Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Alice, my dear.” Lady Josephine adopted the long-suffering, faintly pitying expression Alice loathed.
“Of course you meant well. I would never imply otherwise. A fellow creature is wounded and in need of assistance. You are capable of providing that assistance. The generous and compassionate impulse itself is laudable.”
Now comes the but. Alice focused on the ticking of the vicarage parlor’s mantel clock.
Lady Josephine’s buts were always delivered in gently chiding tones and with the loftiest of stated intentions.
They could go on interminably because Lady Josephine had the knack of blending a small portion of truth with a very large helping of innuendo, opinion, and Scripture.
“But, Alice, you of all women, of all women, must be mindful of how you are perceived in local Society. Your grandpapa will not live forever, and then what is to become of you? Lorne Hall’s new steward will need the use of that cottage.
You have no family to take you in, poor thing.
I daresay you lack independent means, and you aren’t getting any younger. ”
Her ladyship took a dainty sip of tea and shook her head minutely. “My dear, my very, very dear Alice, you cannot risk the only asset you have left, the most important asset any lady has—her good name.”
My good name is not my only remaining asset. Tick, tick, tick. Next would come her ladyship’s current favorite mangled quote.
“Scripture tells us,” Lady Josephine went on, “that nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman. It is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things, and in your case, it is also the sum total of your worldly possessions.”
Mrs. Burney would be surprised to learn she had joined the exclusive company of the evangelists.
“I do apologize,” Alice said, “for causing you any concern, but the baron requested my assistance, and we were at no time private while I served as his amanuensis.”
Lady Josephine sighed again, closed her eyes again, and shook her head yet again.
“That is the conundrum, isn’t it? You had to remain in plain view—I’m told his lordship even expected you to join him on the terrace for a meal—and thus the entire household saw you reduced to the role of an unpaid clerk.
The only thing worse would have been if his lordship had passed you coin while the housemaids gawked from the windows. ”
So many retorts begged to be shot into Lady Josephine’s hot-air balloon of judgment and condescension.
I could use a bit of coin but didn’t have the nerve to admit as much.
Are you implying the maids become somehow fallen because their hard work is rewarded with wages?
So the library door should have been closed for hours on end?
“I was caught in a quandary, your ladyship is quite right. The baron’s request surprised me, and his injury is considerable. He needs a secretary.”
“Of course he does, but in the absence of such a fellow on the premises, you should have sent for me. I have quite a tidy hand. You know I pride myself on maintaining a voluminous correspondence with my connections in the church. I am the baron’s aunt, and my assistance would have provoked no discussion among the gossips. ”
The gossips would have started placing bets instead of merely gabbling. His lordship’s imperiled sanity would have figured prominently in the wagering. More to the point, Alice handled most of her ladyship’s voluminous correspondence, and her ladyship had the penmanship of a fidgety schoolgirl.
“Ma’am, you are entirely correct, and I can only plead a lack of imagination on my part. That you would serve as his lordship’s clerk simply did not occur to me.”
“If you want for imagination, that’s just as well. A fanciful woman pleases nobody. Another half cup, if you please.”
Agreement in principle did not necessarily signal an end to the lecture. Her ladyship was capable of second, third, and fourth winds.
Alice obliged with the teapot nonetheless. Alice was in the habit of obliging Lady Josephine, but the impulse to refuse, to rebut, to rebel had lately become unbearably tempting.
Alice’s hostess sipped her libation plain, sugar and milk being extravagances, according to her ladyship. Alice had it on the authority of the vicarage cook that her ladyship swilled sweetened tea liberally laced with cream when consuming her drink in private.
“Now, then, Alice, let’s consider your options, shall we?”
Oh, not this again. “If your ladyship would like to.”
“You can go into service. A tragedy, when you enjoy the nominal standing of a lady. Your father was a headmaster, and we must admit that qualified him as a gentleman of sorts. At least according to some. You could become the housekeeper for the next steward, assuming he’s unmarried.
A housekeeper must fill her hours with labor, her wages are modest, and her time is not her own. ”
Lady Josephine peered over her tea cup at Alice. To miss the weekly knitting meetings would be no hardship, but Lady Josephine’s innuendo pointed in another direction.
