by Eve Silver
An inauspicious outcome.
Beth knew her methods varied from the other teachers’, and she had wondered if Miss Percy’s benign expression hid approval or dissatisfaction.
Now the headmistress had summoned her, mid-lesson, an unheard of and inauspicious circumstance.
The time had come. Miss Percy meant to dismiss her. A cold knot of dread choked her, and she stared at Alice in mute dismay, her pulse leaping and bounding, her heart pounding in her chest.
She could not bear to fail. She could not afford to fail. Her family depended upon her income for the meanest necessities: food, shelter, coal.
“Lucy,” Beth said, grateful that the tenor of her words gave no indication of the tumult of her emotions. “Please continue reading, here”—she showed the girl the place in the book, then turned to the others—”and the rest of you continue to write out the passage. Mark that you use a fair hand. Upon my return, I shall evaluate your work for both penmanship and spelling.”
She remained only long enough to ascertain that her pupils did as she bid, and then she turned and followed Alice toward the door of the large classroom.
Delving deep for her reserves of composure, Beth willed her racing pulse to slow. Now was a poor time for this dark, oily swell of panic to surge.
Why, oh why, must it come now? Save that one morning when Griffin Fairfax had held her hand over his heart and helped her rein in her dismay, she had been so very adept at controlling her panic since coming here.
Feeling as though the eyes of both pupils and teachers were upon her, Beth clasped her hands together to still their shaking.
No, she must not allow this, must not allow her nervous imaginings to feed the dread growing in her breast. She knew where this would lead. Having spent her life subject to the horror of her attacks of dismay—the wash of clammy fear, the numbing thud of her heart—she could not mistake the signs now of the terrible and overwhelming tide.
She followed Alice, feeling as though she traversed the distance to a gallows.
She glanced to the right and found Miss Doyle peering at her over the top of a book, and the group of girls that surrounded her casting sidelong glances and whispering to each other.
“This way, miss,” Alice said when Beth stepped through the door and turned right. Sending Beth a quizzical look, Alice walked left.
“Yes, of course,” Beth murmured, the surge of unease growing and pulling at her. She could not control it.
She must control it.
“Miss Percy said you must wait for her in her office. She will be with you shortly.” Alice paused and frowned, peering at Beth closely. “I’ll leave you now, miss. You know the way.”
With that, Alice went off in the opposite direction, leaving Beth alone.
For a moment, she simply sagged against the wall, angry and frustrated that it had come to this, that her will and control had failed her so miserably. With a sigh, she rallied, forced herself to walk the long corridor, and in her thoughts she began to prepare her arguments, her defenses.
Perhaps the headmistress could be swayed.
Reaching her destinations, she found the door open, the room empty. Mindful of Alice’s words, Beth stepped inside to await the headmistress’s arrival.
Blowing out sharp little huffs of air, she turned a slow circle, cataloguing the contents of the room in an effort to maintain her control over her emotions. There was the mullioned window, the heavy draperies, the little wooden desk with its scrolled legs. Two straight chairs before the desk and one behind. A room designed for work rather than lounging comfort.
She stared at the top of Miss Percy’s desk. A tidy desk, with not a single speck of dust to mar the surface.
Resting her palm flat against the base of her throat, Beth slid down onto the seat of a hard-backed chair. She perched there for a moment, panic lurking like a scavenger. Nausea churned in her belly.
Well aware that her emotion far exceeded what was appropriate for the circumstance, she was nonetheless caught in its violent thrall. As she had been caught so many times over the years.
A sound carried from the hallway, and Beth twisted to look behind her through the entry. Beyond the open portal, the hallway was poorly lit, a gray and dim domain. Again came the scrape of a boot along the tile and a large shadow fell across the floor, too large to be Miss Percy.
Pushing against the narrow wooden arms of the chair, Beth surged to her feet, rushed to the door.
Mr. Waters, the handyman, stood some ten feet away, hammer in hand. On the floor lay the splintered remains of a doorjamb, and beside them, a fresh cut piece of wood.
