Terms of Employment

"I require letters," said Mr. Ashworth, "of a personal nature. Written by you. Signed by me." Catherine waited. When he did not continue, she said, "Personal in what sense, sir? Many men of business employ a secretary." "Not letters of business." He looked, for the first time, faintly uncomfortable, and she found it improved him. "Letters of courtship." The clock on the stair did not creak. Catherine kept her face very still, which was a skill she had been forced to learn the year the creditors came, and she said, "You wish me to write love letters." "I wish you to write correspondence to a young lady whom I intend to marry." He said *intend* the way another man might say *purchase*. "Her name is Miss Pellinore. The match is sensible on both sides. Her family is respectable, her temper is mild, and her father and I have already reached an understanding regarding the particulars." "Then I cannot see what is wanting." "What is wanting," said Mr. Ashworth, "is that Miss Pellinore reads novels." Catherine did not laugh. It cost her something. "She has formed a notion," he went on, with the grim patience of a man explaining a flooded mine, "that a marriage ought to be preceded by a season of — feeling. Expressed in writing. Her mother encourages this. I have attempted the correspondence myself. I have attempted it four times." He opened a drawer and laid four sheets upon the desk, squared their edges, and pushed them across to her as though surrendering evidence. "You may read them. I am told they are the difficulty." Catherine read them. They were not, in fact, badly written. They were clear, they were correct, and they were as warm as a bill of lading. *I trust this letter finds you in good health. I have given thought to your remark concerning the assembly rooms and find I have no objection.* The fourth one ended, *I remain, with esteem, yours faithfully.* A man could have signed it to his coal merchant. "I see the difficulty," she admitted. "Miss Pellinore wept over the third one. Her mother wrote to mine. It has become" — he searched for the word — "a situation." "And so you would have me invent a feeling you do not possess, and send it to a young woman under your name, so that she will marry a man she has never truly corresponded with." She had meant it to sting. She watched it land, and watched him decline to flinch. "I would have you," said Mr. Ashworth, "lend her the *expression* of a feeling I expect to develop in the ordinary course of a sound marriage. I am not a monster, Miss Vane. I am a man who is bad at one particular thing and is willing to pay rather than fail at it. The letters will be honest in their facts. Only the — the arrangement of them is beyond me." The arrangement of them. As though tenderness were a matter of furniture. She should refuse. A decent woman would refuse, would stand, would deliver some cool remark about the deceit of it and sail out past the former governess and the man with the expensive gloves. Catherine thought of the eleven shillings in the teapot, and the quarter's rent, and a letter she herself owed to Hampshire, a cheerful lying letter to a sister who must never know. She was, she realised, already composing the first line of Miss Pellinore's letter. It had simply arrived in her head, uninvited, the way the right word always did. "I will require to know things about her," Catherine said. "If I am to write to her. What she said about the assembly rooms. What colour she favours. Whether she has a dog. A letter that is true in its facts must have facts, Mr. Ashworth, and you have given me four pages of weather." Something shifted behind his careful face. It was not a smile. It was the place where, in another man, a smile would have been. "Then you accept." "I accept the work," said Catherine. "I have not yet decided whether I accept *you*. We shall see how the first letter goes." "The first letter," said Mr. Ashworth, "is the one I most fear." It was, she thought, the first honest thing he had said all morning, and she was annoyed to find it had made her like him a little.