This was too much to bear. Anne was stung into her own defence. ‘I do not think I have done anything so very bad, ma’am,’ she began.
‘It is not for you to judge, Miss Peters,’ Lady Murray said crossly. ‘Sir Ralph and I are most seriously displeased, and we shall have to decide what is best to be done with you. Naturally there is no question of your continuing to teach my daughters. It would be better perhaps if we were to send you home to England immediately – that would be the quickest way to have this matter forgotten. For the moment you will remain in your room, and I shall ask Sir Ralph when he returns what is to be done about your wages.’
Anne drew herself up stiffly. ‘There is no necessity to put yourself to the trouble of consulting Sir Ralph, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I shall leave at once and find myself other employment.’
‘Highty-tighty!’ Lady Murray retorted, growing red. ‘What, pray, do you think you could do? Other employment, indeed! And don’t think I shall give you a reference, for I shan’t! Mrs Cowley Crawford was right about you. She warned me from the very beginning that you gave yourself airs because of your education. What use is an education to a female, pray tell me that? Where has it got you? For all that I can see, it adds nothing to refinement or delicacy.’
‘Now you have insulted me in every possible way,’ Anne said, fighting her rising temper, ‘and I must beg you to excuse me. I shall pack my things at once.’ And she withdrew and closed the door behind her while she was still able to do so quietly.
Upstairs in her room she gave vent to her pent-up feelings by throwing herself down on her bed and bursting into tears. They had more to do with rage than unhappiness, and lasted ten minutes, at the end of which time she sat up feeling much better, blew her nose, and was able in relative calmness to consider her situation.
There was no possibility of her staying here. Even had the Murrays been willing to overlook her first crime of dancing with the Count, and her second crime of refusing to acknowledge the first, her pride would not now allow her to back down from the position she had taken up. Besides, she had become aware of how much servitude had always irked her, although she had always hidden the fact from herself. She felt that any employment, however mean, which would release her from it, would be better than this luxurious enslavement.
Why should she not stay here in Paris and find herself employment? There must be something she could do, and she spoke French now almost as well as English. She could find some cheap but decent lodging, and get herself work as – as – her roving eye fell on the nightgown she had been altering for Miss Murray when the summons had come. Of course! She was a skilled needlewoman and accustomed to making her own gowns, and Paris was the home of fashion: she could get employment with a mantuamaker. Nothing could be easier! And in time, she might start up her own business. She had seen for herself how the leading mantuamakers in Paris were received everywhere, and even made excellent marriages. It was an eminently respectable calling.
Having thought of the scheme, she could not wait to put it into effect. She jumped up and changed into a plain but well-cut walking-dress of her own making, which she felt would be the best advertisement for her skills, tidied her hair, put on her hat and pelisse, and, going down by the backstairs in case the Miss Murrays were about, left the house and began walking down the rue St Roch towards the main shopping thoroughfare.
As luck would have it, as soon as she turned the comer, she bumped into Mr Hartley Murray, strolling along hatless and looking somewhat the worse for wear. He put his hand automatically to his bare head, stared at it in a rather fuddled way, and then realising who she was gave her a slight bow and a broad grin.
‘Miss Peters! Well, here’s a famous coincidence. What’re you doing out so early?’
‘It isn’t so early, Mr Murray,’ Anne replied cautiously, realising he was probably not entirely sober. ‘It is well past noon.’
‘That’s early for me,’ he said, rubbing his hand over his unshaven chin. ‘When I dine with Sauvechasse and de l’Aude, anything before five in the afternoon is early. A famous dinner we had last night, I can tell you! We did not even sit down to it before ten o’clock, neither.’
‘Your absence from the ball was noted,’ she said, amused by his naive pride in eating so late.
‘Who says I wasn’t there? No one can prove it,’ he said with a wink. ‘For one thing, the guv’nor wasn’t there himself a lot of the time; and for another, de l’Aude dropped in on it before he joined us for dinner, and told me all about it, and who my sisters danced with, so I can make a good enough tale of it to satisfy Mama.’ He grinned slowly, as one in possession of a good joke. ‘And he told me about your little adventure, Miss Peters!’
‘My adventure, Mr Murray?’ Anne said discouragingly.
‘Aye, Miss Innocent, dancing with Count Kirov, the Russian Ambassador’s aide! It must have been famous! De l’Aude said that all the old dowagers and pussy-cats were almost bursting when he led you into the set. And talking French with him, as if it was the simplest thing in the world! Miss Dalrymple was two down from you, and heard you as plain as anything, and told everyone. Oh, I would give worlds to have been there and seen it! How ever did you keep from laughing, Miss Peters? I know I should have died of laughing, if I’d been there.’
‘I wish everyone shared your view of the matter, Mr Murray,’ Anne said wryly. ‘Your mother, I’m afraid, is not pleased.’
‘Why should she mind?’ Hartley said easily. ‘It was all above board, for Kirov knew your pa years ago – didn’t he, Miss Peters? – and he’s old enough to be your father anyway. But he’s a capital fellow, all the same! I’m glad it was him that danced with you, of everyone, for he is a trump card, and rides the most capital bay gelding you ever saw! Sauvechasse knows all about him, and says that no one has ever beaten him at picquet, and he has the most famous hard head for liquor. It would be a famous thing for you to marry him – only that horse won’t go,’ he added with a sudden frown, ‘for he is married already, now I come to remember. But then,’ the frown clearing equally swiftly, ‘his wife might die, you know – people do – and you wouldn’t care about him being so much older than you, because females often marry men old enough to be their fathers, and no one thinks anything of it, and I don’t say he is as old as that exactly, probably not above five-and-thirty, and he rides like a Blood!’
Anne hardly knew whether despair and laughter were the more proper response to such a speech, and at the end of it, she did not manage to say more than, ‘It is quite true that the Count knew my father–’ before he had interrupted her again. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said happily. ‘It would look very well for us if you made such a splendid match. Not that counts aren’t two-a-penny in Russia, but he’s one of the rich ones, so Sauvechasse says. Only there’s this wife to get rid of. But I’m sure someone said she was sickly.’ He frowned in unaccustomed thought. ‘Yes, I’m sure that was it – he had to leave her somewhere because she wasn’t well enough to travel. Well, that’s a start, ain’t it, Miss Peters?’
Though comforted by his friendliness, Anne felt obliged to disabuse him of his tremendous ideas. ‘I am not going to marry anyone, Mr Murray, and I’m quite sure nothing could be further from the Count’s mind. Not understanding our customs, he asked me to dance from respect for my father, that was all. I beg you will not run on in that way. Your father, I know, was far from regarding it as a compliment to your family.’