So, there I was, wondering whether I could actually write a story using the dice method. And here it is. An erudite, good-natured, sarcastic hero, with a child, wealthy, noble family and good looking, with a heroine who is spirited, pleasant, and determined with an absorbing hobby, poor as a church mouse, and attractive. One of the incidents was meeting a carter ill-treating his pony. The other was a letter from a relative, which I decided was from the heroine to the hero.
Here's how it panned out. [have now corrected all the howlers my voice recognition program put in, but have not yet figured out how to stop it putting caps after exclamation and question marks in speech...]
Ok, now I've been through it again and thanks to Colleen for picking up the ones I read right over.
The Unexpected
Librarian
“But Lynnie, you can’t!” wailed
Mrs Ashe.
“Why not, Mama? It relieves you of having to bring me out,
and feeding me, and I shall have a regular wage into the bargain. Frank will be able to stay at school. We have to face it, Papa did not make
sufficient provision for us, and I need to do something to earn a wage. And I really do not wish to be a governess to
some horrid girl who will get everything I had expected to have, and is
featherheaded into the bargain.”
“Nobody would employ you as a
governess; you are too young, and rather too pretty,” said Mrs Ashe.
“Precisely. But to work as librarian to a second cousin
who is a widower, and probably quite old, is much more to my liking,” said
Jocelyn Ashe.
“But he thinks you’re a man!” her mother expostulated. “Only look – he has written to J. Ashe,
esq.!”
“I cannot help it if my name is
more usually given to boys,” said Jocelyn.
“I signed it honestly enough when I wrote to him.”
“So forward of you!” her mother complained faintly.
“Yes, but needs must, and Adam,
Baron de Curtney is a relation,
however distant, and it behoves him to find gainful employment for impoverished
relatives. I told him I had catalogued
my father’s library, and sent him a sample of the system I invented for so
doing; and he has written back that he is impressed by it, and that such
invention and industry deserves further education.” She chuckled.
“I believe he is hinting that if I do well, he might sponsor me to Oxford.”
“The dreaming spires would fall
at the thought,” said her mother.
“I fear so,” said Jocelyn,
“though I wager that I have more brains than half the young men who may go
there.”
“Undoubtedly,” sighed her
mother. “At least if he does not send
you home again – as he might well, my love – you will not have to conceal your
intelligence as you would if you had a season.”
Jocelyn looked affectionately at
her mother. It was from her mother that
she had gained her love of books and she knew that her mother had been much
irked to have to hide her own intellect in her own youth.
“My Lord, there is a young lady
here to see you, who says you are expecting her,” Adam de Curtney’s butler,
Hawtin, hesitated. He went on, “and
there is also a rather mangy pony about which she said she would explain.”
“She had better explain, for I
will not brook anyone ill treating animals,” said Adam, grimly. “But I am not expecting any young, er,
lady. Why did you not send her about her
business?”
“She has a letter which is
unquestionably in your hand, my Lord, and she is undoubtedly a lady,” said
Hawtin. “I placed her in the blue
parlour.”
“Very well,” said Adam. “Thank you, Hawtin.”
The young lady – Hawtin was
right, she was definitely a lady, very young, and rather pretty – rose as Adam
came in to the blue parlour. She dropped
a curtsy.
“I have arrived to take up my
duties as you requested, my Lord,” Jocelyn said. She was rather taken aback to see a very
handsome man, who was by no means as old as she had expected.
Adam stared at her in
consternation.
“I do not understand,” he
said. “I have no expectation of your
arrival.”
Jocelyn laughed.
“Why, my Lord, what a bouncer!” she
said. “We have been in correspondence; indeed I have your last letter inviting
me here to catalogue your library. I am
Jocelyn Ashe.”
He stared, nonplussed.
“But … But you’re a girl!” He managed.
“How very perspicacious of you,
my Lord,” said Jocelyn. “You were
expecting a male Jocelyn? I confess I
was taken aback when you wrote to me as J. Ashe esq.”
“No, you were not,” said
Adam. “You anticipated the error.”
She twinkled at him.
“Well, perhaps,” she
admitted. “I feared you might not take a
lady librarian seriously.”
