Under the Pear Tree: A Victorian Christmas Story Read online

  “A governess’s duty first and foremost is to the young ladies she teaches.”

  That, coupled with the deep affection she felt for the girls, was the reason she’d continue to repeat this tiresome routine that had cropped up just six months after an heir to the family’s soap fortune had been born. At least Juliana hadn’t taken to pricking Master George with a pin or otherwise tormenting her infant brother.

  With a sigh, Elizabeth pushed back her blue quilt and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She slid her feet into the slippers lined up next to her nightstand and pulled on her father’s old dressing gown that she kept draped over the foot of the bed for warmth. Her toes were always cold and the extra layer helped stave off the chill when her water bottle cooled midway through the night.

  She yanked the belt of the dressing gown tight as Cassandra scampered out of the room. The girl’s candle illuminated the way through the darkened nursery that had been Elizabeth’s home for the past six years. This room, with its green-and-white wallpaper and big bay windows looking out over Onslow Square, would continue to be the center of her world until Cassandra was old enough to wear her hair up and marry. Then Elizabeth would return to Miss Carrington’s Agency in search of another position. That was the thing about being a governess—her path was very clearly laid out. She would oversee a girl’s education, and quietly wait at home to hear about her presentation before the queen and her first balls. Then, with any luck, a proposal would come, and when a successful marriage had been brokered, she would pack her things and start the cycle all over again.

  The family names might change as the years went by, but the rhythm of Elizabeth’s life was already set. That is, unless she lost her position.

  It was a very real fear that was never far from her thoughts. Miss Carrington’s book made it clear that a governess was never her own mistress. She had to be perfect in every way—disciplined, restrained, and dignified—because she was entirely susceptible to the generosity or wrath of her employer. And with the Nortons, one never really knew where one stood.

  Elizabeth walked into the girls’ bedroom just as Cassandra announced to her sister’s prostrate form, “I brought Miss Porter.” Juliana groaned, and Elizabeth planted a hand on either hip, assessing the situation with the expert eye of a woman who’d been here several times before. The scene was well constructed, but not entirely convincing. The bedsheets were tangled up between the girl’s legs and her cheeks were an angry pink, yet not a hair was loose from her braid. It was as though the girl’s vanity wouldn’t allow her to fully commit to what experience told Elizabeth was probably a ruse.

  Still, she had pink cheeks . . .

  The risk of fever was very real, and Elizabeth knew to treat every possibility of illness as serious until proven otherwise.

  Without even looking down, she shot out a hand to stop the Nortons’ middle child in her tracks. “Stay back, Cassandra. I don’t want you catching whatever ails your sister.”

  As quick as could be, the nine-year-old ran across the room and scrambled up onto a rocking chair in the corner to watch with curious blue eyes.

  Elizabeth placed a hand to Juliana’s forehead. It was hot, though not alarmingly so. Still, sweat glistened over the girl’s brow. Guilt crept into her thoughts. Perhaps Juliana really was in discomfort.

  “How long have you been feeling poorly?” she asked.

  “Since after supper,” the girl whispered.

  She frowned. She’d spent the entire night with the girls, save an hour when two of the housemaids helped them with their baths. That was when she shut herself away in her room, opened Vanity Fair, and let herself fall into the wicked but enticing life of Becky Sharp. Becky had only spent a short time as a governess—smart woman—and Elizabeth was desperate to know how the novel’s heroine would handle her latest turn of fortune, for, good or bad, Becky was determined to make a future for herself that extended beyond a nursery’s walls. It sounded nothing short of thrilling, and an undeniable work of fiction.

  Life didn’t work like that for the Elizabeth Porters of the world.

  “Why didn’t you say anything after supper?” she asked, brushing her thumb over the girl’s forehead, trying to smooth away the furrow there.

  “I didn’t want you to be angry with me.”

