Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The morning air bit with a cold that turned the railings along Mayfair’s broad pavements to silver and made breath hang in delicate clouds before their faces.
Augusta kept her gloved fingers firmly wrapped around her end of Pippin’s lead, though the enormous Newfoundland trotted with surprising restraint ahead of them, his massive head low to the ground as he investigated each new scent.
“… and so I’ve drawn a map,” Cassie continued, her breath fogging the air as she gestured with her free hand.
“Not a proper map with all the right names and all that, but a proper pirate map! With an X, and a skull with a sword in it, and all the things that make it look treasure-ish!” She sidestepped a suspicious puddle and glanced up at Augusta.
“Do you think Pippin could carry dispatches? Because his mouth is certainly big enough.”
“He would likely consider them toys,” Augusta replied, steering Pippin away from a young servant hurrying along with a basket of laundry. “And dispatches tend to be rather sensitive to teeth marks.”
Cassie considered this, her nose wrinkling. “I suppose. Though I could train him. Hudson says I’m remarkably determined when I want something, and I think—” She stopped suddenly, her attention caught by something across the street. “Oh! Miss Norton, look.”
Across the pavement, three young girls had emerged from the entrance to one of the more imposing townhouses.
They looked about Cassie’s age, perhaps twelve, dressed in matching blue coats with ermine trim, their ringlets arranged with identical precision beneath matching bonnets.
Three governesses in dark wool coats hovered a few steps behind them, clutching muffs against the cold.
“Lady Harriet,” Cassie whispered, her voice laced with a mix of awe and delight. “And Miss Cecily Drummond and Miss Arabella Vane.” She tugged at Pippin’s lead. “We should say hello.”
Augusta hesitated. “Cassie, we’ve promised Mrs. Beale—”
But Cassie was already crossing the street, Pippin trotting happily in her wake. Augusta followed, though not without some trepidation.
“… she’s perfectly friendly,” Cassie was saying as Augusta joined them. “He’s the size of a small pony, but he thinks he’s a lapdog.”
The three young ladies stood in careful formation, neither backing away from Pippin’s enthusiastic investigation nor exactly warming up to it. Their governesses, standing at a respectful distance, exchanged brief, assessing nods with Augusta.
“That’s a Newfoundland, isn’t it?” Lady Harriet—the tallest, with her mother’s pronounced chin—extended a gloved hand to scratch behind Pippin’s ear. “Our spaniel is just a puppy, but my brother says he’ll be a fine gun dog.”
“What’s his name?” Miss Cecily asked, her voice precisely the same volume as her companions’.
“Pippin,” Cassie replied, beaming. “Though when he’s naughty, Hudson calls him ‘you wretched beast.’”
That coaxed a laugh from Miss Arabella, a slender girl with a wide smile.
“My father has special names for our cats too. He calls our tabby ‘Sir Pounce-a-lot’ when he’s cross.
” She cast an apprehensive glance at her governess, as though uncertain whether this admission had crossed some invisible boundary.
“How lovely to see you out walking, Lady Cassandra,” Lady Harriet said, with a practiced nod.
“Miss Westbury sends us out every morning, rain or shine. She says the fresh air improves the complexion, though I’m not certain I see the evidence.
” She glanced at her companions. “We were just discussing this morning’s lessons.
Miss Westbury has set us to studying household accounts and domestic management. ”
“It’s quite fascinating,” Miss Cecily added. “Though Papa says mathematics is hardly a ladylike pursuit. My governess says a lady must be practical, even if she is never allowed to show it.”
“The most practical knowledge is in the menus and the linen inventories,” Miss Arabella agreed. “Miss Harker has me assisting with my mother’s correspondence with the housekeeper. She says it’s the foundation of running a proper household.”
They all turned toward Cassie with expectant smiles.
“And what subjects is your governess teaching you, Lady Cassandra?” Lady Harriet asked, her head tilting in a manner that Augusta suspected had been carefully cultivated.
Cassie hesitated, her free hand dropping to Pippin’s back. “We’re doing geography now. The mountains in Wales and how they were formed. And natural philosophy! We were studying gases yesterday, actually. And some Latin, though Hudson says I’ll never need it.”
“That sounds very unusual,” Miss Cecily observed, exchanging a quick glance with Lady Harriet. “What a charming curriculum.”
“And we’re drawing pirate fleets in watercolors,” Cassie continued, the words coming out faster now. “And we had the most brilliant debate about narwhals the other day! Whether they’re properly unicorns of the sea or just a very peculiar sort of whale.”
The silence that followed was reminiscent of the type that hung in the air after a guest had made a grievous social error. The three girls’ smiles remained fixed, though Miss Arabella’s eyes widened slightly.
“That sounds… very much like the sort of thing my brother enjoys in the nursery,” Lady Harriet said at last, her voice carefully even.
“I’m sure you’ll move on to proper subjects soon enough,” Miss Cecily added, with a gentle pat to Cassie’s arm. “Miss Westbury says that a young lady’s education must be progressive. Perhaps your governess is simply laying the groundwork.”
“You’ll catch up,” Miss Arabella assured her, the kindness in her voice making Augusta’s fingers tighten on her muff. “There’s plenty of time before one needs to understand inventories.”
Cassie gripped on Pippin’s lead, her knuckles going white. Her free hand curled, as though holding something in place.
“We saw the most marvelous balloon exhibition yesterday,” she said, her voice pitched slightly higher than before. “Did any of you attend? The way London looked from so high up—”
But the conversation had already moved on without her. The three girls had turned back toward one another, Lady Harriet murmuring something that made Miss Cecily nod in grave agreement, while Miss Arabella’s attention drifted to a passing carriage.
