A School for Unusual Girls (2 page)

I jerked back from my window as one of the creatures leaped up against the coach door. Black as night, except for yellow eyes and moon-white teeth, the monstrous animal peered in at me as if curious. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could do naught but stare back. Our coachman swore, cracked his whip, and the horses sprang forward. The beast's massive paws slipped from my window. With a sharp yip, he fell away from the coach. These were no ordinary dogs.

“Wolves.” I slammed the window glass up and secured the latch.

“Nonsense,” my mother said, but scooted farther from the door. “Everyone knows there are no more wolves in England. They were all killed off during King Henry's reign.”

“Might've missed one or two,” my father muttered, peering out his window at our shadowy entourage.

Whatever they were, these black demons would devour us the minute we stepped out of the coach. “Turn back. Please. I don't need this school.” I hated the fear creeping into my voice.

Mother laced her fingers primly in her lap and glanced away. I cast my pride to the wind and bleated like a lamb before slaughter. “I'll do exactly as you ask. I promise. Best manners. Everything. I'll even intentionally lose at cards. I give you my word.”

They paid me no heed.

Stranje House loomed larger by the second. Our coach bumped along faster than it had all day, the coachman ran the team full out in an effort to outpace the wolves. My heart galloped along with the horses. Faster and faster we rumbled up the drive, until the speed of it made me sick to my stomach.

The sprawling Elizabethan manor crouched on scraggly unkempt grounds. Dead trees stood among the living, stripped of bark by the salt air they stretched white skeletal hands toward the dark sky. The roof formed a black silhouette against the waning moonlight. Sharp peaks jutted up like jagged scales on a dragon's back. Fog and mist blew up from the sea and swirled around the boney beast.

Gripping the seat, I turned to my parents. “You can't mean to leave me in this decrepit old mausoleum? You can't.” They refused to meet my frantic gaze. “Father?”

“Hound's tooth, Georgie! Leave off.”

My heart banged against my ribs like a trapped bat. No reprieve. No pardon. No mercy.

Where could I turn for help? If Robbie were alive, he wouldn't let them do this. My stuffy older brothers would applaud locking me away. Geoffrey, the oldest, had written to say, “She's an embarrassment to the family. About time she was taught some manners.” I doubt Edward remembers I even exist. Thus, I would be banished to this bleak heap of stones, this monstrous cage surrounded by hellhounds.

All too soon, the coach rolled to a stop in front of the dragon's dark gaping mouth. I couldn't breathe. I wanted to scream, to shriek like a cat being thrown into a river to drown.

Only I didn't. I sank back against the seat and gasped for air.

From my window, I watched as an elderly butler with all the warmth of a grave digger emerged from the house and issued a sharp staccato whistle. The wolves immediately took off and ran to the trees at the edge of the old house. But I saw them pacing, watching us hungrily from the shadows.

To my dismay, our coach door opened and a footman lowered the steps. I hung back as long as possible. My parents were almost to the house when, on wobbly legs, I climbed out and followed them inside, past the grizzled butler, and up a wooden staircase. Every step carried me farther from my home, farther from freedom. Each riser seemed taller than the last, harder to climb, and my feet heavier, until at last, the silent butler ushered us into the headmistress's cramped dimly lit study.

We sat before her enormous desk on small uncomfortable chairs, my parents in the forefront, me in the back. Towering bookshelves lined the walls. More books sat in haphazard piles on the floor, stacked like druid burial stones.

Concentrating on anything, except my fate, I focused on the titles of books piled nearest my chair. A translation of
Beowulf
lay atop a collection of John Donne's sermons, a human anatomy book, and Lord Byron's scandalous vampire tale,
The Giaour
. A most unsettling assortment. I stopped reading and could scarcely keep from biting my lip to the point of drawing blood.

The headmistress, Miss Emma Stranje, sat behind her desk, mute, assessing me with unsettling hawk eyes. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, I couldn't tell her age. She looked youthful one minute, and ancient the next. She might've been pretty once, if it weren't for her shrewd measuring expression. She'd pulled her wavy brown hair back into a severe chignon knot, but stray wisps escaped their moorings giving her a feral catlike appearance.

