Chapter Nine #3
It was getting dark; the guests would be arriving any moment now. She needed to get upstairs so she wouldn’t have to see Masquerade, because that might give her nightmares again. One day she might have to listen to her; today, she didn’t. She hurried to the foyer and turned up the stairs.
“Good evening, Lady Rebecca.” Lady Pauline’s smooth voice came from the open front door, and Rebecca hunched her shoulders, stopping halfway up the stairs.
“Good evening, Lady Pauline,” she said, curtsying while she carefully kept one hand on the railing. No sense falling on her head for no good reason.
“You’re on your way upstairs, I see.”
“Yes. That’s where the stairs lead.”
This time when Lady Pauline narrowed her eyes a little, Rebecca noticed Butler behind her, stifling a smile.
That could be important. Her papa was forever telling her that the servants were why a household worked or didn’t work, and that being kind and noticing the extra care someone on the staff took was both proper and appreciated.
“So I see,” the lady returned, taking a step forward to rest one hand on the mahogany newel cap. “You remember our chat the other day? It’s especially important tonight. I’ll wager you can’t recall the last time your father had a quiet evening spent with friends in his own home.”
Rebecca began to answer that he spent quiet evenings at home with her all the time, but she could already guess that Masquerade would say she was only a little girl.
Not a friend. “I know you’re trying to make Papa like you,” she said instead, turning her back again.
“He’s not the only one who lives here, though. ”
“For now,” came the murmur at her back, and a shiver went down Rebecca’s spine as she continued up the stairs.
Masquerade’s words could mean two things, of course—either that Lady Pauline meant to join them there, or that one of them would not live there much longer.
That would be Rebecca, of course. Boarding school.
Papa had said she would never go to boarding school unless she wanted to, and not until she was much older, anyway.
But Lady Pauline hadn’t meant that. She’d meant soon.
Oh, this was very bad. She could be as sweet as orange meringue from now on and still wake up one morning to discover a coach at the door waiting to drive her away to parts unknown.
When she got to her bedchamber she went to look out the window, but it was nearly dinnertime and Eddie wouldn’t be out in his great-aunt and-uncle’s garden unless he’d gone back to trying to dig into the sewers, which was now more about just digging a grand hole, anyway.
She sat at her small writing table and pulled out a paper, then rested her hands on it.
If she wrote Eddie a note, someone else might see it.
How would she get it to him, anyway? Crumpling it into a ball and throwing it might get it into the Grove House garden, but it would be hours, if not days, before someone found it there.
“Lady Becks?” Mrs. Brubbins knocked at the door, then pushed it open a few inches. “Are you well?”
Rebecca wiped at the tears on her face but didn’t turn around. “I’m fine.”
“May I come in?”
“Yes, of course.”
The governess walked into the bedchamber and closed the door behind her. “I happened to be chatting with Mrs. Alliday about dinner, when who should come into the kitchen but Butler. And he said that I might wish to come see you, because you were upset, and had every right to be.”
Sniffing, Rebecca opened one of the books that sat on her desk, then closed it again. “Papa likes orange meringue pie, Brubbie.”
“Yes, I’m aware. He says it makes his toes tingle.”
“Exactly! They’re having cherries and almonds after dinner tonight, though.”
“Hmm. And why is that, do you think?”
“Because Lady Pauline especially likes them.”
“Oh. Well, that was very kind of your father, then, to select a dessert someone else especially enjoys.”
“He didn’t choose it. She did.”
Nodding, the governess fetched a second chair, the one that sat beside her bookshelves, and pulled it over to the far side of the writing table. Then she sat, leaning her elbows on the desk and fitting her chin into her hands. “You don’t generally cry over desserts, my lady. Speak.”
“Oh, Brubbie. It’s nothing. I’m a little spoiled, I think, and I sometimes say things to grown-ups that I shouldn’t.”
“You are not spoiled. You are perhaps more accustomed to having a say than other young ladies your age, but you don’t whine or complain or lie on the floor screaming if you’re overruled.”
“Screaming is for babies.”
“Precisely.”
Rebecca thought for a moment, then sat her own elbows on the desk and her chin in her hands like Brubbie had. “I heard,” she said slowly, “that sometimes stepmothers don’t want stepchildren about. They make them go to boarding schools so a new family doesn’t have to be reminded of the old family.”
“Ah. And where did you hear this rubbish?”
“I just heard it.”
“Was it Master Edmund? As he doesn’t have a stepfather or a stepmother, I don’t believe his theory has any legs to stand on at all.”
“No, it wasn’t Eddie. And she didn’t say it exactly like that. It was more of a … sinulation.”
“An insinuation?”
“That’s it. An insinuation.” She scowled. “I mean, I know I take up all of Papa’s time, and he would be happier to have a wife and a son, but do I have to go away so he can be happy?”
Brubbie’s round cheeks jumped a little, like she was clenching her jaw beneath them. “Was this your grandmother’s thinking, by chance?” she asked in her same kind voice, but it also sounded a little clenched.
“No. Grandmother doesn’t chat with me. I think she’s worried I’ll spill something on her, because she always nudges her tea away from herself when I walk into the room.”
“I have a fair idea that it wasn’t Mrs. Silbern saying such a thing,” the governess went on, half to herself. “That leaves … Did you perhaps have a chat with Lady Pauline?”
Oh, she’d figured it out. Good. Rebecca took a deep breath. Mrs. Brubbins was quite clever, and sometimes Rebecca counted on that. “I don’t want to be a wag.”
“You’re not being a gossip, my dear. I’m asking you a question, and you’re going to answer it without embellishment. Very proper.”
“Oh, good.”
“Was it Lady Pauline you spoke to, then? She said those things to you about boarding school and your father being happier with a new family?”
“Insinuated,” Rebecca reminded her. “Mostly.” She leaned her elbows and her chin forward.
“Eddie and I have a plan, Brubbie, but you mustn’t tell anyone.
We want Papa to marry Eddie’s mama instead of Masquerade—I mean, Lady Pauline.
Masquerade is our secret name for her, so no one knows who we’re talking about. ”
The governess leaned forward too, so that her nose bumped Rebecca’s. “I want to know absolutely everything, Lady Becks.”