I was twenty years of age when my father employed Agatha as governess to the twins, my half-siblings by his second wife. He had not married for a third time. He said that after losing my mother to the fever and my stepmother during childbirth, it seemed that he was doomed to live alone. Such sentiments, though I rebuked them as any good daughter should, gave me the perfect excuse for my own reluctance to find a suitor. How could I do any such thing when my father needed me so?
It meant that when Agatha joined us, I was neither married nor attached. And neither was she. Oh, but she was exotic. Her skin was a rich, golden brown; in colour like that of a farm hand or a traveller, yet smooth and unblemished even at the age of thirty-two. She smiled all the time, so unseemly for a governess, and she was fond of sweet tea and cream that gave her face, her waist and her bosom a roundness that appealed to my every sense.