Chapter 25 #2
She wasn’t being entirely dishonest. Her shoulder did feel much better today.
Even so, she’d refrained from putting on her corset or crinoline, and had instead dressed in a loose-flowing wool day dress and soft slippers.
A shawl was draped about her shoulders in a concession to the weather.
Outside, the air was damp, and the sky was dark with clouds. A storm was coming soon.
“Did he end up summoning a doctor?” Effie inquired.
Nell gave her a speaking look. “What do you think?”
Effie frowned. She recalled as well as Nell the medical miseries that Nell had gone through in the aftermath of falling from the roof. The bleedings. The purgatives. The barbaric surgeries and painful manipulations of her joints. It had been a variety of hell.
“What then?” Effie asked. “Did his housekeeper reset your arm, or—”
“It wasn’t our housekeeper,” Nell said. “It was Mr. Quincey himself. He’s been taking care of me.”
Effie’s mouth curled into a slow smile. “I see.”
Nell willed herself not to blush. “Enough of that,” she remonstrated. She drew Effie to the fireplace. “Come. Tell me what happened with Miss Brent.”
Effie sat down across from Nell in one of the large oxblood leather chairs. “First, you tell me something. When Mr. Quincey came to the Academy, you didn’t, perchance, allow him inside the gates, did you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because Mr. Royce insisted that he be let inside the gates. As though he had a God-given right to wait in the garden. I immediately deduced it was because your husband had been in the garden first. Was he?”
“He was,” Nell admitted.
Effie snorted. “Men.”
Nell smiled, amused in spite of herself. “They’re competitive, I suppose.”
“When it comes to the Academy, definitely. My husband wouldn’t like your husband to be granted any privileges that have been denied to him.”
“A brief spell in the garden can hardly be called a privilege.”
“More of one than being exiled outside the gates,” Effie said. “In any event—”
“Miss Brent,” Nell supplied.
“Miss Brent, yes.” Effie grew serious. “You’ll be pleased to know that Mr. Royce and I conveyed her to the Academy without incident. Miss Corvus welcomed her there, and promptly surrendered her into Gemma’s charge.”
Nell exhaled a relieved breath. Gemma may not be the most tenderhearted of the Academy’s teachers, but she was certainly one of its fiercest. No harm would ever come to one of her charges. “And how did Miss Brent find her new surroundings?”
“She was curious above anything else. Her eyes were as wide as they could possibly be, taking it all in. She barely blinked once from the moment we entered the grounds. Fortunately, the Academy appeared to be to her satisfaction. I parted with her after a short time, confident that all would be well.” Effie paused.
“It was then Miss Corvus summoned me to her study for a private word.”
A rogue quiver of anxiety went through Nell.
She immediately thought of the sampler she’d posted to Miss Corvus two days before.
The delicate pattern, bordered with butterflies and tiny blue flowers, and featuring the requisite raven with its white-tipped wing, had contained a coded message consisting of only two words: Lady Belwood.
Nell had sent it, not as a challenge, but as a courtesy.
A simple message informing Miss Corvus that Nell had discovered the identity of the woman who had given birth to her and surrendered her to the Academy.
She hadn’t anticipated a reply. One hadn’t seemed necessary.
There was surely nothing Miss Corvus could reveal about the past that Nell hadn’t already ascertained herself.
“Did she?” she asked with forced unconcern.
“I shan’t beat about the bush,” Effie said. “It involves that odious Reverend Pettiman.”
Nell stared at her friend. “Pettiman? What about him?”
“It seems that, since your contretemps in Mr. Quincey’s office, the reverend has not been idle.
He’s written to a handful of the school’s benefactors, and he’s expressed his concerns to the other members of the council.
Miss Corvus has assured him that you and Mr. Quincey are married now, but for some reason he questions the legitimacy of the union. ”
“What?” Nell was stunned. “But…why would he doubt it?”
“I believe it has to do with the banns not being called.”
“We married by special license. The banns weren’t necessary.”
“And with the lack of a marriage announcement being published in the papers,” Effie added.
Nell fell silent. No. There had been no announcement. And there could be none now. Not after Nell had given her full name to Mrs. Pritchard. Not without revealing to everyone that Penelope Trewlove, former schoolteacher, had married Mr. Miles Quincey, editor in chief of the London Courant.
“Could Mr. Quincey not print something?” Effie asked. “A sort of belated—”
“No.” Nell shook her head. “It’s impossible. We’re traveling to Hertfordshire in four days’ time to attend Lord Amstead’s shooting party. He can’t learn that Mr. Quincey is editor of the Courant. And he mustn’t find out that my maiden name is Trewlove. If he did…”
“Yes, I see. It’s too dangerous.” Effie’s expression was grim. “Which leads me to an alternative solution. Mind you, it was Miss Corvus who proposed it, so don’t bite my head off.”
Nell’s lips compressed. “Go on.”
“Write to Pettiman directly. Invite him to come here. Perhaps even to stay with you for a day or two as an honored guest—”
“Are you insane?” Nell interrupted, aghast.
“Not I,” Effie objected.
“That I should permit that offensive, sanctimonious prig to come here and stay under my roof when all the while—”
“Then don’t,” Effie said. “Invite him for dinner. Or—even better—for tea. An hour’s visit at most, and you’ll be rid of him.
Surely, it’s a small sacrifice given the magnitude of his power in relation to the Academy.
And only think, the sooner the scandal dies away the sooner you can return to your teaching post.”
Nell lapsed into guilty silence. It had been several days since she’d thought of returning to the Academy. She’d been too busy settling into her new life with Miles. Enjoying her new life. She’d all but forgotten that it was supposed to be temporary.
The reminder brought with it a pang of anguish.
It wasn’t like her to be selfish. For the past eighteen years of her life, the needs of the Academy had always come first.
“Is that what you would do?” she asked.
“After I considered strangling the man and discreetly disposing of his wretched body?” Effie sighed. “I wouldn’t like it,” she said, “but yes. If I thought it would do the trick.”
Nell resented the obligation to her core. But resentment was a useless emotion. Academy girls were meant to keep their eyes on the future. Nell knew that better than most. These petty insults and offenses were nothing in comparison to the good that the school was doing. That it must keep doing.
“Very well.” Standing all at once, Nell limped to Miles’s desk.
It stood on the opposite side of the library, a great carved mahogany monstrosity with a green leather blotter covering its surface.
“If I must do it, I may as well get it over with.” She opened the topmost drawer, searching out paper, ink, and a steel-nibbed pen.
The latter two implements were readily to hand, but the paper was harder to come by.
She had to look through two drawers before she found a stack of it.
But it wasn’t blank. It was covered with Miles’s handwriting.
An article he was writing, Nell supposed.
She gave it the veriest glance as she moved to flip through the pages, seeking a fresh sheet. And then—
Her attention was arrested by a familiar name.
Miss Corvus’s Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies
It was the heading on what appeared to be a vast outline of facts about the charity school.
Nell scanned the pages, her blood running cold.
There were details about Miss Corvus, names and employment information about several of the Academy’s graduates, and notes about the charity school’s special curriculum—self-defense, swordplay, and coded samplers.
And something else, too. A final line, recently added:
Rule No. 1—Know your surroundings.