“Miss Mallory?” came the voice of Bartholomew, cutting through the gentle voice of Anna as she read aloud from the works of Homer. We were on the Odyssey. The girl stopped speaking and dropped her eyes to the floor as my cousin entered the schoolroom. I turned from my position, standing and listening to my charge, and faced my employer.
“Sir?” I replied, inclining my head, feeling off-kilter, as usual. He always had the ability to unnerve me, and somehow I always felt as though he could read the thoughts which leapt to my mind when he was near, or when he was not. Since his humiliation – such an apt phrase – of Master Brown, I had harboured a great deal of unfriendly and disapproving thoughts of my employer, but as ever they mingled with those I had for him which were light and sweet. Such a confusion was my mind, and for some reason I had the feeling he wanted it that way. A creature sure of purpose is hard to hunt. One confused, not knowing which way to turn, is easier to catch.
Catch? I thought. Do you think him a hound after a rabbit?
Certainly it felt like that, at times.
It was the day after he had so cruelly disclosed Brown’s name to me, the day after I had found poor Anna, pale and crying in her bedroom for discovering that she was becoming a woman. The flush that lit my cheeks that day upon hearing his voice was at once formed for shame at the anger I felt towards him, although why I should have cause to feel bad myself for such an emotion I knew not, and at the same time, remembering the way he had spoken to me before that cruel disclosure, as if we were equals, as though he respected my opinion. Such small interest in me it took for me to think on him kindly! That too I resented, and felt was pathetic, and it was, but if you had gone your whole life being overlooked, you would understand how great a thing it is to draw notice, not just from anyone, but from someone your foolish heart admires.
“I have a matter to discuss with you, Miss Mallory,” he said, walking a step into the room and making a slight, yet oddly wholly arrogant, gesture to Anna which she recognised easily as a dismissal. She left the room without word or question. I looked up at my employer, remembering all too well the last time he and I had been alone in this room. I walked carefully to the other side of the desk, pretending I was rearranging, tidying the books upon it. When I looked up at him there was a smile on his face, and I am sure he easily recognised my actions as a method to put distance between us for my own safety, but he did not seek to move from the doorway where he hovered, staring at me.
I stood on my side of the desk and lifted my face to him. I stared him in the eyes, determination within mine. If he understood my actions, so much the better, for at least he understood I was not encouraging the type of behaviour which he had demonstrated the last time.
Before I had gone to be a governess, I had been warned by several mistresses of the school I had attended to be careful of the loose opinion many men, and indeed women, had of governesses. A single woman, even one raised to be a lady and a lady of accomplishment, was still an unknown quantity in a house when she came to it as a stranger. We governesses, we were a strange breed, adrift in the world in a certain respect, taken into a house without a father, brother or husband to introduce or protect us. Some older mistresses who had been governesses in the past warned in private that such a confusion of the natural order of social thinking could lead certain men to believe that governesses placed in their house were given to them as a plaything, and as such I must always be on guard. Perhaps this was why, when Bartholomew had taken liberties with my station and our relationship, I had taken it more in my stride than I might have done had I not gone into the world armed with such understanding.
Something in me said that I should not have to be the one watchful of my behaviour. If all the men of the world could control themselves, we would not have this issue at all.
All the same, however, being warned of something and experiencing it are two entirely different things. I wanted no more confusion in the matter. No matter my feelings for my handsome cousin, I was not going to become a plaything to be used and then discarded. I wanted no illegitimate babe within my womb, nor to find myself destitute or homeless when he did not want a woman he had had an affair with around the house to shame him anymore. But I had to be careful too; at the moment he was my employer, and should he feel the need, could dismiss me without reference, or worse, promising a bad reference, condemning me to a life without future hope of earning a wage to support myself. I did not want that and knowing that stark truth made me realise that governesses who had given in to a master’s demands might well have done so as they felt they were held to ransom by their employer and had no other option but to submit to his carnal demands.
I was reassured, however, that since that altercation in the schoolroom, no other incidents had occurred. All the same, I was not willing to give them leave to. At night I locked my door and secured it as best I was able with a chair, for I had heard of women visited at night by employers who would use the cover of darkness and the slumber of the other members of the house to achieve what they wanted of a woman by force. During the day I kept myself at a distance, physically, as well as I was able. Mentally, however, was another matter.
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