by Kelly Bowen
John regarded Ada curiously. “And you wrote this missive? How did your personal correspondence become common knowledge among the other girls?”
“The tale is long and not worth repeating,” Ada said. “Suffice it to say, the letter was never sent, and Miss Henderson forbid me the school’s library for the rest of the quarter.”
A terrible punishment at the time, but one Ada had borne proudly.
“Miss Beauvais spent her afternoons roaming the grounds instead,” Miss Deevers said. “We were very concerned she’d develop freckles.”
Oh, of course they had been. “Speaking of Henderson’s,” Ada said, “we called on Lady Barstow yesterday. She sends her regards.”
Miss Deevers set two pieces of shortbread on her own plate. “I have heard she isn’t much of one for socializing.”
“She is quite retiring,” John said, “but she received us graciously.”
Miss Deevers crammed a piece of shortbread into her mouth.
“She wished to be remembered to you specifically,” Ada added, which wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Have you allowed her to read to your orphans?” Miss Deevers asked. “Of course you have. Why have a plain miss read to the children when a countess is on hand to lend her cachet?”
That was the Emily Deevers whom Ada had gone to school with—petulant, unkind, and self-centered.
Insecure, in other words. To be pitied.
“The children don’t care who holds what station,” Ada said. “They would be just as pleased to hear a story from you as from his lordship here.”
“More pleased to hear one from you,” Lord John added. “I’m forever reading to them and bleating on about penmanship and Cromwell and Ceylon. You would be quite the fresh face, miss, if you’re really interested.”
She set down her plate of sweets and looked around the shabby parlor as if the windows were barred and the door locked from the outside.
“We couldn’t get vouchers for Almack’s,” she said. “Mama tried everything, but Papa isn’t… he doesn’t… We were denied. My parents spent all that money seeing me properly educated, and I have failed them utterly.”
Such misery lay in that admission, such mortification. “I’m sorry,” Ada said, meaning it. “I would have given anything to have been spared the ordeal of waltzing at Almack’s. Their punch is truly awful.”
Miss Deevers rose. “I have wondered if spinsterhood isn’t to be my punishment for having been such a horrid girl.”
Ada glowered at John: Say something. Be charming. Do something, but he had apparently developed a fascination with the pattern of faded irises on the carpet.
“I don’t think Henderson’s brought out the best in any of us,” Ada said. “St. Jerome’s is a very different sort of place.”
Miss Deever considered them from across the room. “Different, how?”
“St. Jerome’s is loud,” Lord John said. “If you came by on Thursday afternoon, you could join our local curate, Mr. Addison Palmer, when he reads to the children. The children are very good for him, so don’t be deceived by their apparent docility. Turn them loose in a garden, and they are hooligans.”
Miss Deever looked away. “Would they ever cut off a girl’s hair in the middle of the night just because she’d taken a first in maths?”
Ada got to her feet. “That’s why you cut off my braid? Because I like math?”
Miss Deever nodded, a tear trickling down her cheek. “I was awful. I’m sorry. I will never get a first in anything, and I think I knew that even then.”
The moment should have been… triumphant? Vindicating? Gloating, even? But how sad, to be denied intellectual confidence, and have only spite to fall back on.
“My hair grows quickly,” Ada said, “and I have never set much store by elaborate coiffures. Will you read to the children?”
Lord John was on his feet as well. “They are much better behaved when they know they will have a story later in the day. Please say you will come.”
“I have no talent for dramatic reading,” Ada said. “I suspect you excel at it.”
Miss Deever wiped at her cheek with her fingers. “What time on Thursday?”
“Four of the clock,” Lord John said, passing over a card. “Mr. Palmer is punctual, or we have rebellion in the schoolrooms.”
“I can be punctual as well,” Miss Deever said. “My thanks to you both for calling. Please do come again.”
