Chapter 1

Prelude

1784.

Baron Stephen Demarris was in a temper. “Are you a complete idiot, George.”

“Father, arithmetic is very hard. I passed Latin, and you made threats about that last term.”

“You passed Latin. You did not excel in it. And I am not the one making threats this time. When you return to Harrow, they will test you. If you do not pass that test, you will return on the next coach. Now, do you think that you can learn? Or should I beat it into you?”

“The master already tried that. A caning does not improve my memory.”

The baron approached the local vicar who was also the schoolmaster.

“School is out for the season, Milord.”

“George needs to learn arithmetic. Is there anyone in the village who could teach him?”

“Young Rob Worden was my best student in all the time I can remember, milord.”

Young Rob was a laborer on a local farm. The baron could easily top those wages. Rob was promised, but the farmer let him go at the baron’s inquiry as to when the lease on the farm was up for renewal. It was not for five years, but the farmer did not wish to risk the baron’s memory.

Rob was used to plying a hoe or a scythe from dawn to dusk. Hired for an easier task, he did not expect shorter hours. George did, but he did not choose to make that appeal to his father. Rob and George came to an agreement; satisfactory progress on one day meant that they would take their slates down to the orchard on the next day if it were dry. Otherwise they stayed in the attic schoolroom.

George graduated from Harrow, and went on to Oxford the following year.

“We have sent a blockhead to Oxford,” said the baron. Why not send a scholar as well?” The next year he offered to pay tuition and an allowance for Rob to attend Oxford. George was still there, but neither lad wished to renew the acquaintance.

As a peasant with a degree, Robert Worden saw few opportunities ahead of him. He took holy orders, and became a vicar in Somerset, far from his native Suffolk.

1792

Robert married Sophia, daughter of the vicar of a neighboring parish. She kept his house, and bore his children. If either was ever dissatisfied with the other, no neighbor ever heard of it.

Reverend Worden kept school for the children of his parish, and taught his own children not only the school subjects but Latin and Greek as well.

The Wordens were not lucky in their children, and only the first and third survived into adulthood, Richard, and Violet, who was born in 1795. Vicars were seldom well paid, and Worden was paid rather less than the average. He saved a small sum, though, and his son entered Oxford.

There was a little more set by for Violet’s dowry when she came of age. Violet was comely, but vicars seldom can afford to let that overrule the dowry. As a daughter of a Church of England priest, Violet was a gentlewoman; she could not marry lower. As the granddaughter of a peasant, she could hardly expect to marry higher. Besides which, she was unlikely to even meet many single gentlemen who were not clergy. Meanwhile, she helped her mother with the house and taught some of the younger children in her father’s school.

1811

Everything was going acceptably, if not swimmingly, when the village experienced a pestilential spring. Violet helped her mother tend to the sick until they both caught the disease. By the time Violet recovered, she was an orphan.

There was no room for Violet in the vicarage, and the only reason that she could stay until she had recovered was that the incumbent was irresponsibly lax in naming another vicar. She took her few belongings on an agonizing coach trip to London and another to Suffolk. Then she had to hire a carter to take her to her Uncle Daniel’s house.

When term ended, Richard joined her.

Her relatives expected her to work as they did, and she found herself without the skills to do that work. She finally found work as a pantry maid for the local baron -- ironically, a later Baron Demarris.

Richard worked for the same farmer as Uncle Daniel.

“What are we going to do?” Richard asked her one night. “The doctor’s payments sucked Father’s savings down. What you got for the harpsichord was nowhere near what it cost Father. Is the total enough for your dowry?”

“Well, it is enough -- just -- to pay your last year.”

“If I take my degree and then take orders, what will you do? I shan’t have enough to pay your dowry for years.”

“Well, the vicar of this parish is married,” Violet said. “Two of his children are married. I see no chance of a suitor, even if we save every farthing for a dowry. You, on the other hand, can take orders and have a life with the savings we have.”

“And what will you do?”

“Something,” Violet said forcefully. She could do a great deal, if she could not do what was wanted in this corner of England.

