"Governesses never are heroines in a romance - perhaps that is just as well. If romantic heroines behaved like governesses there would be no story."
Vermilion Massingberd is eminently practical. She acknowledges that she is so ordinary as to be almost invisible, and she has very little choice in the way of career - but if she must be a governess she can comfort herself with the thought that at least she is getting away from her brother-in-law - and that she is saving most of her salary towards her chief ambition: retirement to a respectable lodging where she will have independance and the chance to indulge her hobby of reading sensational novels - even if she must obtain them from the circulating library.
But perhaps it was not very sensible to accept a post so very far from home and civilisation. And why was it important that she should not be easily shocked? - or easily frightened? And why has no one in the capital ever seen her aristocratic pupils?
And will her recommended method for dealing with ghostly apparitions - "I should pull the bedclothes over my head and hope very much that it would go away" - always work. Especially with upires. And worse.
And even the most practical lady can be betrayed by love...