Hammer poised mid-strike, he turned his head to look at her, and she realized she must have made some sound.
“Miss,” he said, and bobbed his head.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Waters.” Beth looked past him down the dim corridor. She wondered if it could have been he who followed her that morning two weeks past, who lurked in the garden and on the road. Then she cast aside such ponderings, for what reason had she to think it?
Turning to his work, he set a nail and brought the hammer down in a sharp blow. The sound made Beth jump.
Mumbling to himself, he scratched his head, looked about him, then ambled off.
Beth backed into the office, paced across the rug to one wall then the other and back again, keeping her eye on the open door, and her ears attuned for Miss Percy’s footsteps. Midway through her third mad dash across the small room, the door swung shut with a solid bang.
She froze. A half turn and she faced the door once more. The closed door. A small room. Tiny. Tight. A box.
Panic swelled, and Beth looked about sharply. She stood, trembling, her arms wrapped about herself, mortified and horrified that she had allowed her emotions to sink her to this place, to carry her so deep into the pit of her attack of dismay that she felt as though she might not claw her way free. It was like a murky bog, sucking her under, filling her mouth and her throat and her lungs until she could barely breathe.
The walls grew dark and darker still, pressing in upon her until they seemed to crush the very breath from her chest. No air. No light...
She could not bear to be closed in.
The tiny box. She felt as though she were trapped in the tiny box of her nightmares, pushing and pushing at the lid, but it held fast, refusing to budge.
She looked about, frantic, seeing not the headmistress’s office, but only cloying gray fog. Unable to trust her senses, to trust herself to know what was truth, she stood, frozen in place.
She was not back there. She was not.
Frowning, she dropped her hands, clenched her fists tight at her sides and willed herself to see Miss Percy’s desk, her chairs, and not the wooden box from her memories. To crawl out of the pit before it was too late, before she was so lost it would take days for her to crawl free.
On jellylike limbs she crossed to the door, yanked on the handle. With a creak, it swung open. The hallway was empty, but she could swear she heard the rapid retreat of booted feet.
Had someone followed her, watched her, waited for Mr. Waters to leave? Slammed the door? To what purpose? What end?
Who could know that it would distress her so?
Extending her arm, she pressed the flat of her hand to the wall, bowed her head, struggled to master herself. This would not do. She knew it would not do. If Miss Percy came upon her like this, in a frenzy of nerves and emotion, she would have cause to dismiss her.
Dear heaven, she knew better than to allow herself such delusions.
Turning, Beth walked at a sedate pace—oh, the effort she put into holding herself back—to the mullioned window that overlooked the front drive. A band of iron closed about her ribs, squeezing tight. Her hands shook. Beads of sweat gathered on her upper lip. She laid her trembling palm flat against the cool wall, and stared out at the late afternoon sky, a clear, blue canvas with only a single wispy cloud far, far in the distance.
Distance. Wide open space. Re
lief touched her, cool and sweet.
There. That was better. She could breathe a little now. She could breathe. The sky was vast. Vast and endless and open.
There was no reason for her to feel distress. So she told herself over and over.
No one followed her.
No one watched her.
And she must believe that the headmistress had not summoned her to dismiss her. Perhaps she merely wished to discuss a particular pupil, or some aspect of the lessons.
Dragging a handkerchief from where she kept it tucked in her sleeve, Beth patted her lip, her brow, then tucked the cloth away once more.
In the next instant she heard them coming, footsteps and voices, Miss Percy and a man.
“... to dinner...” came a low, masculine murmur. Beth thought the voice belonged to Mr. Fairfax. A strange flutter echoed through her veins, a leap of her pulse that had nothing to do with her fears and dismay. Her emotions tangled one with the next in a twisted knot until she thought it would take a patient hand indeed to pick the strands apart.
“I am not certain that it is appropriate,” Miss Percy remarked, her crisp tone carrying along the hallway into the room.