I tried not to cower under her predatory gaze. If this woman intended to be my jailer, I needed to stand my ground now or I would never fight my way out from under her thumb.

My mother cleared her throat and started in, “You know why we are here. As we explained in our letters—”

“It was an accident!” I blurted, and immediately regretted it. The words sounded defensive, not strong and reasoned as I had intended.

Mother pinched her lips and sat perfectly straight, primly picking lint off her gloves as if my outburst caused the bothersome flecks to appear. She sighed. I could almost hear her oft repeated complaint, “
Why is Georgiana not the meek biddable daughter I deserve?”

Miss Stranje arched one imperious eyebrow, silently demanding the rest of the explanation, waiting, unnerving me with every tick of the clock. My mind turned to mush. How much explanation should I give? If I told her the plain truth she'd know too much about my unacceptable pursuits. If I said too little I'd sound like an arsonist. In the ensuing silence, she tapped one slender finger against the dark walnut of her desk. The sound echoed through the room—a magistrate's gavel, consigning me to life in her prison. “You
accidentally
set fire to your father's stables?”

My father growled low in his throat and shifted angrily on the delicate Hepplewhite chair.

“Yes,” I mumbled, knowing the fire wasn't the whole reason I was here, merely the final straw, a razor-sharp spearlike straw. Unfortunately, there were several dozen pointy spears in my parents' quiver of
what's-wrong-with-Georgiana
.

If only they understood. If only the world cared about something beyond my ability to pour tea and walk with a mincing step. I decided to tell Miss Stranje at least part of the truth. “It was a scientific experiment gone awry. Had I been successful—”

“Successful?” roared my father. He twisted on the flimsy chair, putting considerable stress on the rear legs as he leaned in my direction, numbering my sins on his fingers. “You nearly roasted my prize hunters alive! Every last horse—scared senseless. Burned the bleedin' stables to the ground.
To the ground!
Nothing left but a heap of blackened stone. Our house and fields would've gone up next if the tenants and neighbors hadn't come running to help. That ruddy blaze would've taken their homes and crops, too.
Successful?
You almost reduced half of High Cross Greene to ash.”

Every word a lashing, I nodded and kept my face to the floor, knowing he wasn't done.

“As it was, you scorched more than half of Squire Thurgood's apple orchard. I'll be paying dearly for those lost apples over the next three years, I can tell you that. And what about my hounds!” He paused for breath and clamped his teeth together so tight that veins bulged at his temples and his whole head trembled with repressed rage.

In that short fitful silence, I could not help but remember the sound of those dogs baying and whimpering, and the faces of our servants and neighbors smeared with ash as we all struggled to contain the fire, their expressions—grim, angry, wishing me to perdition.

“My kennels are ruined. Blacker and smokier than Satan's chimney…” He lowered his voice, no longer clarifying for Miss Stranje's sake, and spit one final damning indictment into my face. “You almost killed my hounds!” He dismissed me with an angry wave of his hand. “Successful. Bah!”

My stomach churned and twisted with regret.
Accident
. It
was
an accident. I wished he had slapped me. It would've stung less than his disgust.

I wanted to point out the merits of inventing a new kind of undetectable invisible ink. If such an ink had been available, my brother might still be alive. As it was, the French intercepted a British courier and Robert's company found themselves caught in an ambush. It wouldn't help to say it. I tried the day after the fire and Father only got angrier. He'd shouted obscenities, called me a foolish girl. “It's done. Over. He's gone.”

Nor would it help to remind him that I'd nearly died leading the horses out of the mews. His mind was made up. Unlike my father's precious livestock, my goose was well and truly cooked. He intended to banish me, imprison me here at Stranje House just as Napoleon was banished to Elba.

Miss Stranje glanced down at my mother's letter. “It says here, that on another occasion Georgiana jumped out of an attic window?”

“I didn't jump. Not exactly.”

“She did.” Father crossed his arms.

