by Julie Berry
I rose and marched toward the door, toward breakfast and a wash, my mind seething with thoughts of revenge. She was wrong. Someone had heard our conversation. I had a witness to her wickedness. But, of course, Tommy’s word, as a rascally orphan, was worth even less than mine.
* * *
“My dear lady,” boomed Mr. Alfred P. Treazleton to Miss Salamanca, when she presented herself as my chaperone for our conversation in her private parlor an hour later, “have no fear. Miss Merritt and I will have a friendly chat, I assure you.” He patted my shoulder. “This young lady has spirit, and I like to see that. It just needs molding a bit. I’m merely here with some fatherly advice for her.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows at Miss Salamanca, who blushed. Disgusting and even more disgusting. “I promise, I won’t bite.”
Miss Salamanca looked stuck. To yield to Mr. Treazleton was to admit defeat, which tasted bitter after she’d threatened that she’d be watching me. And yet she was utterly incapable of not yielding to Mr. Treazleton. She turned this way and that, until her eyes settled upon the double doors to this room, and the gap between them.
I knew what she was thinking. She’d leave her parlor for our use, then spy on us from outside the door. Clearly, Theresa’s father read her thoughts as well.
“Come to think of it, it’s a pleasant morning,” he said, “and we could all do with a bit more exercise. Why don’t Miss Merritt and I take a stroll together? Not far, just toward the park.” When Miss Salamanca opened her toothy mouth to protest, he silenced her with an upraised hand. “It’s no trouble, I assure you. Have no fear for her safety. I shall be personally responsible for her.”
“But her parents—” she stammered weakly.
“—are friends of mine,” said the Great Financier. “That is to say, her father is employed at a bank in which I hold a financial interest, and I occupy a seat on the board of directors. So, I am hardly a stranger. We are connected.”
Hearing Mr. Treazleton claim a connection between himself and my family would’ve put my mother into a swoon. When recovered, she would boast of the connection in every single conversation for the rest of her life.
Miss Salamanca sagged. “Well, in that case, of course.” But her hawk-eyed gaze burrowed into mine as I shrugged my arms into my coat. “I am certain that Miss Merritt will behave herself admirably on this special outing.”
“Of course she will!” Mr. Treazleton beamed at me, and out we went.
His smile was so warm it left me bewildered. I followed him out the door and across the pavement to the street. He paused to allow me to catch up with him, then took off at a pleasant pace.
“Charming day for this time of year,” he observed, noting the bit of blue that had found its way through London’s clouds and smoke. The day was, indeed, pleasant, with birds hopping about on bare tree limbs in the park and nannies pushing prams carrying bundled babies over the tufty withered grass and leaves.
I followed along and watched the man. He smiled at everyone he met, doffing his tall hat to ladies, young and old, and depositing coins in the gnarled hand of an elderly beggar on a street corner.
Was this Alfred P. Treazleton? His genial manner disarmed me. Where was the haughty man of yesterday, berating Tommy? Well, for that matter, men do get very touchy about their horses, and if he’d misunderstood Tommy’s intentions, it stood to reason. But he was the father of the odious Theresa! Still, spoiled daughters could be the offspring of fathers who are generous to a fault. I wasn’t ready to let my guard down, but I decided, cautiously, to view Mr. Treazleton with a slightly more open mind.
“Miss Merritt… May I call you Maeve?”
I nodded. People did not usually ask me what they could call me.
“Miss Maeve, then. You strike me, if I may be permitted to observe, as a bright young lady with an appetite for adventure.”
He turned a penetrating gaze my way. I didn’t know where to look, so I studied my shoes. His shoes, I noted, were polished to an impossible gleam.
“School must be a suffocating experience for someone like you,” he went on, “all cooped up and buttoned up and lectured six ways from Sunday. Am I wrong?”
I shook my head. No, he certainly wasn’t wrong. But what cause had he ever had to observe me or think about me at all?
