The New Girl at Uskweirs Manor

a pastoral romance by Miriam Robern

The Heart Wants

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Sussex, June 1813

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The evening following Theresa Chesterley’s sudden departure, Amelia dashed off a letter which struck the balance, she felt, between fond affection and her growing panic at her lover’s disappearance.

Had country life disagreed with Theresa’s sensibilities?  Had Mother taken Theresa aside and said something pointed and cutting?  Or had Amelia herself been impetuous and presumptive in sharing her fantasy of domestic lesbian bliss, and then without any warning all but shoved Theresa directly into it?

There was no real mystery as to what had spooked the woman.  Amelia hadn’t even asked Theresa’s thoughts on marriage in general before dumping her impossible dreams on her.

She put none of that in the letter, no reiteration of her matrimonial fantasies and no acknowledgement that those dreams might have been too much.  Instead she communicated her hope that Theresa’s trip home had been at least uneventful if not necessarily pleasant, thanked her for the visit, and mentioned—briefly but pointedly—her surprise at the alacrity of Theresa’s departure.  She conducted the woman all her best wishes and, after a moment of hesitation, signed it Your Duchess Regent.

The letter went out on the evening mail coach, and very well might arrive at Theresa’s London address before the woman herself would.  Amelia resigned herself to wait for the response and climbed into a bed that had never felt more empty.

---

It was a week later—no letter—that Gregory looked up at Amelia on their morning walk and asked, “Why does our mother not want to see us?”

The lady in question had just come into view, sitting atop another hillock with her stool and easel, probably distant enough to feel unreachable to the boy.  Amelia gave him a weak smile.  “I don’t know if that’s true, dear.”

“It is,” opined Eustace from where he was, from a standing position, rolling himself along the side of the hedgerow that followed the path.  Amelia had winced to watch him do so at first—the leaves were sharp and a little barbed—but he seemed to enjoy leaning into the shaped hedge, and it had become unremarkable over time.  She still had to pluck leaves out of his hair before they returned to the house, though.  “Mother doesn’t like us.  Father did, but he didn’t like being at home.”  He paused his rolling and walked alongside them, brow furrowed as he thought.  “Perhaps he only liked us in small portions, and that’s why he disliked staying at home too long.”

“Your father was a very busy man,” Amelia heard herself say.  “He had great ambition.”

Eustace gave her a look.  “Did you know him?”

Did she know her own brother?  She was surprised by the answer: “Not well.”

“But Mother,” Gregory reminded the both of them as to the part of the conversation he cared about.  “If she didn’t see us all day, she’d be happy.  All week!”  He looked uncertainly from Amelia to Eustace and back.  “Does she not like us?”

Amelia sighed.  She had resolved not to lie to the boys, especially after hearing the ice cream story, but this was more than fraught.

Looking down at either of them, on either side of her—they’d both linked hands with her at some point in the conversation—she remembered her own youth.  Raised as a boy, told nothing about motherhood, about womanhood: such details had been withheld like sacred mysteries.  And when she had finally become herself and other women began speaking with her in confidence under the aegis of their shared sex… all those mysteries had been revealed as tragedies of circumstance and social pressure.  Secrets not shared with boys because of shame, and probably the hope of preserving their childish innocence by maintaining their boyish ignorance.  And then the boys grow into men (most of the time, at least) and stride through the world, largely unaware of the extent to which they walk through a garden of tragedies.

Amelia wanted better for her boys.  Wanted better from her boys.

“Not all women are maternal in nature,” she said carefully.  Both boys’ heads snapped up to listen, having apparently resigned themselves, in her long pause, to adult silence instead of an actual answer.  “But most are forced to have children.  And when you are not maternal by nature, but have motherhood chosen for you… it can be… uncomfortable.”  She squeezed their hands.  “Which is very different from not loving her children.  Does that make sense?”

“No,” came Eustace’s immediate reply.

“The two of you love each other,” Amelia tried again.  “I’ve seen it, don’t even try to pretend otherwise.  But you are not always kind to each other.  Especially when you are tired, or hungry, or angry about a missing grenadier.”