“I should not have done,” said
Adam, firmly. “So, tell me, where did
you obtain the cataloguing system you so glibly described?”
She flushed, angrily and frowned.
“I may have chosen to permit you
to assume that I was male, my Lord, but I told no lies. I invented it myself for my father’s
collection, because he was not of bookish disposition. I expect it will have to be sold if you will
not employ me,” she said, sadly.
“And you will not make your
come-out either,” he said cynically.
“Well, no, but what is that next
to a really excellent library amassed over many generations?” Said Jocelyn.
“Besides, the addition of Lord Evenmere’s incunabula that I persuaded
papa to make an offer for, when the Lord Evenmere went bankrupt. It was my eighteenth birthday gift,” she
added.
“You asked for incanabula for
your birthday? Well, it explains why the
incanabula were missing when his library was auctioned off. I take it that this purchase was made prior
to the sale of the rest of the library?”
“Yes, my Lord. One of my school friends is the sister of
Lord Evenmere’s secretary. I was able to
assess the collection and make an offer through her good offices,” said
Jocelyn. “Papa may have made no
provision for us, but he was very generous.
This was why mama and I never realised how short of funds he was. It seemed impolite to take over his finances
as well as taking over his library, especially as we had no idea that his
finances were in any wise in difficulty.”
“What an extraordinary girl you
are!” said Adam. Surely he could not
employ a female to catalogue his library?
And yet the system, if it were indeed hers, seemed quite remarkably
good.
He shot some pertinent questions
at her regarding the cataloguing.
Jocelyn answered with aplomb, and
fully. She knew what she was talking
about.
“Very well,” he said. “I will give you a trial; if I am not
satisfied with you after a month, then I shall send you home. But I will make a firm offer for your
incanabula if I cannot employ you.”
“That seems fair, my Lord,” said
Jocelyn. “I cannot see that you would
not be satisfied, so I may rest assured of retaining my collection.”
“I should like to see it sometime
though,” said Adam. “I believe it is
said to include a handwritten copy of Chaucer’s tales, with a tale as yet
unconfirmed as one of the collection.”
“It does, and I should be glad if
you would look at that tale, my Lord.”
She grimaced slightly. “I should
like an expert to see it, since I am convinced that it is spurious, and may
have been an attempt at forgery in the past perhaps by some earlier member of
the family. Either that, or they were
taken in by it. The quality of the
parchment feels slightly different to the rest of the tales, and the
illumination style is not precisely similar to the rest.”
“Fascinating, even so,” said
Adam, disappointed, but not surprised.
“Now, there was one other matter… I believe there was a pony in rather
poor condition…”
“Oh yes, my Lord!” A sparkle of anger came into Jocelyn’s eyes
as she turned her thoughts to the pony.
However, before she could answer further, the door burst open and a tiny
child of about four or five years old came running in.
“Papa, I could not come before
but Cousin Lynnie here, has taken a pony away from a bad man, and it needs to
get well, as please my I ride it all for my own?”
Adam raised an eyebrow.
“You have already met, er, Cousin
Jocelyn?” He queried.
“Yes, Papa, on the drive, while I
was out for my walk with Lindy, but she wanted me to change before I came to
see you. There are tadpoles in the
lake,” said the child, “and it’s a bit muddy.”
“My daughter, Georgiana,” Adam
murmured to Jocelyn. “Miss Linders is an
indulgent nursemaid, and I should not have it any other way. I will look at the pony, Geegee, now back you
run to Lindy.”
Georgiana put up her face for a
kiss, and received one from her father, and ran over to Jocelyn too. Jocelyn promptly bestowed one, and the child
ran off, satisfied.
“A bad man?” Adam raised an eyebrow.
“He was beating of the poor pony
because the cart would not move; it was stuck in a rut. So I shouted at him, and told him,” she
flushed, “oh dear, it sounds like Puss in Boots, and the Marquis of Carabas,
because I said my cousin, Lord de Curtney, would pay him a fair price. I thought you could dock it from my wages,”
she added.
“What, you value the beast above
books?”
“I could not permit the poor creature
to suffer, could I?” said Jocelyn. “But
you will not be obliged to pay a penny, for he went white, and told me to just
take the pony. He added an adjective
that I did not understand,” she added.
