How to Claim a Governess’s Heart - Bridget Barton Page 0,16

duke now. He had no other choice. It was not just his life and happiness on the line, but Betsy's as well.

Chapter 6

Bridget and Betsy spent the majority of the morning unpacking the belongings delivered from the hotel. For Bridget, she had very little to remove. She had one grey dress she always wore, a dark black spencer coat always on likewise, a black long-sleeved dress that was her Sunday best, a straw bonnet, and a few pairs of woollen stockings and under garments.

She had no personal possessions beyond the rag doll aside from a few books that she read to improve her educational skills, and teaching supplies brought with her from the Smeltings' house. She wondered if the few reading books, paper, pencil and graphite chalkboard that she removed from Betsy's old schoolroom for use as they travelled was also considered stealing.

She brushed away the notion of having done something nefarious and sinful. Everything she had taken from that house was for the benefit of Betsy. After all, she had been given permission to take Betsy's things, so surely, educational supplies were incorporated within that.

She felt a weight in her stomach as she thought of the jewellery wrapped carefully in the silk handkerchief. Those items most definitely didn't fall in the category of Betsy's belongings, even though Bridget thought they should.

Without realising she had conjured it, she could hear her school headmistress's voice in her ear, "Once a thief, always a thief."

The memory stirred was when Bridget was about the same age as Betsy. She had been newly brought to the seminary after a fever had taken both her parents. All of her inheritance, meagre as it was, had gone to pay for her education.

Meals at Bridget's school were short, silent and always left the pupil wanting more to fill their bellies. Well, that was the case for the standard pupils. The parlour pupils were always given as much as they wanted to eat. They often spent their free time being favoured by one teacher or another in a private sitting room.

During one of these meals, in the first weeks of her arrival, Bridget couldn't stand to go to bed hungry again. Her family had not been the finest of the gentry, but they had always had enough food to eat. After meals that night, Bridget was one of the parties assigned to clear away plates and dishes to be washed by others in the kitchen.

Seeing that the top pupil table, where the favoured ones sat, had an abundance of remaining food, she took one of the crusts of bread and quickly hid it in the front pocket of her frock.

She wasn't exactly sure how the headmistress found out this theft of bread, but she did. After the dishes were cleared, all the students were called into the large classroom. Bridget was made to stand atop a chair as the headmistress insisted she empty out her pockets. Once producing the bread, the headmistress railed to all who would hear that Bridget was a thief and no longer fit to be considered a lady.

A long thin rod was produced from the headmistress’s side. Bridget had seen it in use many times already in her short stay thus far. If a child recited a lesson wrong, they would often be given several hard strokes to their back. One time she witnessed the headmistress coming down on a girl of no more than five for writing her letters with a ‘devil's hand’. Her left hand had been struck over and over again with the thin rod. Finally, the headmistress announced that if she were ever to use the hand again for writing, the headmistress would permanently disfigure it.

Bridget's eyes had watched and followed that rod intently as it was brandished before her. Instructed to pull back her sleeves, Bridget was made to bare her forearms before the teacher.

Over and over again the rod came down on her bare skin. She had already learned from the small girl writing with the wrong hand that to cry only made the punishment worse. Instead, Bridget whimpered as strike after strike hit her delicate flesh.

With each swat of the rod, the headmistress reiterated her words: "A thief is not a lady." By the end of what seemed like hours, the headmistress returned her rod and walked away, leaving Bridget to stand in front of all her peers, tears streaming down her cheeks.

By the end of the night, the welts had blistered on her skin and she