“I’ll do so,” said Isabella. “But at this time I really think it would be a good idea for you to return to your seat.”
“Really?” The girl’s eyes flicked from Isabella to Annabel again—then passed Annabel entirely and widened. “Crumbs! Thanks!”
“It will make this occasion so much neater!” Isabella said, as one of the doors opened swiftly across the room.
At least half of the girls stood up to flee, but the other door was already opening, too. Through the first came the Lavender Aunt, sailing majestically; through the second came the Yellow Aunt stalking magnificently. Behind each Aunt were two broad-shouldered footmen, who looked as though they couldn’t decide whether to be amused or sheepish, but who were equally impassable either way. As one, the girls sat again.
“Ma’am, Ma’am!” said Isabella cordially, nodding to each Aunt. “What brings you into our sitting room this morning?”
“Miss Farrah, I must ask you to sit down,” said the Lavender Aunt crushingly.
“Of course, Ma’am,” meekly said Isabella.
Annabel, who had not attempted to rise from her seat due to the combined effects of a sudden dizziness and the conviction that it would do no good, tried not to grin. If the Aunts had any sense of self-preservation at all, they would have left the minute they saw Isabella was unbothered; and doubly quick at Isabella being meek.
“I am surprised, Miss Ammett,” said the Yellow Aunt, surprising Annabel considerably, “to see you in such company.”
“Oh,” Annabel said blankly. “Really? But I like these girls.”
Across the room, she saw Fern grin.
The Yellow Aunt looked disapprovingly at her. “In your position, Miss Ammett, you really ought to be more careful about who you associate with. It may very well lead to some doubt as to your…ahem…that is, it may lead people to disassociate themselves with you.”
“If that’s all it takes, I don’t think I’ll mind,” Annabel said.
“Do not speak back to me, Miss Ammett!”
“Oh, sorry,” said Annabel. Now that was odd. The Aunts had been calling her my lady until yesterday; and today she was Miss Ammett?
“I trust you understand the full extent of your misconduct, then, Miss Ammett.”
“Actually, I’m a bit confused,” said Annabel. She was still dizzy, and now she was also rather tired of being Miss Ammetted so accusingly. “None of us are due in class yet; aren’t we allowed to um, associate with each other? Our Conversation won’t become more Advanced if we don’t study.”
“This is not a matter of associating outside of class!” the Lavender Aunt said impressively. “It is a matter of Scandal! Of Clandestine Classes and Nefarious Doings! If it was not for the very good sense of Lady Margaret, who informed us of this travesty via a note, the good name of Trenthams might well have been soiled!”
There was a polite but very distinct shuffling of girls away from the named Lady Margaret, who put her nose in the air with very red cheeks and glared angrily at her retreating classmates.
Isabella said in bewilderment, “Soiled by learning how to adjust carriage clocks?”
“There is no use in prevaricating, Miss Farrah,” said the Lavender Aunt. “Lady Margaret has already informed us that this disgraceful class is for the purposes of learning how to pick locks. The locks are clearly evident.”
“Locks?” Isabella’s face was the picture of astonishment. “Dear ma’am, what locks? Each of the girls has before her an open carriage clock of the most popular—oh! Dear heavens! I quite see where the mistake has been made!”
There was the scrabble of wooden chair legs across the floor, as the newly solitary Lady Margaret leaped to her feet. “Mistake? There’s no mistake! You’ve been teaching everyone how to pick locks since we got here!”
“I really do think,” said Isabella, “that if you look just a little closer, you’ll discover that each girl has before her a carriage clock of the most popular sort—the lock shape has gained popularity in Broma and Glause already due to its functional and really very pretty design. It can be locked around the utility strap, you see! Such a useful design, don’t you think?”
The Yellow Aunt, her face suddenly aghast, snatched up the closest lock—which, now that Annabel looked at it with new eyes, didn’t have a great many of the characteristics that might have been expected in a lock, and had quite a few of those she would have expected from a very small clock.