When the baron’s daughter visited, she brought her children and the oldest granddaughter’s governess, Violet caught the governess just a little tipsy and feeling generous.

“How did you land this job?” Violet asked.

“Punishment for my sins, and I have not committed them yet. I plan to, though. Have you heard that girl sing?”

Violet would not call it singing, but she had more serious questions.

“Who recommended you to Lady Charlotte?”

“There is an agency. London contains agencies for all sorts of occupations.”

With a little more wheedling, Violet got the name and address. She wrote to the agency.

1812

For the longest time, she received no answer. Then there was a chance, A Family in Shropshire had an opening if she could apply immediately. She dipped into her and Richard’s reserve to pay for the coaches and the meals on the way.

She showed up on the Montraven’s doorstep with fare back and a halfpenny more in her pocket. Lady Montraven asked her questions, but she also sounded desperate. When Violet said that she had some Greek, the lady openly scoffed. She asked to have her husband join them.

When she had written the alphabet for him, Viscount Albert accepted her claim. “Honestly, Hortensia, if she can do that much, she probably can do what she said. How was she to know the limits of my learning?”

“Well, I do not want Alice taught Greek, in any case.”

“If you did, milady,” Violet said, “I should not be suitable for that task. After all, the village butcher can probably read and write. You would not want him teaching those skills.”

So, she was hired as governess for Alice and -- almost as an afterthought -- Anne. Alice had a little more than a year to prepare for her Season. Mamselle had left with brief warning, and her leadership was now considered faulty. That Violet was daughter to a cleric was considered a point in her favor.

It was later, and from the daughters, that Violet learned that Mamselle would have a baby, not four months after she had left.

Violet was not staff, for all that she slept in the attic beside the schoolroom. Staff called her, “Miss Worden”; they called the girls “Lady Alice” and “Lady Anne.” Violet used their first names, and they called her “Miss.”

Soon, Parliament went into session, and the parents left for the Season.

Violet thought that the girls knew more French than she did. She did not bother them with her accent, but assigned them a half hour of conversation with each other every day. One day, she saw that the conversation was amusing them rather than boring them. Without showing the least sign of interest, she listened acutely. She did not know some of the words, but it was clear that they were being obscene.

“Stop now,” she said. Though it was early, that was how she ended the daily exercise.

“Music next?” asked Alice.

“No. Alice, go down to the kitchen and ask Cook for a knife. Then go out into the yard and cut two switches and bring them up here. If the switches are too weak, I shall cut them for myself, and you will not like the result.”

“You really thought I would not notice?” she asked Anne when Alice was on her way.

“We thought you were not that good at French. Those were special words that Mamselle used when she thought we were not listening.”

“Well, you will learn something from this day’s lessons. Sometimes, you think someone knows more than she knows. Sometimes you think that she knows less than she knows. It is unwise to risk much on either assumption, but the second one is an insult to the person you misjudge.”

When Alice returned, Violet had Anne bend over a stool, and gave her four good strokes. Then she gave six to Alice as the ringleader and the one who should have been more responsible.

“You notice that I beat your sister first?” she asked Alice. “That is because the anticipation is part of the punishment, and you deserved the greater punishment. Your delay on the way only increased your anticipation, and thus your punishment.” Then she made them practice orthography -- sitting on their stools -- for the time they would usually have music as well as their usual orthography lesson,

She found books on history and geography. She read them first and taught them after.

She asked Cook -- who was really the second cook; the Montravens had taken Cook with them to London -- what Lady Montraven would do about meal plans.

“Milady always talks to Cook after Friday luncheon. They plan the week’s menus together.”

“Well, you have Lady Alice here. Friday after luncheon, you shall sit down with her, her sister, and myself to plan out the meals for the next week. Since Lady Alice has not done this before, you will explain all the issues that must be addressed.”

After warning Anne that she was to listen and not speak, that is what they did. Alice scheduled all her favorite meals, and none of some other dishes, for the coming week. They ate richly.

On Tuesday, after music, she gave the girls leave to go out into the garden with one of the parlor maids to see that they did not run altogether wild. She went into the kitchen to see Cook.