  The little tremor in Juliana’s voice cut through her. Perhaps she was being too hard on the girl. But there was good reason to be suspicious. Her charge had feigned illness too many times, necessitating too many late-night calls from Dr. Fellows. At the end of all of those visits, the physician’s diagnosis had been the same: an acute attack of amateur theatrics.

  Elizabeth had scolded Juliana for her selfishness the last time, informing her that Dr. Fellows had far better things to do than be dragged from his bed in the dead of the night for nothing.

  Juliana had pouted and whined that she was truly ill, only to make a miraculous recovery in time to accompany her mother on a rare visit to her cousins, the Braithwaites, the following day. The eleven-year-old already showed signs of growing into a masterful manipulator—heaven help the bachelors of the ton when she came out in a few years’ time. Heaven help her governess until her wedding day.

  “Juliana, it’s time to go back to sleep.” Elizabeth moved to tuck her in. “If you’re still feeling poorly in the morning, I’ll send Jeremy for Dr. Fellows. I’m sure your mother will welcome the chance to speak to him as well.”

  The thinly veiled threat hung in the air. Juliana did not heed it.

  “I feel so cold,” said the girl, shivers beginning to rack her slight body.

  There it was again, the doubt and guilt that Elizabeth would feel if by some small chance the girl was actually ill.

  Hesitating a moment, she picked up Juliana’s wrist. She recalled with precise detail the time two years before when Dr. Fellows had pressed two fingers to her own wrist to show her how to test a pulse.

  Elizabeth suppressed a little shudder and tried to focus on her task rather than the delicious memory of being touched by that man, but it was impossible not to remember the way his elegant yet callused hands had felt against her skin. She remembered wondering what sport he indulged in that gave him those hard ridges on his fingertips and the pads of his knuckles.

  Elizabeth shook her head. Now was not the time to think about Dr. Fellows’s hands—or any man’s hands, for that matter.

  Focusing on her task, she counted Juliana’s pulse. It was quick and strong, exactly as the doctor said it should be.

  “Can you tell me what exactly hurts?” Elizabeth asked with a frown.

  The girl squirmed a bit and cast her head to one side, refusing to speak. She arched an eyebrow. Chattering teeth aside, this had gone too far.

  “Juliana, if you’re fibbing I’m going to be very cross.” Just then, Juliana leaned over the bed and vomited all over Elizabeth’s slippers.

  “That’s disgusting,” announced Cassandra from her perch.

  The girl sounded more fascinated than revolted. If only Elizabeth could say the same.

  “Cassandra, ring the bell for Mr. Crane,” she said, the sour smell wafting up to her nose to make her own stomach turn.

  “Quickly, please.”

  Cassandra climbed down and yanked on the long velvet pull, no doubt thrilled at the chance to help.

  A few moments later, the butler appeared, fully dressed despite the late hour. Mr. and Mrs. Norton must still be out for the evening. Thank goodness for small miracles.

  “Mr. Crane,” she said with as much grace as a woman standing in last night’s supper can muster, “would you be so good as to send word to Dr. Fellows that Miss Norton is ill?”

  The tall, stocky man raked his eyes over her, his look of icy disdain telling her exactly how he felt about sick children—and her for that matter.

  “I’ll send Jeremy for Dr. Fellows,” said the butler. He paused, swaying a bit so that she couldn’t be certain whether he had the vapors or if he’d been pilfering the spir
its again.

  “Are Mr. and Mrs. Norton back from the Clyvedon ball?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t see any reason to alarm them unnecessarily, especially at this late hour.”

  “Quite.”

  “Oh, and Mr. Crane, perhaps a chambermaid or two could see about this mess. I imagine it’ll be too large a job for just one.”

  Right on cue, Juliana vomited again.

  Never before had Elizabeth seen Crane move so fast.

  Stepping out of her slippers with a little chuckle, she stripped back the sodden bedclothes and pulled the fresher top sheet from Cassandra’s bed. There was little she could do but make Juliana as comfortable as possible.

  “That’s mine,” Cassandra said from across the room.

  “I promise I’ll make sure your bed is set to rights again,” she said as she tucked the sheet around Juliana.