Lady Margaret said shrilly, “They’ve been changed! She’s changed them by magic into clocks!”
“Miss Farrah,” said the Lavender Aunt, with the coldness of absolute annoyance, “does not perform magic.”
Despite that, she passed the carriage clock to her sister, who, Annabel had learned, was the more competent magic user of the two. The Yellow Aunt looked at it closely, though she did so with a certain grimness that suggested she didn’t expect anything from the examination.
At last, she gave it back to the Lavender Aunt and said, “It is merely a carriage clock. Nothing more and nothing less. Lady Margaret, I believe we have some matters to discuss, if you would be good enough to accompany us.”
She turned and sailed majestically back the way she had come, followed by her two footmen, who were now grinning. Lady Margaret, her face patchily white and red, followed her in a stiff kind of way through a channel of entirely silent, watching faces.
The Yellow Aunt paused only long enough to say, “It would behove you, Miss Farrah, to be very careful,” before she emulated her sister and stalked magnificently away through the same door she had entered. Fern wandered innocently behind her, winking at the footmen who closed the door; and at the other door, another girl was doing the same.
Isabella gave them the slightest of nods. In tandem, they opened their doors a crack and settled themselves comfortably with an eye to that crack with all the comfortable familiarity of long practise. Isabella, rising, stood again before the cleanly swept fireplace and smiled at them all.
“Thus ends the first lesson,” she said. “How to tell the difference between a lock style carriage clock and an actual lock. Very well done, all of you. Top marks to all the class.”
“What?” said someone blankly.
Someone else giggled.
Annabel laughed and shook her head, more to clear the buzzing than from disbelief, and the buzzing faded. With it faded feeling and sight, and Annabel fell into dark coolness that was more welcome than hot reality.
“Nan? Nan?”
“Ow,” said Annabel, aware first and foremost of a pain in her forehead, and then more slowly of far too much warmth around her. “Who hit me?”
“You hit your own head,” Isabella told her. “Face-first into the floor—it was very graceful. Do you think you could open your eyes, Nan?”
“Good grief,” Annabel said, opening her eyes. The buzzing in her ears was gone, and the reason she was far too hot was because she was being carried by Dannick, whose chest and arms seemed to fairly radiate heat. “Did I faint? Why?”
Isabella’s face was decidedly stormy. “One can only presume a lack of sustenance. Through here, Dannick.”
“Miss Farrah, I really don’t think—”
“You can stay with us if you fancy we’re liable to dig through Melchior’s things,” offered Isabella. “We’re not, but you might as well make yourself useful and make us some tea. Oh! And some biscuits!”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to dig through his things,” Dannick said, and went even pinker when Isabella laughed in delight.
“That’s no way to treat your future monarch!” she said. “Nan just fainted from lack of sustenance, and you want to keep such paltry things from her as a few of Melchior’s biscuits?”
“Why are we in Melchior’s room?” protested Annabel. Dannick put her down in one of the red chairs and wandered away—presumably in search of biscuits and tea—and she tried to recapture the sense that her head actually belonged to her.
“Because I
want a few words with him!” Isabella said, in a martial sort of a way.
“So do I, but mostly I want food.”
Firmly, Isabella said, “Both are to be had here. I won’t see the Meal Matron starving you so that you faint, and I would like to know what Melchior’s about to let it happen.”
“It’s probably more the Deportment Master’s fault,” Annabel muttered. “He’s the one who keeps making sure I can’t breathe.”
“A change of maids is in order, one feels,” Isabella said. “How do you think that girl Jess would feel about doing your corsets?”
“Does she know how to lace corsets?”
“Very likely not, but she can sit down to a nice cup of tea while I lace them. So long as we have the appearance of respectability, there’s no need to have the real thing, I think.”
“That should be your motto,” Annabel said.
Across the room, there was a muffled sound from Dannick. His back was to them, but Annabel was quite certain she had seen those broad shoulders shaking for the briefest moment.