Gregory giggled; Eustace had lost a toy soldier the day before and had made it everyone’s problem.  He’d blamed Gregory until his younger brother found the painted lead figurine under Eustace’s pillow.  The elder boy muttered darkly and performatively, but Amelia thought she’d caught an embarassed smile on his lips before he looked pointedly away.

“Imagine you are always angry,” she went on, “about something that you can’t change and never will be changed.  Imagine how that might make you act, even with those you love.”

Eustace growled, “So Mother is angry she had us?”

Gregory double-stepped to look across Amelia to his brother.  “Mother is angry about losing Father,” he corrected quietly.

Their governess could have left it at that, but it felt like a half-truth.  “Both can be true,” she told them gently.  “She is very angry about losing your father.  She is also angry that the life she thought she’d have… never quite happened.”

“She wanted to go paint on the Continent,” Eustace said, remembering the overheard altercation in the conservatory.

“Life is often unkind to women with ambitions outside of being a wife and a mother,” she told them.  “So perhaps you can understand why they might be angry.”

“Is that why you’re a governess?” asked Gregory.  “Instead of a wife and mother?”

Amelia found her lips twisting ruefully.  “I may yet marry,” she said, even if the words felt like knives coming up her throat.  “And may even raise children of my own.  But in the mean time—” she squeezed their hands again “—I am quite content borrowing the two of you.”

Gregory giggled, and even Eustace looked up at her with a smile.  The elder boy detached himself to roll along the hedgerow again; his brother pulled on Amelia’s hand.

Amelia bent down and Gregory cupped his hands around her ear to share a secret: “I wish that you were our mother.”

She couldn’t help herself scooping up the boy to give him a crushing hug.  She also took that time to try to think of a good response to the boy’s pronouncement, not that she found one.  Instead, she said: “If I do ever get to raise a child, I hope they’ll be half as sweet as you.”

---

My dear D. R.—

Your company this last week did me more good than I have the talent to express in a letter.  You are a woman of many charms, and I am both glad and honoured to have enjoyed them.

I also enjoyed spending time with your young charges, who do your attention and tutelage great credit.

In your recent letter you asked after my precipitous departure.  I do apologize if I seemed to act in haste.  I had delivered Mr. Hawley’s box of lenses (and that gentlemen was eager to have it promptly returned along with Eustace’s order) as well as performed my London history for the boys.  My charges fulfilled and with no wish to overstay my welcome, I took my leave.

On that subject of welcome, please conduct my thanks to Lady Suffolk; her hospitality was nothing short of superlative, especially since she did not know me from Eve.  I cannot imagine I will enjoy such hospitality again, but I will always look fondly on my time there.

Yours,

Theresa Chesterley

The damn letter, which had taken more than two full weeks to materialise, prompted more questions than it answered.

It offered some polite admiration, but the missive seemed absent any affection.

Overstay her welcome?  Hadn’t Amelia made it clear to Theresa that “Youngest” had made it clear to Mother that she should be afforded every hospitality?  Three days fell well short of that mark!

At least Theresa had not used the easily available phrasing that she had no reason to stay once box and history were delivered. That may have crushed Amelia’s heart to paste.

Amelia read the letter over again, more than once.

Between the oblique references to ‘charms’ and abbreviating ‘Duchess Regent,’ did she think that Amelia’s post was being read?  (For a moment, she considered if her mother would actually read the governess’s post, only to conclude that if she had done so, she would not have bothered to re-affix the wax seal.)

Worst of all, nowhere did Theresa suggest or even imply that they should ever repeat the experience.

Amelia considered dashing the letter into the fire.  Instead, she read it again.

---

“Miss Wright, a word,” called Mother one evening after dinner.  Iris had just swept out the door after half an hour of tight-lipped conversation and avoiding eye contact.

