by Anne Gracie
After nearly two hours, Cal finally escaped, citing urgent (and possibly dangerous, added Rose) business to attend to. He left Aunt Dottie and the girls to enjoy Aunt Dottie’s triumph with her particular cronies over crumpets and sweet buns at their favorite tea room.
Cal strode up the hill as fast as his dignity would allow him. Fleeing the battlefield was becoming a habit.
* * *
Cal’s aunt had given him a street name, but not a number, but when he saw a line of schoolgirls filing into an imposing building under the supervision of a tall female dressed in dark blue, he knew he’d found the school.
It was set on a corner, with an excellent view over the city of Bath and surrounds, and was enclosed on three sides by a high stone wall, set with shards of broken glass along the top. He grinned. Nobody would be getting in or out of that place except by the front door.
A discreetly lettered brass plate beside the entrance said Miss Mallard’s Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen. Cal rang the doorbell and waited.
A grim-looking female in black opened it and peered at him suspiciously. “Yes?”
“I’d like to speak with Miss Mallard.”
She looked him up and down. “Whom shall I say is calling?”
“Major Ca—” He broke off. “I mean Lord Ashendon.”
She scrutinized him with hostile pale blue pebble eyes. “Please come in. I’ll see if Miss Mallard is available.” She let him into a spacious, black-and-white-tiled vestibule, to the right of which rose a handsome staircase. She indicated some chairs set in a line along the wall. “Wait there.” And then added grudgingly, “Please.”
Amused at the woman’s barely repressed hostility—did she think he’d come here to ravage her precious girls?—Cal sat down to wait.
A wave of whispering and murmuring above him caused him to turn his head and look up. On the landing of the stairs a huddle of young girls had gathered and were eyeing him with speculative interest.
There was a burst of muffled exclamations of “Lavinia, no!” “Lavvie, don’t!” and “You’ll get into trouble, you know you’re not allowed to . . .” and a pretty young girl of about fourteen or fifteen ran down the stairs and confidently plopped herself on the chair beside him.
She turned to him with a coquettish smile. “How do you do? Are you waiting for the Duck, because I’ll keep you company if you like, my name’s Lavinia, Miss Lavinia Fortescue-Brown of the Surrey Fortescue-Browns, you’re new here, aren’t you, are you thinking of sending someone here? Your sister, perhaps, you’re too young and handsome to have a daughter of school age, so go ahead, ask me anything, I’ve been here for years, but I’ll be leaving soon and I can tell you anything you want to know about—”
“Lavinia Fortescue-Brown.” The voice came from above, calm, quiet, but somehow commanding. It cut off the torrent of words coming from Miss Lavinia Fortescue-Brown of the Surrey Fortescue-Browns in midstream.
Cal looked up to see who had produced this minor miracle. A tallish female dressed in drab dark blue came gracefully down the stairs. It was the woman he’d seen earlier, ushering a column of girls into the school.
She was handsome rather than pretty, with high cheekbones and a short, straight nose. Her hair seemed to be brown and curly, though most of it was pulled tightly back and hidden under an ugly spinster’s cap.
Lavinia jumped to her feet. “Yes, Miss Westwood?”
Cal rose to his feet. The tall lady didn’t so much as glance at him. Another man-hater, perhaps? What a waste.
She wasn’t a beauty, but she had a look of elegant distinction. Her complexion was good, her nose small and straight, her chin firm, and her mouth . . . soft ripe raspberries in a dish of pure cream.
“You’re supposed to be upstairs preparing your French poetry recital, Lavinia, not bothering strange gentlemen.”
The strange gentleman was busy looking at the lush, feminine mouth and wondering what it would take to break that smooth nun-like composure.
“Oh, but Miss Westwood, I wasn’t bothering—”
“Upstairs. Now.” She said it in a pleasant, almost conversational tone of voice, but there was no denying the steel beneath. Lavinia cast a wistful look at Cal but took a few reluctant steps toward the staircase.