“I am happy to work for an honest wage if need be,” Alice said, which was nothing less than the truth, “but to have an employer commanding my every waking hour would be… onerous.” Heartbreaking, really, given Lady Josephine’s portentous looks and ruthless streak.
“Precisely. Every waking hour. You would lose your gentlewoman’s standing, no matter that all and sundry would sympathize with your loss of station, but one must be realistic. You know how to keep house. The work is honest. Not an ideal resolution to your dilemma, though. We are agreed.”
What precisely is my dilemma? Alice had never asked Lady Josephine, though the situation/dilemma/circumstances received regular allusions from her ladyship.
“Which takes us to the logical, realistic, and readily obtained alternative of marriage. Do not wince, my dear. Do not retort that age has rendered you unsuitable for the office. You are not yet thirty.”
Not yet six-and-twenty.
“Once dear, darling Davina brings the baron up to scratch, matrimony will be in the air, and autumn weddings are quite the thing. If you put your mind to it and exerted yourself to be agreeable, I’m sure Blessington Peabody would offer for you.
He’s fundamentally lazy, and you are to hand.
A bit of blunt speaking, for which I do apologize, but he’s also quite the catch by local standards. ”
He was quite the prig, too, and he’d be more tyrannical about Alice’s free time and independent pursuits than any employer.
“Ma’am, I do not wish to marry.”
“What woman does? Oh, I know there are the so-called love matches, but infatuation fades, and then one is still quite married and wishing a bit of infidelity on the husband’s part would come along to lighten the wifely load, so to speak.
More blunt speaking, only because I am so very worried about you, Alice, and you are not without experience of the world.
You nonetheless have no mama to guide you, your grandpapa has one foot in the grave, not a penny to your name. I positively fret about you.”
I have seventy-six pounds, six shillings, four pence, thank you very much. Alice’s life savings consisted of a small inheritance from a maternal grandmother augmented by pennies saved from the pin money Grandpapa had doled out over the years.
“You are kind to worry, ma’am, but I wish you wouldn’t. Are you truly convinced that Davina Halbertson will suit the baron better than Dorothea Considine?”
“Alice, you are changing the subject, which is naughty of you.”
Alice had been trying to be polite. “One does wonder how Dorothea would take having to address Davina as ‘your ladyship.’”
“The humiliation would do that one good. I know my nephew, and Camden is not possessed of a particularly penetrating mind. His perceptions extend no further than the nearest ledger or shipping schedule. The poor dear hasn’t the mental nimbleness to keep a restless creature like Dorothea from making all in her ambit unhappy.
Cam will bring sweet little Davina the occasional bouquet and think himself quite doting. So will she, and all will be well.”
“Do you expect them to bide at Lorne Hall?”
Lady Josephine considered her cooling tea.
“At the Hall? Goodness me, Alice. A peer attends the social whirl in Town, and a responsible peer votes his seat. At least Camden has some familiarity with London Society. We might see some of him when the shooting season comes around. Davina will have her hands full parting him from his commercial pastimes, though. I will abet her in that necessary undertaking to the fullest possible extent.”
Camden Huxley’s interest in trade was a passion, not a pastime.
“Perhaps I could succeed Mrs. Shorer as housekeeper at the Hall,” Alice said, though she had no intention of doing so. Lady Josephine would object at length, though, and then Alice, after being suitably instructed, chastened, corrected, harangued, and pitied, could be on her way.
“Alice Singleton, if you are jesting about succeeding Mrs. Shorer, I must protest the nature of your humor. A household of that size is no mere cottage to be kept up between morning prayers and tea. Lorne Hall is a great monument to history and tradition, an edifice of immense consequence. You are neither capable nor experienced enough to undertake such a post.”
Her ladyship galloped on, citing noble households brought to the tragedy of creeping damp by incompetent housekeeping.
She railed against the hubris that gave rise to even speculation that Alice might aspire to such responsibility and leaped forth to conclude that if the baron left such a one as Alice in charge of his family seat, then the man had surely taken leave of his modest senses.