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  A World to Win

  Mary Lancaster

  Published by

  Mushroom eBooks

  Copyright © 2006, Mary Lancaster

  Mary Lancaster has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

  First published by Mushroom eBooks in 2006.

  This edition first published in 2006 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom

  www.mushroom-ebooks.com

  All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It must not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book but did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-84319-435-4

  Contents

  Part One: Discovery: April — September 1847

  Chapter ONE

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Chapter TWELVE

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Part Two: Revolution: November 1847 — March 1848

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  Chapter NINETEEN

  Chapter TWENTY

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  Part Three: Recovery: April — September 1848

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Chapter THIRTY

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO

  Chapter THIRTY-THREE

  Chapter THIRTY-FOUR

  Chapter THIRTY-FIVE

  Part Four: War: September 1848 — January 1849

  Chapter THIRTY-SIX

  Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

  Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

  Chapter THIRTY-NINE

  Chapter FORTY

  Chapter FORTY-ONE

  Chapter FORTY-TWO

  Chapter FORTY-THREE

  Part Five: Toward Peace: January — July 1849

  Chapter FORTY-FOUR

  Chapter FORTY-FIVE

  Chapter FORTY-SIX

  Chapter FORTY-SEVEN

  Chapter FORTY-EIGHT

  Chapter FORTY-NINE

  Chapter FIFTY

  Chapter FIFTY-ONE

  Mary Lancaster

  Also by Mary Lancaster...

  Part One: Discovery: April — September 1847

  CHAPTER ONE

  I first saw him in Vienna.

  Sometimes now I think it was in Vienna that I first saw anything at all, but that’s not strictly true. Actually, I first saw clearly in London, at the mature age of twenty-seven, by the simple expedient of purchasing a pair of spectacles — and all at once I was enchanted, amazed by the beauty of everything, the sharpness, the detail that suddenly became so clear to me!

  I suppose this euphoria might account for the very odd thing I did in London, but at the time I could only wonder why I had never bought them before, how I could have let so much of my life pass in a dull, myopic haze.

  Well, it was easy really. As a child I was ashamed of my constantly worsening disability and hid it lest I be thought stupid. Needless to say I kept my secret and was still thought stupid, which just shows the pointlessness of vanity. After that, as a young girl, no one would let me have spectacles on the grounds that gentlemen didn’t want to marry ladies so disfigured — apparently it gives us a daunting air of intelligence. Myself, I can’t help thinking that neither do gentlemen wish to marry ladies who cut them dead in the street and ignore them at parties simply from not being able to see who the devil they are.

  I speak from experience, incidentally. By the ripe old age of twenty-seven, I had only ever received one offer of marriage, an engagement from which I was freed with embarrassing speed. Just as well, for had I married, I would not have been in the position of looking for a genteel situation in London, never have bought my spectacles, never have answered that fatal advertisement, and so never have found myself in an opulent private hotel room, being interviewed by Count and Countess István Szelényi for the post of governess to their two children.

  It was at this interview that my spectacles really came into their own. I was still fascinated by the newly discovered details of people’s features and expressions, but when I first encountered Count István and his wife, I was completely bowled over by the sheer sharp beauty before me. As I said, it’s the only excuse I have for my odd — my bad — behaviour.

  The Count stood up as I entered the room and approached with a faint, formal smile. Of course, he wasn’t really seeing me: nobles of Count Szelényi’s rank do not see governesses, even if they deign to interview them.

  Tall, dark, splendidly built and impeccably dressed, he was younger than I had expected and handsome enough to have turned to jelly the knees of any impressionable young lady, even one used to the joys of perfect vision.

  “Miss Kettles?” he said, and naturally his voice was charming too: low, cultivated and exotically accented.

  “Count Szelényi?” I countered, inclining my head with a little too much pride — I found it very hard to behave like a governess.

  “Yes, I am István Szelényi. This is my wife. Please sit down.”

  I sat, casting a glance at the lady while I did so. As befitted the wife of so magnificent a nobleman, she was both elegant and beautiful. She was sitting by the window, relaxing against her chair back in a way that would have appalled my Aunt Edith, but somehow she still exuded aristocratic splendour, her fashionable morning gown of pink silk billowing in luxuriant flounces around her chair. Aloof and superior, she managed to acknowledge me by the slightest nod, but she never said a word throughout the entire interview, contenting herself with occasional glances at me from under her long, blond eyelashes. They were secretive glances, almost suspicious, and it struck me that she looked so at all women who came in contact with her husband. Obviously I set her mind at rest — well, I have never been much of a threat to Beauty — for she raised no objection to my engagement.

  “You are a little younger than I expected,” Count István began, civilly but with no trace of hesitation.

