Page 15 of My Favorite Mistake
Fanny closed the door behind them.
Lady Findley had taken a seat on the yellow-striped silk settee. “Is everything all right? You’ve been quiet ever since the service concluded.”
Fanny worked up her courage. “I’ll just come out and say it. I’m so sorry to leave you in the lurch, my lady. But I need to resign my post, effective immediately.”
Lady Findley recoiled with a gasp, the little blonde ringlets Fanny had so carefully shaped that morning trembling. “Resign! Whyever would you do that?”
Honestly, this answer was the thing Fanny had turned over and over again in her mind during the carriage ride home. She’d decided she needed to leave her post the second she realized Nick—or rather,Nathaniel—had merely been toying with her.
As much as her family needed her wages, she wasn’t about to spend another hour living in the same tiny village as the man who’d used her in such a way. She had no desire to see his smug face ever again, and the only thing worse than running into him twice a week for the rest of her life would be the whispers that were bound to start up behind her back.
She needed a fresh start, so she would have to find another post. It was as simple as that.
No, the question that had kept churning around Fanny’s mind was what she was going to tell her very proper mistress.
And, although she might live to regret it, she had decided to tell her the truth.
Or at least, a version of it.
“You recall the couple who were wed toward the end of the service?” Fanny asked haltingly.
Lady Findley gasped again, surging to her feet. “I knew something was amiss! First, you went pale as death, and then you looked like you were contemplating murder!”
“I…” Fanny wasn’t sure what to add, as that sounded about right.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Lady Findley did not require any prompting. “He took advantage of you! Yesterday, at the fair. Am I right?”
“I… I…”
The young baroness crossed the room in three strides. “Did you lie with him?” she asked in a dark voice.
Well, jigger. Fanny had hoped against hope she might be able to maneuver the conversation in such a direction that she could escape with a reference.
It did not appear that would be possible.
Her cheeks warm, Fanny inclined her head. “I did, my lady. I know it was a stupid thing to have done.” She laughed bitterly. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lectured my little sister, Mary, warning her off of blackguards like Nick Cradduck. Yet I skipped merrily into his trap, telling myself that somehow it would end differently for me.” She gave a great sniff. “I’m sorry, my lady. I know this is the type of thing you won’t overlook, and that I won’t be getting a reference. I hope you’ll pay me my wages for this week. But I don’t expect nothing beyond that. I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I’ll make my own way to London.”
Fanny had been gazing mournfully at the carpet. A hand seized her forearm in a surprisingly powerful grip, startling her. She looked up to find her mistress gazing up at her, lips quivering.
“You’ll do no such thing.We’llgo to London. Together.”
“But… But, my lady,” Fanny sputtered. “I would never expect you to… to…”
“Oh, Fanny!” Lady Findley said, taking her hand and pressing it. “Don’t you see? I understand. I understand perfectly because that’s exactly what happened to me.”
CHAPTER5
Lady Findley told Fanny the story while they packed. He had been a friend of her brother’s from university, the heir to an earldom. He came to stay with her family for a few weeks the previous summer. She had assumed his intentions were honorable, and why should she have thought anything else? She was the daughter of a viscount. She was not the type of woman a man ruined and abandoned.
She had been wrong about that.
She found herself in the family way, but it was then that she had a small stroke of good fortune. Because “dear old Lord Findley,” a family friend who was a widower with children grown, stepped forward and volunteered to grace the baby with his family name.
“It turned out,” Lady Findley said, watching Fanny tuck a clean, white chemise into her traveling trunk, “that I lost the baby not two weeks after the wedding. I offered Lord Findley an annulment, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
Fanny could well understand why she might have wanted to annul the marriage. Lady Findley was but seventeen years old, and according to rumor, her husband had been in his dotage. “Were you disappointed that he refused?” At her mistress’s blank look, Fanny added, “I could understand if you wished to be free to find a husband closer to your own age.”
Lady Findley’s cheeks flushed, and Fanny wondered if she had overstepped, but her mistress answered, “Not at all. It came as a great relief. My husband didn’t expect anything of me, if you take my meaning. He was eighty-seven years old, so he couldn’t, um…”
