Temptation of a Teacher Page 3

  “They should not gossip to you about his behaviour,” Jane said sharply.

  Arletta laughed.

  “You cannot shut me up in a glass case, dear Jane, even though you have always tried to keep everything unpleasant from me ever since I was a baby.”

  Jane smiled.

  “You were such an adorable child, just as you are adorable now. It seems wrong somehow that you should ever hear about anything that is distasteful and nasty in life.”

  “While you can, I suppose,” Arletta laughed. “Oh, Jane, I have grown up now. I am nearly twenty and, although I do live, as one might say, in the back of beyond, I read the newspapers and novels. It was in fact the main recreation I had when Papa was ill and I had to look after him. My only other relaxation was when I gossiped with the servants.”

  Jane chuckled.

  “I am sure it has been a life of scintillating amusement!”

  Then, because she thought that she had been too frivolous, she went on.

  “Dearest, I know the terrible time you have had. Papa has told me about it. If it will really make you happy to go to France and as long as you promise to take the greatest care of yourself, I will agree, even though I think it wrong for me to let you do so.”

  “You really will?” Arletta pressed her excitedly.

  Her eyes were sparkling and she looked so lovely that Jane thought that everybody would tell her that it was crazy for anyone looking like Arletta to even think of going off to France and having no idea of what might happen to her there.

  “I shall have to think about it,” she said.

  “There is nothing to think about,” Arletta insisted, “except how I can be you. I suppose, Jane, you have a passport?”

  “As a matter of fact I had one ready, but now I shall not need it because Simon is arranging for me to be included on his as his wife.”

  “Well, that solves one problem,” Arletta observed. “I shall be ‘Miss Jane Turner’!”

  “It does not suit you?”

  “It suits me far better than you think,” Arletta argued. “I shall be Miss Jane Turner, off to France to see the world!”

  “I think you are going to find it a very small one. Just a Château in a very quiet isolated part of the country with two children and a great number of servants. I doubt if there will be anybody else.”

  “I shall be very disappointed if I do not see the disagreeable Duc!”

  “If you do, you must promise to look severely business-like and make it quite clear that you are a Vicar’s daughter.”

  Jane paused and then she added,

  “Promise me that you will always, always lock your bedroom door at night!”

  Arletta stared at her for a moment.

  And then she went into peals of laughter.

  “Oh, Jane,” she giggled. “You have been reading far too many novels! I don’t believe for a moment that the grand, stuck-up proud Duc will condescend to notice a poor, humble little Governess and if, as you say, he is always in Paris, he is doubtless surrounded by all the beautiful exotic women who any real lady pretends do not exist!”

  “And you are a real lady, Arletta,” Jane said.

  “But not so stupid or so half-witted as not to know that the courtesans of Paris are the most extravagant, the most exotic and the most seductive women in the whole world!”

  Jane looked at her severely.

  “You should not be talking of such things and how dare you even know of the existence of such terrible women?”

  “I have read about them, heard about them and, if you want to know, occasionally Papa has talked about them,” Arletta retorted. “Really, Jane, if anyone is being a fuddy-duddy with her head buried in the sand, it’s you!”

  Jane threw up her hands as if in dismay and Arletta laughed.

  Her laughter seemed to lighten the room as if sunshine was suddenly flooding into it.

  Chapter Two

  As the ferry was steaming towards Bordeaux, Arletta thought this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.

  She had had a dozen arguments with Jane before she finally capitulated and agreed that Arletta should go to France.

  “Remember, dearest Jane,” she said over and over again, “that I can come home if things do not go right for it does not matter to me if I don’t have a reference as it would have to you.”

  Jane saw the logic of this.

  At the same time she was desperately afraid that Arletta, innocent and completely without knowledge of the world, would find herself in difficulties that she would not be able to cope with.

  But she was reassured by everything that Lady Langley had told her about the Duc de Sauterre and also, as Arletta herself had said, she could always come home if she wanted to.

  “Anything,” Arletta emphasised fervently, “would be better than settling down in the Dower House or being forced even for a little while to live with one of my relations.”

  She had discussed with Jane the possibility of her finding someone who could chaperone her in London and present her at Court.

  Jane said at once that the person who would be best able to help her there would be Lady Langley.

  “As soon as she comes back from her cruise, you must talk to her about it,” she added, “and I am sure, as you have taken my place with her nephew and niece, she will feel very grateful and under an obligation to you.”

  Arletta knew that Jane was right and that Lady Langley, who had been a friend of her mother’s, would most certainly help.

  She had been kindness itself when her father had written to her on Jane’s behalf asking her if she could recommend her as a Governess.

  Lady Langley had written back saying that she was in need of a Governess for her own children and she was sure that anyone who had lived in their village and was known to them would be very suitable.

  Jane had in fact been a great success as Governess to Lady Langley’s children and as she said she had been very depressed at the thought of leaving the house where she had been so happy.

