Chapter Thirteen
‘Jane, what do you mean you have to go into the city now? We have so much to organise, a wedding to plan!’
Jane didn’t face May. She stared at the mirror, adjusting her hat even though it didn’t require straightening at all, and Daisy would be mad if she ruined its perfect angle.
She felt as if she were standing at the edge of something beautiful and vast, but with a quiet, persistent unease.
She rehearsed the day ahead in her head, trying it on like a dress that almost fit, but not quite.
Ever since the scene at the Casino yesterday—was it only yesterday?—she’d moved around in a state of numbness. Nothing felt real. She and Benedict were engaged, nominally. What could she do now?
How had she even got through the rest of the day?
She remembered Amy hugging her, people pressing in to offer good wishes and glasses of champagne, Regina Van Joort looking like a thundercloud.
Connor had been unsure but prepared to be delighted, her mother doubtful.
No one had said anything to her about it.
There had been games of tennis somehow, each thwack a little release.
Benedict had tried to talk to her, to escort her somewhere quiet, but she’d evaded him.
She didn’t even know what to say to him yet.
She had to escape the wedding mania that had taken hold at Shore’s Edge for a while, to feel like herself, to think clearly.
Then she could sit down and talk to Benedict, find a way out of their dilemma.
She would go to New York, to the school.
She always felt safe there; it was a place where she could be herself, could hear herself think, amid the noise and clamour of the summertime city.
May didn’t want to let her go, but Jane told her she had some urgent shopping to do, and May seemed to see something of that need for escape in her.
Only once she was on the train could Jane take a deep breath.
But Benedict’s image was still with her, with every turn of the wheels.
She couldn’t get away from him at all. She very much feared she had done what she’d always said she never would—she was falling in love.
With Benedict, with a duke. Surely only heartache would come from this?
She had no idea what to do at all. There was nowhere to run from her own heart.
The classroom smelled of chalk dust and lemon polish, quiet but echoing with girls’ laughter down the corridor and traffic from the street below the half-open window.
Summer in the city was different from Newport, hotter, closer, but Jane realised she’d been right to come here.
In Newport, it was all light and stares.
In New York, she could hide away for a while. Here, there were just her students.
‘Je suis, il est, elle est, nous sommes… Oh! Is that right?’
Jane had to pull herself out of her swirling memories of that moment at the Casino when she’d found herself engaged and back into the present.
She nodded to Meg, one of their most promising students, as she practised her French verbs.
She gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Exactly right. You’ve made amazing progress this month. ’
But Meg wasn’t so easily fooled. She studied Jane closely with her large brown eyes, so much older and harder than her sixteen years.
Jane remembered when Meg first arrived at the school, a runaway from a Hell’s Kitchen bawdy house, her hair tinted bright red and her accent harsh.
Now, with her curls back to dark blonde and her voice carefully modulated thanks to those French lessons, dressed in simple blue muslin and a demure lace collar, she looked like any other respectable young lady.
She’d worked hard to make a new life, to train to be a lady’s maid.
But Jane still had the sense that Meg hid so much, knew so much more than Jane ever could.
‘Are you ill today, Miss O’Neill?’ Meg asked.
‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’
‘No wonder, then! I’m sure there are parties every night up there in Newport,’ Meg said with a laugh. ‘Dancing and such all hours.’ Meg, in her ambition to be a lady’s maid, loved society tales.
‘I wish there wasn’t,’ Jane muttered. Parties always seemed to mean trouble these days, standing in crowded rooms, laughter echoing, glasses clinking, voices rising.
The air in those rooms felt too thick, the lights too bright.
She nodded, laughed when she was supposed to, but each word felt like a performance.
Not until Benedict had there been somewhere she could breathe without pretending.
And that feeling was more dangerous than anything else.
‘But surely they’re useful?’ Meg said thoughtfully. ‘Aren’t parties like that meant to help you find the right suitor?’
Jane had to laugh. Her ‘suitors’ were all such disasters, not wanted at all, or wanted too much. ‘So my sister-in-law says. But they haven’t been helpful yet.’
‘But you must have lots of suitors! Look at how pretty you are, with those green eyes and such, and your nice bosom.’ Her accent slipped just a bit.
‘If you were at my old place at Madame Yvonne’s house, you’d have made a fortune.
