Chapter 1

1

June 1900, Oxford, England

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

(from In Memoriam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

A

s her parents’ coffins were lowered on ropes into the hole in the ground, Heppie was distracted momentarily as a squirrel ran across the grass behind the grave. It scrambled up a tree, and she bit her lip, fighting back tears. How did she have any left to cry? The emotions that triggered the tears had gone through stages. First, shock on hearing the news that both her parents had been mown down by a tram on a London street. Then anger at the injustice of it all that they had died from such a stupid avoidable accident. Finally an overwhelming sense of loneliness and loss and disbelief that she would never see them again.

Heppie – no one used her given name of Hephzibah – had been at home in Oxford packing her bags for the six-month trip the three of them were about to make to Rome. Her parents had gone to London to make the final arrangements for the journey. They should have been leaving today and instead here she was, alone, witnessing their interment in a shared grave.

At eighteen, she was an orphan, with no other living relatives, and had discovered just yesterday that she would be penniless. She couldn’t blame her stepfather. His was a sin of omission, not intent. He would never have expected to die so young. He’d probably thought there was plenty of time to make provision for the stepdaughter he adored and had treated as though she were his own flesh and blood.

Heppie looked around at the crowd of mourners. Professor Prendergast, her stepfather, had been a popular and well-respected man. There was a contingent of students and dons, but the stepbrother she’d never met hadn’t deemed it worth his while to make the journey from America to England to pay his respects, even though she had offered to postpone the funeral until he could complete the voyage. He told her that he would leave it to the lawyers to sort out his inheritance. He didn’t enquire about her own circumstances. Now he would get the lot – the house in London and every last penny – even the money Heppie’s own late father had left to her mother when he died, all swept up into Professor Prendergast’s estate.

Heppie didn’t care about the inheritance. It was the realisation that she was now on her own, soon to be homeless and without a clue what to do about it. She leaned over the edge of the grave and dropped two white roses she had plucked from the college garden onto the coffins. Tears now rolling freely down her cheeks, Heppie turned away from the graveside and ran out of the cemetery past the mourners waiting to pay their respects.

Over the weeks

that followed her parents’ funeral, Heppie struggled to know what to do next. Her friends were as devoid of ideas as she was. All of them offered to keep a lookout for any suitable employment that also offered accommodation, but she sensed they now saw her as an encumbrance and were going through the motions, hoping she would fade away and become someone else’s problem.

Her assumption had been that she would one day marry a don like her father, or possibly one of his students, but marriage had not been a pressing issue. Her father had talked of her studying at one of the women’s colleges first and had been coaching her for the entrance examinations – but there was no chance of that happening now that she had no means of supporting herself.

The day Heppie

had been dreading dawned at last. The Master of her father’s college had summoned her. He would want to know when she was moving out of the house, which was owned by the college and situated within the grounds.

Over breakfast she opened the post as usual – each day brought a diminishing number of letters of condolence and an increasing number of unpaid bills. She added them to the pile to be sent to the solicitors to be dealt with as part of probate. She opened the last envelope and quickly read the letter inside. Was this the answer to her prayers?

Stuffing the letter in her coat pocket, she set off for the Master’s house. Ten minutes later she found herself in his office, sitting on the edge of a chair that was too big for her, so she felt small and awkward. She twisted her hands in her lap as her host spoke the words she had dreaded hearing.

‘Miss Wildman, we need to discuss your future plans,’ said the Master. ‘I do not wish to inconvenience you, but the new Dean will want to move into College House before term begins. Perhaps there is something we can do to assist? I imagine you intend to live with a relative? Or transfer to your stepfather’s London house?’ He peered at her over the top of his half spectacles.

‘I have no relatives,’ she said, wondering why this fact made her feel ashamed when it was not something over which she had any control. ‘Papa had a son from his first marriage, but he was already grown up and had left home when Papa’s first wife died. My natural father had no living relatives and Grandmama, my mother’s mother, died last year.’ She paused for a moment. ‘The London house is let to tenants.’

‘Dear, dear. That’s unfortunate. But at least you can use the rental income to live on and rent a room for yourself?’

Heppie lowered her eyes. She studied a shaft of sunlight which carved a line through the Master’s carpet, revealing previously invisible spatters of ink which peppered its surface. She had never entered the hallowed portals of the Master’s house before and felt uncomfortable and out of place. She swallowed and raised her eyes to his. ‘My father’s estate, including the income from his London property, will pass entirely to my stepbrother. Papa had intended to make an allowance to me but had not yet had opportunity to do so.’

The Master frowned. ‘I see, I see. I suppose Professor Prendergast would not have expected to meet such an unfortunate and early demise. Tragic. Terrible thing to happen. And Mrs Prendergast too. Quite shocking.’

The elderly man looked flustered. Heppie had noticed how some people were embarrassed by death. Losing her own father when she was a child had made her see it as a fact of life. While that didn’t lessen the pain, she couldn’t understand why people were reluctant to mention it. It was as if discussing death somehow risked tempting fate into advancing the time of their own demise.

‘I received a letter this morning from one of Papa’s former students, a Mr…’ She pulled a folded letter from her pocket and examined it. ‘Nightingale. The Reverend Mr Merritt Nightingale. He is a parson in a village called Nettlestock in Berkshire.’

The Master waved a hand in the air. ‘Nightingale. I remember him. An excellent student. Took a double first. I’ve never heard of Nettlestock though.’ He frowned, and Heppie sensed his impatience.

‘Mr Nightingale says that the local squire is seeking a governess for his ten-year-old daughter. I wonder if it might be a suitable opening for me, although I know nothing of Mr Nightingale, nor of Nettlestock.’

The Master’s relief showed immediately on his face. ‘Governess. Perfect. Just the thing for a young woman. Where were you educated?’