He’d studied me more, in a couple of brief encounters, than my mother ever had in a lifetime. Maybe keen observation was required in captains of industry.
“Tell me,” he said, “what sorts of adventures you’d look for if you could.”
A little warning sounded in my head: Don’t tell him anything! Keep your ideas to yourself! But why? What harm could there be in discussing my private thoughts with him? It wasn’t as though they were particularly secret. If the Daily Telegraph wanted to run a headline tomorrow, “Schoolgirl Dreams of Girls’ Cricket League,” I couldn’t see how that would affect me much.
“I’d like to travel the world,” I said. “See all the faraway places I’ve read about.”
“Like Miss Isabella Bird,” he said. “What a marvelous plan!”
“You know about her?”
He laughed heartily. “I’ve read each of her works with enormous interest.”
I couldn’t believe we had anything in common.
Mr. Treazleton rubbed his hands together. “I myself have done a bit of traveling, in my younger days. I toured America, even. Stood at the very rim of the Grand Canyon. But now, business and family matters keep me in London most of the time.”
It surprised me to think that someone as rich and powerful as Mr. Treazleton couldn’t go anywhere he wanted to, anytime he wished. But I suppose a vast commercial enterprise can’t exactly run itself.
“What else would you do, if you could?” he asked.
I decided I might as well say it. “I’d like to start a cricket league for girls.”
His eyes widened. “You don’t say!”
I nodded. He didn’t seem horrified, so I proceeded.
“I grew up playing cricket every day with the lads in my village,” I said.
“And which village would that be?”
“Luton,” I said.
He nodded. “Of course. The trains run there now, don’t they?”
“Only just. My father takes the train to work now.”
“At St. Michael’s Bank and Trust.” He winked at me. “You see, Miss Maeve, I do get around, where the city of London is concerned.” He walked along, swinging his gold-tipped cane in one hand. “Well, well. A cricket league for girls, and trips around the world. Those are some very fine ambitions.”
Those were the last, positively the very last, words I expected to hear out of his mouth. Or, for that matter, out of any adult’s mouth, where my schemes were concerned.
“Do you think so?” I looked up at his face. I had to be sure he wasn’t mocking me.
He nodded, quite seriously. “Indeed, I do.” He pursed his lips. “Of course, they would cost a fair deal of money. Especially the travel. Traveling clothes, boots, mules, horses, maps, meals, hotels, guides, ocean passage—it’s uncanny how costs add up.” He pretended to tally up figures on his fingers. “And to start a league, why, you’d need coaches, uniforms, equipment, advertising…” He sighed. “Again and again I find, Miss Maeve, that projects always cost a great deal more than one thinks they should.”
He sounded just like my dad. He was probably saying the same thing right now about Mother’s plans for Evangeline’s wedding.
“Suppose I were to make you an offer?”
I stopped in my tracks. “An offer?”
“A business proposal.”
He had my attention.
“I will undertake to finance your trip around the world, and your cricket league, with a lump sum payment of five thousand pounds—”
Five thousand pounds!
“Deposite
d to St. Michael’s Bank and Trust, accruing interest until the day when you are old enough to carry out these admirable plans.”
I could barely find words to speak.
“But why?” I finally managed to say. “For what? What would you get out of this?”
He watched me as though he was surprised by my question. “Your djinni, of course.”
My body went still.
My djinni?
I drew back. My fingers moved toward my pocket. The sardine can wasn’t there—I’d hidden it in my room, along with the other artifacts—but Mr. Treazleton’s eyes caught the gesture. Now he knew where I usually kept it.
I wanted to give myself a black eye for being such a fool. All that charm and friendliness? He was just warming me up to connive me out of my djinni.
I tried to stall with a bluff. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come, now, Miss Merritt, we haven’t time for that.” I wasn’t Maeve anymore.
Playing a role was never my strength. But I faked a tittering laugh. “You don’t believe in djinnis, do you, Mr. Treazleton?”
His eyes never left my face. “Should I not?”
