Chapter 4
Four
Lord Brookhaven pulled on the reins, stopping the horse just short of the overturned carriage. “Is anyone hurt?” he said as he dismounted.
The gray-haired man was holding a handkerchief to his temple, slowing the flow of blood. “I don’t think my daughter is injured, just hysterical.”
The woman had stopped screaming, but she must have heard her father, because she cried out, “I am injured! I’m bleeding, and I can’t get out!” Then she started half-sobbing, half-wailing.
As I made my way to the carriage, the man addressed Lord Brookhaven. “Did you see our driver?”
“I saw him jump into the ditch. He appeared to be well enough.”
“That’s what I get for hiring an inexperienced . . .” His words trailed off.
I stepped forward and hoisted my skirt while I lifted my foot, then climbed onto the carriage. I leaned my head over the open doorway.
The young woman looked to be around my own age. Her hair was falling down from its pins, and tears made streaks through the dust on her cheeks.
“Can you climb up?” I asked her. She was tall enough to reach the opening.
“Climb? No. How can I climb?” Her voice was high and hysterical.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.” I made my voice as soft and soothing as I could. “Do you have any broken bones?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” She let out another sob.
She was standing, and I quickly determined that she was mostly uninjured.
“I can’t get out,” she wailed. “And my hand is bleeding.”
She held up her hand, but there was only a small amount of blood, the wound appearing to be only a scratch.
I lifted my head with the intention of asking the men to assist her, but they were already approaching.
Lord Brookhaven took my elbow without speaking and helped me down.
Then he took my place on the side of the carriage, while the woman’s father positioned himself on the other side.
Lying on their stomachs, they both reached in and pulled her up, while she cried out, “Oh no! That won’t—Take care not to—I can’t get my—oh! My hair.”
A few strands of her hair had caught on something, and Lord Brookhaven freed them with one hand while holding her wrist in his other hand.
When she was out, she lay on the side of the carriage with outstretched arms. It put me in mind of a painting I’d once seen of a sailor splayed out on the beach who’d been washed ashore, nearly drowned.
Her father nudged her arm. “Millicent, you must get up. Come, come.”
The man dragged her by her arm, and when her legs slid over the side, she screamed.
He and Lord Brookhaven took her by her elbows until her feet touched the ground.
“Oh.” She let out a loud breath and started trying to pin her hair back up.
“What a ridiculous, wretched business this is,” she was saying, still crying.
“Who ever heard of a carriage overturning.” Then she suddenly cried out again.
“Oh! Oh, merciful—!” She was staring as a drop of blood dripped from the back of her hand.
A moment later, her eyes started to close and she stumbled to the side.
Her father caught her and lowered her the rest of the way onto the ground, mumbling something I didn’t quite catch.
Was he thinking what I was thinking? That it was a wonder she’d swooned at the relatively small amount of blood on her hand but hadn’t seemed to notice the much greater amount of blood running down her father’s face?
I’d never swooned at the sight of blood, but I had once chased a fox away from a baby rabbit.
The little thing was sitting in the bushes, very still except for its fast breathing.
I tried to shoo it back to its mother and even nudged it with my foot.
When I did, it moved slightly and made a terrible little sound.
That was when I saw the blood on its badly mangled back foot, and my vision started going black.
I had to step away, hang my head, and take deep breaths to keep from fainting.
So I shouldn’t judge this young woman for nearly swooning after such a terrifying event as a carriage accident.
The young woman—he’d called her Millicent—was moaning, her eyes closed. Poor thing. I dug my handkerchief out of the reticule that dangled from my wrist and knelt beside her.
I gently took the woman’s injured hand and helped her sit up. “It’s just a small cut. Nothing to worry about,” I told her. “I’ll wrap it so you don’t have to see it.” I did just that with one of my best handkerchiefs and tied the ends together. “There. Does it feel better?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She stared at me as though seeing me for the first time. “I am Millicent Skidmore of Shropshire.”
“Charlotte Robbins. I’m the new governess for Lord Brookhaven’s wards.”
Her smile faltered when I said the word governess, but she recovered quickly and whispered, “Lord Brookhaven? The Earl of Brookhaven?”
“Yes.” The earl was talking with Mr. Skidmore, and they were far enough away that they couldn’t hear our whispered conversation.
“And he lives nearby?” she asked.
“His estate is just beyond those trees.”
“An earl. Oh my.” She held her hand to her throat and stared hard at Lord Brookhaven, her eyes fairly dancing.
“He is very good to stop and offer his assistance.” Her attention turned to the broken, overturned carriage and she sighed.
“We were traveling to the seaside to visit relatives and take the sea air, but now . . .”
Mr. Skidmore took a step toward us. “Lord Brookhaven has graciously agreed to stow our carriage on his estate until we return, and we will hire a coach to take us the rest of the way.”
Miss Millicent Skidmore smiled at Lord Brookhaven as she rose. “You are very kind to go to so much trouble for us.”
He did not smile back. “It is no trouble.” Lord Brookhaven then looked directly at me. “You will be all right while I go to the village to inquire about a coach and driver.” He said it as a statement rather than a question.
“Yes, of course. I will stay with them.”
With a curt nod, he remounted his horse and rode away.
Mr. Skidmore talked of the weather and the roads and their incompetent driver, whom he assumed had done something to cause the horses to bolt.
The horses were surprisingly unharmed by the accident, as they had come untethered from the carriage when it overturned.
They stood grazing only a few feet away, still harnessed to each other.
After Lord Brookhaven left to hire them a carriage, the Skidmores began to ask about him.
