A School for Unusual Girls

by Kathleen Baldwin

  “No. You chose to come to Stranje House.” I gritted my teeth, refusing to let her see how she hurt me. I don’t know why I said that, nor why her choosing to come to Stranje House was an important distinction. But it was. She was not one of us. Daneska had never been cast off. She didn’t know what it was like. And then I realized … “Miss Stranje didn’t choose you.”

  Her expression tightened. Rage whipped across her features and blew away as if by a cold wind. In that instant, I knew Daneska was capable of murder. She pinned me to her side and marched us forward.

  “Why?” I ventured. “Why did you want to be at Stranje House?”

  “I was bored.”

  “That’s all. You were bored?”

  “Naturellement. Have you met my aunt? I needed something to pass the time. I thought it would be entertaining to study Miss Stranje’s clever tricks.”

  “You knew what the school was before you came?”

  She jerked my arm. “You ask too many questions.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I stomped on her foot.

  She winced and doubled over but instead of letting go, she tightened her hold. “Come along, Georgiana, don’t be difficult. Poor Tess is up here all alone. If you want to help her you must come with me.”

  “She wouldn’t have come alone. Lord Ravencross would not—”

  “He’s not Ravencross,” she snarled. “Don’t call him that.” She shook with sudden rage. Even through gloves, her claws dug into my skin.

  “What should I call him?”

  “Nothing. Less than nothing. A dog.” She took a calming breath and reverted to the icy-smooth voice she preferred. “Do you really think he would go alone with a young lady into the servants’ bedrooms?” She grunted at my naiveté. “He may be a cur, but even he would not compromise Tess like that.”

  “Perhaps not. But he will come looking for her if she doesn’t return soon. Just as Lord Wyatt will look for me.”

  “Oh, my dear girl. I’m counting on it. Although, for the moment, Lord Wyatt is too busy. He’s off playing his annoying little games with everyone’s lives.”

  She twisted my arm until I feared it would break, and stuck something sharp into my side. “This is what I keep in my reticule.” She whispered next to my ear. “A dagger is much more useful than ink, no?”

  Yes. Infinitely more useful. I gulped back terror, anger, and wished to heaven I had a knife of my own at that very moment—a big sharp one.

  “Such an elegant little blade.” She twisted it, taking a moment to admire the wretched thing. “It would be a pity to soil it with your blood. Now, be a love, and open the door.”

  I yelped, as the point bit through the skin on my ribs.

  “Quiet.” She pressed the blade deeper.

  “I thought you didn’t want to soil your knife,” I said, and gritted my teeth together to keep from crying out as I turned the knob. The door swung open. A small oil lamp flickered atop a bureau. I knew instantly Tess had been there. But she was gone. An empty chair sat in the middle of the small room, cords coiled loosely around the base. A still-knotted gag lay on the seat.

  “Tess?” Daneska barely uttered aloud. Her panicked gaze flitted to the corners of the room.

  Her hold on me weakened. I jabbed my elbow into her ribs and sprang sideways, lunging for a pitcher on the washstand. Something. Anything, I could use to bash her over the head.

  She grabbed my hair. My head snapped back. Next thing I knew her knife was at my neck.

  “I should slit your throat for that. A pity I need you alive.” Her fingers pressed hard against the soft place right below my ear. Her paralyzing grip made me dizzy, unable to speak or move.

  If she wanted me alive, she needed to stop squeezing my neck. The room turned into a mass of bright swirling spots with an ever-expanding dark center.

  “Sweet dreams, Miss Fitzwilliam.”

  Blackness.

  I have no idea how much time passed before she slapped my cheek, rousing me. Daneska’s face swam before my eyes. “Wake up, sleepyhead. This is no time for napping. We are about to have visitors.”

  I struggled to find my way out of the murky depths of unconsciousness, but I couldn’t move. She’d tied me into Tess’s chair, and bound my hands securely behind me. In its stupor, my mind wandered backward to one of Jane’s cryptic remarks, “One never knows when one might need to escape from being bound to a chair.” Oh, how I wished I’d had a few of Miss Stranje’s peculiar lessons.

