‘These Mandevilles – have you ever met them?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But you know something about them?’
‘A little, yes.’
‘How?’
She hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision.
‘I am acquainted with a young woman who was formerly a governess with them.’
‘You mean I am taking the place of a friend of yours?’
I wondered if she had been my predecessor as Mr Blackstone’s spy.
‘She was dismissed last year. I believe there has been another since then.’
‘Two in a year. Are they ogres who eat governesses?’
Another fleeting twist of her lips.
‘Sir Herbert Mandeville has a black temper, and his mother-in-law, Mrs Beedle, has strict standards.’
Just as well, I thought, that Mr Blackstone only expected me to stay for a few weeks.
‘I might be wrong in telling you this,’ she said, ‘but you do not seem to me a person easily dismayed.’
I guessed that she was going beyond the limits set for her by Mr Blackstone and even offering me a kind of wary friendship.
‘How many children shall I be teaching?’
‘He has three from this marriage, two boys and a girl. The elder boy, the heir, is twelve.’
‘So there were other marriages?’
‘One. Sir Herbert’s first wife had several miscarriages and died in childbirth. He married his present wife, Lucasta, thirteen years ago. She was then a young widow with two children of her own, a boy and a girl. They are now both of age, live in the Mandeville household, and have taken his name.’
‘And this Lucasta, Lady Mandeville, she will be the one who decides whether to hire me?’
‘It’s possible that Mrs Beedle will decide. Her daughter relies heavily on her opinion.’
‘Why? Surely as the mistress of the house she may engage a governess for herself?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Was she rich when Sir Herbert married her?’
‘No, but she was regarded as a great beauty in her time. He needed to father a son to inherit the property and title.’
‘And she’d proved she could bear a son. How like an aristocrat, to choose a wife by the same principles as a brood mare.’
‘That is a most inappropriate sentiment for a governess.’
Later, we turned our attention to my appearance, which caused her more anxiety. She discovered my particular curse, that my hair is naturally crinkly and no amount of water or brushing will make it lie smoothly or stop it popping out of pins. In the end, we managed to trap it under my bonnet with the strings tied so tightly under my chin that I could hardly speak.
‘Good,’ Miss Bodenham said. ‘It will keep you quiet.’
We had decided that my lavender dress, worn with the white muslin tucker at the neck, was the more suitable one, though she insisted I must remove the bunch of silk flowers from the waist. My shoes were scratched from scrambling around at Calais, but would have to do, so I must tuck them away under my skirt as far as possible.
‘You can’t wear those stockings.’
‘Why not?’
I was pulling them on carefully. They were my only good pair.
‘Governesses don’t wear silk stockings.’
‘Very well. I’ll wear my blue thread ones.’
‘Blue stockings are even worse. They suggest unorthodox opinions. You’ll have to borrow a pair of mine.’
White cotton gone yellowish from much washing, darned knubbily around toes and heels. I had to garter them tightly to take out the wrinkles and what with that and the bonnet strings felt as thoroughly trussed as a Christmas goose. Miss Bodenham looked at me critically.
‘It will have to do. Be careful of stepping in gutters on the way and make sure you arrive ten minutes early.’ Then she added, unexpectedly, ‘Good luck.’
The house in St James’s Square had the elegant proportions of old King George’s time, an iron arch over the bottom of the steps with a candle-snuffer beside it, stone pots of blue hydrangeas with a thin maid watering them. She couldn’t have been much more than twelve years old and stepped aside to let me up the steps as if she expected to be kicked. As instructed, I was precisely ten minutes early. A footman – the same one who had resented the doorstep in Store Street – opened the door to me and led me to a small drawing room overlooking the square, where I was to wait until summoned. If I had been, as I pretended, a timid applicant for a much-needed post, it would have unnerved me thoroughly. In truth, it almost did. I got back some of my self-possession by reminding myself that I was a spy and that this family, this very house perhaps, could tell me something about my father’s death. I must keep my mouth shut, my eyes and ears more wide open than they’d ever been.
The drawing room told me nothing that I didn’t know already – that the Mandevilles were rich and proud of their ancestry. For evidence of wealth, the room bulged and writhed with marquetry, carving, inlaid work and gilding as if the sight of a plain piece of wood were an offence against society. Swags of golden flowers and fruit, probably the work of Chippendale, surrounded a great oval mirror over the fireplace. Golden, goat-footed satyrs gambolled up the edges of two matching cabinets in oyster veneer with veined red marble tops supporting a pair of large porcelain parrots in purple and green. The chairs, gilt-framed and needlepoint embroidered, looked as comfortable as thorn hedges for sitting on, so I stood and stared back at the Mandeville family portraits that encrusted the silk-covered walls. Hatchet-like noses and smug pursed mouths seemed to be the distinguishing features of the men. There was the first baronet, with his full wig and little soft hands, and his lady who, from her expanse of white bosom and complaisant expression, was probably the reason King Charles gave the family their title. An eighteenth-century baronet stared at the world from between white marble pillars with palm trees to the side, presumably the Mandeville West Indian plantations. One portrait near the door clearly belonged to the present century and seemed more amiable than the rest. It showed the head and shoulders of a beautiful golden-haired woman in a blue muslin dress, hair twined with blue ribbons and ropes of pearls. She was young and smiling, eyes on something just out of the picture. The lightness of her dress suggested the fashion of twenty years or so ago. Puzzlingly, she seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think why. I was still staring at her when the door opened and the footman told me to follow him.
Two women sat facing me, side by side in gilt-framed armchairs, their backs to a window draped with heavy curtains
