Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride

Eventually, the lurching, swimmy sensations settled sufficiently for Aimée to feel able to raise her head. Mr. Jago and the wall-eyed man who had held the umbrella over her were watching her with some anxiety.

‘I will be fine now,’ she murmured, attempting a smile through lips that still felt strangely numb.

‘Yes, you heard her,’ Mr Jago said, starting as though coming to himself. ‘And the sight of your ugly mug is not going to help her get better. Be about your business!’

‘Looks like a puff of wind would blow her away,’ she heard the man mutter as he left the room.

‘Aye, far too scrawny …’ she heard another man, who had apparently been lurking just outside the door, agreeing.

And then there was just Mr Jago, assessing her slender frame with those keen blue eyes.

As if she was not nervous enough, that comment, coupled with Mr Jago’s assessing look, sent a new fear clutching at her belly.

‘I am far stronger than I look,’ she declared. ‘Truly, you need have no fear that I am not fit for work!’

Indeed, she did not know what had come over her. She could only assume that the strain she had been under recently had taken a deeper toll on her health than she had realised.

She knew she had lost quite a bit of weight. To begin with, she had felt too sickened by what her father had done to feel like eating anything. And then flitting from one cheap lodging house to another, whilst racking her brains for a permanent solution to her dire predicament, had done nothing to counteract her total loss of appetite.

And the people she’d been obliged to approach, in the end—people nobody in their right mind would trust! She had not been sure they had not double-crossed her until she’d boarded the stage, and it was actually leaving London.

‘I am just tired,’ she pleaded with Mr Jago. ‘It was such a long journey …’ And it had begun not the day before, in the coaching yard of the Bull and Mouth, but on the night she’d had to flee from the lodgings she shared with her father. When she had to finally accept she needed to thrust aside any last remnants of obligation she felt towards the man who had sired her.

For he clearly felt none towards her!

To her relief, Mr Jago’s expression softened.

‘You must rest, then, until you have recovered,’ he said. ‘Do not worry about your position. It is yours. Quite secure.’

The door opened, and the burly man who had taken her trunk upstairs came in with a large tray, which he slapped down on a little side table at Aimée’s elbow, making the cups rattle in their saucers. Mr Jago shot him a dark look, which the man ignored with an insouciance that immediately raised him in her estimation.

Once she had drunk two cups of hot sweet tea and consumed a large slice of rich fruitcake, Mr Jago led her up the stairs to a charming little bedroom on the first floor. On the hearthrug, before yet another blazing fire, stood a bath, already filled with steaming, rose-scented water.

‘You will feel much better for getting out of those wet clothes and having a warm bath,’ said Mr Jago, and then, going a little pink in the cheeks, added, ‘I hope you will be able to manage unassisted.’

‘Naturally,’ she replied, determined to erase the impression of a helpless, weak and foolish woman she was worried might be forming in his mind, after the way she had behaved today. ‘A governess has no need for a maid.’

He cleared his throat, going a tinge deeper pink, then said briskly, ‘Have a lie down, after your bath. There is nothing for you to do until this evening, when the Captain requests the pleasure of your company at dinner.’

Mr Jago had phrased it like an invitation, but, of course, it was an order. Her new employer would want to look her over. And find out what kind of creature his man of business had hired to take care of his children.

‘Thank you. I shall be ready,’ she assured him.

She wasted no time, after he had left, in slithering out of her wet clothes and slipping into the warm bath with a sigh of contentment. She could not recall the last time somebody else had drawn a bath for her! Several large, soft towels had been draped over an airer before the fire to warm. Having dried herself, she wrapped one round herself, toga style, and set about getting herself organised. The first thing she did was to drape her chemise, petticoat and stays over the frame that had been used to warm the towels. Then she went to her trunk, which somebody—the burly man, she assumed—had placed at the foot of the divan bed, which was up against the far wall. She unpacked the silver-backed hairbrush first, an item she had purchased for the express purpose of placing in a prominent position on her dressing table. She did not know much about being in service, but she did know that a governess had to establish that she was no ordinary servant from the outset, by employing such little ruses as this.

Then she took out the gown she had bought in case she ever had to dine with the family. It looked almost new. And not too badly creased, either. She had pressed it again before packing it. She had got a laundress to carefully run a hot iron over the seams the very day she had purchased it, as she was in the habit of doing with every item of second-hand clothing she ever bought, to make sure that no lice the previous owner might have carried could survive to plague her. It was not a very flattering style, and the dove-grey silk did not suit her colouring, but apart from the fact that it was the only thing she had been able to find that struck the right balance between decorum and style, it added to the impression she wished to give, of being in mourning.

She grimaced as she hung it from two pegs on the back of the door. The day she had bought it was the day she had decided her father was dead to her. She had fulfilled her filial duty by making sure he was free of debt before she left town. And paid for one more month’s rent on his lodgings. But that was it. She would have nothing more to do with him.

