Page 17 of The Good Fortune of Miss Robbins

He stared pensively into the dark trees, smoking his pipe.

“When I was fifteen years old,” I said, remembering, “I spent the summer with a family who lived near the school. I had thought the daughters, who were about my age, were my good friends, but things were not as I’d perceived them, and it was a very long summer for me.”

Lord Brookhaven was looking at me now.

“I thought I would be welcomed into a cheerful home, where Icould see what life as a family was like, but I soon realized there was something unsettling about that family. My friends, Rebecca and Christina Mead, resented their brother George’s attentions toward me. I neither desired nor encouraged his attentions, but that didn’t seem to matter. And his mother hated me as well, forcing me to do more than my share of the work around the house, work that her daughters had been accustomed to performing. I spent the whole summer afraid of the brother and feeling hated by the sisters.”

I shivered and pulled my shawl up to my neck and held it closed over my chest. “It was a terrible experience, as bad as you might have expected me to have at a boarding school, and I was quite glad to get back to Mrs. Southey’s school.” I let out a deep breath, wondering why I told him that.

“That does sound like a very bad experience. But I am glad you escaped that brother. There are many evil men in this world who prey on women, I’m afraid. But I have made you melancholy, forcing you to speak of the past. I have a tendency to dwell on the past, one of my many faults. Forgive me, Miss Robbins.”

“There is nothing to forgive. I am well.”

He stood there holding his pipe and staring quite soberly at me. “And you have no family? None at all?”

“When I was eighteen, Mrs. Southey allowed me to read all the documents that had been brought with me when I came to her. There was some information about my parents and grandparents, who were all deceased, and a letter from my father’s solicitor saying he would be sending an annual sum for my upkeep at the school, with the balance being paid to me on my eighteenth birthday. I received twenty-five pounds, all that was left of the amount my parents had entrusted to the solicitor. And as far as he knew, I had no other family.”

“What was this solicitor’s name?”

“I remember it was Graham . . . perhaps Gilbert Graham? No, Garrett Graham.” Why did he want to know that?

He smoked a while longer, then said, “It is cold. We should go inside before Mrs. Merryweather sends out a search party for you.”

With that, we started back toward the house in silence.

William’s heart burned within him. He walked toward the house with Miss Charlotte Robbins beside him as he dwelt on the many emotions he’d experienced while listening to her. Never had he felt anything like this for any of the society darlings that he met in London. Miss Robbins was all truth and justice, courageous yet kind and compassionate and good. Other young ladies he knew were tepid, jaundiced in their opinions, self-centered and conceited, and never talked about their true feelings and concerns.

He knew his feelings were a bit extreme, but he wanted to protect her, shield her from the world. He didn’t care that she was only a lowly governess, a poor orphan. Find him the richest duke’s daughter and she wouldn’t be half—nay, one-fifth—the lady Miss Charlotte Robbins was.

How unfair was life. But he, the Earl of Brookhaven, could easily raise Miss Charlotte Robbins’s level in society. He could give her the life she’d only dreamed of. Samuel and Annabelle had their own inheritance from both their mother’s and Father’s estate. They would be taken care of. But Charlotte Robbins had nothing and no family.

He would give her the happiness that had been denied her all her life. Why not? She was a pure soul, and many impure souls had everything this world could offer. Besides, just thinking of seeing her thriving and happy, experiencing things she’d always wished to experience, gave him such a burst of joy that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to think of anything else until he could see it come to pass.

But he was getting ahead of himself. She might not want for herself what he wanted for her. She deserved to be able to choose.

He felt something new and different when he was in Miss Robbins’s presence. There were times it had completely driven his melancholyaway, and wise or unwise, he knew he would not stop until he’d made sure Miss Robbins was truly happy.

He’d missed opportunities to do something good in the past—spoiled, selfish, only son of an earl that he was—but he would not let this one pass him by. He would not be like his father.

Seven

I frequently encountered Lord Brookhaven when I was on a walk. Often he was also taking a walk, but sometimes he was returning from a ride. Other times it seemed he must be deliberately seeking me out, although I knew that was unlikely. I’d sometimes been called pretty by my friends, and Mrs. Southey said my manners were very pleasing, but I was not prideful enough to think an earl would be interested in me as more than a mild amusement for when he had no one else with whom to converse.

Indeed, who else did he have for intelligent conversation? I suppose there was his steward, who was obviously a man of letters, but also was very old and dull, as far as I could ascertain. Mrs. Merryweather was not a talkative woman, and I could imagine the conversations they had were quite brief. The butler, Mr. Mims, I wasn’t sure about, but the rector was probably Lord Brookhaven’s friend, as was usually the case with the rector and his patron. But I’d never seen the earl in conversation with either of them. In fact, he didn’t seem to be a particularly agreeable or friendly person in general, which made it even more astounding that he conversed so congenially with me.

Today as I rounded a bend in the garden path, I encountered Lord Brookhaven as I often did. He was staring down at the ground while smoking his pipe.

“Miss Robbins. Come here and see this little hedgehog.”

I stepped closer. A little spiny animal was rooting around in the leaves two feet from the toe of Lord Brookhaven’s boot.

“He is very darling.”

“I had one as a pet when I was a boy.”

“Did you?”

“It lived quite well in the little house I made for it for a year and a half. But when I went off to school, someone released it outside and I never saw it again.”