Not perishing likely. Except that clearly, Miss Deevers was lonely. “You mentioned that Lady Barstow hardly ever goes out.” Ada said. “She is something of a recluse, but she seemed very pleased to receive us. You might drop in on her, while you were out and about.”
“You think she would receive me?”
If Ada wrote her ladyship a note explaining the circumstances, then she would.
“Of course she would,” John said. “You and Miss Ada weren’t the only ones struggling to find solid footing at Henderson’s. Until Thursday, Miss Deever.”
She saw them to the door, and they left her smiling, while Ada wasn’t quite certain what to feel.
“She is not the gorgon I made her out to be,” Ada said, as Lord John settled beside her on the forward-facing coach seat. “She is in truth a rather sorry young woman.”
“While you were and are magnificent.”
Ada took off her bonnet and set it on the opposite bench. “You have taken leave of your senses. We didn’t get a penny from her, and I doubt she’ll show up on Thursday, meaning the children will be disappointed.”
“Mr. Palmer will keep his appointment, and he’s a prodigiously jolly fellow. His father is an earl, and Palmer has a true vocation. He and I knew each other at school.”
“He’s an honorable?”
Lord John’s expression was utterly solemn. “Also an eligible, who has no use for waltzing at Almack’s.”
“Then I suppose,” Ada said, “that I must concede that you were magnificent too, my lord.”
They shared a smile. Lord John patted her hand, and then the coach lurched forward, the horses trotting on to the next call of the day.
The time spent with Miss Deevers didn’t appear to have unsettled Miss Ada, but it had certainly left John with much to ponder.
“Was Henderson’s really so awful?” he asked when he and Ada resumed their calls three days later. Their next call was likely to be awful.
“I have no basis for a comparison,” Miss Ada said. “I attended only Henderson’s, as my mother did. She is not afflicted with a ferociously vigorous intellect, and thus her experience was different from mine.”
He’d meant those words as a sincere and high compliment. “Perhaps your mother does have a vigorous intellect, but she lacked the courage to display it. My mother would never put herself forward as any sort of genius, but she generally reads three books at once. She instilled a love of learning in all of her children, and Papa respects her command of all things literary.”
“Tell me about Mrs. MacHeath,” Miss Ada said. “Will she donate?”
A smooth change of subject, that was not. “Mrs. MacHeath will be mortally offended if I call on the other patrons and leave her off my list, but I doubt she’ll donate a farthing. We needn’t stay long. Tell me about the dashing swain who moved your girlish heart to love letters.”
What sort of man could inspire Ada Beauvais to an infatuation, much less a passionate correspondence? John was more interested in that conundrum than in how to pry a few groats from Mrs. MacHeath.
“He wasn’t my swain,” Miss Ada said, her smile wistful. “I agreed to post that letter for my Aunt Kitty, because she did not want the object of her affections to suspect her direction. The mail from Henderson’s went through Oxford, a large enough town that she’d be guaranteed anonymity, and I was happy to do her the favor.”
“Your aunt should not have imposed on you like that. You were a child, and she was… she involved you in her intrigues.”
“I was sixteen, my lord. Women marry, bec
ome engaged, and have children at sixteen. Kitty is only ten years my senior, and I was pleased to do a kindness for her. She has certainly done many for me. Besides, I went from being the butt of jokes and pranks to a sophisticated level of notorious because of that letter, and I gained the freedom of the school grounds.”
Now, John wished he was on the opposite bench, because Miss Ada Beauvais, for the first time in his experience, looked pleased with herself.
“You turned defeat into victory.”
“Not defeat,” she said, waving a hand. “Never that. I should have known the girls would rifle my reticule. They were forever snooping and snitching, which I now see as evidence of vast boredom. Mrs. Henderson should have had some of the braver Oxford scholars come read to us.”
Was that a jest? A humorous aside?
“You bore your punishment without betraying your aunt,” John said. “I admire family loyalty.”