The tall lady turned her gaze on Cal. She had the most amazing eyes, an arresting gray-green, like sage, or frosted grass, framed with thick dark lashes. She said crisply, “You are being attended to, I presume, sir?”
“Yes, but perhaps—”
A soft scream cut him off in midsentence. They turned to find Lavinia Fortescue-Brown of the Surrey Fortescue-Browns sprawled dramatically at the foot of the stairs. She gazed helplessly up at Cal, whimpering and fluttering her eyelashes.
The tall lady frowned and bent over the girl. “What have you done, Lavinia?”
The girl’s gaze didn’t shift from Cal, who stood beside the teacher. “I tripped, Miss Westwood. I’ve twisted my ankle. It’s frightfully painful.”
The teacher was a coolheaded one, no doubt about it. She seemed entirely unconcerned. She twitched the girl’s hem aside and made a cursory examination of the ankle. “Hmmm. Can you stand?”
The girl made an attempt to get up, gave a loud moan and fell back helplessly. “Oh, it hurts, it hurts! I can’t walk at all.” She gave Cal a piteous look. “Perhaps the gentleman could carry me upstairs.”
Before Cal could offer to help, the teacher said, “Oh, there’s no need to bother the gentleman. He’s much too busy to carry injured schoolgirls around.”
“I don’t mind—” Cal began.
She gave him a swift quelling look. “No, no, the school porter will carry Lavinia.”
“Not Grimes!” Lavinia exclaimed in disgust.
“Of course Grimes,” the teacher affirmed. “You will recall from your lessons, Lavinia, that the word porter comes from the French ‘to carry.’ Carrying things and people is Grimes’s job. He will be delighted to carry you upstairs.”
There was a short silence, then the teacher said dryly, “Or perhaps the pain is not so bad now and you can manage by yourself.”
The girl sighed, and with a moan or two—much less dramatic now—managed to stand. Under her teacher’s eye, she bid Cal good-bye and, clutching at the banister, began to hobble pathetically up the stairs, wincing at each painful step. Limping, he noticed, on the wrong foot.
The teacher watched her go, then turned to Cal, her eyes dancing with humor. “She is somewhat of a minx, our Lavinia.” As Lavinia turned at the landing, cast Cal one last tragic glance and limped bravely out of sight, the teacher added, “Grimes is in his sixties and has hair growing—quite vigorously—out of his nose and ears.”
Cal chuckled. He was impressed with her handling of the girl. Firm, but with humor and a light touch.
She glanced past him. “Ah, here is Theale. I’ll leave you, then. Thank you for your tolerance.” She turned away and hurried back up the stairs in the wake of her pupil.
The grim female in black gave Cal a gimlet look. “Miss Mallard will see you now.”
Cal followed her, well pleased with what he’d learned. Miss Mallard’s Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen might be the very answer. There was discipline here—good discipline and high walls topped with broken glass.
All he needed, really.
* * *
Emmaline Westwood followed her charge up the stairs, trying not to be aware of the hard gray gaze of the tall, spare man standing below. Who was he? She’d noticed him in the street earlier.
Her first impression, as he’d come striding up the hill, was of a hunter: lean, dark and somehow . . . predatory. The last place she’d imagined he would head for was Miss Mallard’s Seminary.
Talk about fox in the henhouse. Even if it was the chickens that were doing the hunting.
“Hurry along there, Lavini
a,” she said. The girl was casting languishing glances back down the stairs.
“Oh, but—”
“You’re limping on the wrong foot,” Emm observed.
“Oh.” Lavinia started to limp on the other foot, then realized. She cast Emm a worried glance. “I’m not in trouble, am I? I was only trying to help the gentleman.”
“Most praiseworthy of you,” Emm said dryly. “He seeming so helpless and lost. And apparently in need of people to carry.”
Lavinia giggled. “Wasn’t he delicious, miss? So stern and handsome and tall, and those eyes . . .”
“You, miss, are a minx,” Emm told her. “Now be off with you. Get on with your French poetry exercise. And I’ll give you an extra poem to translate and learn as punishment for your mischief.”