Amelia had risen from her seat but not yet left the room, which left her standing while the Lady Suffolk still sat at her place at the head of the table.  Exactly as her mother had planned, no doubt; her daughter repressed a smirk.  “Yes, milady?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that young Eustace has taken to reading with spectacles,” the lady noted, voice strangely even and for once unreadable.

“Yes, milady,” Amelia answered with a smile. If Mother disapproved—thought spectacles inappropriate for a boy, or for a future lord—she had to quash that impulse with as much enthusiasm and cheer as she could squeeze into the conversation.  “They make reading much easier for him, and he’s discovered a surprising enthusiasm for the written word.”

Mother sniffed.  “The enthusiasms of boys are fickle things.  We shall see how long his infatuation lasts.”

Amelia bobbed her head.  “As you say, milady.  But I have my hopes.”

“Where did they come from?” the lady asked next.  “The spectacles, not your tenuous hopes.”

“Miss Chesterley brought them with her,” she answered with another smile, but this one went brittle entirely too quickly.  With a knot in her stomach, she said, “That was the chief purpose of her visit.” Not, apparently, seeing Amelia, according to Theresa herself.  She realized she was still talking: “She collected a box of spectacles of various powers from a Mister Hawley, along with instructions—“

Mother waved a hand; she didn’t want these particulars.  “Mister Hawley was convinced to part with an entire box of precision-ground lenses so that an untrained woman could try them on a boy still in short pants?”

Convinced, yes, by a large sum of money that Julian had arranged to sit in surety that the box would come back intact.  Hawley had wanted to come, himself; Amelia had wanted an excuse for Theresa to visit.  But her mother didn’t need to hear those particulars, either.  She pasted on a smile.  “I understand your Youngest directed Mister Clark to arrange the details.”

Her Mother shook her head softly, looking towards the door out of the dining room.  “I thought he’d never read,” she breathed.  “A dullard and, inevitably, an ignoramus.  In line to inherit.  I had steeled myself for such… disappointment to the family name.”

Amelia stilled where she stood.  Her Mother had never been so candid, not with the governess foisted into her household.  She felt like if she moved, she’d startle the lady out of her confession.

“I’ve met many men of name and title,” the lady went on, “and in most of them, I think, I could find something to respect.  But there are always some who fall short of the… rather generous standard I extend to gentlemen.” She nodded to the dining room door, to the house beyond, to Eustace’s bedroom, upstairs.  “I thought he’d be one of them.”

Her mother’s gaze flicked from the door to Amelia, and the lady smoothed away the storm of emotion on her face.  “Perhaps a fresh perspective on the boy and his tutelage was not so bad an idea after all.”

Amelia smiled softly and dropped a gentle curtsy.  It was as close to a compliment as she expected to get from the lady of the house.

When her mother smirked in response, Amelia tamped down her surprise.  When she then chuckled softly, Amelia willed herself to not look out the windows to see if the world was ending.  “How did Youngest even know to do it?” her mother asked in wonder.  “It could not have been you, Miss Wright; there simply hasn’t been the time for you to see Eustace’s struggle, send post to Iceland, and then Mister Clark to receive a reply and arrange the details for Miss Chesterley’s visit last week.”

Amelia’s mouth went dry.  How had she been so careless?  Too much, too fast; she’d shown her hand.  How much did her mother suspect?

But Mother was saying, “Youngest was always perceptive.  And curious about so many things.  What impressive foresight, don’t you think, Miss Wright?”

Was this a trap?  Or was her mother actually complimenting her, albeit more directly than she thought she was?  She nodded, swallowing so that she could reply.  “Yes, milady.  And clear sight for Eustace.”

The lady of the house bestowed a tight smile on her.  “Quite.” She rose from her own seat.  “Now all you have to do, Miss Wright, is cram three years of reading into three months, before term begins.  I imagine you have your work cut out for you.”

Amelia dropped another curtsy.  She knew a dismissal when she heard it.  “Indeed, milady.  Good evening.”

“Sleep well, Miss Wright,” her Mother bade her, already moving towards the door.  “You’ll need to be well-rested to dive into all those books in the morning.”

