Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind Read Free Page B

trial to her that I never put on weight.
    â€œ No, indeed, not at the Dame’s school,” she said as she sat up in bed. “You were hungry, Jane, but you slept well.” She never woke early at school, especially after she was seventeen and put in charge of the littlest girls who boarded there. She did smile then, remembering her cherubs, who were probably even now preparing for come-outs in London. Has it been so long? she asked herself with a pang. My dears, you all ran me ragged at Dame Chaffee’s. Now I suppose you will dance merry tunes for husbands or lovers—perhaps both. I wonder, do you ever think of me?
    Jane knew that no one did, and there was nothing in her thoughts of ill-use or self pity. Lady Carruthers had been telling her for years that she had nothing to recommend herself, and Jane could find no argument.
    â€œ Except for Andrew,” she amended, as she always did. “Andrew would miss me.” She sighed and closed her eyes as she wrapped her arms around her knees, perfectly comfortable, even if the sun was not up. That was it; from the moment Andrew had been put in her arms when she was almost eighteen, she never slept soundly again. It has been nearly twelve years, she told herself in dismay. Am I so old? Better still, was I ever young?
    For all that she was the poor relation, she had believed Blair Stover—more properly Viscount Canfield from one of their family’s numerous honors—when he had put his small son in her arms, winked at her in that way of his, and said, “Janey, just keep an eye on him for a little while, won’t you? Lucinda claims that if she cannot bolt to Leeds to peruse the silk warehouses, she will dissolve.”
    Strange that after all these years she could remember that plea from Blair. Home to Denby from Dame Chaffee’s and waiting for her first position in a household, she had been only too pleased to take the infant in her arms, enjoy the sweet smell of him, and watch him quite carefully during the day of Lord and Lady Canfield’s expedition to Leeds, the first after Lucinda’s confinement.
    Jane looked out the window and was rewarded with the sight of dawn glowing dull red to the east. “Oh, it will rain today,” she said out loud, straightening out her legs and tucking the coverlet tighter. “Andrew will be so disappointed.”
    She kept her gaze on the window, remembering that she had been sitting in the window seat at dusk with her knees up and Andrew, burped and fed, regarding her with sleepy eyes from his resting spot on her stomach, when a messenger arrived on horseback from Leeds. Not enough years had passed for her to forget Lady Carruthers’ shrieks from the front hall, the long silence, and then the butler’s heavy tread on the stairs.
    â€œ I put you right here on my bed, Andrew,” she said, as though he were there. “You were six weeks old, and I laid you down right there, and opened that door to such awful news.”
    The butler had been unable to speak. She thought about him, dead these several years, recalling vividly the way his mouth had opened and closed, and the way he had crumbled into tears before her eyes. Never before or since could she remember a butler succumbing so entirely to grief, and as she sat in bed, the memory made her tuck the covers tighter.
    When he could not speak, she shouldered her way past him and ran down the stairs where the footman—butler now—was attempting to revive Lady Carruthers. “Stanton,” was all she said. She could still see Stanton gentling Lady Carruthers’ head back to the floor and rising to grab her by the shoulders. Standing there so close to her, he told her of the contents of the note that rested by Lady Carruthers’ hand, fluttering a little from the breeze let in by the still-open door.
    She had heard him in shock and horror, and then released herself from his grasp to retrieve the note, as though