  The ropes chafed my wrists as I tried to wriggle free. Through my grogginess, I heard someone in the hall demand, “Where is she?”

  There was a scuffle. A few moments later two men came in, wrestling a third man between them. Daneska shut the door and held up a lantern.

  I inhaled sharply. “Sebastian!”

  “Tut, tut, Georgiana, that’s Lord Wyatt to you.” She flaunted her knife the way another woman might waggle her fan at a beau.

  Sebastian stopped struggling. His gaze flew to her and landed on me. Although he now had a wad of cloth tied in his mouth, gagging him, nothing could silence the panic that suddenly screamed through his eyes.

  “Over there,” Daneska ordered. “I don’t want him near the door.”

  Two large footmen dragged him past my chair and held him against the wall by the window. Surely they couldn’t be Lord Castlereagh’s servants. Too burly. They looked more like sailors or dockworkers disguised as servants so they might slip into the ball unnoticed. They were hired thugs, not gentlemen. They couldn’t possibly be knights of the Order of the Iron Crown. Napoleon would only have granted that title to gentlemen of means and members of the aristocracy.

  When Sebastian tried to say something to me, one of the brutes punched him in the gut. I shrieked, but Daneska clapped her hand over my mouth and pressed the point of her knife against my throat. I felt the sting as the point pierced skin beneath my chin.

  “Be a good girl, and do as you’re told. A proper young lady does not scream.” She said this with a lilt in her voice as if it pleased her enormously to be teaching me manners. She withdrew her knife. “There. That’s better. Now we can all be friends.”

  Not in a hundred years. I glared at her.

  “I’ll wager you can guess what I want? You see, by the time we found him, Lord Wyatt had already doled out your lovely ink.” She shook her head. “Well, except for two last vials. He smashed those. Most uncooperative, don’t you think? But then our Sebastian is a very naughty boy. Aren’t you, my darling?” She drew her finger along the bottom of his jaw. “I daresay your valet will be most annoyed, that ink is bound to leave a nasty stain on your coat pocket.”

  His neck cloth had been lost in the scuffle. Daneska pouted and trailed her fingers intimately down his neck. “Poor Sebastian. It is too bad you are so … how do you say, krótkowzroczna? Shortsighted. Our Emperor Napoleon will soon be free and all of Europe will unite under the Iron Crown. What a pity you have chosen to fight against us.” She slid her fingers into his shirt where it hung open and torn. “Perhaps I can change your mind.”

  It clawed at my skin the way she flirted with him in the middle of abusing us. I must’ve huffed at her impertinence. She snapped her attention to me like a dog on a scent.

  “You’re jealous.” She grinned.

  I tried to wriggle free. When that wouldn’t work I inched the chair forward hoping the leg would pinch her toes.

  “Oh, poor thing. Did he talk sweet to you? Of course, he did. But you are too clever for that old trick. You knew he only wanted the ink. You didn’t actually believe his sentimental rubbish, did you? Oh…” She tittered.

  God forgive me, I hated her. I may have growled. Some noise came from my throat.

  She laughed again. “But I can see you did. How deliciously gullible you are.”

  Even though she still stood next to Sebastian, it felt as if she was strangling me. Her hand wandered brazenly inside his shirt. I wanted more than anything to slam my fist into her revoltingly beau
tiful face.

  “I know Lord Wyatt quite well,” she purred. “He has a rather, er, how do you say … vigorous reputation with the young ladies. Surely, you didn’t think a little red-headed pea hen like yourself would snare such a prize?”

  My heart slammed into my stomach. I thought I would be sick. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. I looked at Sebastian. Pleading with my very soul for the truth. It shouldn’t matter. Not now, when we were both probably going to die. And yet, it did. I desperately needed to know if he’d only been using me.

  I cannot explain how, but where words might have failed to reassure me, Sebastian conveyed the truth in a single expression of his eyes. He told me more in that one wordless moment than he could have using a thousand words.

  With cold clear certainty, I said, “You’re a liar.”

  “C’est la vie.” She acted as if it didn’t matter, but her eyes darkened and her lips pressed tight. She closed her fist around his shirt and ripped it open. Buttons clattered across the floor. Fast as a snake strikes, she slashed her blade across his chest.

