A Major of Marnie (Miss Robin's Academy Book 3)

by Eva Nightingale

  It was a thought that had never occurred to Marnie. She had always thought her circumstances unfair because they were unfair, not because she elected to see them that way.

  "Still," Marnie said. "The idea of obeying someone, day in and day out, for ever and ever. It sounds insufferable. What if he makes a truly cruel or unjust demand? What if his expectations are unreasonable? Am I to suffer in silence forever, with no hope of respite?"

  "Now, you're being dramatic," Georgiana said, twisting her queen around between her fingers. "Miss Robin would never let one of her girls marry a beast."

  "There are always ghastly men at general visitation. You know that."

  "That's because Miss Robin is being politic, Marnie, a skill you could stand to learn. To maintain cordial relationships with senior officers, she will allow their friends to attend a general visitation or two. Sometimes, these men are odious, and then she finds ways to ensure we don't see them again. Sometimes, they are worthy, and the worthy ones are allowed to marry her girls."

  "Be that as it may. We marry these men, promising to do as they say and risking punishment at every turn when we fail. If I am so constitutionally bound to chafe against authority—as you say I am—how can I possibly marry?"

  "Well, that's very easy," said Georgiana. "You marry the right man."

  They stared in silence at the board for a moment. It was Georgie's turn, and Marnie was hardly paying attention. Then Georgie gasped in sudden delight, sweeping her queen next to Marnie's king.

  "Marnie, well, would you look at that!" she said. "I believe that is a checkmate!"

  Marnie glanced at the board, her lip curling. She had to concede that her friend was right.

  But Georgie's words provided more questions than answers for Marnie. All through the next week, she found herself brooding, trying to guess what shape her final exam would take and wondering how life would be once she was married.

  Marnie was deep in such thoughts one late afternoon in the springtime. It was beautiful weather, and Miss Robin had declared one of her seasonal tidy-up days—these were days when the girls, wearing plain stuff gowns and kerchiefs over their hair, participated in the menial labour it took to keep the academy running. Girls threw open the windows, dusted each book in the library, beat the dust from the rugs, polished the steps, blacked the fireplaces.

  Most girls grumbled about these days, but Marnie had been given the job of pruning Miss Robin's rose bushes, and so she did not utter a single syllable of complaint. A day out in the sunshine was something she would never complain about, even if it meant undertaking the dull task of going along to each bush that lined the path, deadheading Miss Robin's prized white roses, then sweeping up the leaves and petals that had fallen to the ground.

  Marnie had a wooden pail in which she collected debris. Each time she filled it, she went to the scrap pile outside the kitchen and emptied the bucket, before recommencing the process.

  She had, slowly and surely, over the past several weeks, built up enough trust that she was allowed to be unsupervised that afternoon. She worked alone. Mrs. Jones was helping to turn all the mattresses in the academy.

  Every girl who graduated from Miss Robin's Academy was given a bouquet of the roses on her wedding day. It was a famed tradition, and so, as she tidied the bushes, admiring the buds that were emerging and inhaling the roses' rich and heady scent, Marnie's thoughts turned to marriage.

  Of course, she thought, as a dead rose fell into the bucket, Major Chance claimed to understand her. But when he was married, he would want what all men wanted—a nice household, a nice, pleasant, yielding wife whose occupations were mainly doting on him, doting on her children and arranging and rearranging the soft furnishings in the house.

  She moved to the next bush and clipped away the dead roses.

  Her thoughts turned in on themselves. What choice did she have, really, besides marrying the major? She had nowhere else to go. And a part of her—a small, but insistent part—liked the idea of proving to her family that she could establish herself without her parents' help or mercy.

  Besides, she thought, sweeping up a pile of leaves, filling the bucket once more, then trudging to the kitchen to empty the bucket, she had come to care for Major James Chance. Jamie. It was embarrassing to acknowledge this, but it was true. The major was handsome. He was kind to the sorts of people her father would call the 'lower orders'—footmen and drivers, maids and even the academy's attendants. He made her laugh. When they quarrelled, she felt a strange surge of lightness. It was like being in the very best sort of game, one that was unpredictable and in which she and her opponent were evenly matched.