They’d be lining up! I saw it even though I was only there a few weeks.
’ Meg clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh! Sorry, Miss O’Neill, I’m not meant to talk about that. ’
Jane laughed more. ‘No matter at all, Meg. I’m flattered. Mrs Astor’s ballroom is tougher than any parlour at Madame Yvonne’s.’
‘Surely there’s gotta be someone you like? Even a little bit?’ Meg’s gaze turned knowing.
Jane studied Meg for a moment. She could do with some advice, it was true, and she couldn’t ask her mother or May.
She couldn’t hurt them, knowing she hadn’t been honest with them.
She couldn’t embarrass them all either with questions about physical love.
She certainly couldn’t ask Amy, who was kind and fun, but rather over-enthusiastic about romance and dukes.
And she probably didn’t know any more than Jane.
But Meg would know about men and desire, and she’d never tell anyone Jane asked.
‘Can I ask you for some advice, Meg?’ Jane whispered.
Meg’s eyes widened. ‘Of course, Miss O’Neill. Anything, after all you’ve done for me.’
‘There… Well, there is someone.’
Meg clapped her hands in glee. ‘I knew it! You’re looking ever so dreamy today. Tell me all about it.’
Jane described their kisses as best she could, how they made her feel, how they made everything else in the world vanish.
‘So, he didn’t force you or anything like that?’ Meg asked. ‘Because if he did…’
Jane shook her head, thinking of Benedict’s kiss and Paul’s kiss. Benedict’s kiss drew her closer and closer, enticed her and did not frighten her, except for the intensity of her own feelings. It held such warmth, intention. With him, time slowed, and she felt safe, seen and not just touched.
‘Surely you’ve had beaux before, Miss Jane? Been kissed before?’
Jane thought of Paul, of the trapped feeling when he’d caught her in his arms. The difference between a loving kiss and a forced one was the difference between being chosen and being taken. She saw that now. ‘Yes, but…’
‘There’s a difference,’ Meg said with a knowing nod.
‘Yes,’ Jane whispered.
‘Well, then, I would grab onto this and never let it go if I was you.’
Jane had so many other questions, but there was no time to ask them, as she was called to meet with Mrs Davenport in her office. ‘We will talk more later,’ she whispered to Meg before she hurried away. Their talk had reassured her on some things and left her more confused on others.
‘Oh, Jane, isn’t it marvellous!’ Mrs Davenport, Jane’s former tutor and now owner of the Davenport School, cried as she gestured towards a crate on her desk.
‘The Duke of Trent has arranged for the delivery of all these books from the 8th Street Bookstore. So very kind of him. He says he heard of the school from you.’
Jane turned and saw Benedict standing there. Seeing him, so familiar and yet so strange here in this place, made her feel as if her heart had forgotten how to beat for just a moment, then it beat faster than ever before. Recognition and disbelief tumbled over each other.
‘Did he indeed?’ Jane choked out as Benedict smiled ruefully at her. He ran his hand through his hair, leaving it tousled in a most unduke-like way.
‘I was just telling Mrs Davenport of my grandmother’s school at Rollston, and what marvellous work you’re all doing here,’ he said. ‘I wanted to be of assistance in some small way.’
‘Assistance?’ Jane managed to say.
‘Perhaps he would like a little tour of the school, Jane,’ Mrs Davenport said.
‘I must discuss a matter with my assistant now, but you know as much as I do about it all. You can describe it all so beautifully.’ She smiled and gave a little shooing motion with her hand.
Jane wondered if she too was trying to matchmake.
‘Of course,’ Jane said. ‘If you’d like to come this way… Your Grace.’
She turned and led him along a corridor, past the classrooms. The building was large enough that it had once been an office, but Mrs Davenport and Jane had done much work to make it feel like any refined girls’ school.
There were tall windows to let in light, high ceilings plastered with patterns of wreaths and long, echoing corridors lined with classrooms. The air smelled faintly of ink, chalk, starch and polish.
The rows of desks were neatly arranged and, no matter where they came from, the girls were dressed in matching uniforms of good fabrics and pretty prints, white aprons and long skirts, their hair smoothed back.
A group of Jane’s students lingered in one of the doorways, staring and whispering.
Meg pointed at Benedict and mouthed, ‘Him?’ Jane tried to shoo them away before Benedict could notice, but the girls just giggled harder.