“Someone upset you in there?” he asked, nodding toward the building from which she had just emerged.
“That is Mr. Hatchard’s office,” she explained to him. “My man of business.”
“Ah,” he said. “The employment. It did not meet with your approval?”
“Edna and Flora will return to Bath with me tomorrow,” she said.
“That bad?” He patted her hand on his arm.
“Worse,” she assured him. “Farworse.”
“Am I permitted to know what happened?” he asked.
“The Bedwyns,” she said, sawing at the air with her free hand as they crossed a street, avoiding a pile of fresh manure. “Thatis what happened. TheBedwyns! They will be the death of me yet. I swear they will.”
“I do hope not,” he said.
“Flora was to be employed by Lady Aidan Bedwyn,” Claudia said, “and Edna by none other thanthe Marchioness of Hallmere!”
“Ah,” he said.
“It isinsufferable,” she told him. “I do not know how that woman has the nerve.”
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “she remembers you as a superior teacher who will not compromise her principles and high standards even for money or position.”
Claudia snorted.
“And perhaps,” he said, “she has grown up.”
“Women like her,” Claudia said, “do not grow up. They just grow nastier.”
Which was ridiculous and unfair, of course. But her antipathy toward the former Lady Freyja Bedwyn ran so deep that she was incapable of being reasonable where the woman was concerned.
“You have an objection to Lady Aidan Bedwyn too?” he asked, touching the brim of his hat to a couple of ladies who were walking in the opposite direction.
“She married a Bedwyn,” Claudia said.
“She has always struck me as being particularly amiable,” he said. “Her father was apparently a Welsh coal miner before making his fortune. She has a reputation for helping people less fortunate than herself. Two of her three children are adopted. Is it for them she needs a governess?”
“For the girl,” Claudia said, “and eventually for her younger daughter.”
“And so you are to return to Bath with Miss Bains and Miss Wood,” he said. “Are they to be given any choice in the matter?”
“I would not send them into servitude to be miserable,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “they might not see it that way, Miss Martin. Perhaps they would be excited at the prospect of being governesses in the houses of such distinguished families.”
A young child with a harried-looking nurse in hot pursuit was bowling his hoop along the pavement. The marquess drew Claudia to one side until they were all past.
“Little whippersnapper,” he commented. “I would wager he promised most faithfully that he would carry the thing except when he was in the park with plenty of open space.”
Claudia drew a slow breath.
“Are you suggesting, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, “that I reacted overhastily and unreasonably at Mr. Hatchard’s office?”
“Not at all,” he said. “Your anger is admirable as is your determination to burden yourself with the girls again by taking them back to Bath rather than placing them in employment that might bring them unhappiness.”
She sighed.