  “Lady Langley is just like your mother,” she told Arletta, “and I know that, just as she looked after me, she would be only too willing to look after you.”

  “All I have to do,” Arletta said, her eyes dancing, “is to fill in the time until Lady Langley returns from the Mediterranean and what could be better than that I should do so teaching her nephew and niece. And, of course, seeing France, as I am longing to?”

  Finally Jane was convinced and she showed Arletta the instructions that she had received from the Duc’s secretary.

  He had written in a rather stiff ponderous English, very obviously translating it, and Jane commented,

  “I don’t know whether I should be insulted that he thinks I would not understand French.”

  Then she laughed,

  “One thing is quite certain that you speak French, Arletta, better than I do, in fact like a native.”

  “Which I am because of my Grandmama.”

  Her mother had been so insistent that she should speak the Parisian French as spoken by the great families of France, that they had often had ‘French Days’ when Arletta was small when they spoke nothing but French whatever they were doing.

  It became a game that even her father joined in with and Arletta knew that by the time her mother died her French was perfect.

  It was certainly going to come in very useful now and, as the ship carried her towards Bordeaux, she practised sentences to herself and read a French novel that she found amongst her mother’s books.

  The sun was shining and Bordeaux from the sea looked very inviting despite the fact that Arletta knew that it had always been a commercial town.

  Since the time of the Romans it had become a leading centre of the wine trade and Arletta thought that her father would have been interested if he knew where she was for it was the red wine of that area that had made him suffer so acutely in the last years of his life.

  The instructions that Jane had given her told
her that, when the ship arrived at Bordeaux, she was to take a train that would bring her to the Station nearest to the Duc’s Château and there she would be met by a carriage.

  Everything was very clear and the only trouble was that the ferry had been late in leaving Plymouth Harbour and therefore they were late in docking.

  Although if punctual, she would have had several hours before catching the train, Arletta was very afraid that she might miss it.

  She had never before travelled by herself and she was surprised at how many people offered to help her.

  The porters had vied with each other to carry her baggage, several elderly women asked if there was anything she needed and she had no idea it was because she looked so lovely and at the same time so young and helpless.

  She and Jane had had a long talk over what she should wear as a Governess in the Duc’s Château.

  “I have not bought anything while Papa has been so ill, so everything I possess is really in rags,” Arletta pointed out. “And so I must have some new gowns and I was going to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes in London.”

  “You must certainly not have anything too smart,” Jane told her firmly, “or I am sure that the Duc will be suspicious that you are not what you appear to be.”

  “But I have no wish to look like a beggar-maid,” Arletta replied, “and I think in what I am wearing now even the children would question my authority.”

  Jane ruminated that it was not her clothes that would make them question her but her looks, but there was no point in saying so and starting the argument all over again as to whether she should or should not go.

  She therefore suggested,

  “The best thing we can do is to go into Worcester. You can buy some clothes there that will not look too sensational or expensive to be beyond the purse of an ordinary Governess.”

  They left the next morning very early so that they could be back at the Vicarage by the time Simon Sutton was due to arrive.

  As Jane had known, there were some very pretty clothes in the shops of Worcester, as it was a large Market town.

  She had, however, to admit to herself that whatever Arletta put on seemed to become a perfect frame for her beauty.

  She also had a way of wearing her clothes that gave her a style of her own, which again Jane without saying so thought was due to her French blood.

  ‘She has chic,’ Jane told herself, ‘which is something I could never acquire.’

  She was very touched when Arletta insisted on buying her a dress and a coat to travel to Jamaica in and a very pretty evening gown as well.

  “It is part of my Wedding present to you,” she insisted, “and will be far more useful than a brooch or a necklace, which I would have given you otherwise.”

  “You are not to be so extravagant,” Jane scolded her automatically.

  “If that is the repressive voice you use to your pupils, then I am sorry for them,” Arletta countered.

  Then they were both laughing and buying clothes seemed to be so amusing too until they returned to the Vicarage feeling that the whole day had been one of sunshine.

  Simon Sutton was waiting for them and, when Arletta saw the expression in his eyes when he looked at Jane, she realised how lucky Jane was.

  It did not matter to him that she was actually rather plain. He loved her and there was no doubt that Jane was head over heels in love with the only man who had ever wanted to marry her.

  *

  At their marriage, which took place the following morning, Arletta was sure that the angels were joining in with the choir and singing a glorious hymn of praise.

  No bride or bridegroom ever looked more radiant than Jane and Simon when they walked down the aisle together.

  Arletta had remembered at the last moment where her mother had put away the exquisite lace veil that had been worn for generations by the Weir brides.

  She insisted on Jane wearing it, together with a small diamond tiara that was also a family heirloom, but which she thought privately Cousin Hugo would consider not large enough to be impressive.