---

Perhaps because of her mother’s encouragement, Amelia packed three different books for Eustace to read under the shade of their favourite copse of trees the following day.  She tried not to push too hard, and he gamefully attempted all of them, to various degrees of success and interest.  Eventually it was his brother who peeled him away to play muskateers with sticks.  Amelia let them fence, considering it a productive day.

An hour later, the three of them turned the last corner in the path that eventually led them back to the house.  There before them was Iris, easel and canvas over her back, bag of paints and brushes at her side.  Also returning to the house, she was perhaps fifty feet ahead of them and moving slower; it would only be a matter of time before they caught up.

“Mother!” Gregory shouted and ran to greet her.  Even after their long walk and the dozen or so trees he’d climbed, the boy was still a ball of energy.  Despite his enthusiastic scramble, however, Amelia could detect the hitch of tension in his shoulders.  Would his mother be happy he was invading her walk back to the house?

Iris paused and turned toward him, too far ahead for Amelia to read her expression.  He wrapped his arms around her middle, causing her to throw her arm and elbow out to balance herself under her painterly load.  Nearly dropping her precious supplies might have upset the lady, but Amelia could hear her laugh.

The two of them exchanged a few words and then she handed Gregory her bag.  He took up the load as if it were a great honour, and strode forward with weighty purpose.

By that time, Eustace had caught up with her.  They talked for a moment and, after a noticeably longer hesitation, she handed over the easel and canvas.

As Eustace tromped away, careful under her precious load, Amelia came up beside the lady.  “Good afternoon, Lady Marbury.”

“Miss Wright,” the lady replied, doing little more than acknowledging her presence.  But then the lady fell into step beside her.

It was clear to Amelia that Iris had not made up her mind how to handle her, or if she even needed to be handled, after she had walked in on the late-night tryst three weeks past.  She alternated warm and cool, sometimes even going so far as to smile at the governess who’d promised to keep her secret.  Other times, however, Amelia caught her staring daggers across a room when she thought she was unobserved, and there had been a few curt, if not actually cutting, remarks over breakfast and dinner.

All of which made Amelia’s job—her actual job, as the boy’s governess—that much more difficult.  There were a raft of things she wanted to discuss with her charges’ mother: major issues like her having lied to her children, rather cavalierly, for so long, as well minor issues like supplying the boys with adventure novels that were by no means academic in nature.  All of it was impossible to broach if Iris still viewed her with suspicion and distrust.

More than anything, though, she wanted to encourage the lady to spend a little time with her children.  They shouldn’t be telling their governess of less than two months that they’d rather she were their mother.  The trio had a long history—the boys’ whole lives—and as dour as Eustace might be about his memories, Gregory’s rosier recollections strongly implied that it hadn’t all been frustration and neglect.

If Iris wanted to grieve her husband by painting, that was fine.  But surely she could check in with the boys most evenings, if only for a few minutes.  It would make such a difference.

And here was perhaps an opportunity: two brief, positive encounters with her boys, with the both of them industriously pattering ahead of them.  They were good boys (most days), and perhaps she’d like to spend just a little more time with them.

“They’re always so eager to help,” Amelia observed, with entirely unfeigned affection.

“They are,” the other lady allowed. “When they’re not trying to kill each other.” The addendum was offered so drily it took Amelia a moment to realize the lady was amused.

“Brothers,” Amelia smiled wanly.  Even if she hadn’t been one, she’d had one.

Iris looked sidelong at her.  “Oh, I know all too well.  I had five, growing up.”

Amelia lifted her eyebrows.  “Any sisters?”

“None,” the lady groaned.  “I begged my father to send me away to a girls’ seminary, just to escape them all.”

“I can only imagine.” And she had, even if her dreams at Eton had been more about being at any other school than that one.  A school for girls was so fantastic a dream that she had reserved it for the longest, loneliest nights.

The boys had disappeared up ahead, ducking through a trellis-screened passage that led into the service yard and thence into the house.  “Propriety be damned,” Iris scoffed, but it sounded a little like a chuckle around the edges.  

