The Runaway McBride (7 page)

Her father had given her a thorough grounding in classical languages, and it was a selection of his library books that stocked her bookshelf. She went to it now and ran her fingers along the spines of the leather-bound volumes. She passed over the Greek and Roman philosophers, knowing that the girls would find those too difficult to translate. Aeschylus almost burned her fingers. Euripides tempted her, but she shook her head and found what she wanted, her father’s commentary on the works of Herodotus. The girls would find Herodotus well within their capabilities.

Her father’s commentary was well worn and showing its age, but Faith regarded this book as her most precious possession. She reverently traced the name of the author on the front cover: Malcolm McBride.

As the teacher, she had to be aware of any and every irregularity of grammar and syntax, so she made herself comfortable on the chair by the fire and began to read her father’s book. Before long, memories flooded her mind, and her eyes teared. She could almost hear her father’s voice, teasing her for her fanciful translations. “Stick to the text,” he would say, “and don’t elaborate.” So she’d stuck to the text with a vengeance and had the pleasure of having him hoot with laughter.

Her mother had died in a boating accident when Faith was only six, so her memories of her were very sketchy, but her father had tried to fill in the gaps. Mama, he said, always went with him on his excursions to the various Roman ruins in England, but that was before Faith was born. After that, Mama stayed home to look after her baby.

Was it all a lie? Why would her father lie to her?

She riffled idly through the pages of the commentary as another memory came back to her.

“I remember when Mama . . .” he’d said, then his face had gone all sad and he’d stared into space.

“What about Mama? I want to know about her. Tell me!”

His expression cleared, and he smiled at her. “She was enchanted with Herodotus’s histories and took up Greek just so that she could read them the way Herodotus had set them down. She would read them aloud to you whenever you cried or were fractious. The sound of the words always distracted you, and you’d stop crying and listen to the sound of Mama’s voice. She had a beautiful voice.”

Was that a lie, too?

Restless now, she set the book aside and wandered over to the window. There was little to see. A sudden fog had swept in from the coast, and the grounds were veiled in a diaphanous haze. The school was practically deserted at this late hour, so no sounds reached Faith through the open window. She might as well have been alone in the world.

The thought made her shiver.

She was just about to shut the window when a movement caught her eye. Someone was down there, in the bushes close to the school. At this time of night, all the girls should have been in their rooms, and it hardly seemed likely that a teacher would conceal herself in the bushes as though waiting for someone from the outside.

Her lips flattened. Every school had its renegade, and St. Winnifred’s was no exception. A name came instantly to mind: Dora Winslet. Everything came effortlessly to Dora: languages, mathematics, the sciences, boys. Especially boys. She was a tearaway and would have been expelled long since had she not possessed one of the finest brains Miss Elliot had ever encountered in her long teaching career. The headmistress expected great things from Dora.

Cursing softly under her breath, Faith opened the door and quit her room. She let herself out of the school quietly and, after a few steps, paused, straining her ears for the sound of Dora’s voice. There was nothing. The fog swallowed up every sound and landmark.

“Who’s there?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Dora, is it you? ”

The silence was unnerving. Then it came to her, the sound of someone breathing. A twig snapped, then another. Whoever it was was edging his way toward her.

Was this the person she’d sensed had been stalking her? She swallowed the knot in her throat, then swallowed again.

Another name came to her: James Burnett! That settled her nerves as nothing else could. Turning on her heel, she walked smartly back to the school and shut the door with a satisfying bang, then locked it and made for the stairs.

Once in her own room, she marched to the window. If Dora was out there, she would find herself locked out. The only way in was through the front door, and the porter on duty would report the girl for breaking school rules. And if it was James Burnett come to harass her, the porter would turn him away with a blistering scolding.

Her anger cooled when she turned from the window, and her gaze came to rest on her desk. The letter she had received from Lady Cowdray was exactly where she had left it. What was out of place was her father’s commentary. It was on her desk, too, and she distinctly remembered setting it on the little table beside her chair.

A picture flashed into her mind. Someone had entered her room when she was outside chasing down Dora and had picked up the book she was reading. Finding nothing of interest there, he or she had wandered over to her desk still carrying the book. The book was discarded in favor of the letter.

Thoughtful now, she walked to the desk and picked up the letter. She’d left it folded. Someone had smoothed it out. Someone now knew about Lady Cowdray and Madeline Maynard. They’d easily deduce that she would be going out to Chalbourne. But why would anyone care?

She sat on the edge of the bed feeling all at sea. A few moments’ reflection cleared her brain. This was a girls’ school. One of her pupils had probably come to see her about something, and finding the door unlocked, had allowed her curiosity to get the better of her.

What else could it be?

It was late in the afternoon when a hansom cab pulled up
at the gates of St. Winnifred’s School for Girls. James stepped down and helped his aunt, Mrs. Mariah Leyland, to alight. She was in her mid-sixties, pleasantly rounded, with a spark of humor lurking in her bright sparrow’s eyes. She was not dressed in the height of fashion, but the quality of her garments indicated that there was no shortage of money.

“So this is St. Winnifred’s,” she said. “I wish there had been schools like this in my day.”

James gave a dry smile. He’d made it his business to find out as much as he could about St. Winnifred’s this past week, and he doubted that his aunt could have learned anything here that she had not learned in her full, if rather unconventional, life. She wasn’t so much the black sheep of the family as the rebel, and when her temper was up, she could be a firebrand. He liked her immensely, but that had not prevented him from pitying her late husband, the colonel.

