A School for Brides

by Patrice Kindl

  Miss le Strange smiled, a thin stretching of the lips. “I thought it my duty to see to the welfare of his only child. I had thought to convey her to her father’s sickbed, but most unfortunately I was prevented.”

  “I do regret that,” Miss Quince said as civilly as she could manage, “especially as you now inform me of your special relationship to Miss Crump. However, I reserve the right to take instructions only from her father, or from her legal guardian, if that becomes necessary. I know you will understand.”

  Miss le Strange most decidedly did not understand. She did not deign to answer, but left the room without a backward glance.

  “That poor, poor man,” murmured Miss Quince. “I cannot be surprised at his condition, under the circumstances.”

  The necklace was not recovered, either that night or after a careful search in the morning. No one had had the heart to repeat Miss le Strange’s accusations to Robert, but the whole of the servants’ wing began to treat him as if he were sickening for some fatal illness. Cook presented him with three toffee apples, telling him he must keep his strength up, the housekeeper called him “m’boy” and patted him solicitously on the shoulder, and a chambermaid took one look at him and burst into noisy lamentations. Robert thanked them for these tributes, but could not fathom what had prompted them. After devouring all three toffee apples (he was a growing boy still) he returned to the search for the necklace with renewed energy, looking for it in both likely and unlikely places—inside cracks in the stonework of the roof, lying near the foundation of the school building, or caught up in the branches of nearby trees, and then, when that produced no results, rummaging through closets and kitchen cupboards to peer into hatboxes, soup tureens, and old boots.

  The students, aware that an unpleasant charge was hanging over Robert’s head, pleaded to be allowed to postpone their lessons and look, too. Miss Quince, who was becoming worried on his behalf, insisted on a brief French lesson, but then allowed them to disperse over the house and grounds, looking for a flash of gold or sparkle of ruby.

  Even Miss Crump bestirred herself to help with the search, although she did little more than walk dully about, stirring the leaves near the perimeter of the building with a stick. She told no one that the necklace was not her father’s to give—it had descended through her mother’s family and had been Miss Crump’s property since the day of her mother’s death. To be fair to Miss le Strange, it was quite possible that she did not know this; but her father surely did.

  All the pleasure of the star party seemed to have evaporated, and the scent of herbs had given way to a rather less attractive rural scent: that of the farmers fertilizing nearby fields in preparation for sowing the winter wheat. Most of the young ladies carried a handkerchief liberally drenched in eau de cologne pressed to their noses as they lifted curtains that had been lifted ten times previously and looked behind doors and under cushions that had already been turned and turned again.

  With a score of people searching assiduously, it soon became obvious that the necklace was not within the building, at least not in any place where it might have gotten by accident. Reluctantly, Miss Quince spoke with her fellow headmistresses, addressing herself primarily to Miss Hopkins, whose house and whose staff it was, urging her to allow a search to be made of the servants’ quarters.

  “My dear Clara, it must be done,” she said, speaking with great compassion, for Miss Hopkins was by now almost hysterical, alternately weeping and abusing Miss le Strange, demanding to know why she and Mrs. Westing had ever come, as they had not been invited.

  “I don’t see why it must be,” said Miss Hopkins. “My servants have been with me since I was a baby, most of them, and even if poor, dear Robert is of unknown parentage, he has grown up in Lesser Hoo and is the gentlest and best behaved boy I’ve ever known.”

  “Don’t you see? It is for their protection,” Miss Quince said. “It is the first thing Miss le Strange will want to know, and we must be able to tell her that a search has been performed, without result. It ought to have been done sooner, so she could not say that we had given one of them time to dispose of the necklace elsewhere.”

  “And in addition,” said Miss Winthrop, “Robert is a member of the lower classes, and say what you will, Clara Hopkins, people of that sort will get up to anything. Brought up in Lesser Hoo! Tut, what nonsense! Of course his room and his person must be searched.”

  Miss Hopkins regarded her friend and co-headmistress with dawning dislike, and there might have been a serious quarrel had Miss Quince not interfered.

