“Of course,” Anne said, coming to her feet.
“I’ve already asked them to bring the carriage around,” he said, escorting her to the door.
She gave him a nod as she stepped outside. The fresh air was bracing, and she did not mind the cold. There was a cleansing quality to the chilly mist, and it made her feel more like herself.
And right then, in that very moment, that wasn’t such a bad person to be.
Daniel still had no idea what had happened to Anne back in the dining room. He supposed it could have been exactly what she’d said, that she’d choked on a bit of her tea. He’d done so before, and it was certainly enough to set a body coughing, especially when the tea was steaming hot.
But she’d looked terribly pale, and her eyes—in that split second before she’d turned away—had looked hunted. Terrified.
It brought to mind that time he’d seen her in London, when she’d stumbled into Hoby’s, scared out of her wits. She’d said she’d seen someone. Or rather, she’d said there was someone she did not want to see.
But that was London. This was Berkshire, and more to the point, they had been sitting in an inn full of villagers he’d known since birth. There hadn’t been a soul in that room who would have had cause to harm so much as a hair on her head.
Maybe it was the tea. Maybe he’d imagined everything else. Anne certainly seemed back to normal now, smiling at him as he helped her up into the curricle. The half canopy had been raised against the rain, but even if the weather held, they would both be thoroughly chilled by the time they reached Whipple Hill.
Hot baths for the both of them. He’d order them the moment they arrived.
Although sadly, not to be shared.
“I’ve never ridden in a curricle,” Anne said, smiling as she tightened the ribbons on her bonnet.
“No?” He did not know why this surprised him. Certainly a governess would have no cause to ride in one, but everything about her spoke of a gentle birth. At some point in her life she must have been an eligible young lady; he could not imagine she hadn’t had scores of gentlemen begging for her company in their curricles and phaetons.
“Well, I’ve been in a gig,” she said. “My former employer had one, and I had to learn to drive it. She was quite elderly, and no one trusted her with the reins.”
“Was this on the Isle of Man?” he asked, keeping his voice deliberately light. It was so rare that she offered pieces of her past. He was afraid she would bottle herself back up if he questioned too intensely.
But she did not seem put off by his query. “It was,” she confirmed. “I’d only driven a cart before that. My father would not have kept a carriage that seated only two people. He was never a man for impracticalities.”
“Do you ride?” he asked.
“No,” she said simply.
Another clue. If her parents had been titled, she would have been placed in a sidesaddle before she could read.
“How long did you live there?” he asked conversationally. “On the Isle of Man.”
She did not answer right away, and he thought she might not do so at all, but then, in a soft voice, laced with memory, she said, “Three years. Three years and four months.”
Keeping his eyes scrupulously on the road, he said, “You don’t sound as if you have fond memories.”
“No.” She was quiet again, for at least ten seconds, then she said, “It was not dreadful. It was just . . . I don’t know. I was young. And it was not home.”
Home. Something she almost never mentioned. Something he knew he should not ask about, so instead he said, “You were a lady’s companion?”
She nodded. He just barely saw it out of the corner of his eye; she seemed to have forgotten that he was watching the horses and not her. “It was not an onerous position,” she said. “She liked to be read to, so I did quite a lot of that. Needlework. I wrote all of her correspondence, as well. Her hands shook quite a bit.”
“You left when she died, I presume.”
“Yes. I was quite fortunate in that she had a great-niece near Birmingham who was in need of a governess. I think she knew that her time was near, and she made the arrangements for a new position before she passed.” Anne was quiet for a moment, then he felt her straighten beside him, almost as if she were shaking off the foggy mantle of memory. “And I’ve been a governess ever since.”
“It seems to suit you.”
“Most of the time, yes.”