Free Elisabeth Fairchild by Valentine's Change of Heart Page A

on the run, and he with a pack of hounds that looked like dog-sized dragons, after her.
     
    Mrs. Olive snored, which kept Elaine tossing and turning in the bed beside a completely motionless Felicity, her mind on the question of her future. No references! What was to become of her without a single decent reference?
    The possibilities seemed limited, and hopelessly dreary. No one of standing would take a governess without references. Must she turn to a different source of income? Should she write to Anne? Her sister might be able to find her a position as companion to a lady of means.
    She came to no clear answer before she finally drifted off. There were good reasons to leave Lord Wharton’s party, chief among them what she knew of his past. And yet, Felicity’s plaintive voice sounding in her mind, Mrs. Olive’s cheerful coaxing, Lord Wharton’s dry, disinterested sarcasm.
    He was not what she had expected--not a wild, womanizing drinker. Tea. He wants tea, and cold rides in the rain, and bedtime stories of dragons and princesses!
    She could not decide if he breathed fire or wisdom when he spoke to her, when her heart lurched at mere sight of his handsome, knowing face.
    Can I be objective? even sensible serving such a man?
    It had been easy to resist Lord Palmer. He was a beast. But how would she react if this beauty of a man turned his attentions her way? Can I resist such temptation?
    Elaine rose to the first graying of dawn with a feeling of exhaustion when Mrs. Olive cheerfully prodded at her shoulder. “Come, my dear. The master likes an early start.”
    Early start, indeed. The sun had yet to fully illuminate the sky. Felicity still slept the deep, impenetrable sleep of youth. Elaine stood at the window, brushing out her hair in the pale morning light as she stared down at the bustling street, her mind equally busy. Where am I to go? What am I to do?
    Manchester was known for weavers and spinners. There would be wealthy merchants here, a half dozen country squires, perhaps a nobleman or two. She could find a job here if she decided not to go on into the wilds of Wales with Wharton. She wanted to laugh. The whole idea was too alliterative by far.
    “What think you of the master?” Mrs. Olive asked.
    Elaine set aside the hairbrush, her hair crackling from the briskness of her ministrations. Think of him? What did she think of him? I do not trust him. She could not admit as much to the man’s housekeeper. He is handsome. An enigma.
    This, too, she could not voice. She parted her hair into three sections with her fingers and started to plait it in the French style from the crown of her head. “I have yet to form an opinion, Mrs. Olive.”
    “You see him in better times, you do. I will say that. Tell me, do you mean to come with us, Miss Deering, to Chester?” Mrs. Olive sponged her face and upper arms from one of the basins, groping for the linen Elaine placed to hand. “Or do you bid us farewell after breakfast?”
    “I do not know.”
    Mrs. Olive cupped a hand to her ear. “What’s that?”
    Elaine spread her hands and shrugged.
    The older woman dabbed moisture from her face and smoothed back her fly-away hair. “Ask for a sign, my dear, “ she said as she went to work on the arrangement of her lace cap. “I asked for a sign when I questioned whether I should come back to him.”
    “You left his lordship?”
    “Oh. Aye.” The old woman glanced at the sleeping child, keeping her voice low and confidential. “He was deep in his cups. Had cast off his friends, and sent the child away to boarding school where she contracted an illness and must be sent home again, and all the while he was drinking himself into an early grave.”
    Here it is, just as I suspected.
    Mrs. Olive stepped closer to whisper, “’E shouted and raved when ‘e was drunk. Not a pretty sight.”
    Father, stumbling in late at night, brandy on his breath, hat and neckcloth askew, casting up accounts in the garden, on the stairs.