  “All the servants must be searched, and all their quarters. In truth, I would not object to being searched myself—”

  An immediate outcry arose over this, however, and Miss Quince admitted that such a search might be seen as prejudicial to the dignity of the Winthrop Hopkins Female Academy. “However,” she said, “some would point out that a single lady in a position such as mine might not be averse to a comfortable sum on which to retire, no matter how it was obtained.”

  Miss Winthrop, who had never given any thought to what Miss Quince would live on when she was too old to teach, began to eye her speculatively, but Miss Hopkins burst out with an avowal of perfect faith in her integrity.

  “I won’t have it!” she cried. “Perhaps you are right about the servants, Eudora, but I won’t allow my trusted and valued friend and relative to be suspected. No, not for the sake of that terrible woman, even if she is second cousin to every royal house in Europe!”

  Miss Quince bestowed a grateful smile upon Miss Hopkins, a somewhat frostier one on Miss Winthrop, and went to organize a search of the servants’ quarters.

  Feelings against Miss le Strange were running high amongst the students as well.

  “I doubt that she ever wore the necklace last night at all! Quite certainly it is lying disregarded on the top of her dressing table at this very moment,” said Miss Asquith. “How dare she accuse darling Robert?”

  “Not ‘darling Robert,’” chided Miss Evans. “Really, Miss Asquith, he is a footman!”

  “I don’t care!” Miss Asquith said, and dashed away angry tears. “He is a perfectly wonderful footman! You know how much he loves his position. He would never do anything to jeopardize it. And taking something that does not belong to him would never enter his head.”

  “I’m afraid she was wearing it last night,” said Miss Briggs. “One couldn’t help but notice how that pendant ruby sparkled in the candlelight. It is a glorious necklace. I must say”—she cast a cautious glance at Miss Crump—“it was a most impressive engagement present.”

  Everyone went silent at this, imagining Miss le Strange as a stepmother to Miss Crump.

  In a valiant effort to change the subject, Miss Victor attempted a little light teasing. “I expect you never noticed the necklace last night, Miss Asquith, because you were far too busy being wooed by Mr. Crabbe. He is a fine dancer, is he not?”

  Despite herself, Miss Asquith blushed. “Hush, child, and don’t presume to twit your elders and betters.” Then she looked at Miss Crump in a corner, her head bowed down under the weight of her enormous bonnet. “Oh, do cheer up, Miss Crump, pray do! I cannot bear to see you so unhappy,” she said. “If the worst comes to worst, we shall slip some hemlock in horrid Miss le Strange’s tea, I promise we will!”

  In the shadow of Miss Crump’s bonnet it was difficult to tell, but a fleeting smile, like a shooting star, might have crossed her countenance before winking out and being replaced by all-encompassing gloom.

  15

  “PSSST! I SAY, Miss Pffolliott!”

  Miss Pffolliott was using a walking stick to lift the ivy leaves on the outside walls of the school, hoping to see the glint of jewelry. She whirled about, the stick still raised.

  “I am glad to see you have not got that fearsome dog with you,” said Mr. Rasmussen, who was peering out from behind a manicured boxwood hedge. “H
owever”—he eyed the stick nervously—“perhaps you could lower that implement? Looks a bit hostile, don’t you know.”

  Miss Pffolliott lowered the stick a little, but kept it in readiness. “Yes, Mr. Rasmussen?” she said. Although she was not an intrepid young lady, her timidity was beginning to give way to irritation. “What is it, sir?”

  “Er . . . what were you doing just now, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I am looking for a ruby necklace.”

  Mr. Rasmussen chuckled. It was a masculine chuckle, full of indulgence for female imbecility. “That is an original method of acquiring finery! Perhaps you think that ruby necklaces grow on . . . er, vines?”

  “No, Mr. Rasmussen, I do not believe anything so nonsensical. A necklace was most regrettably lost during the star party last night. If you had attended, as you were invited to do, you would be aware that it might have dropped from the roof into these vines.”