I remembered the incident of Theresa Treazleton’s braids and his whispered conversation with her just yesterday afternoon during visiting hours. She had told him about my djinni. And he’d believed her! The thought of my parents believing that I’d found an ancient spirit of power was laughable. But somehow, this man trusted his daughter.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Imagine if my mother thought anything I did was worth taking seriously! I would never envy Theresa for her money nor her prettiness, but I actually envied her the esteem in which her father held her. Imagine that.
We stood on a path through the park, near a bench, and Mr. Treazleton took a seat upon it, after first dusting it off with his pocket handkerchief. He gestured for me to join him. I took a few steps closer, but I didn’t sit. Staying on my feet made me taller than him. I needed every advantage I could get.
“Well, Miss Merritt, do we have an agreement?”
I swallowed hard. Five thousand pounds. Only one wish remaining. I pictured Mermeros billowing out of his sardine can to find Arthur P. Treazleton as his new master. He’d probably be pleased, that arrogant old fish. They practically deserved each other.
Then I remembered Mr. Treazleton’s footman’s cracking whip lashing across Tommy’s shoulder.
No, there was nothing forgivable about that. I shook myself. How had I come to listen to, to almost trust, this mean man? Nasty Theresa’s nasty father?
Imagine this man with Mermeros’s power at his fingertips. Imagine the wishes his arrogant mind would conjure up.
“I’d like to go back to school now,” I told him, which, under any other circumstances, would’ve been a lie.
“It’s quite a nice position your father holds at St. Michael’s Bank and Trust,” he said. “Worked his way up for many years. Finally, he can provide a comfortable living for his wife and daughters.”
He interlaced his fingers and rested them atop the knob of his cane. I stared at those fat, soft fingers, afraid to find out what he was really saying. In my stomach, I already knew.
“I spoke to my old friend Edgar about him just last evening,” he said. “Edgar was over at my house for supper. Oh, you know Edgar, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“Edgar Pinagree? The bank manager? Your father’s superior at the bank?”
Oh. That Edgar.
“There’s nothing Edgar wouldn’t do for me if I asked him,” said Mr. Treazleton. “In fact, I am well accustomed to my wishes being honored. I am a man of considerable reputation in this city, with a great many people eager to do me favors, though I suppose a young girl like you would know nothing about that.”
I let the jab pass. I didn’t care. I knew what he was about, and I was tired of being manipulated by him.
“What exactly are you hinting at, Mr. Treazleton?” I asked him. “I’m not accustomed to bullies tiptoeing around their dirty business. On the playground, they’re much more straightforward. Call you names, or sock you in the chin, but at least they’re honest about it.”
The whoosh of a little laugh escaped him.
“Well, aren’t you something,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to hard negotiating with little girls still in their petticoats, Miss Merritt. You don’t know whom you’re dealing with.”
I felt my fingers flexing into fists. Of course, I couldn’t take a poke at this man as I had his daughter, nor stick him with a pin as she had me, but a fighting stance cleared my head and kept my eyes sharp.
When he spoke again, his voice still had the same friendly tone, but his eyes were as hard as flint.
“I began by making you a very generous offer,” he said. “Five thousand pounds for your djinni. You appear to be uninterested. Very well. I shall make myself quite clear: I will have that djinni from you before the new year. You now have two options: give it to me freely, with no payment—that ship has sailed, you see—or don’t, in which case I shall see to it that your father is sacked from his post, with his name and reputation ruined, such that he’ll never secure an honest position in London again.”
My head swirled and my brain felt hot. How dare he threaten my father? How dare he threaten me? Would he actually be so wicked as to destroy my father’s career over my little sardine tin and its fishy occupant?
“Rest assured, Miss Merritt, that whether you give me the djinni or not, I will have it. I won’t rest until it’s mine. There is no possible way you can keep it from me.”
He was trying to scare me. He almost succeeded.
I took a deep breath. I still had my djinni. I still had my fists and my wits. And there’s one thing I know: never, ever, ever yield to a bully, nor give in to fear. No matter what.
