77. The Poor Governess - The Eternal Collection , livre ebook

M-Y Books - Barbara Cartland

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81 pages

English

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Lara, the beautiful red-headed daughter of Lord Hurlington, a country Parson, is horrified to hear that her friend, Jane, is on the verge of a breakdown after being horribly pursued by the lecherous Lord Magor, a regular guest at The Priory, the fabulous stately home of the Marquis of Keyston, to whose niece Jane is Governess. Determined to teach Lord Magor a lesson and to seek out ideas for the novel she is writing about contemporary Society, Lara takes Jane’s place as Governess to ten year old Georgina. But, although Lord Magor is every bit as predatory as Jane had described, the Marquis is awe-inspiring, handsome and, as she soon discovers, much kinder and considerate than she or Jane had ever imagined. Just as Lara realises that she has fallen in deeply love with the Marquis, the wicked Lord Magor traps her in a locked room. Only her great-grandfather’s duelling pistol can save her. And on the spur of the moment, it seems that Lara has killed her cruel pursuer and will be taken away by the Police to prison for murder as well as dashing all hope of a second kiss from the magnificent Marquis who has stolen her heart. "Barbara Cartland was the world’s most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime, of which no less than 644 were romantic novels with worldwide sales of over 1 billion copies and her books were translated into 36 different languages.As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, theatrical plays and books of advice on life, love, vitamins and cookery.She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and it was called Jigsaw. It became an immediate bestseller and sold 100,000 copies in hardback in England and all over Europe in translation.Between the ages of 77 and 97 she increased her output and wrote an incredible 400 romances as the demand for her romances was so strong all over the world.She wrote her last book at the age of 97 and it was entitled perhaps prophetically The Way to Heaven. Her books have always been immensely popular in the United States where in 1976 her current books were at numbers 1 & 2 in the B. Dalton bestsellers list, a feat never achieved before or since by any author.Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime and will be best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels so loved by her millions of readers throughout the world, who have always collected her books to read again and again, especially when they feel miserable or depressed.Her books will always be treasured for their moral message, her pure and innocent heroines, her handsome and dashing heroes, her blissful happy endings and above all for her belief that the power of love is more important than anything else in everyone’s life."

