Free Improper Relations by Juliana Ross

Waterloo Bridge station, where I had often caught trains to Dorset with the family. The departures board was a maze of information, one word blurring into the next. How was I to make sense of it all?
    The ticket office was at the far end of the hall, so I picked up my bag and made my way to the first open wicket.
    “Where are you going today, ma’am?” asked the man behind the counter.
    “I don’t know. That is, I haven’t decided. Which train is leaving next?”
    “That would be the nine-forty to Bristol, stopping in at Maidenhead, Twyford, Reading, Steventon, Faringdon Road, Wootton Bassett, Chippenham and Bath.”
    I’d visited Steventon as a girl. My mother had taken me to visit her elderly aunt one summer, and we’d returned the following year for Great-Aunt Charlotte’s funeral. It was quiet and peaceful and hadn’t changed one whit since Jane Austen had lived there some sixty years before.
    It would do.
    “How much is a single ticket to Steventon?”
    “In which class, ma’am?”
    “Third, please.”
    He consulted his timetable. “It’s four shillings and seven pence.”
    I handed over the lone coin in my reticule.
    “Here you are, and here’s the fifteen and five I owe you. Train’s leaving from Platform Two in five minutes. Best go now, else you’ll risk not getting a seat.”
    “Thank you very much.”
    “You’re welcome, ma’am. Good day to you.”
    The irony of his polite farewell wasn’t lost on me. I’d lost the man I loved, had been exiled from my home and everything that was familiar to me, was embarking on a journey that might well end in destitution, and it wasn’t yet ten o’clock in the morning. It seemed unlikely I would ever know a good day again.
    I walked to the platform, showed the man at the barrier my ticket and found a seat in one of the gloomy third-class compartments. The seats were hard and wooden, as austere as my mood, and as the train lumbered west I closed my eyes and prayed that the journey would be over soon.
    My fellow passengers appeared unaware of the torment I suffered, and for that I was grateful. From this moment on, I resolved, I would tell no one the truth, allow no one to comprehend the loss I had sustained.
    I would face the barren days to come with steady resolve, as I’d always tried to do when life disappointed me. I would build a new life for myself, though my life was already over.
    And I would never look back.

Chapter Eight
    Steventon was as small and sleepy and quiet as I had remembered. It was so small, in fact, that it appeared to be little more than a string of farmhouses along a narrow country lane. Unless I wished to seek employment as a dairy maid, I realized, I would have to move on.
    The station master confirmed my suspicions. Fortunately, one of the local farmers was bound for Whitchurch, some seven miles to the west, that very afternoon. For tuppence I was able to secure passage on the front seat of his wagon.
    It was a simple cart, with no shelter from the elements, and I’d nothing more than a thin shawl to protect me when it began to rain. Before long I was thoroughly wretched, both in spirit and substance, and was bitterly regretting my impulsive decision to travel to a part of the country so little known to me.
    Farmer Dunn took me directly to the post office in Whitchurch, explaining that the postmistress kept a situations vacant board and should be able to direct me to suitable accommodation. It was late in the day when he set me down at my destination, a neat bow-fronted building on the town’s High Street, and bid me a friendly farewell.
    I stumbled across the threshold of the post office, my sodden carpetbag held tight in my arms, and said a silent prayer that I did not appear as bedraggled and desperate as I felt.
    “A good evening to you, ma’am, and how may I help you?” The voice was attached to a plainly dressed woman with a wide and welcoming smile.
    “Good evening. I have just arrived—that is, I have just now