‘Hattie? What is it?’ Ophelia asked, touching her forearm. ‘You are absolutely ashen. If you need more money, I have some. So does Trudy. We can pool what we have. Surely that will cover your fare.’ Then she gasped and gripped one of Hattie’s gloved hands before turning it over within her own. Ophelia’s long blonde curls flipped in the air dramatically. ‘And youmusttake my gloves. Yours are unseemly,’ she muttered, beginning to tug off her own gloves to exchange them. ‘You simplycannotbegin your new employ with a duke with gloves stained such as these.’
Hattie stood in a silent fog. Her new employer, William Sutherland, the Duke of Wimberley, had sent his carriage to fetch her. She had never travelled by private carriage. She didn’t even know anyone who had. Her stomach lurched with nerves.
‘What has you so confounded, bewattled, Hat?’ Gertrude asked, her voice tinged with its usual low-grade irritation.
‘I cannot go by stagecoach,’ she replied. ‘His Grace sent his carriage to collect me.’ She nodded towards the carriage. The driver hopped down from his box seat and gave what remained of his apple to one of the horses before rubbing its sleek chestnut-covered nose. The other whinnied an objection to being left out and he whispered something to it.
Gertrude followed the direction of Hattie’s gaze. For once, her friend had no retort. Ophelia prattled on and finished pulling off both of Hattie’s gloves before swapping them with her own. She rolled her eyes at their stunned silence. ‘What has got into both of you? Truly, I—’ Ophelia’s words died on her tongue as Gertrude grasped her hand and pointed.
‘His Grace sent a carriage.’
‘What?’ Ophelia asked, joining in their shock.
After another minute of silence, Gertrude shook her head. ‘What did I say about so few details, Hat? What employer sends his private carriage for a governess to ensure her comfort?’ she asked, lifting a single, dark, judgemental eyebrow at them both. She dropped her voice. ‘How do you know this is not something unseemly?’
The options for unseemly were vast, but Hattie batted the suggestion aside.
‘Perhaps he is simply very kind and generous?’ Hattie replied, putting on Ophelia’s pristine white gloves.
Ophelia bit her lip and shifted on her feet. ‘While you know I usually do not agree with Trudy, I think she may be right this time. It seems rather…suspicious.’
Gertrude’s brow lifted even higher, threatening to disappear entirely into her dark, widow’s peak hairline. ‘What if this is some sort of an academy or accommodation house he is running?’
Ophelia gasped and covered her mouth at the reference to a brothel, but then nodded. Her agreement with Trudy felt like a betrayal. Hattie fought the urge to stomp her feet. She hated it when they aligned against her as much now as she had when they were children. Once united in thought, it was hard to not be persuaded by them.
But today, she would not yield.
‘I am going,’ Hattie said, lifting her chin in defiance.
‘And if you are murdered?’ Gertrude retorted, crossing her arms against her chest. A frown darkened her usually demure features, making her look like an old matron they’d once had at the orphanage.
Hattie thought for a moment and then smiled triumphantly. ‘At least I will die having seen the outskirts of London and having had an adventure,’ she replied.
Ophelia laughed and then tried to cover her smile. ‘She has a point. None of us have ever been anywhere far outside Stow. Perhaps it is worth the risk to have an adventure, even if she might become a canary bird.’
Hattie batted her arm at her friend’s unseemly reference to how they had all come into this world: daughters of unmarried women without fathers to claim them. She had vowed to never be a man’s mistress, no matter how charming or wealthy the man might be, for that had been her mother’s lot in life, which had landed Hattie an orphan.
While they all joked about it, as it softened the pain behind their childhoods, they each knew the sorrow resting behind such a fate, for they had lived it. Mistresses were used and discarded, and their children often suffered the same fate when the money ran out.
Ophelia smiled wide and her eyes brightened. ‘Orshe might meet some lovely man and fall in love.’ She clasped her handstogether and gave them a dreamy smile. ‘What a delicious story that will be.’
Hattie chuckled. She had long abandoned her childhood dream of a family with a loving husband and children despite her love of stories with such happy endings. Such stories weren’t meant for her. It was easier to accept that than be held captive in the disappointment of longing for such an outcome and never having it.
‘Please do not leave me with her,’ Gertrude replied, looking up to the heavens. ‘I simply cannot bear it.’
Hattie laughed and pressed a kiss to Ophelia’s cheek. She adored her friend’s optimistic, if not a bit overly innocent and romanticised nature. Hattie would miss her and Gertrude deeply. She pulled them both into a hug.
‘I shall write to you as often as I can,’ Hattie said, fighting the emotion bubbling up in her. They were her family and this was the first time she would be separated from them in years.
‘And Trudy will write to you for us,’ Ophelia replied sweetly. She had struggled with reading and writing as long as Hattie had known her, but she was as brilliant and fanciful as Gertrude was sensible and exacting. They were a beautiful and unlikely trio thrust together by childhood misfortune. Hattie knew how lucky she was to have them.
After leaving the orphanage, they’d found and let joint rooms from the nearby boarding house run by Mrs Kipp, so they could live together, and found work to pool their funds to pay their bills each month. She and Ophelia worked as shop girls at the general store in town and Trudy sold her needlework, as she had a keen penchant for precision. Together they had weathered everything.
Hattie worried her lip. Could she weather this without them?
Momentary doubt snaked through her before she tamped it down with force. She could. She had to.Thiswas her chanceto make something of herself and she had to seize it. If she did well during this two-week trial as governess for the Duke of Wimberley and his daughter, she might even be asked to stay on permanently. Then she could earn and save enough money to help them all leave this place and start a new life elsewhere. She wanted to give that to Trudy and Ophelia more than anything. She longed for their happiness almost more than she did her own.
With one last, warm embrace, savouring the comfort of them and storing the memory in her mind so she could access it later if she needed it, Hattie said goodbye and extricated herself from them. ‘I adore you both,’ she said, gripping their arms for a final goodbye, her eyes welling.