Lavinia sighed, but she was getting off lightly and she knew it.
Emm paused, then added, “Lavinia, before you go, I want you to think about this: Which young lady do you think a gentleman would find most interesting—the girl who thrusts herself eagerly into his company, unasked, or the young lady who remains ever-so-slightly aloof—a prize to be won?”
Lavinia looked perplexed. “You think he thought me too eager?”
Emm fought a smile. The girl had been flirting outrageously in the way of the very young and innocent. “I have no idea what that particular gentleman thought. All I ask is that you think about the impression you wish to give.”
“But if I am too cool and aloof, gentlemen might not even approach me.”
“There is no danger of that,” Emm assured her. “You’re a very pretty girl with a lively and affectionate nature. You will have your pick of gentlemen, I’m sure. A little reserve will not frighten men away—it will only make you a prize more worth the winning.”
Lavinia gave her a doubtful look.
Emm said lightly, “Men—most people, in fact—value the hard-won prize over that which comes to them easily, don’t you think?”
“I never thought of that.”
Emm smiled. “I’m not suggesting you change your personality, just that you try to consider the impression your words and actions might give. A girl’s reputation is a delicate thing, and it rests almost wholly in the hands of others. People who don’t know you can misinterpret your actions and make false judgments about you, and once that’s happened, there’s very little you can do to change things.”
If only someone had told her that when she was Lavinia’s age.
Lavinia thought that over and nodded. “I see.” She took a few steps, then paused and turned back. “You are so wise, Miss Westwood. Why did you never—?” She broke off, blushing. “Sorry,” she muttered, and hurried away.
Emm knew what she had been going to ask. Why had Emm never married? The girls speculated constantly about that, she knew. She’d never explained, and never would.
The girls had come up with a range of stories, she knew, the most widely accepted being that she’d been in love with a soldier who’d been killed in the war.
Emm never discussed it. The truth was uglier than anything the girls, in their innocence, could come up with. Emm still didn’t quite understand how it had happened.
Just that it had. And her life had been ruined.
No, not ruined, she told herself firmly. She was happy here. She loved teaching, she really did. And the girls were wonderful.
But it wasn’t how she’d dreamed her life would be.
She hurried to her room to prepare for her next class. Geography. A frustrating subject; not only had the borders of so many countries been changed by Napoleon’s conquests, they kept changing after his defeat. It was almost impossible for a teacher to keep up.
She set out the globes and tried not to think of the tall, hard-eyed man waiting below. What would bring such a man to Miss Mallard’s Seminary?
* * *
“The Rutherford girls?” The elegant silver-haired headmistress stared at Cal in horror over her pince-nez. “You want me to take Rose and Lily Rutherford back? No and no and no!”
Cal said soothingly. “Not permanently, just for a few weeks or a month, until I can—”
“No!” She removed the pince-nez, placed them in a case and closed it with a snap. Business completed. “Not for a week, not for a month, not even for a minute!”
“Why not?”
“Your half sisters are too old for this establishment. Too old and too . . . restless. They would lead the younger girls astray.”
“What if I paid double the usual fees?” She didn’t respond, so he said, “Triple?”
She thinned her lips. “Did you not understand me when I said no, Lord Ashendon?”
He sighed and sat back in his chair. “No, I’m just desperate. Can’t you help me just a little, Miss Mallard? You had them here for five years, after all.”
She snorted. “And between them, they turned my hair white.”
“I know Rose can be a handful, but Lily—”
She threw up her hands. “Lily! That girl drove my poor teachers to distraction.”
“Lily did?”
“She is unteachable, quite unteachable.”
Cal frowned. “Are we talking about the same Lily? Sweet-natured and biddable—”
“Oh, yes, she’s very sweet-natured, but nobody can teach her. It’s not that we haven’t tried everything we can think of, but it’s very bad for the reputation of my school to turn out a pupil who after five long years still cannot spell and can barely read.”
There was a short pause, then Cal said, “Are you telling me that Lily cannot read and write?”