“Likely not, but the devil take that. I want her there, and so I will have her. Isobel will like it, and she is my sole concern.”
“I, too, have concern for Isobel, but I must also exercise responsibility for Miss Canham.”
They were speaking of her, Beth realized with a jolt.
“Then I must point out that Miss Canham, as Isobel’s teacher, is of the same ilk as her governess. And I sat across the table from Isobel’s last governess every night for two bitter months. Does that moderate your concerns?”
“It—” Miss Percy stopped abruptly in the doorway as she caught sight of Beth standing by the window.
Beth attempted a smile. Her face felt stiff, like starched linen. From Miss Percy’s frown, she gathered that she might look as sickly as she felt.
“Ah, Miss Canham, you are here,” Miss Percy said. “How fortuitous that I also happened upon Mr. Fairfax in the hallway.”
Beth’s gaze snapped to Mr. Fairfax, who stood just behind Miss Percy.
Their gazes met across the room, locked, and Beth thought that Mr. Fairfax’s dark eyes missed nothing, not the sheen of sweat on her lip or the way her palm pressed hard against the wall by the window or the shudders that racked her frame though she wished them away.
He was intense, unsmiling, his attention focused wholly on her.
In some vague part of her thoughts, Beth recognized the charged tension in the small room. An awkward triangle they made, Miss Percy and Mr. Fairfax and Beth.
She ought to drag her gaze away. Ought to speak, to fill the void of silence. But she did nothing. Only stared at him, the hard, captivating beauty of him, and wondered again if perhaps she was going mad.
After a long moment, Miss Percy stepped deeper into the room. Mr. Fairfax followed. Beth studied the two of them, her back rigid, her hands trembling, her belly twisting and writhing like a nest of snakes.
Her gaze flicked to the open door, then to Miss Percy, who had turned and reached for the handle. Beth’s throat grew tight. She could not bear it if they closed the door.
Mr. Fairfax continued to watch her, his expression bland, his dark eyes shadowed.
“I find the air a bit stuffy, Miss Percy,” he said, his gaze never leaving Beth’s. “Would it trouble you to leave the door open?”
There was only silence for a heartbeat, and another.
“Not at all,” came Miss Percy’s delayed reply. Walking briskly, she rounded her desk and sat.
Beth shifted her stance, clasping her hands tight together behind her back, uncertain if she should be grateful or wary.
Mr. Fairfax seemed to see to the heart of her. Had he requested that the door be left open for her comfort, or for his own? Had he seen her fear, somehow divined that she felt uneasy in this small, closed space?
Uneasy. She almost laughed. Such a gift for understatement.
Miss Percy’s voice poked through her reverie. Realizing that she had been invited to sit, Beth did just that, unclasping her hands as she perched once more on the edge of the hard-backed chair.
“...so you see, Mr. Fairfax and I both feel that Isobel would benefit from your presence. You seem a calming balm to her, and it can only be for the good.”
Beth blinked, started, the words coming down a long tunnel to her, and she realized she had missed the beginning of Miss Percy’s explanation, and only heard the tail end. The headmistress was watching her with a marked frown as she spoke, and Beth thought it best that she not request a repetition. Instead, she tried to use the bits she had heard to fashion the whole. A puzzle.
But one thing seemed clear. She had been granted a reprieve. She was not being dismissed. In fact, this meeting had nothing at all to do with her classroom skill.
“I see,” she said, grateful that her voice, at least, sounded calm. “I would be pleased to be of assistance. When...?”
There. That should garner her a clue. Perhaps Miss Percy would say enough in reply that Beth could understand what it was they had asked of her.
“Isobel comes to dinner once each week,” Mr. Fairfax spoke from his place behind Beth’s chair. She swiveled to look at him, and found him positioned in the corner, in the shadow where the light coming through the window did not reach. “At least, that is the preference I have. The unfortunate truth is, there are times she simply refuses to come.”
