Her Ladyship's Companion Read Online Free PDF Page A

she was destined to bowl over with her surpassing loveliness was still in the nursery.
    “Robert, seventh earl, is my nephew. You were brought here to be companion to his great-aunt, the dowager Countess of Harforth, the Lady Dorothy, who also happens to be my aunt. I am Giles Tarsin, late of the army and more particularly lately seconded to Wellington’s staff, brother of the last earl, uncle of the present one, and also his guardian and manager of this estate. Several prominent members of the Whig party will vouch for me. Do you find my credentials to be in order, Miss Rivenwood?”
    “Quite.” All this verbiage was unnecessary. Let him send her away and be done with it.
    “Mr. Biddle’s discretion is very nearly absolute, but he could well have granted you a little more background on the ménage here. Of course, he may have assumed no one would come if given the full story.” Giles’s eyes rested on the girl’s face thoughtfully for a minute. “Regarding your own credentials ...”
    Melissa folded her hands in her lap. This was more what she’d anticipated. But was this serious consideration, or was the infuriating man only amusing himself?
    Giles unearthed a folded letter from the pile of papers on the desk. He smoothed out the creases against the wood and studied it a bit. “According to this, you have been a junior mistress in London for the last six years.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you taught?”
    “The French language.”
    “Hmm. Biddle says you’re fluent, so we’ll take his word for that. Why did you leave?”
    Melissa thought: Bad food, a hard, cold bed, and that vulgar penny-pinching old tyrant, carping at me night and noon. What she said was: “I received but three pounds six a year, sir. And it was not a pleasant position.”
    “You obtained no letter of recommendation?”
    Melissa’s stomach, which had been cautiously un-tensing, did a sick little flip-flop at this. “I believe I made that clear to Mr. Biddle. Mrs. Brody, the headmistress, had such trouble keeping staff that she never gave recommendations. It was her method of holding her employees.”
    “Yes. I see. Biddle does say that here. Why did you take work in such a place?”
    “I was a student there from the age of fifteen onward, and upon completion of my courses Mrs. Brody offered to take me on as junior mistress. It’s not so easy to find a position at nineteen, especially if your school won’t speak for you,” Melissa concluded with some bitterness.
    Giles aligned the corners of a stack of papers on the desk. Biddle had included some pungent comments on the school that made “not a pleasant position” sound like understatement. Unobtrusively he gave Melissa a lengthy inspection. Very nervous, he thought, and hiding it well. He watched a pulse beating rapidly under the curve of her throat. She had poise. That would please Dorothy. Dorothy liked to disconcert people, but only if there was a challenge to it. He folded and refolded the letter idly. “You have no relatives?”
    In the dim light of the inn he’d been impressed. In the rich slanting light of the library he was sure of it. The girl was a real beauty. What on earth was such a woman doing going out as companion? Madness multiplied. Madness that any relative had allowed such a child to seek her living this way. And madness that no man had married her, penniless though she must be, for that black mane alone or for the line of her jaw. He experienced an impulse to reach out and caress her cheek very gently, just as one will touch a beautiful statue. None of this showed on his face.
    “I have no relatives,” Melissa replied in a low voice. None at all, she thought despairingly, except two little adoptive sisters she’d reared from birth and a hatchet-faced uncle who would never let her see them again. From long practice she shut the thought away and buried it again in the back of her mind.
    “An orphan?” Giles inquired.
    “Yes.”
    “Your parents were ...?” he