“I’m tempted to call on your father,” Miss Ada replied, her smile disappearing. “I understand that our families want us to be safe, my lord, but you are fully grown, the children at St. Jerome’s are healthy, and your father’s protectiveness shades very close to sabotage.”
There was her ferociousness again. “Papa provided me an education and a more than decent upbringing. He owes me no more.”
“If somebody offered to provide your orphans three meals each day and textbooks, would you consider all of their needs met?”
“Of course not. Children need love and affection, they need moral guidance and good examples. They need recreation and rest. They need friendships and a sense of security. They need much more than mere food and lectures.”
An uneasy insight hovered at the edge of John’s awareness: He had needed more than lectures, primers, a safe place to sleep, and punctual meal times, and his father hadn’t known how to provide much more than that.
Still didn’t.
“You asked about Mrs. MacHeath,” John said. “She’s a terror. She knows everything, she has yet to part with more than five pounds annually for St. Jerome’s, and nothing we do for the children is up to her standards.”
“Does she have children?”
“Not a one. Is that significant?”
“I don’t know, but I suspect Mrs. MacHeath and I will get on quite well.”
Nobody should get along well with Lorna MacHeath, but John could not afford to offend her. “If you can do that, you will be the first to accomplish it.”
“We must seek out an area where her expertise is genuine,” Miss Ada said. “Just as Miss Deevers can be of use by reading to the children, Mrs. MacHeath has something of value to offer us. We need only be clever enough to discern what it is.”
“I applaud your strategy,” John said, for it closely matched how he took on difficult children: Find what they excel at and start there. “I will applaud even more loudly if you can make it work.”
Ada pulled on her bonnet, sitting docilely while John arranged her hair over her shoulder. She was again smiling the pleased, self-satisfied smile that brought out all of her best features: Her forget-me-not eyes, her direct gaze, her pretty mouth, and her determined chin.
Good lord, when she wore that serene, confident expression, she wasn’t simply pretty, she was quietly stunning.
Ada found the décor in Mrs. MacHeath’s house remarkable for its unrelenting masculinity. The art was all heroic and military. Blunderbusses, swords, and daggers adorned the walls. The furniture was heavy and dark, as were the volumes lining the bookshelves in the parlor.
A stuffed animal that resembled a small, furious bear glowered down from a corner of the room, its mouth open in a perpetual snarl.
“What on earth is that creature?” Ada asked. “It is the embodiment of all that is fierce.” Fierce and tormented.
“That is a wolverine,” Mrs. MacHeath replied. “The colonel shot it in lower Canada on his second campaign. I doubt there’s another like it in all of England.”
And thank the Deity for that.
“Such a creature would give me nightmares,” Lord John quipped. “I was forever imagining dragons and the like in my wardrobe and under my bed as a child.”
Mrs. MacHeath paused before taking a seat. “And do you allow such fanciful notions in your young charges, my lord? An overactive imagination is a sore trial for a child who must bend his attention to every scrap of learning he can find.”
She was a stout, gray-haired lady whose attire would have made Quakers appear festive by comparison. Her bun looked lacquered into place, and the lace at her collar was blackwork.
For whom or what does she mourn? Her parlor looked like an estate office, with more weaponry on the walls, more heavy, dark furniture, and more martial art.
“It’s about those young charges that we’d like to consult you,” Ada said, taking a seat on a horsehair sofa. “St. Jerome’s has come through the winter in need of all available support, you see.”
Mrs. MacHeath settled into a large reading chair. “Please do sit down, your lordship, and explain to me how St. Jerome’s comes to be at such a pass. Is it not your job to ensure adequate funds are on hand? Perhaps what’s needed is sounder management. The colonel always said the regiment’s success was more often in the hands of the quartermaster than the generals.”
“Even a brilliant quartermaster cannot control the elements,” Ada said. “Children need coal and candles, though if you’re concerned that St. Jerome’s is not well run, perhaps you could join us for a tour of the facilities? His lordship has never experienced the economies necessary on a military campaign, and you might have insights to share that could benefit the children and the exchequer.”
