Chapter 5 #2
Miss Corvus met Nell’s explanation with ominous silence.
Apprehension coiled in Nell’s stomach. By some miracle she kept it from creeping into her voice. “Do you doubt me?”
“You’ve never given me any reason to,” Miss Corvus said. “Yet it doesn’t change the facts.”
Nell’s already sagging spirits sank still further. “I know. I know. It’s why I came back immediately. I thought to warn you before—” She stopped herself. “But I didn’t consider he’d send an express to you.”
“Not only to me. If he’s sent one here, you can be assured he’ll have sent something similar to one or more of our patrons.”
Nell had contemplated that very possibility during those frantic moments after she’d been caught in Miles’s office. It made it no easier to hear.
“We rely on their generosity,” Miss Corvus said. “Many are women like us—forward-thinking, subversive—but not all. It’s the latter that concern me. Specifically, Lady Summers, Mrs. Crookshanks, and Mrs. Weaving.”
Lady Summers, Mrs. Crookshanks, and Mrs. Weaving were their three largest benefactors. Respectable Christian women all, none of whom knew the true purpose of the Academy.
“How long do you think their annual donations will continue if they are persuaded my deputy headmistress is a light-heeled wench who’s no better than she ought to be?” Miss Corvus asked.
Nell flinched at the coarse description. “I will explain the circumstances to them myself.”
“It won’t matter.”
“I’ll tell them—”
“It won’t matter,” Miss Corvus bit out. She stood abruptly.
Arms folded, she paced across the study, her black crepe skirts swishing with bottled fury.
“We are held to a higher standard here. Higher still because our outward show of modesty protects the true purpose of our work. What you have done, however inadvertently, puts us all at risk.”
Nell clasped her hands tight in her lap. During all her years at the Academy, she had never received a dressing-down. The worst of Miss Corvus’s ire had always been reserved for Effie and Gemma. Nell, by contrast, had rarely merited a single word of rebuke.
She had spent her life doing her duty as best she knew how. Always looking out for her sisters, her students. Always putting the Academy first. It’s why she’d gone to London in the first place. And all for this to happen. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
“Would that I was rich enough to subsidize all this myself,” Miss Corvus went on. “But we rely on these charitable ladies and their ilk. When they come to me, along with Pettiman, demanding that I dismiss you—”
“No!” Nell objected, shocked.
Miss Corvus glanced over her shoulder to meet Nell’s stricken gaze. Her mouth curved in a bitter smile. “Had that possibility not occurred to you yet, my dear?”
Nell could supply no answer. Her chest tightened so that for a moment she could scarcely breathe.
“No, I don’t suppose it did,” Miss Corvus mused. “All you could think of was returning home.”
Tears stung at the back of Nell’s eyes. “What else could I have done?”
“Nothing,” Miss Corvus said. “Indeed, returning to the Academy is exactly what I expected you would do should trouble cross your path during your visit to town.”
Nell stilled, hearing the unmistakable note of censure in Miss Corvus’s arctic tones. “I don’t know what you’re implying—”
“I imply nothing. My meaning is plain. You had no wish to leave the school. You never have had since your accident. It surprises me not at all that you would return at the first opportunity.”
“You make it sound as though I’m making excuses. Surely, you must see that the events of this morning—”
“Oh, they’re a scandal. There’s no doubt of that.” Miss Corvus walked to the tower window. She stopped in front of it. There was an endless pause. And then: “What is Mr. Quincey like?”
Nell’s heart beat an uneven rhythm. “A good man, I suspect,” she said. “But unknowable.”
“What is there to know? So long as he’s honorable.
And his exposés on Compton’s crimes would lead one to believe he is.
No one else would have risked so much to reveal the truth.
” Miss Corvus looked out the window, her posture as resolute as the woman in the portrait that hung in the hall.
“You will, of course, have to marry the man.”
Nell stared at Miss Corvus’s rigid back. She was certain she’d misheard her.
“I will inform Pettiman and any others who inquire that you are already engaged,” Miss Corvus said.
“An excess of enthusiasm can be forgiven if a couple is soon to be wed. It will not expunge the crime, but it will go some small way toward ameliorating the damage.” She turned.
A muscle twitched at her eye, the only sign of the effort it took for her to maintain her control.
“Perhaps, when enough time has passed, you may come back and resume your duties. Married teachers are not out of the common way. You might even live here again if Mr. Quincey will permit—”
“Stop,” Nell cried, springing up from her chair. An image of Miles leapt into her mind—tall and commanding, with his broad shoulders and penetrating brown eyes. A hot flush swept over her skin. “You can’t be serious.”
“Do I look like I’m in jest?”
“But I don’t understand why—”
“You do understand. You of all my girls know what it means to put the Academy first.”
“I have put it first.” Nell went to her, all thought of keeping her composure gone. She reached into her reticule, withdrawing the scrap of paper containing the names Miss Jean had given her. She offered it to Miss Corvus. “I did as you bid me. I went to Whitechapel. I saw Miss Jean.”
Miss Corvus took the paper. She scanned the names, frowning. “And these are?”
“The brothels where Flora Brent is most likely to have been taken. I hadn’t time to go to them myself. But I can return if you wish it. I can fix this. Make amends somehow for having allowed things to go so very—”
“No,” Miss Corvus said. The expression in her eyes softened almost imperceptibly. “I was wrong to send you. I should have kept you close. All this might have been averted.” She slipped the paper into the pocket of her skirt. “I shall send someone else. It need not concern you any longer.”
A lump formed in Nell’s throat. She knew what this was. She was being cut out. Dismissed. She couldn’t allow it. “Send me,” she said. “Let me return to London. Let me prove myself.”