  “Oh! Oh, I see. How unfortunate!” Mr. Rasmussen’s eye had sharpened, and he began to look about himself with a thoughtful gaze. “Valuable, was it?”

  “So I am given to understand.”

  “I see, I see. Wouldn’t mind having a look for it, myself. Grateful lady and so on—might be something in it for me,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

  “If you will excuse me, I must get on,” said Miss Pffolliott, turning her back to him and raising her walking stick to the task once again.

  Recalled to the matter at hand, Mr. Rasmussen cleared his throat and proceeded in a playful tone, “And now you are annoyed with your poor old admirer because he didn’t come to the party last night, I perceive. Well, I couldn’t do it, that’s all. Prior engagement. But your headmistresses did get a letter from your father? Introducing me and recommending me to your notice, and so forth?”

  “They did,” Miss Pffolliott conceded. She turned to look at him. “And how, pray, did you know my father had sent such a message?”

  However, Mr. Rasmussen had the answer to this at his tongue-tip. “Why, I asked him to write it, that’s how. I could see you didn’t care for me poppin’ up out of nowhere—very proper of you, I might add, very proper indeed—so I got the old boy to send it along. Didn’t want you to think there was anything havey-cavey about me. No, your father and I, we go back a long way together. Old schoolfellows.”

  “Then why did you not say so?” she retorted. “Why did you not ask to be introduced in the usual way, instead of sending me those extraordinary anonymous letters, sir?”

  “Now, now, now, my dear young lady! No need to be so hard on a man, just because he’s impetuous. Carried away by my emotions, that’s all. It’s dashed difficult for a fellow, all this hanging about, waiting to be introduced, having to be watched by a chaperone every moment he’s in the company of a beautiful young lady such as yourself. I daresay I saw myself as a regular young Lochinvar. Ever read that poet fellow, Scott? ‘So daring in love and so dauntless in war, Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?’” Mr. Rasmussen stepped out from behind the boxwood bush and struck a heroic pose, one hand on heart, one hand on an invisible sword hilt.

  “I am familiar with Mr. Scott’s Marmion,” Miss Pffolliott admitted. Miss Asquith had read it aloud in a dramatic rendition only a few weeks ago—the poem about young Lochinvar and his reckless wooing of the fair Ellen had become an instant favorite.

  “Thought you would be. Just the sort of thing romantic young girls like—that’s the way it seemed to me, anyway.”

  The idea that Mr. Rasmussen had been attempting to pique her interest through letters from an unknown lover was, on the one hand, rather touching, if also rather scandalous. On the other hand, though, wasn’t he a bit elderly for that sort of behavior? He seemed to be trying to paint himself as a passionate, hotheaded young man. Why, he himself had pointed out that he was the same age as her father. She regarded his rather puffy midsection critically.

  “I must insist that you meet with my instructors before you address me again, Mr. Rasmussen,” she said. “And now, I believe this conversation is at an end.” She took a firm grip on her stick and turned to walk away in a decisive manner, feeling that she was at last handling these episodes with a certain degree of composure.

  “Oh, of course, of course,” agreed Mr. Rasmussen, trotting along behind her. “Exactly what I had planned. I’ll go and pay a call right now. Er . . .” He hesitated. “You haven’t any other callers at the moment, have you? I shouldn’t want to interrupt, you know.”

  “If you mean anyone other than Mr. Arbuthnot, who is resident in the school until his leg heals, no, I do not believe so,” she replied, still retreating in front of him.

  “In that case, lead on, my fair one,” he said jovially. “I shall be charmed to meet the ladies.”

  Inside Miss Asquith there burned a flame of revolutionary indignation. It was not right that a woman like Miss le Strange could accuse Robert of theft, when the entire fault in the case was her carelessness. Or, if not that, given the extensive search that had taken place, why then, there must be some other explanation.

  Miss Asquith found herself comparing the actions of Miss le Strange unfavorably with the sort of high-handed behavior that had precipitated the French Revolution. Twenty years earlier, France had been seized by a violent social convulsion that saw much of the ruling class imprisoned, beheaded, or unceremoniously strung up on lampposts. The highborn all over Europe had watched aghast, sensing a crack at the base of their safe and secure world.