“Are you quite well, Dannick?” enquired Isabella. “Shall I help you with the tea things?”
“It’s nothing, miss,” said Dannick.
“Was it not? Are you sure?”
“Perhaps he feels, as I do, that two young ladies shouldn’t be discussing their corsets in front of him,” said Melchior’s voice.
“Oh,” said Isabella, with a distinct lack of cordiality. “There you are.”
One of Melchior’s brows went up. “I trust you’re glad to see me, Nan?”
“Yes,” said Annabel, who still felt as though it was a little too hard to raise enthusiasm for anything but a cup of tea.
Melchior’s other brow went up. “Perhaps I’m unnaturally quick,” he remarked, “but I’m catching the sense that neither of you is particularly happy to see me. May I remind you both that this is, in fact, my own room? What is it this time?”
“Miss Ammett fainted,” said Dannick. Annabel didn’t think she imagined the less-than-cordial tones with which he said it.
“Miss Ammett,” continued Isabella, with even greater coldness than Dannick, “has been refused a full serving at every meal. Naturally she fainted, with the heat!”
“Nan?” Melchior said sharply. “What is this about?”
“Why are you asking me?” Annabel said tiredly.
“Really, Melchior!” remonstrated Isabella. “I thought better of you!”
“Pardon?” Melchior said blankly. “What do you think I’ve got to do with it?”
Annabel stared at him. “It’s no good pretending you don’t know about it.”
Melchior, who looked as annoyed as Annabel had seen him for a very long time, drew in a deep breath through his nose and said, “Nan, I’d like to know exactly why I’m to be suspected of depriving you of food to the extent that you fainted!”
“The Awesome Aunts said the orders came from you.”
“The Awesome Aunts are misinformed!” snapped Melchior, “And I still take great exception to being accused of causing you to faint! Dannick, you may go!”
“How was I supposed to know that?” Annabel asked indignantly, finding the strength to sit up in the midst of that indignation. “And you can’t just tell Dannick to go!”
As Dannick left, his shoulders hunched as if to avoid the disagreement, Melchior said coldly, “I believe I can; it is my suite, after all, Nan! And as to how you were supposed to know—well, one imagines that one’s oldest friend knows one a little better than that!”
Annabel, automatically accepting a cup of tea and two biscuits from Isabella, felt that her appearance of righteous indignation had been disturbed. She said vigorously, “The Awesome Aunts said—”
“Nan, if you tell me just once more what the Awesome Aunts said—!” Melchior stopped, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “No one at the school knows I’m your guardian, and I assure you that there have been no letters to the manor. They couldn’t have got my permission!”
“Oh,” said Annabel. She ate one of her biscuits, pondering this, and then pointed out, “Yes, but you said I could stand to miss a few meals, too, so I really think—”
“When did I?” demanded Melchior; and then, goaded, “Are you throwing up something I said to you when we were in the castle?”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Annabel protested. “And I haven’t got much thinner!”
“Let me make two things perfectly clear, Nan,” said Melchior. “When I said you could do with a few less meals, it wasn’t a comment on your weight: it was an objection to the way you were using eating as an excuse.”
“Oh,” said Annabel, in a small voice. That, as far as it went, wasn’t so far from the truth. She had used it as a defence of sorts. I’m too fat to do this. I’m too big to do that.
Melchior’s eyes narrowed on her. “That,” he said, as if he perfectly understood exactly what she was thinking, “and that thing you do where you make a wall out of it. No one can hurt me if I’ve got a nice bit of padding. That sort of thing. Don’t think I didn’t see it.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“Pardon?”
“You said there were two things,” Annabel said. She’d prefer more time to think over the first. “What’s the other one?”
“Yes, what is the other thing?” demanded Isabella, her eyes sparkling. She had been watching them avidly, and now she blinked demurely at Melchior. “Do tell, Melchior!”
“Nan, did you have to bring the Firebrand with you?”
“I believe I did the bringing,” Isabella pointed out.
“With Dannick’s help, anyway.”