  I shrieked as an arc of dark red blood bloomed on his chest and ran in rivulets down his belly.

  Daneska clamped her hand over my mouth. “The wound, it is not so very deep. Not yet.” She sizzled poison in my ear. “You caused this small problem, yes? The Order, also, has a small problem. Coincidently, your fault, too. So unless you want small problems to become big problems…” She wiped the bloody knife across my bodice, taking care to make certain some of his blood smeared onto my breasts. “You will tell me your formula.”

  There was a low rumble from Sebastian. He shook his head warning me not to say anything. Daneska nodded, and her servant slammed Sebastian’s head against the wall.

  “You must not listen to him, Georgiana. He is a man. Men are always so impractical. It is the women of the world who must live with the mess men make of it, no? This is between you and me.” She used the knife to indicate the two of us.

  Ruthless witch. Your blade still drips with Sebastian’s blood.

  “We are pragmatists you and I. You are a scientist. Very practical. Me, I am practical, too. I want what is good for Europe. Peace and stability. The Order of the Iron Crown will unite the continent and stop all this pointless bloodshed. Your English king, he cannot promise peace or stability. Poor mad King George, he cannot even keep his own mind right side up.”

  I had no answer for that. It was the sad truth.

  “Ah. See. You know I am right.” She grinned and tapped my shoulder with her knife. “His foolish son, Humpty Dumpty Prince George, is no better. Your parliament, they made this fat buffoon Prince Regent of England. The fool. Your ruler gambles and chases skirts while his government makes war all over the world—America, India, Africa. You must ask yourself, what do these men want?”

  I did my best to look confused. As long as she talked she wasn’t hurting Sebastian.

  “I will tell you what they want—the greedy swine. More and more for England.” She spit air through her lips.

  I seethed, struggling to keep a mask of feigned interest. My brother had died fighting to free the continent from the very tyrant she worshipped. I knew the truth. She cared nothing about the welfare of anyone except herself. Daneska wanted more and more for Daneska.

  She narrowed her gaze, scrutinizing me. “Your eyes—little mouse—they tell all. You are the skeptic.” She aimed the dagger over her shoulder. “It’s him, isn’t it? The charming diplomat has convinced you. Foreign service. Ha! A joke. Le grand farce. Sebastian is England’s pawn. Always sneaking around sticking his nose in where it does not belong. Always making trouble.” She screwed the blade through the air, twisting the point toward me. “The Order needs to know what mischief he and his pesky friends are playing at so we can keep it in check. You understand, yes?”

  I nodded, frantic to keep her talking. I could practically taste how bitterly she hated him. Any second she might turn her venomous blade on him again.

  She frowned and stood back. “This was a simple matter until now. Their codes were easy enough to decipher. But now, my dear”—she lifted one of my curls over my shoulder and arranged it against my décolletage—”now you have invented an undetectable ink.”

  My fault. I upset the apple cart. Jane was right. I was dangerous. I ought to have stayed in the corner doing needlepoint.

  As if she could read my mind Daneska said, “How very remarkable you are.” She smoothed her fingers along the skin of my neck and shoulder.

  Sebastian groaned. I saw by his expression how desperately he hoped I would not give away the secret. Or was he afraid for me? Perhaps both.

  Daneska whirled back to him and dug the point of her knife under his chin. “So, you see, the Iron Crown wants your little ink and I’ll have it one way or another.” Blood ran down her blade.

  “Stop!” I blurted. “He can’t tell you anything. He doesn’t know the formula. I had to change it before I came. That’s why I’m here. The one he helped me with is useless.”

  Sebastian’s shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. I’d said the wrong thing. But I couldn’t let them hurt him anymore.

  “I knew that much by your conversation in the hallway. Now, if you would be so good, I need the recipe.” She shoved the dagger deeper and blood spurted onto her gown. She grimaced. “That is going to stain,” she murmured, but then focused on me. “Now, you were saying…”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  Sebastian struggled with his captors and shook his head. Daneska forcefully rammed her elbow back into his abdomen. She didn’t even turn around or blink. He bent forward with a groan, but she continued to smile pleasantly at me. “Do get on with it. Then we can all go home from this wretched smelly little room and be happy.”

