Miss Hartwell's Dilemma Read Online Free PDF Page B

Stepmama and her half-brothers and hoped to hear from him again before another six years had passed.
    As she sealed it, she realised dejectedly that she might as well be writing to a stranger. The only thing she had in common with the Philadelphia ironmonger was the past.
    The next day, she was distracted from her blue devils when Mr. Majendie’s groom brought in a bundle containing the past two weeks’ issues of the Morning Post. The owner of the castle, an elderly gentleman both kind and learned, he had encouraged the school from the start. He sent his newspapers to keep them in touch with the doings of the Fashionable World. That, he was wont to say with a twinkle in his eye, was surely the most important part of any young lady’s education.
    The Morning Post was full of reports of the proceedings in the House of Lords over the Bill of Pains and Penalties against Queen Caroline. George III had died in January. The Prince Regent, now George IV, was desperately anxious that his estranged wife, whom he loathed, should not be crowned at his side. If the Bill passed in both Lords and Commons, she would forfeit her rights as Queen and be divorced into the bargain.
    Mrs. Vaux pored over the sordid details with unabashed fascination. This was undoubtedly the sole topic of conversation among the ton and, though exiled for six years, she had spent most of her life in that world and still felt a part of it.
    Miss Tisdale was clearly revolted by the testimony of the Queen’s Italian servants who revealed, under close questioning, the state of dress, or undress, in which they had seen her and her ‘chamberlain,’ Pergami, on various occasions. Tizzy blenched when she read that Her Royal Highness’s hand ‘was in the small clothes of Mr. Pergami,’ but she read on. This was history in the making, and it was the duty of any instructress worthy of the name to be fully informed.
    Amaryllis had mixed feelings. Chief among these was outrage. George had taken countless mistresses over the years, not to mention his deceitful marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert. Many of the Lords now sitting in judgment had reputations that would bear no scrutiny. How dared they condemn Queen Caroline? Yet she had, it was clear, deliberately set out to embarrass her husband and cause a scandal by rampaging about Europe in black wig and short skirts and without doubt having an affair with her chamberlain. Papa’s running off with the daughter of the Spanish Ambassador seemed a minor disgrace in comparison.
    The day before school started, Amaryllis carefully locked up every newspaper in a cupboard in the private drawing room. Stained sheets and hands upon private parts had no place in the curriculum of her young ladies.
    After that there was no time to feel blue-devilled. Carriage after carriage rolled up to the gate, and the house filled with gay, chattering voices as the girls unpacked their trunks and valises and bandboxes.
    There were five new pupils. Two had older sisters and a third, a fifteen year old, already knew several of the girls. Miss Hartwell had received a note from Lady Carfax saying that her daughter Louise would arrive a few days late owing to a sprained ankle. Thus Miss Isabel Winterborne was the only one with whom Amaryllis need particularly concern herself.
    She had not been greatly disturbed to hear from the vicar that Daniel Winterborne was a rake. After all, the Viscount Hartwell had been a rake himself, judging by his endless pursuit and conquest of women. During her years on the town she had been protected by her social position from the attentions of libertines. Now she was armoured in her concealing cap and her dark brown worsted dress. The most persistent of womanisers was hardly likely to make a respectable schoolmistress the object of his illicit affections.
    Lord Daniel appeared shortly after three in the afternoon accompanied by a pale, thin child with ginger hair and huge dark eyes in a solemn face under her Leghorn bonnet.