  Then there were the things he could do to her. When they were alone. She knew that she had only experienced a taste of what else could happen between them, if they were married. Without thinking, she licked her lips.

  Marnie trudged back to the rosebushes, the empty bucket swinging by her side.

  And then, she thought, there was how much Major Chance loved horses. The other men Marnie had met—her father, friends of the family, her sister's husband—didn't see horses as anything other than conveyances, useful beasts who existed for men's own pleasure and convenience.

  Major Chance wasn't like that. Bess was a feisty mare, a difficult, beautiful horse, which could easily throw any rider. But Marnie could see that she trusted him. That told her a great deal about what kind of man Major Chance was.

  But what about all those things he had said—about her obeying him, about there being 'no question' about who was the master of the house?

  The thought of being subservient to someone made her stomach churn. Georgie was right. It wasn't in her nature.

  Marnie wiped her brow on the sleeve of her gown. She could see that the roses were beautiful. But weren't they more beautiful left to live their lives on the bush, with the bees and the fresh air and the sunshine, rather than being cut off and left to die in a vase somewhere?

  She tried to picture herself, sometime in the near future, being one of those ladies who went from room to room, listlessly, arranging the flowers in their vases, picking out the dead ones, remarking on which was the best way to place them. The thought made her unspeakably sad.

  Then, an even worse thought occurred to her. What if, one day, the major realised he had made a mistake? What if he regretted his choice? Marnie paused in her work. Thinking about the major's inevitable disappointment in her made her heart feel sick and heavy.

  She had never been able to picture herself as a bride holding one of Miss Robin's famous, gorgeous bouquets. Now she knew why. It was impossible that she would ever make a good wife. For the major—for anyone.

  Marnie, distracted, accidentally closed the gardening shears around a perfectly good, new rose, still in the process of blooming. It fell into the bucket with the dead ones.

  "Blast!" Marnie cried.

  She turned back and forth, looking around the garden. The only other girls who were outside, sweeping and weeding, were far away. Marnie saw that no one had noticed. For a moment, she felt relieved.

  But when she turned back to her work, Marnie—without thinking—seized another perfect rose and lopped it off. She repeated the same action, over and over and over, until a whole bush was bald of its roses.

  In her haste to cut the roses down, Marnie had covered her forearms with scratches. The bush looked bare and stunted, and her bucket was full.

  Marnie's heart was thudding wildly in her chest. She felt a hysterical sort of elation.

  'No roses, no wedding.' Wasn't that what Miss Robin always said?

  Marnie left the bucket where it was. She laughed and looked around. No one was watching. There was just Marnie, her shears, and a few dozen unguarded rose bushes.

  Marnie moved to the next bush. As she clipped and clipped and clipped, her movements built to a kind of methodical frenzy. Marnie sliced off every flower and bud on one bush after another. As she went, the blades of the shears flashing in the sun, sweat breaking out
on her brow, Marnie had the fleeting thought that it was so much quicker and easier to destroy things than it was to make them.

  A cake took hours to make and moments to eat. Roses took weeks to bloom and seconds to cut. And the bonds she had made—with Mrs. Jones, with Miss Robin, and especially with the major?

  They had been built slowly and with great care. But they could be severed in an instant.

  Eventually, Marnie stopped at the bottom of the path. She was out of breath, her heart was racing, and when she looked back along the rows of rose bushes she could see the litter of beautiful blooms lying thick and glorious on the ground. A giddy, terrified feeling rose in her, somewhere between thrill and panic. I've done it now, Marnie thought. I've really done it this time.

  See? Marnie thought, as the first girls saw what she had done and started pointing, crying out, covering their mouths in surprise. I could never be married. I could never be anyone's wife. Just look what I am capable of doing—why, who would ever choose to marry me?

  Chapter 13

  When the doorbell rang at Elspeth's, Marnie suppressed a sigh. It was her sister's desire that she answer the door to the Talbots' guests, although she was the governess and the Talbots employed a footman who had very little to do.