  He warned me off with his eyes.

  She gestured to the big one. He struck Sebastian in the face and blood spurted out of his nose. “No more,” I begged. “I said I would help you. Why are you hitting him?”

  “Because, my friend, you are not talking fast enough.” She whirled behind me and grabbed my hair, twisting it around her palm, coiling it so tight I thought it might rip from my scalp.

  Her ruffian slugged Sebastian again and split open his cheek. We were so close I could almost feel his skin tear. I whimpered.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it? Watching someone you care about suffer. You can make it all stop.”

  “I don’t have the exact measurements. I’d need my notes.”

  The other man slugged Sebastian in the ribs. He crumpled against the wall. She yanked my hair, cranking my neck back so far, that I looked at her upside down. “Georgiana, you are trying my patience. Your cook assured my man that you were the smartest little thing she’d ever laid eyes on, and that you had a memory longer than the King’s road. That is a direct quote. Quite in awe of you, your cook was. So, you see, you must do better than to say you can’t remember.” She let go.

  Sebastian slumped to the floor with the next blow. Why did he not moan? Why? Was it so I wouldn’t tell them? Did he think I couldn’t see how much it hurt? He should not have been so brave. His courage made me love him more, made me feel each blow all the more keenly.

  “Pulverized gall,” I said, loud enough to make them stop.

  Sebastian shook his head and struggled to sit up. He tried to shout at me through his gag. But I couldn’t let them hurt him anymore. “And alum.”

  She crossed her arms. “You must not lie to me, Georgiana.”

  “Don’t you need a pen and paper to write this down?” I asked.

  She inspected the tip of her dagger. “My little dumpling, you are not the only one with a good memory.”

  “I see.” With a sigh, I continued. “Two parts copperas.”

  “Copperas? What is that?”

  I groaned because it was such a good question. Why couldn’t she be stupid? It might’ve taken the Order of the Iron Crown years to figure out the meaning of that one component.

  Just the
n, the latch broke and the door burst open. Lord Ravencross flew into the room. Tess rushed in right behind him.

  Daneska signaled the biggest footman. He yanked Sebastian to his feet and dragged him to the window. I shouted for Tess, but it was too late. Daneska’s henchman heaved Sebastian over the sill and shoved him out of the third-story window.

  I screamed.

  Tess kicked the footman between his legs and the oaf doubled over and swung wildly for her. She brought both fists down on top of his neck and he collapsed. She grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into the floorboards.

  Daneska hung on to the curtain and leaned out the window. No doubt she derived some grizzly pleasure from making certain she’d killed Sebastian. I roared with anger, but stopped mid roar. Daneska jumped.

  Impossible. I struggled to scoot my chair closer.

  “Hold still,” Tess ordered. “I’m trying to untie you.”

  As soon as my ropes were off, I rushed to the window. A hay cart rolled through the narrow alley below bearing the prone body of Sebastian. Daneska sat beside him on the hay. That sneaky cheat! She’d known the cart was there. She’d planned this mode of escape the whole time.

  I yelled to her. “Let him go!”

  “Come and get him,” she jeered as the dray turned out of the alley. I could’ve sworn she gave me a flippant farewell wave, but the moonlight was weak, and I could not escape the last image I’d had of Sebastian’s face, battered, bleeding, and desperate.

  “We have to go after them.”

  I whirled around just in time to see Lord Ravencross plow a conclusive fist into the remaining blackguard. Tess had her knee pressed into the back of the blighter on the floor, and was using my ropes to bind his feet and wrists.

  “Hurry! Daneska’s taking him away.” I dashed past the broken door into the hallway. “We must go now!”

  I couldn’t wait for them to secure Daneska’s men. Sebastian was wounded and probably dying. I raced down the backstairs. There had to be a servants’ door to the alley. I startled a maid on the first floor. She averted her eyes, as do maids in all great houses. I grabbed her shoulders and made her face me. “Which way to the alley on this side of the house?”