She nodded. “Didn’t you know?”
He shook his head slowly. He didn’t quite believe it. Lily didn’t seem at all stupid to him.
But dammit, there was no solution for him here after all. “So nothing I can say or do will convince you to take them back?”
“My advice to you is to get them married off as quickly as you can. They are of age. Rose is almost twenty and Lily is eighteen. Make them some other man’s problem.” She rose in implacable dismissal. “Good day to you, Lord Ashendon. And good luck.”
* * *
Cal spent the rest of the afternoon visiting other seminaries for young ladies—Bath was full of them—but without success. Either the girls really were too old or their reputations had traveled before them. He suspected the latter.
Walking back to his aunt’s house, he was surprised to see an old friend striding grimly along on the other side of the street, deep in a brown study. Ned Galbraith, a few years behind Cal at school, had gone to war at the same time. He’d resigned his commission in 1814, rejoined for Waterloo, then sold out again.
Cal hadn’t seen him since Waterloo. “Galbraith,” he called.
Galbraith glanced up and the frown cleared from his face. He crossed the street and the two men shook hands.
“Can’t stay to chat,” Galbraith said after the initial greetings were over. “Got an engagement in”—he pulled out a fob watch and consulted it—“quarter of an hour. I’m staying at York House. Join me for dinner? We can blow a cloud and catch up.”
“Can’t, I’m afraid,” Cal said regretfully. “I’ve only just arrived in Bath and I need to look after my young half sisters.”
Galbraith’s brows rose. “Don’t they have nursemaids for that sort of thing?”
Cal grimaced. “They’re not children. They don’t require a nursemaid, more like . . . a watchdog.”
“Like that, is it? Well, if you change your mind, you know where I’m staying. I’m here for a week or two.”
“Weeks? Not here for the waters, are you?” Galbraith looked as fit and healthy as ever.
“Lord, no—filthy stuff. If you haven’t already tasted it, don’t. Might as well drain water through your old socks and drink that. No, I’m”—a peculiar expression crossed his
face—“I’m courting.”
“Courting? You? Good lord! I always thought you were as marriage-shy as me.”
“I know. I was. I am. But”—he gave a wry grimace—“needs must when the devil drives.”
“Your grandfather?”
Galbraith nodded. “Got it in one. Since my father died, the old man hasn’t stopped fretting. Says before the angels call him, he wants me firmly buckled to a respectable, levelheaded gel, and with a lustily squalling heir in the nursery.”
Cal couldn’t help but snort. “The angels?” From all accounts Galbraith’s grandfather, old Lord Galbraith, had been a notorious rake in his youth.
“Turned religious,” Galbraith said, faintly amused. “Respectable as a vicar now.”
“Damn.”
“Damn indeed.” He added in a dry voice, “He’s even picked out the girl.”
Cal was shocked. “What, you don’t get a choice?”
“Of course I do, but . . .” He shrugged. “The old man is failing, and I—I’ve given him nothing but trouble all my life. I’ve decided to marry quickly, so he can die in peace. And since it makes no difference to me who I marry . . .”
“No difference? You don’t believe that, surely?”
“Why not?” Galbraith said indifferently. “All cats are gray in the dark. And you know as well as I that with a title comes the obligation to procreate.” He gave Cal a twisted smile. “Marriage, it comes to us all in the end.”
“Not me,” Cal said emphatically. And then he remembered his own title and the need for an heir. “At least not for a good long while yet. But who is this girl he’s picked out for you?”
“Tell you all about it when you come to dinner. Make it Thursday. Give you a couple of days to find a watchdog for the girls.” Galbraith consulted his watch again. “Must go. The blushing bride awaits.”
Cal continued on his way, a little disturbed by what he’d learned. Gossip at the Apocalypse Club had Galbraith down as a cold bastard and, since returning to England, he’d apparently developed a reputation in the ton as cynical rake and a care-for-nobody. Whatever he was now, most agreed that Galbraith had been a damn good officer—a man to rely on.