“They haunt the kitchens when they’re not out with me,” Amelia giggled.  “Gregory wakes up almost as early as Cook and ‘helps’ her by eating the tarts that aren’t pretty enough to be put on the platter.”

“Surely Enid’s cook is not so sloppy as to make ugly tarts.”

Amelia smirked.  “Not on accident, at least.  She likes spoiling him a little.” They’d reached the trellis, and she raised her eyebrows at Iris.  “The boys are right, though, that this is the quickest way inside.”

The lady rolled her eyes, good-naturedly.  “I am just following my easel,” she explained, and ducked down the stone-lined path behind the trellis.

The shade was cool and green, the morning’s brief rain still seeped into the brick wall that ran along one side of the servants’ passage.  Amelia could feel the tension unwind from her shoulders as she followed after Iris.

But then the lady was brought up short, loosing a surprised and strangled cry.  Amelia ran into her back.  “What?”

Before them the hidden servants’ passage widened, stacks of baskets stored along either side, and among them stood Mister Grant, the estate agent, and Mister Hawthorne, the estate shepherd.  Both were hurriedly pulling up their coats; Grant was trying to simultaneously tie his cravat.  Hawthorne’s short naval ponytail had come undone and his greying hair splayed out all around his face.  The men huffed and stammered, trying to find an excuse that would obscure the fact that they had just been pressed up against the wall, kissing.

Mister Grant was, Amelia realized, trying to tie his cravat in order to hide the blossoming bruise of a love bite on his neck.  “Lady Marbury, Miss Grant,” he said finally, and dipped his head in a little perfunctory bow.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Amelia answered, thinking: I have to stop walking in on people’s clandestine lovemaking.

“We were just… inspecting the… baskets,” Hawthorne all but mumbled, knowing how ridiculous he sounded.

“It’s perfectly clear what the two of you were doing,” Iris spat.  “Did my boys see—“

“They tore through here at a gallop,” Grant answered with a shake of his head. “I don’t think they saw the baskets, let alone us.”

“What are your names?” Iris asked, voice tight and resigned.

Both men filled their lungs to answer, knowing that Iris would report them to the lady of the house, that they’d lose their positions, that they wouldn’t find another one, not at their age and not with the reputation that would follow them, that they were almost certainly looking at a future of penury in the form of Iris Sommerset.

“We don’t need to know their names,” Amelia put in before either of them could answer.  Iris looked back at her, eyebrow raised high.  She spoke quickly but gently: “Lady Marbury, they haven’t done anyone any harm.  We’re the ones who aren’t suposed to be here.” She bobbed her head at the men.  “Excuse us for invading your privacy.”

Iris stared at her, agog.  “Miss Wright, we can’t just overlook—“

Amelia nodded to the two men, hoping that they’d take the hint and take their leave so that they could not be interrogated for their names.  She said soothing things to Iris, trying to talk her down.  “It’s nothing to worry yourself over, milady.  The heart wants what it wants.  Who are we to judge?”

But the Lady Marbury’s eyes flashed.  “The heart wants…?” she sputtered.  “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Just let them go, milady,” Amelia pleaded, and was pleased to see the two men were, indeed, creeping backwards out of the awkward scene.  “I promise nobody will be scandalized.  Nobody has to know.”

Amelia’s mouth was running like a babbling brook, simultaneously trying to distract and placate the lady. She nearly said again, “The heart wants what it wants,” and stumbled to a stop.  The last time she’d said the same to Iris, she’d just walked in on the woman’s tryst with the Master of Stable.

Iris evidently remembered the phrase, and drew exactly the wrong conclusion as to what the governess meant to imply with her repetition.  Amelia’s silence for that night—in exchange for Iris’ silence today.  But before Amelia could clarify, Iris backed away.

“Nobody has to know,” the lady echoed, all but snarling.  “Fine.  As you like it, Miss Wright.” And without looking back, she stalked away, back out of the servant’s passage, out to the grounds, and presumably to a respectable door on the ground floor.

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