sister obediently retreated, Rosamund approached Alexandra. “I know what you’re doing.”
“I never imagined otherwise.”
“You won’t win.”
“Win? I’m not certain what you mean.”
“We will not cooperate. We are not going away to school.”
Alex softened her demeanor. “Why don’t you want to go to school?”
“Because the school won’t want us. We’ve been sent down from three schools already, you know.”
“Don’t say you’d rather remain here with Mr. Reynaud. If it were up to him, you’d have only dry toast at every meal.”
“We’re not wanted by Mr. Reynaud, either. No one wants us. Anywhere. And we don’t want them.”
Alexandra recognized the defiance and mistrust in the girl’s eyes. A dozen years ago, those eyes could have mirrored her own.
A tender part of her wanted to clutch the girl close. Of course you’re wanted. Of course you’re loved. Your guardian cares for you so very much. But to lie would be taking the coward’s way out, and Rosamund wouldn’t be fooled. What the girl needed wasn’t false reassurance—it was for someone to tell her the honest, unflinching truth.
“Very well.” Alex folded her hands on the desk and faced her young charge. “You’re right. You’ve been passed around from relation to relation, sent down from three schools, and Mr. Reynaud wishes to rid himself of you at the first opportunity. You’re unwanted. So what you must decide is this: What do you want?”
Rosamund gave her a suspicious look.
“I was orphaned, too. A bit older than you are now, but I was utterly alone in the world, save for a few distant relations who paid for my schooling—on the condition that they would never have me in their sight. It wasn’t fair. It was lonely, and my schoolmates were cruel, and I cried myself to sleep more evenings than not. But in time, I realized I had an advantage over the other girls. They had to worry about catching a husband to help their families. I was indebted to no one, I answered to no one, and I needn’t meet anyone’s expectations of what a young lady should or shouldn’t be. My life was my own. I could follow any dream, if I was prepared to work hard for it. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
Rosamund gave no acknowledgment, but Alex could tell the girl was listening. Intently.
“So what is it you truly want? If you could have any life you wished, what would it be?”
“I want to escape. Not just this house, but England.”
“Where do you mean to go?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I’d take Daisy with me. We’d travel the world, wearing trousers and smoking cheroots and doing as we pleased.”
Alexandra had been hoping to hear “I want to be a painter.” Or a French-trained chef, or an architect. Whatever pursuit Rosamund named, Alex could build lessons on its foundation. But she was quite certain Mr. Reynaud would not approve of lessons in cheroot-smoking. Alex wouldn’t have known how to give them, anyway.
“That sounds like a grand life indeed,” she said, “but how will you support yourselves?”
“I’m perfectly capable of looking after us both.” Rosamund cast a glance at the table. “So you can clear away your nine sweets and leave us alone.”
“You know very well there are eleven sweetmeats.”
“Are there?”
Alex looked. Sure as could be, two sweetmeats were missing. The girl had managed to steal them, right from under her nose, and one of the two was already across the room in Daisy’s hands. Alex could hear the paper crinkling as the younger girl unwrapped it.
“Rosamund, may I tell you something? You will find yourself reluctant to believe it, but it’s the truth.”
The girl gave a lackadaisical shrug. The warmest gesture she’d made toward Alex so far.
“I like you,” Alexandra said. “I like you very much indeed.”
Alex woke to darkness.
Disorientation wrapped her brain like a fog. She sat up and shook her head, trying to clear it. Her heart pounded. Perspiration glued her shift to her chest. Worst of all, her stomach pitched and rolled. As if she were at sea.
Dread rose within her, quickly transforming—thanks to Nature’s least helpful of alchemies—into panic.
She fumbled blindly, finding nothing familiar. Her hands grasped bedclothes of the softest flannel. Definitely not her own. Her feet found a solid floor, but as she stood, the floorboards didn’t creak beneath her weight.
Then her knee collided with a chest of drawers. Ouch.
The pain gave her racing thoughts a jolt. Calm yourself, Alexandra. She pressed one hand to her belly and mentally sank through each solid, immovable layer beneath her feet. Wooden floor. Stony plinth foundation. Cobbled London street. The same layer of grainy, musty earth that Romans had packed beneath their sandals, and the bedrock Atlas, supporting the city on his shoulders.
There, now. You’re fine, you ninny.
She wasn’t lost at sea. She was in the Reynaud residence. And she was a governess.
An underqualified, ill-prepared, and thus far unsuccessful governess, but a governess nonetheless.
When she swallowed, her tongue rasped against the roof of her mouth. She was also a thirsty governess.
By now, Alex’s eyes had adjusted to the dark. She went to the washstand and lifted the ewer. It was light in her grip, no sound of sloshing. Empty. Drat. Tomorrow she’d be certain to set a cup of water aside before she retired, but that wouldn’t help her now. She supposed she might ring for a maid, but she hated to bother the staff. She squinted at her compact traveling clock on the washstand. Already five in the morning. She could wait another hour until sunrise, couldn’t she?
Her parched throat objected. No, she couldn’t wait. To most people, the sensation of thirst was an inconvenience. But then, most people didn’t know the minute-by-minute torture of going without water for days at a stretch.
Alex slid her feet into a pair of worn slippers and made her way out of the bedchamber, through the corridor, and down the stairs with silent footsteps. Being small-statured had a few benefits, and stealth was one of them.
In the kitchen, she found the kettle on the stove. It still held some cooled water. She gulped down one cupful, then a second, and yet another still.
Once her thirst was slaked, she turned to make her way back upstairs.
Thump. Thump.
She eyed