I flashed him my most confident smile. No bluffing this time.
“I like a challenge, on the cricket field, and otherwise,” I told him. “I’ll be ready for you.”
He snorted with laughter. “Will you, now? You have no idea what awaits you.”
“I think, Mr. Treazleton,” I told him, “that you don’t know whom you’re dealing with, either.” And before he could lever himself off the bench, I turned and marched back to school.
Chapter 18
Fine words. Grand words. Bold and brave, in the moment.
But what on earth was I to do? What couldn’t a man like Mr. Treazleton do to get my sardine can? What wouldn’t he do? If he was anything like his daughter Theresa, he’d stop at nothing to get his way.
And Father! Poor Father, and his post at the bank! It was the one thing he took real pride in. Not his four daughters: a spinster, two ninnies, and a tomboy. He loved us, of course. I’d never doubted that. But his post was his prize jewel.
I’d told Alfred P. Treazleton that I’d be ready for him. I had better be.
* * *
He sent me a letter by the next day’s post. The fat red wax seal of a T surrounded by laurel leaves on the envelope repulsed me. I didn’t like knowing his greedy hands had touched the elegant letter paper. But I borrowed Alice’s letter opener, pulled out the note, and scanned its lines. They were nothing more than a repetition of the threats he’d made on our walk. I tossed the envelope into a drawer of my desk and tried to put it out of my thoughts.
Miss Salamanca didn’t know what to do with me after my meeting with Mr. Treazleton. She couldn’t quite send me back to the cellar, or the coal bin, lest he should want to see me again, so she let me return to my classes. They were punishment enough.
If I’d thought I was a leper among the other girls for socking Theresa in the eye, or chopping off her braids (and Honoria’s), it was nothing to the pariah I became after publicly sassing Mr. Alfred P. Treazleton. Theresa’s hatred for me sank to new depths of loathing.
The other girls looked upon me as a condemned criminal, awaiting execution.
A sort of sad pity, mingled with horror and fear, was on most of their faces when I passed them by; Winnifred Herzig’s especially. She seemed to dog me around, anxious not to miss anything that might befall me. I felt once more like a gladiator in the ring, with spectators leaning over their seats to not miss a single inch of my entrails once the lion ripped them out of me. I began making sinister faces at Winnifred, just to scare her off. A girl needs her privacy.
Poor Alice glowed like a summertime strawberry with her sunburn. She actually fibbed—truthful Alice! She told the teachers it was a rash, so they sent her back to her room to rest. I visited her when I could and helped her slather her face and neck with cold cream, which I pilfered from Honoria Brisbane’s dressing table. No amount of cream could make Honoria look attractive, and Alice needed it, so my conscience didn’t bother me in the slightest.
We kept my sardine can and the other artifacts hidden in Alice’s secret spot, behind the loose shelf in the closet. I tried not to think about it, nor about Mermeros, and certainly not about Mr. Treazleton. I needed time to plan my third wish, and I didn’t want to repeat past mistakes.
But Mr. Treazleton’s threats worried me, so I did something rare, for me, and wrote my father a letter. I asked him how he was getting along, and how things were at work. I still couldn’t fathom how Mr. Treazleton would stoop so low as to go after my father and harm his career. Fathers were supposed to be invincible.
Two days later, Polydora took a morning train in company with our aunt Vera to visit me and inquire whether I had contracted the flu. Only feverish delirium, my family thought, would make me write a letter to Father, so Polly was dispatched to check on me. She examined my eyes, my ears, my tongue, and my skin color. She interviewed me about my eating, sleeping, and homework. Was I all right? Were the teachers kind? Was I making friends? And so on.
It was Polly who raised me, really. She read me stories and gave me baths and mended my pinafores and tucked me in at night. She always missed me when I was away at school, and I missed her, too. Sometimes Polly’s need to nurture someone reaches a boiling point, and I help her let off steam.