‘And you,’ she said finally, dabbing delicately at his chin again, ‘are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’
Her loving gentleness made him want to weep. Tears welled in his eyes and rolled slowly down his cheeks. Never had he cried in front of anyone before, and it appalled him that he was doing so now, but he was powerless to stop it.
‘Oh my darling Jack,’ said Romily, setting down the glass and putting her arms around him. ‘We’ll get through this, just you see.’
Her words, spoken so bravely, made him weep all the more.
Chapter Four
The last of the guest rooms made ready for Mr Devereux’s family, Florence went over to the window and watched Mr Fitzwilliam disappear inside the boathouse down by the pond. Seconds later, he reappeared with an old wicker chair and settled himself into it in the dappled shade of the willow tree. Yet as beautiful as the setting was, there was nothing relaxed about his posture; his shoulders were hunched, and his head lowered. As Florence had seen him do before, he put his left hand protectively on his useless right arm, where the fabric of his jacket sleeve hung loosely over his stump. There was something so sad about those few inches of lifeless sleeve. Something sad too about the sight of him sitting all alone at the boathouse. Poor man, she thought; obviously seeing his old friend so ill had upset him badly.
From what Florence knew of Mr Devereux’s estranged family, she doubted they would feel as upset as Mr Fitzwilliam. Would they even bother to come? And if they did, how would they react to the news that Miss Temple was now officially Mrs Jack Devereux-Temple? Which was quite a mouthful, however much Florence practised it! Much easier was the less formal name she had been instructed to use when she was alone with her somewhat unconventional employer: Miss Romily.
Florence wondered what would happen if Mr Devereux died. Would Miss Romily leave Island House to return permanently to London, taking Florence and Mrs Partridge with her? Florence hoped not; she liked living here.
At first she hadn’t thought she would take to life in the country, not when the church bells kept her awake at night, along with owls hooting and what sounded like a wild banshee howling in the darkness but which actually turned out to be a fox calling for its mate. To her surprise, though, in the few months she’d been here, she had grown accustomed to the strange noises, and now Island House felt like a proper home to her. It was somewhere safe where she didn’t have to live in fear of her beer-sodden father and brothers finding her and dragging her back home. In London, that fear had always hung over her.
Miss Romily had been the one to offer her a means of escape from her domineering father, and Florence had grabbed that chance with both hands. Their paths had crossed, quite literally, one morning when she had stepped absently into the road and suddenly found herself thrown off her feet before landing with a heavy thud on the dusty ground. It happened so fast, but at the same time almost as if in slow motion, giving her the feeling that she was actually flying. She must have closed her eyes, for when she opened them, she found that a crowd had gathered around her. But one face stood out: the face of an elegant woman wearing the smartest red hat Florence had ever seen. Funny to think that there she was, lying in the gutter, making a spectacle of herself, the wind knocked out of her, and all she could think of was that she would give anything in the world to own a hat as smart as that.
The owner of the hat spoke; the voice was that of a posh upper-class woman. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Can you move? Or perhaps you’d better not. Not yet.’
‘What happened?’ Florence asked, the air now back in her lungs and a flood of pain making itself felt in just about every part of her body.
‘I’m afraid I knocked you down. You stepped right into the road in front of my car before I could brake. I couldn’t do a thing about it. I’m terribly sorry.’
Another voice joined in. ‘She’s right; you did exactly that. You practically walked straight into the car. You must have been daydreaming to do that.’
Mortified that she’d caused such a kerfuffle, Florence said, ‘I’m very sorry. Is your car all right?’
‘Oh tish and tosh, please don’t be sorry. And don’t give my car a second thought. Now then, do you think anything’s broken?’ The woman’s gaze travelled the length of her, eyeing up Florence’s legs and arms.
It was then that Florence realised her dress had ridden up over her thighs, and there, for all the world to see, were the livid welts and bruises her father had inflicted on her yesterday with his belt. Shame made her face flush and she pushed the dress down.
‘I insist on taking you to see my doctor,’ the elegant woman said, a gloved hand outstretched. ‘It’s the very least I can do in the circumstances. Come on,’ she said to the crowd of onlookers, ‘let’s see if we can get this poor girl up and onto her feet.’
With others rushing to do the woman’s bidding, Florence was at a loss what to say. She was too weak with pain and too dazed to argue.
She had never been in an open-topped sports car before, and all she could do was sit in the passenger seat and hope she didn’t wake up from this extraordinary dream. Because it had to be a dream. Maybe she had been knocked unconscious and this was all going on inside her head, and any minute now she would wake up and find herself still in the gutter. Perhaps knocked over by somebody who didn’t care, rather than by a beautiful woman driving at what she now realised was an alarmingly fast speed.
More alarming still was that when the car came to a stop, she saw that they were parked outside a doctor’s consulting room in Harley Street. Suddenly terrified that she would have to pay the man a king’s ransom, she said, ‘There’s really no need for me to see a doctor. I’m all right. Honest I am. Just a bit shaken, that’s all.’
‘I disagree,’ the woman said firmly, and helping Florence out of the car, she took her gently by the arm and led her up the steps to the black front door with its shiny brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. ‘By the way,’ she said, giving the lion’s head a loud rat-a-tat-tat, ‘my name’s Miss Temple, what’s yours?’
‘Florence, miss. Florence Massie.’
‘Well, Florence, I’m here to tell you that whoever caused those shocking marks on your legs had no right to do such a thing. No right at all.’
‘I did it to myself, miss,’ lied Florence. Just as she had when a teacher at school had asked how she’d hurt herself this time. She knew better than to admit the truth. ‘I tripped over the coal scuttle,’ she said. ‘I’m as clumsy as anything, me. Always have been.’
‘Yes,’ the woman replied, giving her an uncomfortably long stare, as if seeing straight through her. ‘I’m sure you are.’
Their meeting proved to be the best thing that could have happened to Florence, for Miss Temple was in need of a new live-in maid. The fact that Florence had no experience as a lady’s maid – she’d been working in a laundry since she left school – didn’t bother Miss Temple a jot. ‘I’m sure you’ll pick it up soon enough,’ she’d said, ‘and the estimable Mrs Partridge, my cook, who’s been with me since forever, will take you under her wing and give you all the pointers you need.’
Predictably, Florence’s father hit the roof when she plucked up the courage to tell him that she’d found a new job and wouldn’t be a burden to him any more. He told her that she would only leave home over his dead body, and threatened to beat some sense into her if she dared to defy him. But there was something about Miss Temple and the fact that she seemed to know how Florence had come by her bruises that gave her the strength, finally, to stand up to her father, to see him for what he was: a cowardly bully who was only man enough to hit a girl. She secretly packed a small bag of her belongings and slipped away without a backward glance and without leaving an address. She simply disappeared and, in so doing, history repeated itself, for just as her mother had run away, so had Florence. She felt a certain sense of pride in what she had done, and would always be grateful to the woman who had given her a chance to change her life.
And what a life she had lived in the four years since that day. With Miss Romily there was always something interesting going on, and then there was the travelling she had to do, sometimes to promote a book, other times to carry out research. Often she liked Florence to go with her on her trips abroad. Last year Florence had gone to the French Riviera and to Venice, and the year before that to Paris. Oh yes, she was quite the well-travelled lady’s maid, as Billy Minton had once teased her. ‘You’re much too good for the likes of a simple country boy like me,’ he’d said in his soft Suffolk accent. ‘I’ve never been anywhere.’
Billy worked for his parents in their baker’s shop in the village, and he always had a kind word for Florence when she passed by or called in, but then he was that sort of lad, forever with a smile on his handsome face.