Lord John was seized with a coughing fit.
“My lord, are you well?” Mrs. MacHeath asked.
“Just a tickle,” he managed. “Springtime, you know.”
“You should have a nip of rum. The colonel swore by a flask of rum for most ills, and he lived through many a difficult march.”
The colonel, the colonel, the colonel. Perhaps Mrs. MacHeath’s grief was like that wolverine. All teeth and tenacity. “How long since he went to his reward?” Ada asked.
Mrs. MacHeath sat up quite straight. “Eight years, four months, and three days. He died peacefully in his sleep, though he was taken much too soon. After all the bullets, the horses shot from beneath him, the dysentery and worse… he simply slipped away. I should be grateful, but my gratitude is bounded by sorrow.”
Ada pulled off her gloves, for surely such a proper lady would soon be ringing for the infernal tea tray.
“I suppose that’s why you have such concern for Lord John’s charges,” she said. “Like you, they have all known loss and hardship, and they struggle under a burden of grief, even in the midst of blessings.”
“They do,” Lord John said. “They’ve lost their homes and their families, and when our years are tender, so are our hearts.”
Had Mrs. MacHeath ever had a tender heart for anybody but her colonel?
“I wonder what the colonel would tell us about how to bring the children along?” Ada asked, glancing around the room. “Their enemies are ignorance and ill-health, but also despair. How does one combat such a foe when one is small, sad, and alone?”
“But that’s the thing,” Mrs. MacHeath said. “That’s the very thing about army life. One is never alone. One never marches alone or makes camp alone. One always has comrades who become dearer than family. For them, one would make any sacrifice. The colonel rode at the head of his troops into every battle, he’d visit the injured before he broke his fast and after he took his supper. He made sure the recruits were taught more than how to march and salute, and his men had decent boots or the generals got no peace. People think army life is brutish, but this civilian society, where we hardly know our neighbors, and have nothing more important to do than pour tea and gossip… this is the true disgrace.”
Mrs. MacHeath’s pale cheeks had acquired a hint of color and her tone had become spiri
ted.
“What skills did the colonel ensure his men had, other than marching and saluting?” Lord John asked.
“Why, how to start a fire without flint and steel, for one thing. Many a bivouac takes place in rustic surrounds, and many’s the time a raging river stole our cook’s supplies. Everybody, from the lowliest piper to the colonel’s aide had to be able to start a fire from wood and tinder.”
“What else?” Ada asked, for it would not have occurred to her that soldiers might lack such a skill.
“How to sew a straight seam,” Mrs. MacHeath went on. “What manner of soldier will bring glory to his regiment when his trousers are gaping, I ask you? And yet, some of the most fierce fellows, the most curmudgeonly sergeants, had no idea how to wield a needle and thread. Let me tell you, I addressed that oversight whenever I came across it, and I heard some of the most marvelous stories from those old soldiers.”
“You taught them to sew?” Lord John asked.
“And darn their socks, my lord. An army might march on its belly figuratively, but men march on their feet literally, and one small blister can render a soldier useless after twenty miles of open country.”
She launched into a story about how a strategic use of laxative herbs in the enemy’s supper on the eve of battle had seen British forces victorious without a shot fired the next day.
“The children would love that story,” Lord John said, when Mrs. MacHeath had brought her tale to a conclusion.
“The older children would also love knowing how to start a fire without a flint,” Ada said. “I would like that skill myself.”
“I could show you,” Mrs. MacHeath said. “I taught that trick to many officers’ wives and they had reason to be grateful.”
“Perhaps when you tour St. Jerome’s, you could make a list of practical accomplishments we could teach the children.” Lord John dangled that possibility like yarn before a bored cat. “We can’t have their little noses in books every hour of the day, and some of the boys will grow up to take the king’s shilling.”
