“Are you saying she has left your employ or departed from Bath?”
Lady Beasley spread her hands and shrugged.
“As I understand it, she has done both. Mrs. Malcolm slid a note of resignation along with a message for each of my girls under my bedroom door early yesterday. With no explanation and only muted contrition, she stated she could not continue in her post.”
Lady Beasley had begun to pace the room, working herself up into high dander.
“A month or at least a fortnight could be expected from anyone in her position to allow me the opportunity to find a replacement. But I received not even an hour’s notice. It is a shame.” She stopped and sighed again. “I liked her. I held her in high esteem for the education she could give my girls. Moreover, I trusted her with their future development into knowledgeableyoung ladies. To say I am disappointed would be to state my feelings mildly.”
Adam knew how she felt. Disappointment warred with anger, although he knew when he stepped outside and could examine his emotions, both would give way to sadness.
“All I can say, my lady, is that I am sorry you have lost an excellent governess.”
“As am I,” she agreed. “And I hope you had nothing to do with it.” Her cheeks turned puce. “My goodness, I truly hope you had nothing to do with it,” she repeated. “Your mother definitely wouldn’t be pleased, and then your father would have to get involved, too.”
It took Adam a moment to understand of what she was accusing him. One thing he was certain, Alice was not with child. At least, not with his.
“On the matter of which you intimate, I can assure you there is no merit to your insinuation. And I would hope you do not start spreading any such hearsay about your former employee.”
“I shall not give her references,” Lady Beasley declared, “so I cannot imagine how she will find her next position.”
Adam thought the clever Alice would land on her feet and find another post if she chose.But why leave this one and start over?
“She said nothing of why she had to go away?”
“She did not,” her ladyship confirmed. “You know, I thought it a pity you didn’t find my Susanne to your liking, and now, I imagine you feel the same. But it is too late for you to find a respectable wife in Bath after being tangled up with Mrs. Malcolm. Everyone is talking about it. I can only surmise that is why she left. I bid you good day, my lord.”
Without waiting for his response, she departed, leaving him still holding Alice’s book which he’d intended to return.
That night, seated in the drawing room of his too-large home, looking at the view of Victoria Park with a glass of brandy inone hand, Adam finally opened Austen’s novel. He had meant to read it previously but had been content keeping hold of the book, so he would always have a pretext to go see her.
He had never even cracked the spine before. To his amazement, when he did, the bookplate on the front cover held the answer to the mystery that was his Alice, as he’d come to think of her.
Alice Malcolm Jeffrey, Stonely Grange, Caversham
She wasnotMrs. Malcolm at all!Maybe she wasn’t even a widow.
He turned the page and the next one before flipping to the back where she’d written a note about how much she’d enjoyedNorthanger Abbey. It wasn’t a note to him, merely something scrawled on the back of the last page.
She had dated the note 1838, which would explain her youthful and effusive words about the satirical Gothic tale of terror and manners.
Reading it again, he smiled. At least he had a place to start.
Stonely Grange was, in a word, crumbling. If Alice had to pick another word, it would bedilapidated, decrepit, evencreepy. Someone might kindly say it was a diamond in the rough. However, it was more like a diamond being reclaimed by the earth from which it sprung. It had once been polished but was now a murky shadow of its former glory.
Was there even a single window without a broken pane?
Yes, those that were completely boarded up.
That made her laugh. It was good to be home, even if she now had a hole where her heart had been.
The only staff still there were those glad of a free place to live. They no longer received wages, so she supposed they weren’t really staff, nor could she ask them to do so much as boil water for her tea.
Thus, Alice had moved another rung down the ladder of life. She’d given up her steady role as a governess with her meals prepared for her and a clean bedroom for the frightening insecurity of being an impoverished lady.
A new existence but with her old identity.
She couldn’t maintain either long, or she would starve. With her savings, if she wished to keep some of it in reserve, she could probably manage for a month, time enough to decide where she would go next. The mistake had been going to Bath instead of a country village. The old temptations of a sparkling, lively city had lured her to the only other place in England with its own full Season.