“I’m afraid my instruction of Lady Cassandra would not meet with your approval,” Augusta said, her tone perfectly civil but sharp enough that all three governesses straightened.
“Though I assure you, she has been studying subjects requiring considerably more intellectual rigor than household inventories. Curiosity is hardly a childish trait.”
The eldest governess—Miss Westbury, Augusta presumed—stiffened visibly. “How dare you criticize Lady Harriet’s education? Lord Edgerton has personally—”
“It is hardly your place to comment on the instruction of other young ladies,” the youngest governess interrupted, her eyes flashing. “Such presumption—”
Cassie’s small hand caught Augusta’s sleeve. “Miss Norton,” she said, her voice very quiet. “May we go, please?”
Augusta looked down at her and saw the rigid set of her jaw, the color high in her cheeks, the way her gaze remained fixed on Pippin’s ruff rather than on the faces around them.
“Of course,” she said, then turned to the group with a brief inclination of her head. “A pleasure to see you all. Have a good day.”
They walked away, with Pippin padding heavily between them, the gentle jingling of his collar tags the only sound until they had rounded the corner and left the group behind.
The silence between them lingered painfully for several streets, broken only by the soft jingle of Pippin’s collar and the crisp sound of their boots on the pavement.
Cassie kept facing ahead, her steps quick and clipped. Each footfall seemed to strike the ground with a little more force than strictly necessary, as though the pavement itself had somehow offended her.
Augusta said nothing. Over the past weeks, she had learned that the girl’s silences were rarely empty. They were simply a different sort of conversation, one that required patience to hear.
She steered her away from the broad thoroughfares, where carriages and carts would force them to walk in single file, and guided her instead toward a quieter neighborhood where the houses stood farther back from the street.
They reached a small garden square at last, barely more than a patch of ground enclosed by iron railings and filled with elms. An iron gate stood partly open, as though the square had been waiting specifically for them. Augusta nudged Pippin’s lead toward it.
“Shall we?” she asked.
Cassie nodded once.
They found a stone bench beneath one of the larger trees and sat down. Pippin immediately sat on his hind legs with a sigh and dropped his enormous head on her knees.
Cassie’s gloved hand settled on his fur.
For several moments, she held herself perfectly still, her spine straight, her chin lifted, the very picture of composure.
Then, without warning, her shoulders sagged, and tears began to roll down her cheeks, fast enough that she had to wipe them away almost angrily with the back of her glove.
“I am so tired of being treated like a child,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.
Augusta kept her own hands in her lap. “It’s not easy.”
“Miss Norton, do you know how many people have told me I’ll catch up eventually?” Cassie’s voice had grown thick with tears and frustration. “Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. My last governess said it. My dancing master said it. Even Hudson says it sometimes, though he tries to hide it.”
She rubbed at her cheeks again.
“I’m nearly twelve years old. I’m not foolish.
I know real things. I know why boats float and why the sky is blue and which trees produce the most interesting leaves in autumn, but nobody ever seems to notice.
” The words poured out in a torrent now, each one landing like a pebble on the frozen ground between them.
“And now Lady Harriet and Miss Cecily and Miss Arabella think that I’m—that I’m—”
Augusta waited.
Cassie’s breath came in quick, tight gasps, her hand gripping Pippin’s ruff with enough force to make the dog look up in mild concern. A single tear dripped from the end of her nose and landed on his fur.
“They’re measuring you against a very narrow idea of what young ladies ought to be,” Augusta said at last, her voice quiet. “That narrowness says more about them than it does about you.”
Cassie stared down at Pippin’s fur, rubbing one thumb repeatedly against the leather of her glove.
“I know,” she said, the fight draining from her voice.
“But it will happen again. Lady Harriet’s mother invites Hudson for dinner every month, and Miss Cecily’s father is a member of Hudson’s club, and Miss Arabella’s aunt was friends with our mother.
” She looked up at last, her eyes red-rimmed and steady.
“They know things I don’t. Things I should know. ”
The summer sun slanted through the bare branches above them, casting thin, wavering shadows across the gravel.
“I want you to teach me,” she said. “Household management. Accounts and menus and linens and all of it.” Her jaw set in a stubborn line that reminded Augusta of Hudson so much that she nearly smiled despite herself. “I don’t want anybody to ever look at me that way again.”
Augusta studied Cassie’s profile: the reddened eyes, the stubborn mouth, the hand gripping Pippin’s thick fur.
She thought of pirate fleets painted in careful watercolors, of climbing trees with skirts hitched up to her knees, of lying on her back in the grass counting clouds and asking questions that had no simple answers. All the wild, wonderful curiosity that made Cassie so distinctly herself.
If she agreed, those things would be replaced by ledgers and inventories, by careful lessons in how to become the kind of young lady those girls would accept.
“I’m not asking to stop our other lessons,” Cassie added, as though reading the hesitation in Augusta’s silence. “Just to add these. Please.”
“We’ll find a way to incorporate the lessons,” Augusta said after a long moment.
“Not instead of your other studies, but alongside them.” She paused, choosing her words with care.
“There’s value in knowing how to manage a household, just as there’s value in knowing how narwhals live and why the sky changes color at sunset. You must always remember that, Cassie.”
Cassie’s eyes searched Augusta’s face.
“I mean it,” Augusta insisted. “As for household matters, we’ll begin small. Perhaps a household account tomorrow, and the history of pirate fleets the day after.”
Cassie exhaled, a long, shaky breath that fogged the air between them. Then, quite without warning, she leaned her shoulder against Augusta’s arm.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice small but steady.
Beneath the bench, Pippin’s tail began a slow, steady thump against the gravel. Above them, the thin sunlight filtered through the bare branches, casting the three of them in a light that made even the cold stone bench seem, for one suspended moment, exactly where they were meant to be.