The memory of the day of her arrival at Burndale Academy tugged at Beth, the recollection of Alice’s words. She is not ready, sir... She will not come!
“And my role?” Beth asked, curious now, curious enough that the racing of her pulse slowed a little.
Focus on the riddle, not the fear.
Yes, there, her panic snuffed a little more, and she knew now that she would come through this episode without disgracing herself. Relief was sweet and clear as water from a spring.
“Isobel appears to feel some affinity for you,” Miss Percy said. “Mr. Fairfax is of the opinion that your presence at the weekly dinner would both encourage Isobel to attend, and ensure her enjoyment of the experience.”
Startled, Beth looked back and forth between the two, an action that necessitated her twisting about at the waist, given their opposing locations in the room.
The corner of Mr. Fairfax’s mouth twitched, and he stepped forward to take the seat on her right. So close. Too close. She could smell the faint scent of spice, and of him, so enticing.
Despite the turmoil that tugged at her, she noticed that and other things about him. The simple white stock tied at his throat. The wind-tousled fall of his hair. If her preoccupation with this man, despite the panic that yet threatened to swell, was not proof that she was fit for Bedlam, then she could not imagine what would be.
She looked away, focusing her attention on Miss Percy.
“So you wish me to accompany Isobel to dinner once each week?” She found the proposition unsettling, not for the dinner itself or the role of companion to the child, but rather for the prospect of sitting at a table with Griffin Fairfax.
Oh, she could well imagine it, the two of them, cozy over dinner, with the silent child between them.
“If you do not find the inconvenience too great, it is truly the best solution for the child,” Miss Percy said. “She has formed an attachment to you. It is most unusual. She has never behaved so before.”
Because she has never before encountered a soul matched to her own, strange and fey and burdened with all manner of private terrors, Beth thought, but she said nothing, merely bowed her head and nodded her understanding as Miss Percy turned to Mr. Fairfax and discussed the arrangement for his carriage to come for Beth and Isobel on Thursday next, a week hence.
A pang of regret echoed inside her that it would be the closed carriage that fetched her and not the open curricle that flew along the road, letting the wind sting her eyes and
tear her hair free of its pins. She had liked the curricle very much, the freedom of it. Like flying.
The idea of the closed carriage was far less appealing, especially in her present state of fatigue and heightened distress. At this moment, she found the prospect of such a small space infinitely ghastly.
As though he read her thoughts, Mr. Fairfax said, “If the weather is fine, I shall come myself with the curricle. Isobel prefers it, and she takes not much space. I suspect we can wedge her between us.”
Raising her eyes, Beth found him watching her, his frame relaxed on the chair beside her, his gaze unreadable. A shaft of sunlight sliced across him, painting him in bronze and gilt, the contrast playing over his hard features like a gift. In this light, his eyes were not so very dark, the whisper of green more apparent.
His thick lashes swept down, then up. In his gaze she read shrewd awareness, a knowing understanding that left her feeling as though he stripped her secrets bare.
The way he looked at her was... unsettling. Her pulse fluttered, then raced, as it had earlier in her panic. Only now, both the sensation and its cause were different. A prickling awareness made her mouth go dry and her limbs restless. Her gaze dropped to his lips, hard, well formed.
Oh, she was a regular pendulum, swinging to and fro between panic and... what? Apprehension? Anxiety?
No... attraction, hot and sharp.
Tension knotted her shoulders, and Beth was grateful when a knocking at the door drew their attention.
Alice. A distraction. Oh, thank heaven.
A glance at Mr. Fairfax showed he had leaned back in his chair, behind the beam of light. The shift in his position left his face in shadow, veiling his expression from her sight.
“Excuse me, Miss Percy,” Alice said. “The stonemason is here to speak with you about the wall.”
Beth knew the part of the wall she spoke of, near the gate of the back garden. There was a crumbling section that was both unsightly and a danger. Miss Percy rose, excused herself, and left the room.
Left her alone. With Griffin Fairfax.