  The big tiaras, the necklaces, the bracelets and the brooches that had all been part of the family treasures had been sold by her father as soon as he had inherited to meet her grandfather’s debts.

  He had, however, kept only this one small tiara for her mother to wear on special occasions.

  Although Arletta had often looked at the portraits of the previous Countesses, glittering like Christmas trees, and regretted that their jewels were no longer there, her mother had merely laughed.

  “I am quite happy as I am,” she had said, “and I can assure you, darling, that peace of mind is a far better ornamentation than a load of unpaid debts.”

  Anyway Jane was thrilled with being lent anything so beautiful and Arletta knew that the fact that she looked, as she put it ‘a real bride’ in Simon’s eyes, made her Wedding even happier than it was already.

  There were only a few guests to drink the health of the bride and bridegroom and they set off to have a few days honeymoon alone before they finally left for Jamaica.

  Jane hugged Arletta when she said ‘goodbye’ to her and whispered,

  “Promise me you will look after yourself. I shall worry about you and will pray that you will be safe.”

  “Of course I will be safe!” Arletta asserted. “If anything goes wrong, I shall just tell the Duc what I think of him and come home. After all, if I am in any difficulty, I know that your father will look after me.”

  “Of course he will,” Jane replied, “but I have not told him what you are doing.”

  “No one must know, because if they do, they will try to stop me.”

  Jane kissed her again and then hurried to where her husband was waiting for her.

  *

  Arletta went back to the Big House to write only one letter before she left three days later.

  This was to Mr. Metcalfe.

  She told him that she was going to France to stay with some friends and gave him the address of the Duc’s Château, just in case it was imperative for him to get in touch with her.

  She was so busy her last days at home packing up that she hardly had time to think of what lay ahead of her.

  She knew that once she had left it might be very difficult to have anything she wanted without having to plead for it with her cousin, which she would dislike having to do.

  She therefore ordered the gardeners and the other servants to move to the Dower House everything that she particularly wished to keep that had belonged to her mother and found it quite surprising how much there was.

  There was furniture, books, pictures and what she had forgotten was that the old housekeeper had kept all her mother’s clothes carefully put away in wardrobes in the attics at the top of the house.

  She used to go over them regularly in case they were eaten by moths.

  Because Arletta had been so unhappy at her mother’s death and then almost before she had recovered from it her father began to be ill, she had never given a thought to her mother’s furs and her other clothes that she had always looked so lovely in.

  Now, although many of them were out of date, she thought that some of the dresses would certainly suit her and could be altered, while the furs and coats would be useful in the winter.

  “Why did you not remind me that we had all these clothes?” she asked the housekeeper.

  “I thought it might bring back unhappy memories, my Lady,” was the answer and there was no reply to that.

  Because they in fact brought back memories of happier days, Arletta put some of the items that had belonged to her mother into the luggage she was taking with her to France.

  There were some beautiful nightgowns and to wear over them a negligée of blue satin that was far more attractive than the plain wool of the dressing gown that Arletta had worn since she was sixteen.

  ‘No one will see me,’ she told herself, ‘so I shall look glamorous when I am alone at night – and what could be more appropria
te in a Château?’

  However much Jane had disparaged the Duc by repeating what Lady Langley had told her, Arletta could not help thinking that it would be rather like living in a Fairytale.

  She was going to an enchanted Château in France in an area that she knew from her books was famous for its ancient Châteaux.

  She wished that she had had more time to read about the Dordogne where the Duc’s family had lived for centuries.

  Of course, when she wanted them she could not find any books about that particular part of France and thought that the first thing she would do when she had time was to try to find guide books that would tell her all she wished to know.

  When she reached Bordeaux, she found herself thrilled and delighted with the people she could see in the streets, largely because they looked so different from anyone in England.

  The ordinary peasants with their full skirts and shawls over their heads had a charm of their own, as had the nuns with their varying headdresses.

  There was also occasionally a glimpse of women dressed in the strange lace cap and lace-trimmed apron that was characteristic of the district and even the Gendarmes in their smart uniforms looked as if they had stepped straight out of an operetta or a musical comedy.

  There was, however, little time to look round on her way to the Station and she actually caught the train with only ten minutes to spare.

  She watched from the window the undulating countryside, the huge woods that seemed to her like dragon forests and an occasional glimpse on the top of a hill of an ancient Château.

  This, Arletta told herself, was Fairyland as she had always wanted to see it.

  Her first glimpse of the Duc’s Château was exactly what she had hoped it would be.

  Silhouetted against the sky it looked very impressive, very formidable and, although she would hate to admit it, rather intimidating.

  In the distance the windows seemed little more than arrow slits and the crenelated tops of some of the towers reminded her of the soldiers who must have once guarded the Château and been ready to repel enemies from whatever direction they came.

  Beneath the Château there was a river and a stone wall rose straight above the bank on one side to where the building itself began.