  Miss Asquith was not highborn; her father’s father had been a small farmer, and her mother was a lawyer’s daughter. At this moment she was prepared to turn her back on the gentry, raise the revolutionary banner of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité!” and march on Versailles like the market women of Paris.

  The one factor restraining her indignation was Robert himself; his admiration for his “betters” knew no bounds. He would be the last to advocate the overthrow of the English class system, glorying as he did in his position, his duties, and his yellow silk knee breeches. To question the accepted hierarchy would cause Robert every bit as much alarm and dismay as it would any newly created knight of the realm.

  Like Miss Pffolliott, Miss Asquith was engaged in walking about outside the school, searching for the necklace. In her case, she was prodding at the stones of the foundation and hunting under bedding plants. Being in a state of high indignation, her efforts involved violent thrusts at weeds and other obstructions with her parasol. Occasionally she kicked one of the smaller stones from her path with a fair degree of violence.

  “Hi! I say, that hurt!” came the aggrieved voice of Mr. Crabbe. He rounded the corner of the building and stopped to rub his knee.

  Miss Asquith looked at him with disfavor. Prior to the allegations of Miss le Strange, she had regarded him as by far the cleverest and most amiable gentleman of her acquaintance. Now the scales fell from her eyes and she saw him for what he was: an aristocrat. No doubt, like all aristocrats, his greatest joy lay in snatching the last crumbs of bread from the mouths of the starving poor.

  “I beg your pardon, your Lordship.”

  Mr. Crabbe’s eyebrows lifted. “I feel certain you did not mean to wound me. Is anything amiss?”

  “Nothing of any consequence to you, my Lord.”

  “Er, I am not a lord yet. So long as my father lives, I am more correctly addressed as ‘Mister Crabbe.’ But perhaps you could tell me what is upsetting you?”

  “Oh, nothing at all. It concerns a servant. He will most likely be turned away to starve in the streets or else clapped in prison, but what of it? The fact that he is innocent of any wrongdoing is of no importance. He is a member of the lower classes—therefore he must be guilty of something.”

  “And who is the servant in question?” asked Mr. Crabbe cautiously. “No, do not tell me! I suspect it is that handsome young lad in the canary-yellow
livery, whose serving at table is so exquisite that it makes one feel one has inadvertently sat down to dine in the midst of a performance of the ballet.”

  “Pray do not make fun of Robert. He is as good-natured and honest as—as new-baked bread.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it. The look of beatific pleasure that dawns over his face every time he sees me cross the threshold gives me a most pleasant conceit of myself. I approve of Robert. What crime is the excellent Robert accused of committing?”

  “Miss le Strange—”

  “Ah! Miss le Strange and the affair of the missing necklace. I see. No, I do not believe your footman purloined the necklace.”

  Miss Asquith turned to him, her face alight. “You do not? Oh, I know he didn’t! But how is it to be proved?”

  Mr. Crabbe hesitated. “I can tell you why I don’t think he took it, but it is not conclusive, I fear. The pockets in his breeches are barely deep enough to hold sixpence without bulging, let alone that whacking great necklace.”

  “Oh, you are right! Robert told me that he never carries anything in his pockets for fear of spoiling the line of his uniform. And he could not have concealed it anywhere else on his person without looking exceedingly odd, as his clothing fits him so closely. Oh, hurrah!”

  “However,” Mr. Crabbe cautioned, “the fact that your footman’s attire is tailored to within an inch of his life will not necessarily save him. He might have secreted it somewhere, you know.”

  “But where? We’ve looked and looked! There isn’t anywhere!”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “You do realize that, if what you say is true and Robert did not take it, and if the whole of the school has been scoured and nothing found, why, someone else must have taken it?”

  Miss Asquith dropped her gaze. “Oh, I suppose you are right. But Robert wouldn’t do it, I know he wouldn’t!”