  I said, “I am twenty-seven,” and looked straight into his fine, grey eyes. I saw no recognition there. I felt none myself.

  “May I ask what your experience is?”

  “To be honest, none,” I told him flatly. I think I smiled.

  He sighed. “Then perhaps you will tell me what qualifies you to take charge of my children?”

  “I have been well educated,” I returned calmly. “I know my arithmetic, history and geography. I can play the piano-forte and sew. I have Latin, French and Hungarian...”

  “Hungarian?” he pounced. I knew he would.

  “Hungarian.”

  He leaned back in his chair, regarding me thoughtfully. “That is unusual in an English lady, is it not?”

  “I dare say, but I am Scottish,” I said pedantically, adding by way of explanation, “My mother’s family were Hungarian.”<
br />
  Again, I looked straight into his eyes. But he only smiled faintly. He doesn’t know, I thought, and felt laughter bubble up inside me. It was a bitter sort of mirth, but it still made me reckless, so I choked it back, and waited.

  “That is fortunate for us,” he observed. “In Hungary, people of our class tend to speak in French, but I do not forget I am a Magyar. I would have my children grow up with a thorough knowledge of their own language, as well as French and German — do you have any German, Miss Kettles?”

  “A little,” I said cautiously. He nodded consideringly. Again there was a pause.

  “Do you have references?” he enquired at last. I delved into my reticule for the required letters. The Count accepted them, read them quickly, occasionally casting a quick, almost curious glance at me. “Your father was a minister of the church?”

  “Yes,” I answered, feeling my heart bump. “He died some three months ago. To be frank it is why I am now in need of a situation.”

  And how he would have disapproved of this one! I shuddered to think of what he would have said. I hoped the dead did not really watch over us.

  The Count nodded. “Of course. I understand. These gentlemen speak very highly of you.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw the Countess give me a slightly longer look. The Count leaned forward to hand the letters back to me. I took them without comment.

  He said, “May I ask what brought you south to London?”

  Before I could help it I shrugged. Aunt Edith wouldn’t have liked that either. “Partly a desire for change,” I said honestly, “and partly because I was told there is a greater variety of situations to be found here.”

  “I see,” said the Count. “You realize what this post would entail?”

  “Yes, I think so. I would be teaching your son who is seven and your daughter who is six.”

  “Of course, but we would require you to do so in Buda-Pest,” he said a little drily. “Also in Vienna when I have to attend the Emperor, and in my father’s castle in Transylvania. It is all a long way from home.”

  “I have no home,” I said quickly and then, disgusted by the pathos of such a statement, I added, “I have nothing to keep me here; I have always wanted to see the world, and I need a situation.” I smiled faintly. “I am told Transylvania is incredibly beautiful.”

  How fortunate I would now have my spectacles to appreciate it.

  The Count said, “Mmm.” He stood up. “Our tour here is nearly over. We plan to leave London at the end of this week. We will travel as fast as possible to Vienna, where we may stay some time before going on to Buda-Pest. I move around a lot, Miss Kettles, and my family go with me. You may find it tiring caring for small children in such circumstances, but I shall expect them to be taught just the same.”

  I nodded. He glanced at his wife, but she was gazing out of the window and didn’t turn.

  “Then you accept the post at the salary stated?”

  With every ounce of sense I had, I knew that this was madness and that I should stop before it went any further. But I couldn’t help myself. After all, the salary was extremely generous.

  “Yes,” I said brazenly. “I accept. I have just one question however. Your advertisement mentioned a ‘replacement’ — why did your previous governess leave?”

  I told you I was feeling reckless. Such blatant curiosity could easily have cost me the situation. Perhaps I was trying to lose it, knowing in my heart I shouldn’t even be thinking of it. However, it was the Count who looked embarrassed. He half-turned, tidying some papers on the table before him.

  “She did not choose to leave,” he said at last. “She — er — died.”

  I blinked. “Oh dear,” I murmured. “How — daunting.”

  The Countess lifted her head, and I saw her china blue eyes were full of laughter — a mirth not entirely free of malice.

  * * * *

  I never liked children. You may think governessing an odd choice of occupation in the circumstances, but I had long ago worked out that it was all I was fit for. I was reasonably well educated — for a woman — and of respectable family. I could sew only slowly and badly, despite what I had told the Count, and I had had great difficulty in keeping house for myself and my father let alone for a family of strangers. So I had either to sponge upon my father’s family or become a governess. With regret, I chose the latter.

  Even more regretfully, I contemplated the dead governess, my predecessor, and tried not to wonder what appalling acts perpetrated by my charges had driven her to the grave. For I was under no illusions about the position of a governess in a wealthy household. Despised by both family and servants and universally regarded as inferior to the children to be taught and disciplined, it would be very easy to find the situation intolerable. I had resolved to seek what entertainment I could from it — and then the Devil prompted me to answer Count István’s advertisement. Which, as I began to say some time ago, was how I came to be in Vienna and to see Lajos Lázár.

