Chapter One A Changed Woman
Chapter One
A Changed Woman
Saltcrest, Welkland
Present Day
Headmistress Thornhaven’s gray eyes bored into Poppy’s brown ones from over her teacup.
Poppy lifted her own with great caution—it wouldn’t do to spill it—and took a sip herself.
Thornhaven watched closely, tracking her movements like a falcon does a field mouse, from the moment she bent to drink to the moment she returned the cup to its fragile saucer.
“Miss Sutherland,” Headmistress Thornhaven began. Poppy tensed. Here comes the criticism. “I must confess that when you first arrived in my office seven years ago, I was not expecting much from you.”
She could hear everything the headmistress wasn’t saying: backward, Virian, brown.
Color me surprised. Poppy could still recall how the headmistress’s pale face had curdled when she’d washed up at the door to Thornhaven College for Fine Ladies, drained from six weeks at sea. All of the clothes Poppy packed had been made for the golden heat of Viryana, not the gray Welkish damp.
As she’d shivered in the college’s foyer, the headmistress sneered. “I am not in the business of taming wild animals,” she’d said. “However, I’ll give this my best effort. We wouldn’t want His Grace to have spent his funds in vain on a . . . thing . . . like you, would we?”
The memory of her cruelty swelled inside Poppy’s throat, but she forced it down with another deep sip of tea.
“Pleased with my handiwork,” Headmistress Thornhaven was saying. “Who would have thought that the ragged creature that was dumped on my doorstep, reeking of brine, could be the same woman sitting in front of me, with perfect posture, drinking tea like a lady!”
Poppy bent her head, pretending to consider the assortment of sandwiches and biting her lip to keep from speaking out.
The metallic tang of blood mixed with the aftertaste of the tea.
Headmistress Thornhaven met with every girl twice each semester to discuss their studies and progress—though Poppy was certain that she was the only girl whom the headmistress dared to insult so openly.
“Miss Sutherland, do pay attention. I’m speaking.”
Reluctantly, Poppy lifted her gaze back to the headmistress, whose thin lips curved in a satisfied smile.
She knew her words had found their mark.
When it came to insecurities, she had a bloodhound’s nose.
Headmistress Thornhaven was the kind of woman who only grew sharper with age, the passing years like a whetstone against the keen blade of her intelligence.
For this reason, the other girls at the college often referred to her as the Hawk—though only when they were certain they were out of the wide radius of her earshot.
Though the headmistress could be terrifically cruel with her words, she was not above also using her cane.
“My sincerest apologies, Headmistress,” Poppy managed. “Do continue.”
The headmistress smoothed out her gown. “Where was I? Ah yes, your miraculous transformation. Well, I should never have doubted myself. If there was anyone who could have tamed you, it was me. I should think that of all the girls I have educated at this school, you are one of my greatest accomplishments. A Virian—one born on the streets, at that—turned into a pious, well-educated lady, with perfect Welkish manners.”
On hearing this, Poppy’s head whipped up. “Pardon me, Headmistress,” she said before she could stop herself, “but your immodest bragging is quite vulgar.”
Silence filled the salon. Poppy snapped her mouth closed, but the deed was done.
The Hawk swooped, seizing control of the situation in her talons.
“But, of course, my work is not finished.” She sniffed, deflecting Poppy’s barb without acknowledging it.
“You are still far too defiant. Your father will be most disappointed when I write to tell him that even after seven years, his daughter has still not changed. Perhaps you never will—most of your kind never escape the nature of your race. That is why the Founder asks us to go and guide them, so that we can save them from their savagery.”
Despair twisted in Poppy’s chest, sharp claws cutting into her heart.
A scream swelled in her throat: I have changed!
She was no longer the same girl she’d been at sixteen, no longer the same girl whom her father had exiled overseas for a single careless trespass.
She had tried, every single day for the last seven years, to be different.
To become more elegant, more diplomatic, more respectful.
To become the Welkish lady others refused to see in her.
To become more. Poppy wanted to believe that she was more, even as the headmistress—and everyone else—condemned her to a life of being lesser.
