As the carriage bumped along, Georgette could not help thinking that the Duke of Draycott must have paid out an awful lot of money for mail coaches in the last six months, particularly if the other governesses had also come from London.
Initially, there had been three other people on the inside of the coach with her when they had first set off from Piccadilly. None of the original three remained by the second day of travelling, each leaving the coach at one of the planned stops to change the horses. However, others had embarked upon their own journeys from those stops, and Georgette felt herself somewhat exhausted from what seemed to her to be almost perpetual introductions to people she had no desire to get to know.
In truth, it was not simply because she did not wish to know anybody, but rather that she did not wish to explain where she was going and why. It was almost as if she feared the scorn. Even people of lower class seemed to look down upon a person who had fallen in fortunes. A young lady of her obvious breeding setting off on a long journey to become a governess in a great house would clearly fit the category perfectly. Without explanation, all in her company would instantly know that she had become suddenly impoverished, and she could not bear it.
At first, the idea that she would be so very far away from London had quite unsettled her. It was almost as if Georgette would, at intervals, forget that she would have no home to return to there, even if she did go back to London.
In the end, she simply tried to think of it in another way. At least if she were not working in London, there would be very little chance of happening upon an acquaintance she had known in better times. More than once, Georgette tried to imagine the horror of being the governess in the house where one of her former acquaintances had arrived as a visitor. In truth, her sense of humiliation would have been complete in such circumstances.
At least in Oxfordshire, she knew nobody, and nobody knew her. And she need not explain to a single person about her former life and what had happened to change everything. She would simply be the governess; anonymous and isolated.
By the time the coach had come upon the immense driveway which would eventually lead to Draycott Hall, Georgette was the only remaining passenger in the post-chaise. In truth, Georgette would not have realized that they had entered the estate of Draycott had the driver not called down to her. She could see no house as yet, only vast woodlands and green fields everywhere. She had even seen a river flowing across the land and had felt the bump of the carriage as it had gone over the bridge which traversed it.
It was not until the driveway dropped down a little and they found themselves in a clearing that she saw the house for the first time. At that moment, Georgette was glad that she was alone inside the carriage, for she gasped audibly.
Georgette had never in her life attended such a place. Whilst she had been a minor member of the aristocracy, still, her father did not have the sort of connections that would have led either of them to so grand a place.
From her vantage point, Georgette could see Draycott Hall in all its glory. It was truly the most enormous mansion she had ever set eyes on, and she now rather wondered quite how only fifty servants could service such a building.
And, much apart from the great woodlands of the estate itself, Draycott Hall was set in the most beautifully landscaped grounds she had ever seen.
Georgette almost pressed her face against the window as if it would somehow give her a better view. Set in the very center of the vast and immaculate green lawns was a great stone fountain of the most immense proportions she had ever seen. The central feature of the fountain was a great stone column with circular platforms, ranging from large at the bottom to very small at the top of the column. The water itself seemed to come from a finial at the very top of the column and slowly trickled down into the first of the circular platforms, overflowing that and flowing into the next. And on it went until all the platforms were filled and the water spilled over into the base of the great stone fountain itself. For a moment, Georgette busied her mind entirely with quite how the thing must work.
She realized, of course, that the source of the water must come from a much higher place, relying upon gravity to force the water up through a pipe of some sort inside the stone column and out the finial at the top. Of course, she had seen the river running across the land and thought that it must surely wind around the back of the great estate to higher ground behind. Still, the work which must have gone into the creation of such a thing must have been truly involved.
Although there was much countryside surrounding London itself, Oxfordshire seemed to be really rather rich in greenery. And the estate itself, the very grounds of Draycott Hall, seemed to contain more countryside than she had ever imagined herself to have been comfortable with. In truth, Georgette had always very much been a town dweller, loving London more than any place she had ever been. Quite how she would do now in the country was beyond her.