‘Mama taught me all I know, including French and a little Latin. Then over the past months Papa had begun to teach me some ancient Greek, but I fear we had got no further than the rudiments of grammar.’

‘More than adequate, Miss Wildman. An excellent plan. Do you need a letter of recommendation? I will be happy to furnish one. As you know, I held your stepfather in high regard.’

‘But you don’t know me or my competencies.’

He waved his hand again. ‘No matter. I am sure your mother will have prepared you for all that will be required in the upbringing of a young girl.’ He chuckled and shook his head. ‘No need to worry about the Latin and Greek. Good manners, reading of the Bible and some of the finer feminine skills such as singing and sewing should be more than adequate. And a bit of French never did anyone any harm. If the Reverend Nightingale recommends this family, I am sure it will be a good one.’

The Master rose from his chair and said, ‘Very good, Miss Wildman, very good indeed.’

She was dismissed.

The packing was almost finished.

The furniture had been dispatched to storage, pending the dispersal of the estate. With the solicitor’s permission, Heppie had sent her parents’ clothing to the local workhouse for the benefit of the poor and dispossessed. Heppie reflected that she too could almost be classified in that way. Her own worldly goods now comprised a small trunk, crammed with clothing, her mother’s copy of

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

and a small daguerreotype of her parents.

She had been tempted to keep some of her mother’s jewellery, but the solicitor sent a man to make an inventory of the contents of the house and he itemised every piece. All she had managed to keep were a pair of pearl earrings and the locket her mother had given her when she married Professor Prendergast. It had been a gift to her mother from her first husband, Heppie’s father, and her mother had felt it inappropriate to continue wearing it once she remarried. Heppie raised her hand and squeezed the small gold heart on its chain around her neck and wondered at the cruelty of God in killing them both just as they were all about to embark on an adventure in Rome, where Professor Prendergast was to research his book on the cult of Mithras. Heppie had been looking forward to six months in the Eternal City, perhaps learning a little Italian and spending her days clambering around ruins with her stepfather.

What a difference one moment had made, destroying two lives and utterly transforming her own. She picked up the book of sonnets and as she turned the thin, almost translucent pages of the small volume, the tears welled up again. A line caught her eye:

“My grief lies onward, and my joy behind”

. She held the leather-bound book up to her face and gave a little inarticulate cry. Where would she find the strength to get through this? Nothing would bring her parents back. Nothing would restore her life as it was. Accept that, Heppie, and get on with it, she told herself. She brushed a hand over her eyes, took a deep breath and set about finishing her packing.

The last item to go into the trunk was a pair of double-sided green velvet ribbons, another gift from her mother, given the day before she died. Heppie had intended to use them to trim a hat or dress her hair. Now in mourning, it would be a long time before she would wear such bright colours. She thought wistfully of the pleasure of choosing them in the haberdashery store, hesitating at first over whether to choose a safer blue, but her mother convincing her that the green was more vibrant. Now, as a governess and in mourning, it would have to be sober blacks and greys for a while.

Heppie was to make the journey from Oxford to Nettlestock by train. It was a distance of only around forty miles as the crow flies, but the train required her to travel two sides of a triangle via Reading and involved a lengthy wait between trains.

It began raining as soon as the train left Oxford and the water ran in torrents down the carriage windows, blurring the landscape as they passed through it. Heppie had lived in Oxford her entire life and felt bereft about leaving her city, probably forever. As it pelted down, she shivered in the draughty coach and tried not to think about her miserable situation. But it was hard to think of anything else, as little icicles of grief had frozen her heart over and made the rest of the world appear pointless and trivial.

Heppie took out the second letter she had received from the Reverend Nightingale. He had beautiful handwriting: confident, broad, bold strokes in black ink. His letter confirmed the squire was more than happy for Heppie to take up the position, expressed his delight that he had arranged things to the satisfaction of all concerned and was full of assurances that she would not regret her decision to come to Nettlestock. Heppie sighed. What decision? To describe it as a decision implied she’d had a choice. She scrunched the letter into a ball and dropped it back into her bag. It was tempting to dislike the Reverend Nightingale for his unbounded enthusiasm, but she told herself it was hardly his fault that her parents were dead and her life turned upside down. It would be unfair to take against a person before even meeting him, particularly one who had acted as her guardian angel and thrown her a lifeline.

The train from Reading was a branch line, stopping frequently at towns and villages on the way. When it pulled into Nettlestock station and Heppie climbed down from the carriage, she stepped into a puddle, drenching the hem of her woollen gown. She looked around the empty platform, wondering what she was to do about transporting her trunk and bags up to Ingleton Hall. There was no sign of a porter. She couldn’t even see the village, so feared it would be a long walk and the rain was still torrential.

‘Miss Wildman! It is Miss Wildman?’

A young man was hurrying along the platform towards her. His black coat billowed out behind him as he ran, then fell back to cling damply around his legs.

‘I’ve been listening for the train. I had a feeling you would be on this one. There are only two a day. Please come and take some tea with me at the parsonage. It’s very close. I’ve arranged for the carter to deliver your bags up to the Hall. He’ll be along to pick them up from here in a few minutes. Squire Egdon is expecting you in an hour. The carter will come back and collect you from the parsonage once you’ve had some tea.’

Heppie looked at him. He had a shock of thick reddish-blond hair and a friendly countenance, notable mainly for its rash of freckles. Perhaps she had met him before as he had been Papa’s student – but if she had, it was not surprising she didn’t remember, as, freckles aside, his face was nondescript. Pleasant enough, but unremarkable.

‘Mr Nightingale.’ She nodded in greeting, then hesitated, looking at her trunk, uncertain how to respond to his invitation.