  "You have such a pretty curtsey, my dear," she'd said, after forcing Marnie to demonstrate it in the drawing room in front of the entire family. "It would be a pity if no one were ever to see it!"

  The children were supposed to be painting watercolours that morning. They would usually do this in the day nursery, upstairs, but for some reason, Elspeth had insisted that they work in the library on the ground floor. Marnie had set up easels and paints and then watched as the children proceeded to make a brown mess of everything, ignoring her instructions.

  Elizabeth screwed up the piece of paper she was working on and threw it to the floor. "It's ruined—I need another!"

  Marnie had given her another, to which she did exactly the same thing.

  "Get me another!"

  And when it happened again.

  "Another!"

  Isabel liked to take Elizabeth's discarded attempts at painting and run to the fire, giggling happily as the flames rushed to consume the paper and sparks flew up the chimney.

  Marnie had tried telling them to stop their bad behaviour. She had tried reasoning with them, raising her voice, threatening to tell their parents. Unlike the chaperones at Miss Robin's, Marnie was without a martinet or a tawse—Elspeth had expressly forbidden her from punishing the children in any way, even from making them stand in the corner. And so, Marnie sat, her apron paint-smeared, her beautiful hair hidden by a white cap, her body covered neck to ankle by a gown made from the ugliest, cheapest brown stuff that her sister had been able to buy.

  The bell was loud and shrill. When it sounded, Marnie rose, hung up her dirtied apron, smoothed her skirts and started to make her way along the corridor.

  But when she reached the foot of the staircase, there was the sound of a stampede behind her. She turned to see her sister bustling down the stairs, taking them two at a time in her haste.

  "Now, now!" she cried, seeing Marnie approach the door. "Don't be forgetting your place, my dear! Why would we have the governess greet our guests when we have a perfectly serviceable footman. Joseph! Joseph!" she called, looking around. "Blast, where is he? Footman!" she called and clapped her hands together.

  A pale, drawn man in a jacket with shining brass buttons appeared from the other side of the staircase. "Yes, ma'am?"

  "I was calling you for an age, Joseph! Have you forgotten your post, man?"

  "Of course not, ma'am. Only my name is Robert, ma'am."

  Elspeth curled her lip. "Our guest is waiting, Norbert. Answer the door, for heaven's sake!"

  "At once, ma'am."

  Marnie turned to walk back to the library. She didn't want to see which of Elspeth's odious friends would be joining her for tea. Lippy was already in the house, having arrived some half an hour earlier. Marnie knew that—as the library adjoined the drawing room, where tea would be taken—she would be bound to overhear murmurs of dull conversation and bursts of Lippy's high-pitched laughter.

  When Lippy had first arrived, she had followed Marnie to the library to 'drop in and say good day to the dear, dear children, as I always do'. She had lingered, remarking that she just loved how Marnie looked in an apron, and didn't plain brown just suit her wonderfully, and she must feel so lucky to be taken in by Elspeth and her kind brother-in-law.

  "The children are perfect angels, are they not?" she had said, pinching Isabel's cheek.

  Before Marnie could think up a reply, Isabel broke away from her aunt and said, "Why are you here, Aunt Lippy?"

  "Whatever do you mean, my pet?"

  "You always tell us to go away when you take tea with Mama. You say we have sticky fingers and give you headaches."

  "I do not!"

  "You do too," Elizabeth replied. "You say we're 'too loud for your fine sensibilities'," she said in a perfect imitation of Lippy's affected voice and manner.

  Marnie had had plenty of battles with Elizabeth and Isabel in the weeks since she had left Miss Robin's, but in that moment, she felt something she had never felt before—a rush of pride in her charges.

  "Now, now," Marnie had said, but there was no intent behind the words and the children knew it.

  Elspeth waved Marnie back to the library before she had Robert open the door. Marnie had just stepped inside when she heard a voice that sent her stomach fluttering and chills up her spine.

  "Good day to you, Robert."

