The Governess Gambit - Erica Ridley

Chapter 1

June 1816

Palace of Westminster

London, England

Miss Chloe Wynchester sucked in one last breath of semi-clean air from the open attic windows and then poked her head through one of the narrow apertures high above the central chandelier in the House of Commons.

Her nostrils immediately tickled with the smoke from dozens of flickering candles and the musty scent wafting from a large chamber packed with several hundred men.

The octagonal ventilation shaft was her only viewing gallery. Women had no place in Parliament. But Chloe never allowed anything so dull as not belonging to keep her from somewhere she wished to be.

Much of this blessing was due to her eminently forgettable nature. She was neither tall nor short, thin nor fat, ugly nor beautiful. Her clothes were neither fashionable nor tattered, her hair neither smartly curled nor a mess of tangles. Her eyes and hair were brown, the most common color. Her skin was white, neither pockmarked nor freckled. Having one of those faces that was always vaguely familiar was brilliant for pretending to be an old acquaintance.

Chloe was not a lady. She was a Whitechapel foundling, now grown to almost eight and twenty years. She’d had the immense fortune to be plucked from the orphanage and fostered by a foreign lord at the age of ten, but most orphans were not so lucky.

That was why she was here.

Chloe never missed a session of Parliament if she could help it, in order to stay abreast of any news of the government doing something—anything—to help the poor.

Most often, when the subject of money arose, the government’s aim was to put coin in their pockets, rather than give aid to those who had none.

Parishes had workhouses, did they not?

There were foundling hospitals for orphaned infants, were there not?

The sort of thing a wealthy man might say, because he’d never been abandoned in a wicker basket, or had to wonder if tomorrow there might be a crust of bread to eat, or collapsed from exhaustion after working from dawn to dusk for months on end without a single day’s respite.

It wasn’t that the members of Parliament didn’t know this was happening.

They didn’t care enough to do something about it.

It was not their business.

This was just how the world worked.

None of which stopped Chloe from penning and disseminating countless pamphlets in an attempt to educate the wealthy on the plight of poverty. There were a few ladies’ societies dedicated to charity for the poor, and Chloe appreciated them very much. Women like that were the reason she’d had somewhere to go as a newborn squalling inside of a basket.

But for big improvements, structural improvements, lasting improvements, one was forced to rely on the opinions of a chamber full of rich white men in top hats and tailcoats slowly sweating themselves into a puddle. They sat hip-to-hip with each other on long, narrow benches as the summer sun beat down upon the roof.

She pulled her head out of the ventilation shaft for another gulp of marginally-less-fusty air before returning her face to the smoky draft inside.

There he was.

Her heart beat faster.

The statesman with the rich, smooth voice was the reason she had hope.

Lawrence Gosling, Marquess of Lanbrooke, was the orator Chloe most loved to watch. It was not because of his soft brown hair or angular jaw. Or his wide shoulders displayed to perfection in a bespoke gray coat, paired with sharp black breeches over strong, muscular legs.

It was because Lanbrooke sometimes spoke about helping people who could not speak for themselves in Parliament.

Despite having to hunch over at an awkward angle to achieve a partially obstructed view, Chloe would not move from this position until Lanbrooke concluded his speech.

When he spoke, people listened.

She included the occasional pithy quote from him in her pamphlets, which made the content seem less idealistic and more official. If the future Duke of Faircliffe agreed with certain points, the public might think, surely some of the other ideas also had merit.

Eventually, when Lanbrooke inherited the Faircliffe dukedom, he would take his seat in the House of Lords. Although there was no convenient attic theatre box above that chamber, Chloe had no doubt Lanbrooke would continue to champion unpopular causes there just as often as he did here in the House of Commons. After all, she’d been watching him speak for almost a decade.

In fact—

A rhythmic knocking sound came from the roof just overhead.

Tat, rat-a-tat, tat.

It was the signal.

With one last look at her favorite statesman, Chloe eased her head out of the