“Just as well; this is the carter
who works out of the Red Lion,” said Adam grimly. “I threatened him, last time I caught him
mistreating his animal, that if he ill-treated any more, I would horsewhip him,
and throw him in the pond. I take it,
therefore, that your luggage is still at the Red Lion?”
“Yes; bringing the pony somewhere
where he might be fed and watered, cooling him by walking him here, seemed a
good idea,” said Jocelyn.
He nodded.
“I like your priorities,” he
said. “I will have your luggage
collected.”
Jocelyn found Adam’s library
something of a challenge, as portions of it, which overlapped, had already been
catalogued using a selection of very different systems, which were not
compatible. However, she worked
assiduously on it.
Adam would sometimes come in to
see how Jocelyn was getting on, but schooled himself to stay away, in case she
felt he was hovering with the intention of criticism. As Jocelyn shared her advances with him over
tea, each day, he felt no need to pry into her work. When he walked into the library looking for a
book, and was able to lay his hand on it almost immediately, the efficacy of
her system was definitely vindicated.
Often in her breaks, Jocelyn
would take walks in the thin spring sunshine, and sometimes in light showers
too. When it was fine, she often met
Lindy and Georgiana, out for a walk. Sometimes she saw Georgiana riding the
pony, under the guidance of a groom, once the pony was deemed well enough for
the little girl to ride him. When they were walking, Jocelyn usually made a
point of speaking with Georgiana.
“I want to read proper books!” declared
Georgiana one day. “Lindy only has baby
books.”
“Can you read them all?” Asked Jocelyn. As one of her reasons for needing a job had
been the desire to keep her much younger brother in school, she had some
experience of small children. Frank had
been impatient over learning to read, and had burst into angry tears when he
was not able to read the newspaper the same day he had started to learn his
alphabet!
Georgiana appeared to suffer the
same impatience, for she scuffed the toe of her shoe into the gravel of the
drive.
“No,” she said in a small voice.
“Dear me!” said Jocelyn. “These things take a lot of practice, you
know. Perhaps Lindy will let me come up
to the nursery after tea, and if you work hard to read for me, I will tell you
a good night story.”
Georgiana brightened.
“Oh yes!” she said.
“It’s up to Lindy,” warned
Jocelyn.
Miss Linders looked gratified.
“If you would, Miss Ashe, I would
be delighted,” she said.
Jocelyn privately suspected that
Georgiana rode the poor woman ragged, not from any deliberate naughtiness, but
because Lindy had not the heart to say ‘no’ very often, and Georgiana was
strong minded enough to be in danger of becoming a nursery tyrant.
It turned out that Georgiana had
indeed been mutinous about learning her letters, as she wanted to learn whole
words.
“Tell me, Geegee,” said Jocelyn,
“what is this house built of?”
“Stone,” said Georgiana.
“Stone, indeed,” said
Jocelyn. “And the stone is in big
blocks, isn’t it?” Georgiana nodded, and
Jocelyn went on, “Do you think the men who built it could pick up all the house
at once?”
“’Course not,” said Georgiana.
“Well, reading is a lot like that. The sounds the letters say are the stones,
that can build anything. When you know
how all the stones work, reading becomes easy.”
“Oh,” said Georgiana,
thoughtfully.
“Then let us read through ‘A –
apple, B – bit it,” said Jocelyn, “and you point to the letters you know, and
tell me what part of the word they are saying.”
Georgiana was a clever child, and
soon became excited. She cried out,
“B – I – T, bit,” she said, and
added “and you can make C –A –T, cat!”
“You can,” said Jocelyn. “See you’ve done some building for yourself,
and that means that you are starting to understand how to use the
sound-stones.”
Jocelyn had not noticed the
nursery door opening, and the tall figure of Adam coming quietly in. She closed the book.
“And now, I will tell you a
story,” she said. “A story about a
wizard who built a castle with magic, just by saying the word ‘stone’ for every
block.”
“S – T – O – N?” asked Georgiana.
“Aha! Now we use a bit of word magic there,” said
Jocelyn, “for that would be ‘ston’ which has no meaning. But magic -e on the end of the word makes the
letters in the middle say their name, not their sound, so it is S – T – O – N –
and magic –e.”