  "Good day, sir."

  Marnie gasped. She would know that voice anywhere. She didn't dare turn back to look, but she left the library door open a crack so that she might listen.

  "Mrs. Talbot," said Major Chance, and he was using his polite voice, his gentleman's voice. "How kind of you to receive me."

  "Oh, Major, how good it is to see you! The pleasure is truly all mine," Elspeth said, her voice dripping with honey.

  Marnie heard them walk past the library and enter the drawing room. She stood frozen on the spot for a moment, her back to the wall, her eyes closed. Her thoughts were racing.

  "Do you have a headache, Aunt Marnie?" Elizabeth said.

  Elspeth had told them not to call her 'Aunt Marnie', as Marnie was an employee of the household, but the girls tended to ignore her.

  "It's nothing," she said to the girls. She walked back to the table covered in a mess of watercolours and ruined paper. To Isabel's surprise, Marnie ran an affectionate hand over the girl's strawberry blonde hair. "Nothing at all, girls. It will pass."

  The visit lasted a long time. And each minute of it passed by with infuriating slowness. Marnie wanted desperately to know what was happening in the room next door.

  She had not seen Major Chance since being packed off to her sister's house. When she was thrown out of Miss Robin's, it was made clear to Marnie that her engagement to Major Chance was at an end. The rules of the academy were simple—no girl could marry without graduating first.

  Of course, Major Chance could have contravened Miss Robin's rules and sought to marry Marnie anyway. Marnie had even held out a small glimmer of hope that he would come for her. But as the weeks dragged by, this hope dwindled further and further. Marnie knew, from all the major's talk of discipline, that he would never consider breaking Miss Robin's rules.

  It pained Marnie to think of Miss Robin. She would never forget the look on Miss Robin's face when she had seen the rose bushes. After some fellow Privettes had spread the word, a chaperone had fetched Miss Robin and she had simply stood at the academy's back door, calmly, in her usual red dress with her usual chignon. She did not lose her temper. She did not weep or scream or make a withering comment. Marnie had stood between the denuded bushes, watching, the shears still in her hand. She had looked at Miss Robin, expecting to be scolded, whipped, held to account.

  The newer girls, perhaps, who had not had as
many dealings with Miss Robin, might not have noticed her face. But Marnie saw, just for a moment, an expression of the bitterest sadness. It was as though all her features sagged. Miss Robin was a woman who wore her age well, with energy and pride of carriage, but in that moment, she seemed older, tired, hunched—for just a second, all her vitality slipped away.

  It made Marnie think of the mysterious conversation she had heard between Miss Robin and Doctor Rawson. She was so accustomed to seeing Miss Robin as a figure of calm, unassailable authority that she often forgot Miss Robin was also a woman, as capable of being vulnerable, disappointed, or hurt as anyone else.

  Marnie felt a horrible wave of guilt. Even weeks later, thinking of her actions caused her to feel the shame afresh.

  After the incident, Marnie had not even been called in to see Miss Robin. Word had been sent directly to Mrs. Talbot, who was only too happy to renew her offer of employment, on slightly less generous terms. Mrs. Jones had packed up her things. And she had left that very evening, not even able to say goodbye to Georgiana, who waved furiously from an upstairs window, hoping Marnie would see.

  Since then, Marnie had tried to adjust to life at her sister's house. She found that the best way to manage was to break each day down into tiny sections, to last until dinner, until the children went to bed, until Sunday, when she had a few blessed hours to herself.

  When things became truly insufferable—when Elspeth called her into her bedroom to rub her sweating feet, or Isabel was screaming and screaming at the top of her lungs, or when Marnie reflected that there was no way for her situation to improve, not ever—she had to reduce that time and say to herself—just the next hour, Marnie. Just the next ten minutes. Due to this habit, she became very quick at converting time into seconds—six hundred more, she would say to herself, two-hundred-and-forty more, just three-thousand-six-hundred more.

  A burst of Lippy's high, loud laughter came from the drawing room, interrupting Marnie's thoughts.