  When Elizabeth finished, she found Cassandra standing at the edge of Juliana’s bed, her two tiny hands wrapped around the jug of water that usually sat on a stand in the corner. A fresh bit of linen hung from her arm, nearly dragging on the floor.

  “So you can clean the sick off your feet,” said the little girl.

  Touched, Elizabeth took the cloth and dipped it in the jug of water. “That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you.”

  Cassandra wrinkled her nose. “It smells.”

  She smiled. “That it does. Now, why don’t you find the book we were reading so we can keep your sister calm while we wait for the doctor? And a bucket. I must find a bucket.”

  A few minutes later, with the rocking chair dragged up to Juliana’s bed but kept well out of range, she settled Cassandra on her lap and opened One Hundred Cottage Stories for Girls. They read, trying to pass time until the doctor arrived, only stopping when the patient needed to cast up the contents of her stomach.

  Had Juliana not been clinging to a spare chamber pot, the scene would have been positively domestic. Except these weren’t Elizabeth’s children. The familiar, dull ache that throbbed low in her chest every day pulsed again. When she first became a governess, she’d hoped it would someday disappear. Instead, she’d learned that she could suppress it but never fully be rid of it. Family, home, children—they were all things she could never aspire to. She didn’t want the life of a novel’s heroine. Not really. What she wanted was these quiet little moments with her own children.

  She tried her best to shake off her sadness. Things could be far worse. They had been far worse.

  Nearly a decade ago, during the first month of her first, and only, modest season, her beloved father had been ripped from her without warning. She could still feel the shock of one of his lieutenants telling her that he’d fallen from his horse. Then came the waves of crushing grief for the man who had played both mother and father all her life.

  After a week, another shock—perhaps the biggest of all.

  The honorable army captain, idolized by his daughter, had not been so honorable when it came to his creditors. As soon as his lieutenants lowered his casket into the muddy ground, his tailor, butcher, and landlord all came to Elizabeth’s door, clutching bills in their hands as they each paid their condolences and then brought up the matter of her father’s accounts.

  And then there were the IOUs from gentlemen who’d told her that her father had been a dab hand at cards. Still, no man can win every time, they’d said. The only differences between these men and the tradesmen were the cut of their coats and the fact that they’d arrived during calling hours.

  Captain William Porter had left his orphaned daughter two hundred pounds plus an annuity of twenty pounds a year. Elizabeth had gathered up his bills, cried, and then paid off every last cent of his debt. It had cost her dearly in more ways than she cared to admit.

  With nothing more than her wits to recommend her, it was work or starve. So she made a choice. She chose survival and took a position teaching the fourteen-year-old daughter of a local lady of quality—a girl just three years her junior. She’d been a governess ever since.

  Elizabeth had spent the last nine years in limbo—no longer the lady her education and upbringing had prepared her for, but not a servant either. She belonged neither upstairs nor downstairs. Her world was the nursery where she taught, slept, and took her meals alone. To dream of a life any larger than that would only end painfully. It was for that reason that she must stop the little flutter of her heart every time she sent Jeremy to fetch Dr. Fellows. Yet despite possessing all of the common sense in the world, she couldn’t help it.

  The Edinburgh physician was a handsome man with dark hair cut short—functional rather than fashionable. He had clear hazel eyes and a mouth that smiled easily and laughed freely. When he became excited by some medical diagnosis, he would bounce on his toes. A string of Latin words would tumble from his lips until he’d abruptly stop himself, blush, and explain to her exactly what he was going on about. Those were the moments when she couldn’t help the way her heart swooped low in her chest.

  Dr. Fellows was a deceptively dangerous man. He wasn’t slick and charming like the bearded men with carefully oiled hair Mrs. Norton entertained when her husband was at his office. He was kind and sharp, easy with his wit and never condescending. He was the sort of man Elizabeth could imagine forgetting herself with. But a governess could never forget herself, no matter how much she wanted to.

  Dangerous indeed.