Georgiana clapped her hands.
Jocelyn told the tale of a wizard
who had built his castle, but forgot to leave a door to go in; she told how he
had to ask for help to knock through a doorway, and how a clever builder had
showed him how to build an archway with a keystone to hold up. She explained that this was just like the
main front doorway to Georgiana’s own house.
Georgiana was getting sleepy by
the time Jocelyn had finished, and Lindy whisked the little girl off to get
undressed.
“Papa!” cried Georgiana as she
saw her father.
“I will kiss you good night
presently,” said Adam. “Miss Ashe, why
do you blush so furiously? You have done
nothing wrong.”
“I was wondering how long you had
been listening to my foolish story,” said Jocelyn.
“But it was not foolish, it was
quite charming!” said Adam. “A lesson in
reading, an excellent object lesson in asking people when you need help, a bit
of engineering, all in an interesting tale.
Geegee is a lucky little girl. Do
you suppose you could take on some duties in teaching her?” he asked, abruptly.
“I am not sure if I would wish to
give up being a librarian for being a governess full-time, if that is what you
are asking,” said Jocelyn.
“No, no, not at all! I am perfectly satisfied with your work in
the library, but there are now less duties there, and I hope you might let me
pay you for an hour or two every day, to teach Georgiana. I do not want her to have a full-time
governess yet.”
“Then in that case, I am happy to
accept,” said Jocelyn. “She is a
delightful child, but a trifle wilful.”
He pulled a grimace.
“Lindy is indulgent, which I
like, but Georgiana needs to learn discipline too,” he said.
“Indeed, but not the sudden
transition to a governess. Lindy is such
a lovely person, but Georgiana is a stubborn child, I think,” said Jocelyn.
“She takes after her father,”
said Adam, dryly. “And you handle her
very well.”
“My little brother is eight,”
said Jocelyn. “I know about stubborn
children! I will need to work with Lindy
on this, so that we give Georgiana a good balance in her day.”
Lindy, listening in trepidation
behind the door, relaxed. She was not to
be turned off!
“Indeed, I do not know what I
would have done without Lindy,” agreed Adam.
“Geegee minds Lindy most of the time, you know!”
“She would not be such a happy
child if she were not in the habit of obedience,” said Jocelyn. “But she is trying the limits. It is far easier for a newcomer to impose
those limits.”
“You are wise,” said Adam. “Thank you!”
Georgiana proved an apt pupil,
but Jocelyn was thankful of having the experience of having listened to the
family governess dealing with her brother’s stubbornness! Jocelyn was able to ask, “Shall we do sums
first, or reading?” making the question of whether to do sums merely a question
of being before, or after, Georgiana’s preferred lesson of reading. Discipline was easy enough, for Georgiana
responded very well to a threat of withholding such privileges as riding her
pony.
Adam felt Jocelyn to be a
blessing; she had restored order to the chaos of his library, and had arrived
at just the right time to prevent Georgiana from becoming spoilt. How could he have considered sending her
away! However, a visit from the vicar
and his wife disturbed Adam greatly, and after they had left, he sent for
Jocelyn.
Jocelyn tripped cheerfully into
Adam’s study.
“I have a list of those books
which will need a proper restorer,” she said.
“I am not qualified to do it myself, though if you permit, I shall
watch, and try to learn. Why, what is
wrong, Sir?” As she saw his bleak face.
“I have to send you away,” said
Adam harshly.
Her face went white, and her eyes
held the expression like a whipped puppy.
“Why? I thought you were satisfied with what I have
done! I know Georgiana became rather
muddy when we made a model of England
in that big puddle, but…”
He held up a hand.
“You give perfect satisfaction,”
he said, reflecting how adorable she had looked with tendrils of hair escaping
her cap, and a smudge of mud on her nose, after Georgiana’s excursions into
geography. He went on, “the vicar’s wife
has pointed out that as a man who has no wife I am damaging your reputation, a
lone woman in my household.”
“Old cat,” said Jocelyn, in
shock. “But I am not a lone woman in
your household. I have an adequate
chaperone in Lindy. And may I ask how
come the vicar’s wife has never worried about her reputation before I came?”