What puzzled him was how Faith had ended up here. The girls in this school were being educated to turn the world on its ear—his comfortable, masculine world, he supposed. That’s not how he remembered Faith. The Faith he remembered was softer, generous, vulnerable . . . And as it turned out, he hadn’t known her at all.

A gust of wind caught at his hat, and he held on to it with one hand. Minding his manners, he offered his aunt his arm. She took it automatically, but her eyes were taking in the splendid parklike setting and the handsome three-story Georgian building at the end of the drive.

“How did a girls’ school come to be situated in this lovely house?” she asked. “Was it bequeathed to St. Winnifred’s by a former pupil?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged, “an eccentric lady much like you, Aunt Mariah.”

She laughed, taking his words as a compliment. “And how do you come to know so much?”

“It’s amazing what one can learn in one’s clubs.”

And from his cousins. No psychic visions were involved. All that was required was a little sleuthing, a quiet word to his aunt, and he had the perfect entrée to St. Winnifred’s annual Speech Day. Aunt Mariah had published a number of biographies on the remarkable women of her own generation and was frequently asked to address a few words to women’s groups. This time, she had offered to speak to the girls of St. Winnifred’s, and her invitation had been accepted with alacrity.

“And such a lovely park, too,” his aunt enthused.

James’s steps slowed, and he halted. He, too, looked around the park, but it wasn’t to admire it. He could feel the fine hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise, a manifestation of his growing powers, and he narrowed his eyes to take in the scene. There was too much shrubbery for his liking, too many weeping willows and other places for trespassers to hide. He was wishing he’d invited Gavin and his dog along. Macduff would soon nose out any undesirable characters.

There were plenty of people about, most of them making for the front doors, but others were in clusters, enjoying the picturesque grounds. The sun was shining, flowers were blooming, but the wind was fresh and smelled faintly of the sea. Some ladies wore stoles, others were in pelisses. The gentlemen were dressed much like James: dark coat, buff-colored trousers with matching waistcoat, and of course, the ubiquitous top hat.

Mrs. Leyland edged him forward. “Miss Elliot,” she said, “wants to have a few words with me before I address the girls. Frankly, James, I’m beginning to be sorry that I allowed you to talk me into this, and on such short notice, too. I’ve hardly had time to set my thoughts in order. I’m not used to talking to young girls, and I may talk above them, or my mind may go blank.”

He gave her a level look. “Tell them about Florence Nightingale and how you helped her found the institution for training nurses. Tell them about Mrs. Beeton and how she turned her husband’s fortunes around by writing her treatise on household management. Trust me, Aunt Mariah, your mind won’t go blank. It’s getting you to stop talking that will be the problem.”

Her irreverent snort turned into a chuckle. “Very true,” she remarked with a sideways glance at her nephew, “but at the end of the day, you must tell me the real reason for this visit to St. Winnifred’s. No. Don’t try to put me off with evasions and half-truths. I think I’ve earned your trust, don’t you?”

The truth, James reflected, would sound absurd. What could he say? That a teacher at the school was in danger and that he was the only one who could save her? That he did not know who or what threatened her and hoped to find some clue at the school to point him in the right direction? His aunt was a Burnett, like his father, and to them the McEcherans were prone to flights of imagination. No. The truth would not do.

Conscious of the gleam of speculation in his aunt’s eyes, he replied easily, “Alex is on a case, and he asked me to keep an eye on one of the teachers. I’m sorry, Aunt, I can’t say more than that.”

She looked as though she would argue the point but merely sighed and shook her head. “You and Alex,” she said. “You always blamed each other when things got sticky. And what do you mean, ‘he’s on a case’? Is it true what they say? Does he work for Scotland Yard?”

James shrugged. “It could be the Special Branch or the War Office. Your guess is as good as mine.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could blister him, a lady with iron-gray hair and penetrating blue eyes called from the top of the stairs. “Mrs. Leyland! It is you, is it not? How do you do? I am Miss Elliot, and I do thank you for coming to speak to our girls.”

The headmistress swooped down and swept Mrs. Leyland up the last few steps and into the school. James followed in their wake.

It was a shameful way to repay Alex for his invaluable advice, James thought with a faint smile, but Alex would have done the same if their positions were reversed. It was Alex who had suggested that Aunt Mariah would be welcomed with open arms at St. Winnifred’s since her name was a household word among women with radical opinions. James was the one who would stick out like a sore thumb.

He must remember to keep his mouth shut.

James was right about his aunt’s aptitude with words. It
wasn’t, however, that she didn’t know when to stop so much as her audience would not let her. She was the last speaker and was laying forth on all the exceptional women of the nineteenth century that they should take as their examples, and her audience applauded wildly each time she paused, encouraging her to go on.

This didn’t have the feel of a Speech Day to James, leastways none of the Speech Days he’d attended when he was a schoolboy. He’d once, inadvertently, attended a Methodist revival. The same religious fervor he’d sensed then was present in this hall. The words were different, but the message was the same: “Go forth and make converts.”

All the teachers and girls were sitting in rows facing the lectern, but James’s eyes were trained on Faith. He wasn’t a member of the audience but had positioned himself at the side of the hall so that he could watch her unobserved.

He could tell from her pinched profile that she was aware of his presence. From time to time, she turned her head to speak to her neighbor, but her eyes never lifted to meet his. He recognized her friend but couldn’t put a name to her: Iris? Daisy? Fleur? Something like that. As he remembered, she’d been Faith’s friend when they’d met during the season all those years ago. Her back was to him, but he could read that rigid spine without reference to his psychic powers. Her hostility to him was equal to Faith’s.