Her stays and petticoat were still slightly damp when she put them back on later, upon rising from her nap, but she could not leave them lying about her room! The coins she had sewn into the hem of her petticoat bumped reassuringly against her calves, reminding her that the safest place for the amount of money she was carrying was on her person. And that it was where it must remain, no matter what.

Having dressed, and brushed, braided and pinned up her hair in the style she had decided made her look the most severely governess-like, Aimée lifted her chin, straightened her back and left her room.

The burly servant was lounging against the wall opposite, his brawny arms folded across his massive chest.

‘Evenin’, miss.’ He grinned at her, straightening up. ‘They call me Nelson.’ He shrugged in a way that suggested it was not his real name at all, but that he was not averse to the nickname.

‘I’m to take you down to the front parlour, where the Captain is waiting,’ he explained.

‘Are you the footman?’ she asked as he led the way along the corridor to the head of the stairs. She knew that as governess, her position would be outside the hierarchy that governed the rest of the staff, which she did not mind in the least. No, so far as she was concerned, if the only people she spoke to, from one end of the day to the next, were her charges, the safer she would feel. Nevertheless, it would be useful to ascertain the status of every person working in this household, so that she did not inadvertently tread on anyone’s toes. Mr Jago was easy enough to place. He was in a position of some authority. But Nelson was something of a puzzle. He had hefted luggage about like a menial, but then served tea with an air of doing Mr Jago a personal favour, and had come to fetch her as though he had a fairly responsible position himself.

He turned and looked at her over his shoulder, his leathery, brown face creasing even further as he frowned.

‘In a manner of speaking, just now, aye, I suppose I am,’ he said. ‘Down to minimum complement of four side-boys, just now, on account of—’ He stopped short, his eyes skittering away from hers. ‘And, well, we all do whatever’s necessary,’ he finished, crossing the hallway and flinging open the door to the parlour.

She could not help noticing his rolling gait, which, coupled with his nautical outfit, and the incomprehensible jargon he used, confirmed her belief that this man was an ex-sailor. In fact, now she came to think of it, all the men who had gathered at the front door, upon her arrival, looked more like the crew of a ship, loitering on the dockside, than formally trained household servants.

And when he announced, ‘Miss Peters, Cap’n!’ before bowing her into the room as though she were a duchess, she wondered if Mr Jago had hoped all her years of travel had rendered her broad minded enough to deal with what was looking increasingly like a very eccentrically run household. Because, from what Nelson had just said, it sounded as though the Captain expected all his staff to adapt themselves to the circumstances, rather than rigidly stick to a narrow sphere of duty.

Well, that did not bother her. She could cook and sew, manage household accounts and even clean out the nursery grates and light the fires if necessary. As long as her wages came in regularly, and nobody asked too many questions about her past, she would not mind taking on duties that were, strictly speaking, not generally expected of a governess.

A tall man dressed in naval uniform was standing with his back to the room, gazing out of the rain-lashed windows. His coat was of the same dark blue as that of his staff, though cut to fit his broad shoulders and tapering down to his narrow waist. Gold epaulettes proclaimed his rank. And instead of the baggy trousers of his men, he wore knee breeches and silk stockings.

He swung round suddenly, making her gasp in surprise. For one thing, though she could not say precisely why it should be, she had always imagined her employer would be quite old. Yet this man did not look as though he was much past the age of thirty.

But what really shocked her was the scarring that ran from one empty eye socket to his right temple, where a substantial section of his hair was completely white.

What a coincidence! His coachman, too, had worn an eyepatch over his right eye.

No, wait … Her stomach sinking, she studied his face more closely.

Earlier on, she had only glimpsed the coachman’s features fully for a few seconds, when he had pulled his muffler down, the better to berate her. And the hat had concealed that thick mane of dark blond hair.

But there was no doubt this was the same man!

Her stomach sinking as she recalled the way she had shouted right back at him, she sank into a curtsy, hanging her head.

He must have had a perfectly good reason for driving the coach himself. Nelson had said the household was short of staff at present. Perhaps that accounted for it. Perhaps that accounted for him coming to fetch her so late, too. Nelson’s ambiguous comments indicated the place was in turmoil, for some reason he did not care to divulge to her, the newcomer.

But did that excuse Captain Corcoran from not introducing himself properly? Or shouting at her, and scaring her half to death?

Oh, if he were not her employer she would …

But he was her employer. And he had every right to shout at her if she angered him. And since she needed this job so badly, she would just have to bite back the remarks she would so dearly love to make.

She clenched her fists and kept her eyes fixed on the floor just in front of the Captain’s highly polished shoes, knowing that it was a bit too soon to look him in the face. Not until she had fully quenched her ire at being so completely wrong-footed could she risk that!

She had never imagined how hard this aspect of getting a job as a governess would be. She supposed it came from not having to submit to anyone’s authority for so many years. Not since her mother had died. Though she had never had any trouble doing exactly as she had told her.