“Besides, it would be shocking for a female student to be alone in the sitting room of one of the male masters,” Isabella said, even more demurely. “What is the other thing, Melchior?”
“Never you mind,” Melchior retorted. “Out, Firebrand; out! I’ve another lesson to prepare, and Nan needs quiet.”
Annabel hadn’t meant to grin, but it happened anyway. “It won’t matter if you don’t prepare,” she said. “They’ll hang on your every word anyway.”
“I’ll have a word with Miss Cornett,” Melchior said, refusing to acknowledge the jibe. “I won’t have them starving you. And you—Firebrand! Make sure they don’t lace Nan’s corsets too tight. It’s unhealthy.”
“We ought to cover our ears,” Isabella said confidentially to Annabel. “Shall you begin screaming first, or shall I?”
“Miss Cornett says we ought to cover our ears and scream if a male begins to talk about undergarments in our presence,” Annabel said to a very startled Melchior.
“I conclude that it’s entirely acceptable for young ladies to talk about undergarments in the presence of footmen, however!” Melchior said sourly, when he had recovered a little. “I’ll thank you not to put ideas into Nan’s head, Firebrand!”
“Well! Of all the ingratitude!” gasped Isabella. “I’ll have you know, Melchior, that I am entirely responsible for the blue ensemble in which Annabel is currently attired!”
Melchior’s brows went up again for the briefest moment. “In that case, Firebrand, I unreservedly apologise.”
“There was nothing wrong with my clothes before this!” protested Annabel.
This time, it was Isabella who was firm. “Yes, there was. It’s no use arguing with me. At any rate, it disguises exactly how tight—or otherwise—your corsets are done, which is advantageous to us. Very well, Nan; you remain where you are. I’ve other matters to attend to in any case—I’m sure Melchior will make sure you’re taken care of.”
Annabel meant to protest, but found that she didn’t have the desire to do so. “All right,” she said. At Melchior, she added, “But if you expect me to do anything, I’m going to faint again.”
12
Annabel wasn’t sure exactly what else Melchior did than talk to Miss Cornett, but she was certain he did something else. Certainly Miss Cornett, with her nervous
flutterings, couldn’t have produced the distinct appearance of deflation with which the Deportment Master conducted his lesson the next day. She mentioned as much to Isabella at lunch time, which was served with the normal pink napkins again, and was surprised to see Isabella consider the idea seriously.
“I wouldn’t be quite so sure, Nan,” Isabella said thoughtfully. “Miss Cornett is a surprising thing. She always seems as though she’s on the brink of a nervous collapse, but she can be occasionally savage when one least expects it.”
“Really?” asked Annabel doubtfully. “All right, I suppose you know better. At any rate, wasn’t it nice not to have the Master shrieking Tighter! Pull it tighter! all through the beginning of the lesson?”
“Not to mention real breakfast and real lunch,” agreed Isabella. “Which reminds me, Nan; what do you think about establishing a food bank for Blue Napkin students? We meant to establish a stash in the library, after all, but I quite forgot!”
“Absolutely not!” said Melchior’s voice.
Annabel jumped, but Isabella only gazed up at him innocently. “Are you serving some punishment, Melchior? Presiding at breakfast and lunch! Dear me!”
“Be a little less free with my name, if you please, Firebrand,” Melchior said warningly. “And it’s nothing of the sort. I’ll be presiding over the dining hall tonight as well.”
“You’re making sure my napkins really are pink,” said Annabel, feeling pleased and content in spite of the fact that the heat was even worse today than it had been yesterday.
“Believe it or not, Nan, there are reasons for the things I do that don’t have directly to do with you.”
“Really?” asked Isabella. “What would they be? We’re very curious, Melchior!”
“Very curious,” Annabel agreed, refusing to feel slighted. The girls around the dining hall were watching in mingled curiosity and jealousy as Melchior lingered by their table, and that struck her as dangerous attention to have. “Belle, do you think we should go now?”
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