It had happened two and a half years ago. One would've thought they'd have forgotten it by now. “Another experiment,” I admitted. “I'd read a treatise about Da Vinci and his—”

“
Wings
.” My mother cut me off and rolled her eyes upward to contemplate the ceiling. She employed the same mocking tone she always used when referring to that particular incident.

“Not wings,” I defended, my voice a bit too high-pitched. “A glider. A kite.”

Mother ignored me and stated her case to Miss Stranje without any inflection whatsoever. “She's a menace. Dangerous to herself and others.”

“I took precautions.” I forced my voice into a calmer, less ear-bruising range, and tried to explain. “I had the stable lads position a wagon of hay beneath the window.”

“Yes!” Father clapped his hands together as if he'd caught a fly in them. “But you missed the infernal wagon, didn't you?”

“Because the experiment worked.”

“Hardly.” With a scornful grunt he explained to Miss Stranje, “Crashed into a sycamore tree. Wore her arm in a sling for months.”

“Yes, but if I'd made the kite wider and taken off from the roof—”

“This is all your doing.” My father shot a familiar barb at my mother. “You never should've allowed her to read all that scientific nonsense.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” she bristled. “That bluestocking governess is to blame.”

Miss Grissmore
. An excellent tutor. A woman of outstanding patience, the only governess in ten years able to endure my incessant questions, sent packing because of my foolhardy leap. I glared at my mother's back remembering how I'd begged and explained over and over that Miss Grissmore had nothing to do with it.

“I let the woman go as soon as I realized what she was.” Mother ignored Father's grumbled commentary on bluestockings and demanded of Miss Stranje, “Well? Can you reform Georgiana or not?”

There are whispers among my mother's friends that, for a large enough sum, the mysterious Miss Stranje is able to take difficult young women and mold them into marriageable misses. Her methods, however, are highly questionable. According to the gossip, Miss Stranje relies upon harsh beatings and cruel punishments to accomplish her task. Even so, ambitious parents desperate to reform their daughters turn a blind eye and even pay handsomely for her grim services. It's rumored that she even resorts to torture to transform her troublesome students into unexceptional young ladies.

Unexceptional
.

Among the beau monde
,
being declared
un
exceptional by the patronesses of society is the ultimate praise. It is almost a prerequisite for marriage. Husbands do not want odd ducks like me. Being exceptional is a curse. A curse I bear.

I care less than a fig for society's good opinion. Furthermore, I haven't the slightest desire to attend their boring balls, nor do I want to stand around at a rout, or squeeze into an overcrowded sweltering soiree. More to the point, I have no intention of marrying anyone.

Ever
.

My mother, on the other hand, languishes over the fact that, despite being a wealthy wool merchant's daughter with a large dowry, and having been educated in the finer arts of polite conversations, playing the pianoforte, and painting landscapes in pale watercolors, she had failed to bag herself a title. She'd married my father because he stood second in line to the Earl of Pynderham. Unfortunately, his older brother married shortly thereafter and produced several sturdy sons, thus dashing forever my mother's hopes of becoming a countess. As a result, her desire to elevate her standing in society now depends on puffing me off in marriage to an earl, or perhaps a viscount, thereby transforming her into the exalted role of mother to a countess.

A thoroughly ridiculous notion.

Has she not looked at me? My figure is flat and straight. I doubt I shall ever acquire much of a bosom. I have stubborn freckles that will not bleach out no matter how many milk baths or cucumber plasters Mother applies. She detests my ginger hair. Red is definitely not
en vogue
.

Not long after the glider incident, she tried to disguise my embarrassing red curls by rinsing them with walnut stain. It would infuriate her if she knew that her efforts to change my hair color increased my obsession with dyes and inks. Her oily walnut stain failed miserably. The hideous results had to be cut off—my hair shorn like a sheep. It has only now grown out to an acceptable length.

And now this. Exile to Stranje House.

I clinched the fabric of my traveling dress and wished for the millionth time that I'd been more careful while adding saltpeter to the boiling ink emulsion. If only it hadn't sparked that abominable fire.