The Way to a Gentleman's Heart - Theresa Romain Page 0,20

beyond—to make this dinner a success.

She’d been hired eight years before not because she was right for the post, but because she was desperate and admitted it. Upon leaving Lincolnshire, she had tried to find work elsewhere in London, only to realize she had no useful skills. She had stopped at Mrs. Brodie’s Academy because of the gilded plate on the front of the building denoting the name of the place. Run by a woman, she’d thought. More likely to be safe; less likely to have leering eyes and pinching hands.

Carrying a valise and dressed in her last clean gown, her last pair of clean gloves, and her best hat, she’d rung the front bell, bold as anything. “I have an appointment with the headmistress.”

The butler looked at her doubtfully. “Your name?”

Her mind reeled. Should she make something up? She could think of no falsity that would make her more likely to gain an appointment. Mrs. Brodie would never believe she was Princess Charlotte.

“Miss Redfern,” she said crisply and honestly. And when she was ushered into the headmistress’s office, to her surprise, delight, and simultaneous terror, the honesty continued.

Behind the big desk sat the small woman, a little less gray then, but no less forceful or beautiful. With a dark and steady stare, Mrs. Brodie asked, “Why have you said you have an appointment with me?”

“I need a job,” Marianne blurted. “And I hoped... I would rather not be pinched and violated. I thought perhaps with a woman in charge...”

“Very reasonable,” the older woman said in a crisp voice tinged with the accent of Wales. She regarded Marianne for a long moment, up and down. Marianne made herself as still as a statue, imagining herself at a dance waiting for someone to invite her to the floor. At last, the headmistress gave a little nod. “What skills have you?”

“The usual useless ones. Needlework and watercolor. But I will do any honest thing,” she added quickly.

“Why limit yourself?” Marianne must have gaped, for the headmistress lifted a hand and said, “Very well, we will try you in the kitchen. If you sew and paint, you must be good with your hands, and Cook will welcome a new assistant. If you are eager to learn, you will do well. And if you are not...” Mrs. Brodie shrugged. “If you only want a safe place to live and honest work to do, the academy will take you on as a maid or find a similar post for you.”

Now that the different options were dangled before her, Marianne found that any honest thing had lost its appeal. Being a housemaid when one could be a cook’s assistant? The latter was clearly more exciting. It was hardly the dream she’d once had for her life, but those dreams had relied upon others. Those dreams were done and gone.

“I would like to assist the cook,” Marianne told Mrs. Brodie. “I will do my best to learn from her.”

“I believe you will.” Mrs. Brodie named a wage that sounded a pittance compared to her former pin money. But it was generous compared to the maid’s wages she’d been offered at other places—and with no pinching or harassment. “If you accept, you can have your things sent and begin tomorrow.”

“I have no other things,” said Marianne.

Mrs. Brodie lifted her brows. “Then we’d best get you a uniform. And you can start work at once. My girls and staff eat well here. One cannot learn or do one’s best work if one is hungry.”

A footman guided her through the academy, giving her a bit of a tour on their way to the kitchens. Marianne regarded the students closely as she got the opportunity, wondering what an exceptional young lady looked like. To her eye, they looked like every other girl and young woman of her acquaintance. Some were quite pretty, some plain. Some had dark skin, some light. Some looked at the world as if it were a celebration. Some passed through the corridors in dreamy silence.

She wished she knew what to say to them. How to warn them against hoping for too much. But the words caught in her throat; it wasn’t her place to say anything to these girls, whose fees ran the school and paid her own salary.

Her place was not what it had once been.

But after eight years at the academy, she had made the place her own, and she was proud to have done so.

“And how is the new kitchenmaid working out?” Mrs. Brodie