Sujets

Downton Abbey

Mills & Boon

Thomas Hardy

Jane Austen

Harlequin

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Publié par	M-Y Books
Date de parution	01 janvier 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782134442
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0222€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Author’s Note
The Governess’s lot in the Victorian and Edwardian era was often miserable and frightening as I have described in this novel. My mother always said she was so sorry for them as if they talked they were considered ‘forward’ and if they were silent ‘dull’.
A pretty Governess was also too often considered fair game and I remember hearing a well-known ‘dasher’ of my mother’s generation saying,
"There was a jolly pretty Governess in one house I visited. I was considering seducing her, but thought it unfair. Then, damn me, I learnt that my best friend had got there first!"
Between upstairs and downstairs and often ignored by both, a Governess was lonely and isolated.
But there was no other career open to respectable young women at that time except to be a companion to an old and usually disagreeable Dowager.
CHAPTER ONE 1887
The door opened and a voice said sharply,
"Come along, Miss Lara, it’s a nice day and you should be out getting’ the air instead of bein’ cooped up here scribblin’ your head off!"
The Honourable Lara Hurley raised her face to say laughingly,
"1 am scribbling my head off to some purpose, Nanny, and when I am famous you will be proud of me."
Nanny, who had been with the family for over twenty years, merely snorted disparagingly and, coming into the room, picked up a scarf that was on one chair, a sun-bonnet on another and several books that had been thrown onto the floor.
Lara sat back in her chair and exclaimed,
"Oh, Nanny, now you have broken the thread of what I was going to say and I am having such trouble with this chapter anyway."
"Why you should want to write a book when the house be full of them already is beyond my comprehension," Nanny replied stoutly.
"You say that now, but when it is published you will be the first person who will want me to sign a copy for you."
Nanny sniffed as if that was very unlikely and Lara went on,
"It’s all very well, Nanny, but what else can I do to make money? And, as you well know, we need it!"
"It’s not the sort of occupation that’ll bring in much money," Nanny commented. "From all I’ve heard, famous authors have always starved in garrets before they had their books published."
"You are quite right," Lara said, "and, although I am not starving, thanks to you, I am desperately in need of a new gown and, if I have to go to Church in the same bonnet for another five years, I am sure it will fall to pieces while I am singing the psalms and you will really be ashamed of me!"
Nanny did not reply and Lara went on,
"Not that there is anybody in the Church who would notice what I am wearing! And seeing how dull and uneventful this village is, is it surprising that I have to use my imagination to find excitement?"
"I’m not goin’ to say you shouldn’t use your imagination, Miss Lara," Nanny said tartly, "but you look pale and it’s fresh air you need to put them roses back in your cheeks and I can’t think why you don’t take up gardenin’ or sketchin’, as other young ladies do."
"Which young ladies?" Lara enquired. "There is none of my age around here, as you are well aware."
Because she thought that she was at the worst of the argument, Nanny walked to the door.
"I can’t stay here gossipin’ all day, Miss Lara," she said. "I’ve got your father’s dinner to prepare and the so-called chicken old Jacobs has killed be so tough it’ll have to be boiled for hours before you can get your teeth into it!"
Nanny did not wait for a reply, but went from the study, shutting the door behind her and therefore did not hear Lara laugh.
The toughness of the chickens was an everlasting bone of contention between Nanny and the odd job man who stoked the boiler, planted the vegetables in the garden and cleaned out the stables.
Lara often wondered what they would do without him, for she was quite certain that they would find no one else who would do what Jacobs did for so small a wage.
‘Money! Money!’ she thought to herself now. ‘It’s not the ‘root of all evil’, it’s the cause of all discomfort and worry!’
It seemed ridiculous, she often thought, that her father had come into the family title, but with not a penny to go with it.
As the younger son of the third Lord Hurlington, he had gone into the Church while his older brother Edward, as was traditional, had served in the Grenadier Guards, which was the family Regiment.
When Edward died in Egypt, not of wounds but of sand-fly fever, the Reverend Arthur Hurlington had become the heir to the Barony.
But when Lara’s grandfather had died, he had left a mass of debts, which were only partially cleared by the sale of a family house and its contents.
Because he was conscientious and also honourable, the new Lord Hurlington worked valiantly trying to pay off the debts that remained out of his very small stipend.
This meant that his wife and daughter had to pinch and save every penny and such necessities as a new gown or even a new bonnet were all expected to wait until in some far distant future they were clear of the millstone round their necks.
"How could Grandpapa have been so extravagant?" Lara had asked her mother a dozen times.
Lady Hurlington not only had no answer, but a year ago had seemed to relinquish her hold on life as if she just faded away.
Lara bitterly blamed the fact that there was not sufficient food to sustain her, nor could they afford the expensive medicines she obviously needed.
Since she had become eighteen and no longer considered herself a schoolgirl, she had been obsessed by the idea of earning money.
At the same time she knew it would be impossible for her to leave her father alone, even if she was offered lucrative employment elsewhere.
Actually there was no chance of that.
The only careers open to young women who were ladies were either to be a companion to some cantankerous old Dowager or else to become a Governess.
"You’re certainly too young to be that," Nanny said when Lara talked to her about it.
"I have also no wish to teach children anyway," Lara stipulated, "and Mama always said a Governess lived a miserable life somewhere between Heaven and Hell!"
Nanny looked at her for an explanation and she said with a smile,
"They are neither upstairs nor downstairs, so to speak, but in a ‘no-man’s land’ somewhere in between, which I imagine is a very uncomfortable position."
Then because the idea of Governesses rather caught her fancy, she decided that she would write a novel about them.
The heroine would be very poor and very pretty, she told herself. She would obtain a post in a Ducal household, and of course, as the Duke was a widower, she would eventually marry him and live happily ever afterwards.
It seemed to Lara the type of novel that she would like to read herself and she was certain when it was completed that she would find a publisher for it and make her fortune.
‘Perhaps like Lord Byron I shall become famous overnight!’
There were also the Brontes, who she thought resembled herself, being Parson’s daughters living in the wilds of Yorkshire. While one could hardly call Little Fladbury wild, it was certainly dull and nothing happened from one year’s end to the next.
In novels, she thought, there was always a grand house where the Squire lived.
He would either be young and handsome with his eye on a pretty village maiden, or else, if he was old and cantankerous, he had a son who was dashing enough to wish to run away with the girl he loved.
Because Lara was an only child and had lived so much on her own, her head was full of stories. Only her mother had understood that the people who lived in her imagination were just as real, if not more so, than those encountered every day.
Now as she rose from the table she thought with satisfaction that she had written two chapters of her book in her neat handwriting, but she was now undoubtedly stuck in the third.
It was where the heroine, having been recommended for a position in the Ducal household by a kind old lady who lived in the neighbourhood, was setting out for the ancestral castle.
‘How can I describe such a place without having seen one?’ she asked herself.
She wondered whether it would be possible to ride over and look at the outside of one of the country houses that were not too far from Little Fladbury. But in the part of Essex where she lived there were no stately mansions.
Ten or fifteen miles away there were, Lara knew, several houses of aristocrats and she felt if she could see them it would be helpful.
But the only horse she and her father had to ride was growing old and she doubted if Rollo would carry her ten miles, and certainly not twenty.
She knew that one of the farmers would lend her a carthorse in an emergency, either to ride or attach to the gig, but again it was a question of distance.
She reckoned it would take far too long to travel at least ten miles each way and get back the same evening and she could hardly spend the night under a hedge.
‘I suppose all writers have the same difficulties that I am having,’ she thought.
But that was poor consolation and she looked at her manuscript a little ruefully before she thought that she had better do as Nanny insisted and go outside and into the garden.
Nanny was always interrupting and trying to prevent Lara from concentrating on her novel.
She knew in a way that it was a kind of jealousy, for Nanny had for many years disliked the thought of her growing up and being able to