Pressure built behind her eyes. She forced herself to blink once, slowly, pushing it back.
From across the tea tray, Headmistress Thornhaven was still watching her, searching to see if her blow had landed, a shark looking for blood in the water.
When she found no evidence of it, she sat back and selected a sandwich.
Poppy knew this tactic well—she was holding back her dismissal.
The trap was obvious: The headmistress was waiting for her to crack, apologize, and grovel for another chance.
But Poppy was no new girl. After seven years, she had memorized the Hawk’s rules, and ladies do not whine like children.
Instead, Poppy mirrored her, picking up a sandwich of her own and taking a polite-sized bite. She hoped the headmistress couldn’t tell how much effort it took to force it past the lump in her throat.
· · ·
Two months later, Poppy found a pair of envelopes at the foot of her door. The collage of stamps announced that the letters had been delivered from overseas. From home.
She waited for the joy to bubble up, but dread sank through her instead as she recalled Headmistress Thornhaven’s threat.
She’d promised to report that teatime outburst. Could the letters be about this?
She gripped the first envelope, the Duke of Cloudcliff’s seal glaring at her like the Hawk’s stare.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he would understand. The lie fell flat, even in the confines of her head. The Hawk would have portrayed her in the least sympathetic light, and her father would have no cause to believe that she was lying.
She put the envelope down, her heart immediately lifting at the name on the other: Mrs. Catherine Montrose-Oakbury, her best—and only—friend from back home.
Catherine and Poppy’s relationship had bloomed on the sidelines of every ball and social gathering.
When Poppy had been shipped off to college, she’d expected the friendship to wither, but Catherine wrote dutifully each month, sometimes even sending packages with her letters.
Poppy tore into Catherine’s new missive first.
Sweet Poppy,
I was so jealous upon receiving your last letter.
I still cannot believe you get to shop at some of the most fashionable boutiques in all of Welkland!
Though I feel your absence every day, I remind myself that it would be selfish of me to wish for you to return from your time at school just so that we might visit the shops here together.
A pang of nostalgia and yearning cut through her.
She’d been forced to go on that shopping trip all alone after one of the other college girls had purposely spilled wine on her gown.
Shopping was miserable without Catherine, Welkish boutique or not, but it would have been churlish of Poppy to complain.
Since I last wrote you, much has happened. Theo is in quite the state. Richard’s men have blocked him . . .
Poppy read the rest of the letter, commiserating with her old friend as she detailed how her elder brother, Richard, had gotten into another tiff with her husband, Theodore, over some business of Theodore’s.
Far too soon, Catherine’s missive was over.
Now there was nothing left for Poppy to do but read the one from her father.
Best to get it over with. She gripped her letter opener, took another breath, then dragged the blade across the envelope and pulled out its contents.
To her surprise, she found not her father’s neat script but Demetria’s lacy scrawl.
Her mother was rarely a disciplinarian—that task had been left to Poppy’s governess or, for more serious transgressions, her father.
This letter, then, could not be about that tea with the headmistress.
With a renewed sense of interest, she began to read.
Dearest Poppy, she had written. Please do not be alarmed.
Poppy huffed in amusement. A bit late for that, Mother.
Your father has suffered a minor stroke.
I wanted to send you a telegram the moment it happened, but he forbade me from doing so.
He wishes me to stress to you that this is a trifling matter and no cause for concern.
If he had it his way, he would not have mentioned it at all.
However, I knew you would be hurt if we did not tell you.
Dr. Bluefinch has assured us that your father will make a full recovery.
I am certain that by the time you receive this letter, he will already be back on his feet, holding council meetings and fighting the epidemic of crime that has arisen in the slums. The doctor has insisted that the stroke was not caused by any underlying illness but is likely a result of overworking himself.
He has been advised to plan for retirement, but in the interim, modifications to his lifestyle will be made as a preventative measure. He will use a cane . . .
Her fingers went numb, and the letter fell from her grasp. The only thing worse than enduring a reprimand from her father was learning that he had been too unwell to admonish her. Despite the reassurance that he was recovering, the stroke bothered her deeply.