“You will be returning, but not to pursue Miss Brent. You shall have to meet with Mr. Quincey to formalize your arrangement. I presume he’ll be agreeable?”
“I’m not agreeable,” Nell said.
Miss Corvus took a step toward her. “You’d prefer exile?
At least with marriage you would have a path back to us.
A chance to return to your role at some later time, your reputation restored.
” She passed a hand over her brow as though staving off a headache.
“No. There is no other remedy I can find. None that would serve the school.”
Nell shook her head in reflexive disbelief. She refused to accept that her only choices were marriage or exile. Surely, there must be another way. A better way. She had only to think of it.
But she couldn’t think at the moment.
Her emotions were in turmoil, her mind in a complete muddle.
“Take dinner in your room this evening,” Miss Corvus said. “Recover your strength. We will plan your exit in the morning. There is no escaping it.”
Nell was beginning to comprehend that. All that remained was to decide what form her exit would take. The frightening prospect of it—of her, existing somewhere, anywhere, outside of the school—gripped at her trembling vitals like a steel vise. “What about my students?” she asked.
“I’ll tell them myself after you’ve gone,” Miss Corvus answered.
“They will be grieved to lose you, to be sure, but many will see it as a romantic adventure. As for the special girls…we might present it as a cautionary tale. Either way, I see no need for prolonged farewells. It would only upset them unduly.”
Nell agreed in principle, though her heart was breaking. Like Miss Corvus, Nell desired what was best for the school. She wanted to be part of the new generation of women advancing forward, not the cause of their being hamstrung and held back. If that meant she must withdraw from the field…
Miss Corvus clasped Nell’s arm briefly as she passed her on the way back to her desk. She didn’t speak, but the fleeting touch of her hand spoke volumes.
The last of Nell’s self-control crumbled. Hot tears spilled onto her cheeks. She swiped them away. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I-I have much to think about.”
She departed Miss Corvus’s office without looking back, blindly descending the stairs to the staff floor.
Somehow, she found her way to her room, to the small, safe world she’d built for herself within the Academy’s impenetrable walls—the soft bed, the pink-painted wardrobe, and the little chair with the needlepoint pillow she’d stitched with such love and attention.
It bore the unofficial symbol of the school—a raven with a white-tipped wing.
“An intelligent and prophetic bird,” Miss Corvus had once explained to Nell and Effie. “Ravens don’t abandon their young. They remain with them into early adulthood, flying beside them.”
But no more, it seemed.
Henceforth, Nell must fly alone.
· · · · ·
By the time Miles found his way back to Mrs. Marigold’s Hotel for Women in Whitechapel, it was a quarter past four. His suit was stained, his hair rumpled, and his spirits decidedly worse for wear.
The news of Lawrence Cowgill’s murder had spread through the offices of the London Courant like wildfire.
A wave of intense demoralization had followed in its wake.
It was made worse by the growing whispers that the paper’s editor in chief—a man whose reputation the staff had formerly believed to be beyond reproach—had only that morning been caught beneath the skirts of a mysterious woman in black.
As if all that weren’t bleak enough, the reporter Miles had dispatched to track down Reverend Pettiman had been unable to find the man.
There had been no trace of him at any of the nearby hotels or guesthouses.
Which could only mean one thing: Pettiman had already returned home, possibly by the next train, his scandalous tale ripe for the telling.
There would be no mitigating the damage now.
It was crisis upon crisis, with no end in sight. Miles was dealing with it the only way he knew how—one catastrophe at a time.
Lawrence Cowgill’s tongue was now in the custody of Scotland Yard. It had been accompanied not by Cowgill’s notebook (which was presently locked in Miles’s desk at the Courant), but by the tissue of lies Miles had concocted to explain why he’d broken into Cowgill’s flat.
“Leave it with us,” the police inspector had told Miles and Higgins. “We’ll find who’s responsible.”
Miles took leave to doubt it. The London police were overworked and overwhelmed. Even if they did by some miracle solve Cowgill’s murder, they would have neither the time nor the resources to pursue the story that had led to it.
No. That was Miles’s job. He had no intention of shirking his duty. Not to Cowgill, the Courant, or anyone else to whom he owed the burden of loyalty.
He approached the reception desk in the hotel’s small foyer. A vinegar-faced older woman in a dark dress stood behind it, sorting letters into the rack of pigeonholes that hung on the wall, each of them numbered to their corresponding room.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked without breaking her task.
“Miss Trewlove is expecting me,” Miles said.
“Miss Trewlove is no longer in residence,” the woman replied.
Miles froze. “She’s checked out of the hotel?”
“She departed this afternoon. I summoned a hackney to take her to the railway station myself.” The woman turned, eyes squinted in inquiry. “You’re not Mr. Quincey, are you?”
“I am.”
“She’s left a note for you. I put it here somewhere or other.” The woman searched through the stacks of papers on the desk. “Ah. Here it is.” She passed him a folded note card stamped with the hotel’s name in blue ink. “Miss Trewlove said I was to give this to you if you should come calling.”
If?
Miles suppressed a harsh surge of annoyance. As though he couldn’t be relied on to keep his word! Temper simmering, he unfolded the note, scanning Nell’s familiar elegant script.
Dear Sir,
I have returned to the Academy. You may write to me there in regard to anything relating to Reverend Pettiman. As to the other matter you referenced, you will agree it is impossible.
Yours,
P. Trewlove
Reading her words, Miles’s brow contracted in a furious scowl.
He most assuredly did not agree. Whatever Nell’s qualms, it didn’t change the fact that he’d compromised her this morning—and himself in the bargain.
It was incumbent on him to make things right.
His reputation depended on it, even if hers didn’t.
Tucking the card into his waistcoat pocket, he strode out of the hotel.