“Perhaps she feels that Lindy is
old enough not to count,” said Adam dryly.
“I am glad that I can point out that Lindy is your chaperone; I cannot
think how I came to forget that. Shock I
suppose. I presume there has been talk
because you are young and pretty.”
“And Lindy cannot be over forty;
and mama was almost forty when Frank was born, so papa must still have felt her
quite suitable for … such things as occur between men and women,” she
blushed. “If you ask me, it is nothing
more than interference, and jealousy, because that old besom thrusts her
muffin-faced daughter at you at every opportunity.”
“She does, does she?” Said Adam. “I am dense!
Why, it was an attempt to blackmail me into marrying her daughter,
supposedly to preserve your countenance.”
“And if you ask me, the reason
that young woman is still on the shelf isn’t so much a lack of looks, because
anyone contented has their own inner beauty, but because she has a sour
disposition,” said Jocelyn.
“Disappointed in love perhaps.”
“She threw herself at my head
when she was first out,” said Adam, dryly.
“However I was always going to marry Letty Lorimer, Georgiana’s mother.”
“Did you love her very much?” asked
Jocelyn a little wistfully.
He considered.
“We were good friends,” he
said. “It sounds a little lukewarm, but
we could laugh together. I loved her,
but I never felt any overwhelming passion.
We just always expected to get married,” he laughed, “and though we had
a private pact to release each other from our parents’ plans if we met the love
of our life, it never happened. And we
were happy,” he said softly. “She had
such plans for our children; she wanted to teach them herself at first. But we only had Georgiana. She would have approved of you,” he added.
“Oh, Adam, I wish I had known
her,” said Jocelyn.
“In a way, so do I,” said Adam,
“but then, I might not have learned to love you, Lynnie.”
Jocelyn’s heart beat faster.
“Oh, Adam!” She said.
“Even if you only want me as a mother for Georgiana…”
“I don’t,” said Adam, savagely,
“I want you,” and he came round his desk to pull her into his arms to kiss her.
Jocelyn realised that perhaps
this was what the vicar’s wife had anticipated, but she did not, in the least,
consider the situation worth protesting.
Inevitably, Georgiana walked in
on the embrace.
“Papa, I… Why are you cuddling
Cousin Lynnie?” she asked. “Has she hurt
herself?”
“No, sweetheart,” said Adam. “How would you like Cousin Lynnie to be your
new mama?”
Georgiana considered that.
“She won’t stop teaching me, will
she?” she demanded.
“It’s one of the important things
mamas do, to teach people,” said Jocelyn, who was blushing.
“Oh, good. I’d like Cousin Lynnie to be my mama, then,”
said Georgiana. “Papa, Lindy let me play
rescuing her from highwaymen, but I can’t untie her.”
“Why did you tie her up in the
first place?” asked Adam.
“Because she was napkinned by
highwaymen,” said Georgiana, unanswerably.
“I think you mean kidnapped, and
are a bit muddled, darling,” said Jocelyn.
“Highwaymen just steal things.
Shall we go and rescue Lindy?”
Lindy was very pleased to be
rescued from a rather spidery coach, in the back of the coach house, where she
had been ‘napkinned’. She was delighted
when Adam begged her to be the first to wish him happy.
“Oh, I am so pleased!” she
said. “Of course, not unexpected … Oh
Miss Ashe, you will want your mother here!”
“Hah! Of course, the very thing!” said Adam. “If Mrs Williams does not consider Lindy a
suitable chaperone, she cannot take exception to Mrs Ashe! And I shall let her stew before the betrothal
is announced!”
“Adam, you are a bad man!” laughed
Jocelyn.
“Yes,” agreed Adam, “and when she
proses on about the vanity of choosing someone as young as you, I will tell her
that I am only marrying you for your incanabula.”
“Aren’t you?” said Jocelyn,
peeping at him from under her lashes.
“No, you minx; I am marrying you
because I adore you,” said Adam, kissing her again.
It was only later that Adam
reflected with amusement that the vicar’s wife probably had no idea what
incanabula were, and would probably think it highly improper. That pleased him no end!
