Chapter 4 #2
From Miss Liddiard’s position it was a natural progression for Prunella to consider her own, for this subject occupied an ever greater part of her thoughts as she grew older.
She had always been set apart from the schoolgirls, even as she had passed her life among them.
The fact that she remained at the school only at Mrs. Daubeney’s sufferance would have ensured this in any event, but the distance was increased by the colour of Prunella’s skin, the cast of her features, and the likelihood both suggested that her mother had been a native.
Mrs. Daubeney had not separated Prunella from the others by any deliberate measure. As a child Prunella had attended lessons, played and dined with the schoolgirls, and she had scarcely noticed the difference between their position and her own.
At nineteen, however, Prunella was no longer quite a girl.
The older girls’ tales of their families and dreams for their futures brought her own prospects into stark relief.
No chance of a glittering Season in London or a grand marriage for Prunella.
For as long as she wished she might stay with Mrs. Daubeney, and do everything desired of her for no wages, but that was as much as she might look forward to in the coming years.
Of course, if she were patient and tractable, there was a chance she might inherit Mrs. Daubeney’s worldly possessions, but: I am the most impatient, intractable creature I know! thought Prunella.
In her reverie she might easily have missed the valise, for she was bundling things into chests without stopping to examine them. But as Prunella gathered another armful of objects she felt leather under her fingertips, and a curious sensation came over her.
She thought she stood, not in the familiar dusty attic, but in a different room altogether.
A room in an alien land, for though it was dark and cool she knew somehow that it was a blazing-hot day outdoors.
She felt the grit of dust between her teeth.
The very air smelt different, perfumed with foreign scents—warm air, sluggish water, and earth baking under the sun.
“There you are!” said a soft voice. Though Prunella longed to see who it was, she could not raise her eyes, struggle as she might. The things in her arms clattered to the floor. She wrenched her gaze up, and saw—
Nothing. She was alone in the attic, stupefied with magic.
“Oh!” said Prunella. She put her hands over her eyes. She felt as if she had lost something terribly important, though she could not say what it was. For a moment she feared, absurdly, that she might cry. Then she remembered the touch of leather beneath her fingers.
On the floor, jumbled with split embroidery hoops and a stuffed owl, was a valise. It was made of brown leather, scuffed and worn as though it had been much used, though Prunella could not recall ever having seen it in Mrs. Daubeney’s possession. There were initials engraved upon it: HRG.
“Was not my father’s name Hilary?” said Prunella, and started at the sound of her voice echoing in the empty room.
“Prunella!” said Henrietta behind her.
Prunella jumped. Acting on an unexamined impulse, she hid the valise under a dusty old piece of tarpaulin. She was inclined to snap when she turned to greet Henrietta, but she forgot her irritation when she saw the girl’s anxious face.
“Why, what’s amiss?” she said.
“Emily Villiers and Clarissa Midsomer are quarrelling,” said Henrietta. “I hate to play the informer, but you know what Clarissa is like, and she is so cross I believe she would not stop at murder. She has bit Emmy!”
“Wretched creatures! I hope they may bite each other’s heads off!
” Prunella exclaimed, but she divested herself of her apron.
“If the Sorcerer Royal arrives while I am there, you will simply have to distract him, Henny. I declare there are times I do not know if I am in a school or a travelling circus!”
· · ·
WHEN Prunella entered the classroom, Clarissa Midsomer was trying to bang Emily Villiers’s head against a desk. Emily was resisting this, screeching in a manner fit to bring the ceiling down.
“That is quite enough of that!” said Prunella, pushing between the combatants.
She was no taller or sturdier than Clarissa or Emily, and they were neither of them inclined to attend. Yet after a moment’s confusion they found their struggle suddenly at an end, and themselves on opposite sides of the desk.
“What can you be thinking, to be brawling on the very day of the Sorcerer Royal’s visit?” demanded Prunella.
Clarissa looked away haughtily. She was one of the few girls who would not condescend to address Prunella as an equal, and she clearly believed it beneath her dignity to respond. Prunella was used to such snubs, however, and she looked at Emily.
“Clarissa was being an utter brute, and I told her she ought not to talk so about Lord Duchemin, for he is my cousin, and even if George is not very clever, he has the kindest of hearts, and it is a beastly lie to say that Millicent is only marrying him for his money!” said Emily all in one breath.
“I did not say that at all,” interjected Clarissa.
“I am sure the prospect of being a countess is as much an attraction as his fortune, to the daughter of a grocer! But I do not like a mésalliance. I suppose”—she glanced at Prunella—“some people would see nothing wrong in it. Some people would make themselves ridiculous if they thought they had half a chance at rank and fortune.”