18. Chapter 18- Lily #2
Lily chuckled. “My one want easily remedied then.”
“You truly prefer the countryside to the city?”
“I’m as surprised as anyone, believe me. But there’s something about the peaceful mornings, the slow afternoons. And I never realized how much the city stinks until I returned. There are too many people, too much noise.” She glanced over at him. “I’m sorry—I’m complaining again.”
“Of all the people I know, you complain the least.”
“Then most of your acquaintances must be curmudgeonly indeed, for I feel I grumble all the time.”
Bradford shook his head, smiling. “I never heard you complain once, not even when Rebecca was sick upon your shoes.”
“Believe me, I was wailing on the inside. I dearly love shoes.”
He was staring at her again—she’d noticed he did that sometimes. Lily self-consciously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “Forgive me—I’ve been prattling on about matters of little consequence when you doubtless have questions prepared for me.”
Every day, he asked her something as part of his investigation. It was the least she could do to answer him honestly, considering what she’d done.
“I have many questions today, but the first is, how did you come to the decision to do what you did—to take employment somewhere far away?”
There were several moments filled only with the sound of the wind shivering the leaves of the trees they walked beneath. It was one of her favorite things about Bradford—though he might ask her difficult questions, he never rushed her to answer.
She finally said, “You know what happened to my family—we’ve spoken of that before.”
Bradford nodded.
“It was the worst of both worlds—too noble to take on work, too poor to eat. So I thought about what I might do to help my sisters, something more than simply finding things within the house to sell.” She adjusted her shawl more firmly around her shoulders, stopped in the pathway, and faced him.
“Do you know the problem with selling one’s things? ”
“What is that?”
“After the creditors ravage the place, there’s only as much left to sell as you were clever enough to hide. It pains me to admit it, but at the time, none of us were all that clever. I don’t think we had to be before that, you see.”
“So you thought you’d take a position.”
Lily nodded. “My first idea was to become a companion for the elderly. I thought I’d write to some of the elegant, aging dowagers with whom our family is connected.
Claire was completely against it—she put a firm end to that idea as soon as I brought it up.
I was angry at the time, but now I know she was right to do so. ”
“Why is that?”
“Because it would have sunk our family permanently if I’d done such a thing publicly.”
Lily looked out over the small pond they were strolling past. Several swans dotted the surface, winding elegantly through the draping branches of a weeping willow that kissed the water. Near the shore, a duck wiggled itself free of water, then promptly waded back in.
She continued, “Claire was stronger in that aspect—she always held the belief that our poverty wouldn’t last. She believed that we would eventually be free of it somehow, that we just had to survive long enough and keep our reputations safe in the meantime.”
Lily shook her head, the pale blue ribbons of her expensive bonnet fluttering with the motion.
“You didn’t believe that?”
“No.” She gave a self-deprecating huff of a laugh. “I thought that William was dead, and if not dead, that he was ignoring us on purpose.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Who knows?” She waved a gloved hand. “Why was Richard the way he was? If one brother could willfully plunge us into poverty and bankrupt the title, how large of a stretch was it to believe that the other might ignore the title altogether?”
“But that would also mean ignoring the family, too.”
She faced him. “You must understand that Richard and William had an argument years ago—a nasty one in which Richard removed William from our house and prohibited him from acting as part of the family.”
Bradford frowned. “William wouldn’t blame you ladies for that.”
“I wasn’t so sure. I was there when it happened.
Or at least, I heard the tail end of it.
I was so shocked I couldn’t even utter a comforting word to William as he left.
I just stood there like a useless, vapid thing.
What must he have thought of me—of all his sisters—in that moment?
We should have defended him. At the very least, we should have told him that we didn’t wish for him to go. ”
“Certainly he knew that.”
“I understand that now. At the time, everything was so confusing. It was all so muddled by our collective fear.”
Bradford was studying her again. “How did you come up with the idea to become a governess?”
“I was going through an old trunk in the attic, unwrapping items, trying to see if any of it was worth selling. It wasn’t.
It was a collection of my sister Winifred’s early paintings—absolute rubbish, but my mother loved them.
” She flicked a gloved hand as if the topic was inconsequential.
“Each was wrapped in newspaper, and I started reading the postings. So many of them weren’t in London, and I wondered whether I could get far enough away to be a governess where no one would recognize me. ”
“Northumberland certainly is far enough,” he said, exhaling a laugh.
“Precisely. It was a short jump of reason from that idea to changing my name. That was Claire’s main problem with the idea—that people would connect the Preston name to employment, and none of us would ever be able to marry well.”
“How did you know Miss Sarah Hughes?”
Lily felt that old, familiar flare of jealousy.
She pressed her lips together until it passed, then finally admitted, “She was the former pupil of our governess. Whenever one of us would misbehave, we were treated to a long lecture on all the merits of Miss Hughes, all the ways she was far more deserving of a life of luxury than we were.”
Bradford chuckled.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry if I sound bitter.
I try, but I can hardly help it. You’d have a hard time keeping a rational view of someone if they’d been held over your head as the paragon through much of your formative years.
We all detested Miss Sarah Hughes, though none of us had so much as laid eyes on her. ”
“I suppose it’s understandable how you came to use her name. It must have been some thrilling sort of payback.” He grinned.
“It was terrifying. I kept imagining her finding me out, kept wondering what would happen if the real Miss Sarah Hughes showed up on your doorstep.”
“That visit would have been memorable, though it would have deprived both of us of hiking prime Northumberland countryside.”
Lily laughed ruefully and shook her head. “I know it wasn’t fair of me to involve her. She’d never hurt any of us directly.”
“I will concede that of all the people you could have chosen, she was the best. Not only were her qualifications excellent—and real—she was too busy having children to have ever found you out.”
“I don’t want you to get the impression that I intended her any harm,” Lily added, searching his face earnestly.
“It was simple jealousy, nothing more, that caused me to think of her. When I reviewed all I knew, I thought that she would have precisely the qualifications one would want in a governess.”
“You were right. She was the best governess, on paper.” He nodded. “But as it turns out, I would have chosen Miss Lily Preston over Miss Sarah Hughes any day of the week.”