizabeth, looking at her closely once more.

She continued to stare stonily at him.

“Why did he write to you, love?” he asked gently. “I was unaware that he even knew of your existence.” He turned to Louise when it became obvious that Elizabeth was not going to answer him. “Do you know what this is all about, Louise?” he asked.

She looked hesitantly, first at her sister-in-law and then at her husband. “After Elizabeth had written to ask you to come here,” she said, “she had a letter from your secretary to say that you were too busy either to write or to visit, but that you would write as soon as you were able.”

“You asked me to come?” he said, turning back to Elizabeth in wonder.

When she still did not answer, the rest of what Louise had said seemed to penetrate his mind. Unexpectedly, he chuckled. “Carson was my father's secretary,” he explained. “He was more like a parent to me when I grew up than my own father was. Now he seems to feel that every female has designs on my title and my fortune, not to mention my person. He has taken it upon himself to protect me. This is not the first time I have had evidence that he has discouraged bold females in my name.”

“You mean you knew nothing of Elizabeth's letter?” John asked stiffly.

Hetherington looked at Elizabeth as if it were she who had asked the question. “Do you not know me well enough,” he asked, “to know that I would have come to you as fast as horse could gallop at any time I had received such a letter from you in the last six years?”

Elizabeth looked blankly back into his now entirely sober face.

“After I saw you at Mr. Rowe's house,” he said., “I returned home for one night. I have been traveling ever since. I have not been home at all. Please believe me, Elizabeth.”

John rose to his feet. “Come, Louise,” he said, “our presence is not needed here.”

Elizabeth whirled on him. “I do not wish to be left alone,” she said. “I have nothing to say to the Marquess of Hetherington. And I have a great deal to do. I leave for Yorkshire tomorrow morning with Mr. Chatsworth. He has hired me.”

“Elizabeth,” John said, and his voice was unusually stern, “if I have to lock you in this room, I shall force you to speak with Hetherington this time. It seems to me that the two of you have had your marriage blighted by misunderstandings and suspicions and missed opportunities. This time, talk! At least then, if you continue with this idiotic notion of moving to the wilds in order to teach other people's children, it will be a decision made out of sanity and common sense.”