They obviously considered themselves superior to me, but they weren’t above asking me if Lord Brookhaven was very wealthy and if he had a wife or was engaged to be married.
I answered them as simply as I could, telling them I hardly knew anything about his private affairs and that I’d only arrived at the estate the day before.
Lord Brookhaven soon returned, a hired coach distantly behind him. “What did you wish to do about your driver?” He inclined his head toward the road behind them.
A young man was walking toward us, his hat in his hands, head down.
“There you are,” Mr. Skidmore said. “What do you have to say, leaping off the seat to save yourself?”
“It weren’t my fault, sir. The horses, they got spooked and took off running. They pulled the reins clean out of my hands. I tried to leap on the left one’s back to grab the reins and stop him, but I couldn’t hang on and ended up in the ditch.”
“A likely story,” Mr. Skidmore grumbled. “You’re to go back to your duties in the stable. I’ll not place my life into your hands again.”
“Yes, sir.” He lowered his head even more. “How’ll I get home, if you don’t mind, sir?”
Mr. Skidmore mumbled, “I ought to . . .” but the rest of his words never reached my ears as he handed the former driver some coins. I wondered if he’d have been that gracious if Lord Brookhaven had not been standing there.
The hired coach arrived. The Skidmores thanked Lord Brookhaven again and stepped inside, and soon they were rolling away down the road.
“Well, Miss Charlotte Robbins?” Lord Brookhaven was staring down at me. By the scowl on his face, one might have thought he was angry.
“Yes, sir?”
“Shall we return to Lowndesbury House?”
“I must post a letter in town first.”
“Why didn’t you say so? I could have posted the letter for you.”
“It is no trouble. I like to walk. Besides, you were occupied with more pressing matters.”
“That was not so pressing as to prevent me from posting your letter.” Again, his voice was gruff. “Give me the letter and I shall frank it and put it in tomorrow’s post.”
“That is very kind of you, sir, but if it is all right, I shall take it myself, so it will get there a day earlier.” When he just stared at me, I continued, “I don’t want my friends to worry about me any longer than they must.”
“Very well.” He turned, nudged his horse into a run, and was gone.
It was strange. I probably should have been afraid to speak so boldly to him.
Then again, I might get back to Lowndesbury House to find he had dismissed me, just as he’d done to Hattie’s cousin’s friend.
Great titled men could be very changeable, or so I’d heard, which made it that much more surprising to find the Earl of Brookhaven so . . . human.
By the time I’d arrived back at Lowndesbury House, the storm clouds had passed without delivering any rain, and the tall trees were casting deep shadows over the lane.
Even the birds were quiet. The night was warm, and I let my shawl fall off my shoulders, draped over my arms and around my waist. How lovely to feel the cool air on the back of one’s neck.
As I walked, I remembered the conversation I’d had with Mrs. Merryweather on my way out, when I’d caught a glimpse of a thin, stooped-over man with white hair disappearing into one of the rooms.
“That man is Mr. Hayes, Lord Brookhaven’s estate steward,” Mrs. Merryweather had informed me, “and the room he just went into is the earl’s private study. You are not to go in there.”
I’d been hoping the steward might become my first suitor, and if he was suitable, my husband. But obviously Mr. Hayes was too old.
Even though I was only a governess, I did have standards.
Perhaps the head gardener would be a genteel sort of man—genteel for a gardener—or perhaps I could catch the eye of the earl’s solicitor, or maybe even the rector or vicar of the parish church.
A clergyman should make a good husband, I imagined, and if he was not from too grand a family, he might deign to marry a governess.
When I reached Lowndesbury House, I was reluctant to lose the last bit of twilight.
I walked to the garden, but its perfect paths and rows of well-manicured bushes displayed a rigid, off-putting formality.
I decided to go beyond the garden, and I found the large tree that Lord Brookhaven had collided with when he was a boy.
Even though it had been dark and his voice had held a certain gruffness, almost anger, he’d seemed so vulnerable when he was telling me that story.
I’d felt similarly toward our rector in Milford when I was thirteen years old.
When he stood in front of the congregation and spoke of feelings of guilt, joy, and condemnation for his own sins, as well as gratitude for God’s mercy and grace, my heart had seemed to swell out of my chest.
No one else ever spoke of feelings—especially not men, of whom there were none in my life, unless you counted the man who made repairs around the school, or the farmer who greeted me a few times a year when I passed him on the way to the village.
No one besides Hattie and a few of the other teachers at Mrs. Southey’s school ever spoke of how certain past events had made them feel.
But it was as if I needed that depth of conversation, longed for it with a yearning that took my breath away now, remembering how Lord Brookhaven had spoken to me the night before.
It was almost improper, unseemly for an employer to open up to his employee in that manner. But why? Why should it be unseemly to speak of emotions, to express sadness or pain? For I’d sensed a fierce pain inside him. I’d actually felt his pain.
I could well commiserate with the pain of the absence of loving parents. I felt it every time I saw a child with their mother or a father smiling fondly at his daughter, whether she was ten years old or twenty or thirty. It was an affectionate gaze I was never to know.
Although Lord Brookhaven had not known much affection from his mother, I suspected his relationship with his father was no better. Though I knew little of the former Lord Brookhaven, titled gentlemen were not known for their kindness and affection toward their children.
Lord God, please let me marry someone who will love me, a good man who will not refuse to speak of feelings and will not berate me for my—
“Miss Robbins.”
I sucked in a loud breath and turned to find Lord Brookhaven fifteen feet away.