  With a sigh, she glanced at the book in her lap and found she was at the end of the chapter. “Juliana, would you like me to read another?”

  The girl nodded weakly and closed her eyes.

  Elizabeth wished she could do the same.

  Dr. Edward Fellows stretched his neck against the stiffness of his high shirt points and tried his best to squash the anticipation rolling through him. No man should be this pleased to be roused from his bed and forced to dress in the middle of the night, but he could hardly help it. He was about to see her. He followed the Nortons’ butler up the familiar stairs and down a long corridor. It was a routine he’d performed several times over the past few weeks that should be tiresome by now, yet he couldn’t help the little smile that crossed his lips.

  Crane opened the door, flooding the darkened nursery with lamplight. Through the open inner bedroom door, sitting next to Miss Norton’s bed in a rocking chair with Miss Cassandra on her lap, was Elizabeth Porter. He sucked in a sharp breath and gripped the handle of his medical bag a little tighter.

  She wore a wine-colored dressing gown more suited for a man than a woman over a white night rail that bore little embellishment as it poked out of the folds of her lapels. Her long hair snaked down her back in a thick, dark braid so that only her heavy fringe was free. Society might favor blondes with impossible waists and porcelain skin, but he would forever swear that Miss Porter was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

  And that was part of the problem. She wasn’t merely a woman. She was something otherworldly sent to torment him every time he tended to the Norton family, for he could never touch her.

  Not that he should even be entertaining those thoughts. He was supposed to be counting down the months until he’d sail to America to start a hard-won fellowship he’d prepared half his life for. He should be wrapping up his practice in London, saying good-bye to all but his most delicate patients. Instead, he found himself loath to sever ties with anyone, because that would mean he’d have to stop treating the Norton family and kill any hope of seeing her again.

  Miss Porter looked up from the book she held. The flickering lamplight illuminated the exhaustion around her eyes, but she offered him a small smile nonetheless.

  “Dr. Fellows,” she said as she stood, easing a nearly asleep Miss Cassandra off her lap and settling her into the chair in her place.

  That was when he noticed Miss Porter’s feet. Her bare feet.

  “Miss Porter,” Edward said with a little swallow. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the exposed feet of
a woman who was not a patient. It was not a particularly seductive part of a woman’s body—not like the slope of a calf or the curve of a lower back—but, on her, a bare foot seemed thoroughly erotic.

  Edward slammed the door on that thought. Desperate to scrub his mind clean, he turned to the best distraction he knew.

  The skeleton of the foot consists of three parts: the tarsus, metatarsus, and phalanges.

  “How’s the patient tonight?” he asked, feeling a little more in control. Latin had a way of doing that to a man.

  Miss Porter crossed her arms over her chest and glanced down at the girl. “A new development this time—Miss Norton is retching.”

  He looked down at her exposed toes and swallowed hard.

  Again.

  The tarsal bones are— What are the tarsal bones? How do you not remember this? You’re a physician.

  “Am I to understand that explains your lack of slippers this evening?”

  One side of the lady’s mouth quirked up. “You missed a rather violent attack, I’m afraid.”

  The tarsal bones are the calcaneus, talus, cuboid, navicular, and the first, second, and third cuneiforms. Breathe, you idiot.

  He set his medical bag deliberately on a chest of drawers and unsnapped the top. “Has Miss Norton been out of bed?”

  He stole a glance as Miss Porter shook her head. “Her sister woke me.”

  If only I could have been the one to wake you.

  Edward stilled. Miss Porter was a lady with a quiet but fierce intelligence. A gentleman doesn’t think of ladies in such a familiar manner. The problem was that she didn’t make him feel like a gentleman. Most of the time he wanted to push her against a wall and suck on those lush lips until she whimpered.

  He dreamed of sliding his hands up her legs to the spot where her garters tied off and stocking met bare skin. Then higher, higher until his fingers found—

  Five months. That was all he had to get through without defiling a perfectly respectable woman. If he couldn’t do that, he was a lout.