“Piffle. Even Joy knows how to cook.”
“I cook very well,” Joy informed her.
“I am sure you do,” Arabella replied.
“I cook — Mouse!”
Arabella nearly choked on her pancake. Robin spat his milk over the table.
“Robin, really.” Philip wiped up the mess, picked up Joy and placed her on her own chair, where she proceeded to draw a face on her pancake with the blackberry jam. “We will read Mouse again tonight, child of my heart,” Philip assured her.
“Um, Papa, I think she means there is actually a mouse.” Katy pointed to a corner. “Over there.” Indeed, a little creature scurried behind a cupboard.
“I will get out my mouse traps after breakfast. Special ones that don’t kill. But first we need to finish this conversation. You were saying, Miss Weston?”
Arabella sat tensely on her chair. Not only because she was piqued about her expanded role in the household, but also because there was a mouse skittering about somewhere.
“I was saying I know neither how to cook, nor clean, nor to wash laundry.” Her nose was in the air. She was a governess, but she wasn’t a servant. There was a distinction, wasn’t there? Arabella folded her forehead into a thick line. Her governess, Miss Dowster, had been an in–between creature, neither here nor there. The servants had thought her proud, and Arabella remembered overhearing the housekeeper saying Dowster put on airs and wasn’t welcome in the servant’s hall. She’d never joined them for meals. It would have been inconceivable for Miss Dowster to have breakfast on the same table as the Duke of Ashmore. To them, she’d been a servant. How must she have felt about this?
Arabella swallowed.
She dropped her head as she realised she’d never bothered to think about what her old governess might have thought.
Philip leaned back in his chair and looked smug. “Unfortunately, Miss Weston, if you are to be the governess for a working-class family, you have to abide by our rules. Peggy isn’t here this week, so we all have to cooperate to put food on the table and get things done.” He bent forward. “But I know what your real problem is.”
“What?” She couldn’t think under his steady scrutiny.
“You think to cook and clean is beneath your station.” A line of derision played about his lips. “You are a lady, after all.” He linked his fingers behind his neck. “And for some reason, you’ve chosen us as your social experiment.” There was a quarrelsome spark in his eyes.
Arabella sat up, stung. “I did not!” Truth was, in some sense he was right. It was a bit of an experiment for her.
Their eyes locked. He’d thrown down a gauntlet. That was a challenge she could not forego.
“I will do it. Tomorrow is my day?” She looked at Robin. If that 10–year–old could produce burned pancake for breakfast, then, by Jove, so could she!
“Tomorrow is your day. Mind you. That is in addition to”— Mr Merivale swept an arm to his children who ate, oblivious to the adults’ conversation— “teaching the brood.”
“I will succeed.” She narrowed her eyes at him.
He smirked.
She’d show him, she would!
“We will see, Miss Weston. We will see.” He looked pleased as if he’d just licked all the cream out of the bowl.
Chapter 9
Three pairs of eyes stared at her.
She was their governess. She was to teach them. Except she’d never taught anyone before, and all she was capable of now was staring back, as her mind drew a horrifying blank. She was woefully unprepared and had no idea of what to do or how to begin.
The children sat at the kitchen table, a massive thing hewn out of oak, with knots and deep furrows in its surface. They’d cleared off the breakfast dishes, which were piled up in a wooden tub by the stove. Someone was going to have to wash them. She hoped it wasn’t to be the governess.
“Er.” She rubbed her lower lip with one finger, pulling off a flaky piece of skin, as she tried to recall what her teachers at the seminary had done on the first day of school.
Joy wiggled in her chair, rubbed her eyes and yawned.
Robin pulled out a pocketknife and began to carve something into the table.