  I was only presented to my charges on the morning of our departure from London. They were called Miklós and Anna. The boy was small and slight, delicate looking, with his mother’s secretive eyes; the girl was plump and prosperous. Both stared at me flatly when I smiled at them — I particularly hate when children do that — though they answered me politely in French when their father introduced us in that language.

  Their politeness lasted all the way to Vienna, and in the end I was glad to see it go. Initially suspicious of them, especially on account of my predecessor’s demise, I was greatly relieved on that swift, exhausting journey to find them biddable, well-mannered children — a trifle precocious, perhaps, but intelligent and interested. Their grasp of languages was especially impressive: they spoke French and Hungarian with equal fluency, interspersed with odd phrases in German.

  However, by the time we reached Vienna there was another nagging suspicion in my mind: that they were just too well behaved to be children at all. Either they were lulling me into a false sense of security — in which case I should look out, or follow my predecessor to the grave — or they were sick and I should report the fact to their parents.

  I felt rather sick myself as I unpacked my meagre possessions in Count István’s elegant Vienna house. The elegance had not yet impinged upon my brain, only my own tiredness and that nagging worry over the children. I thought I was getting another headache.

  Still, I revelled in my solitude and the stillness of my quiet bedchamber. I felt quite joyful at the prospect of staying in one place for several days.

  “Travel,” I said to my one evening dress as I hung it up in the wardrobe, “is, after all, overrated.”

  I had longed for years to see more of the world, and now that I had — admittedly at a cracking pace — I was ridiculously disappointed, harassed by a vague sense of insecurity that had very little to do with my menial position or the strangeness of the Szelényi family. It had more to do with glimpses of poverty, faces turned towards me with want and discontent and hardness in their eyes.

  My sombre thoughts were interrupted by an abrupt knock on the door. I nearly screamed with vexation for I dearly wanted a few hours’ peace. Instead I stayed silent, hoping I would be presumed asleep, but the knock came again, accompanied by a double-voiced giggle that was unmistakable for all its rarity.

  Surprised, I crossed the room and opened the door. Two small night-gowned figures erupted past me in a medley of mirth and garbled words, from which I deduced that they had escaped from Zsuzsa, their nursery-maid — it wasn’t difficult, Zsuzsa’s attention was easily distracted by anything male and over the age of sixteen — and for some reason come to say goodnight to me.

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said, eyeing them dubiously as they dived on to my bed. My heart was unwilling to be touched. “You’ve never done this before.”

  Heaving herself in to a sitting position by leaning on her brother’s head, Anna grinned at me.

  “We thought you might b
e lonely,” she said disarmingly.

  “I haven’t had time to be.”

  “We wondered,” Miklós chimed in, emerging flushed from under his sister’s elbow, “what your name was.”

  “Miss Kettles,” I said primly and, I hoped, repressively.

  “Don’t you have another name? Frau Weitel did.”

  “It was Marta,” Anna added. “What is yours?”

  “Katherine,” I said, surrendering to the inevitable.

  “We could call you Miss Katherine,” Anna offered in friendly spirit, “only it’s even harder to say than Miss Kettles.”

  I found myself admitting, “My friends call me Katie.”

  “Oh, that’s much better!” cried Miklós. “Can we be your friends then?”

  I opened my mouth, and closed it again. “If you’re good,” I said, taking off my spectacles to wipe an imaginary smudge.

  “Why do you wear these?” the girl asked.

  “To see.”

  She stared. “Can’t you see without them?”

  Suspicion returned. I could imagine all sorts of future catastrophes resulting from this conversation.

  “Certainly I can.” I put the glasses back on and regarded her fully. “They help me to see even better.”

  Anna looked quite awed, but Miklós was holding out his hand to me.

  “Can I try them?” he asked. I contemplated him for a moment, eventually deciding it would be the lesser of two evils to get it over with now. I took the spectacles off again and helped the boy hold them over his eyes. His face screwed up alarmingly.

  “I can’t see anything at all — it hurts!”

  “That’s because they are my spectacles,” I said, taking them back. “They only help me. Do you know, I think you should run back to bed now before Zsuzsa reports your escape to your mother.”

  “Very well,” Anna said reasonably, “but will you take us to the Prater tomorrow, Miss Katie?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, pulling them both off my bed and pointing them firmly in the direction of the door.

  “Please — we’ll be very good — even Frau Weitel took us once... “ She broke off in surprise as her brother’s outburst of laughter interrupted her. “What?” she demanded.