A School for Unusual Girls (30 page)

Now I understood why Miss Stranje kept so few of them.

The top of the stairs led to a hall of servants' bedrooms. I pushed out of her grasp. Pickpocket-quick, she snagged my arm, wrenched it behind my back, and forced me ahead.

“Let me go, Daneska.” I wriggled like a mongoose trying to get free. “If you already know about the ink, what do you want with me?”

“You wound me, Georgiana. I merely desire the pleasure of your charming company.”

“I'm not charming.”
The formula
. She didn't have the exact ingredients. She couldn't have gotten that from Cook, at least not all of it.

I marveled at how Daneska could make her voice sound so pleasant. “I thought you might like to exchange recipes. That is what friends do. You share yours with me, and I will share with you the ingredients of a lovely Romanian apple cake.”

Always mocking
.

I shook my head, and tried to copy her glib tone. “I'm afraid my recipes are a bit too complex to explain to the likes of you.”

She forced me to turn, nearly twisting my shoulder out of the socket. Face-to-face, her pale eyes darkened, and she hissed, “Don't pretend to be superior to
me,
Georgiana Fitzwilliam. You are
nothing
. Long before you came, I was one of them, you know, one of Miss Stranje's clever castoffs.” She yanked my arm. Hard.

“No. You
chose
to come to Stranje House.” I gritted my teeth, refusing to let her see how she hurt me. I don't know why I said that, nor why her choosing to come to Stranje House was an important distinction. But it was. She was not one of us. Daneska had never been cast off. She didn't know what it was like. And then I realized … “Miss Stranje didn't choose you.”

Her expression tightened. Rage whipped across her features and blew away as if by a cold wind. In that instant, I knew Daneska was capable of murder. She pinned me to her side and marched us forward.

“Why?” I ventured. “Why did you want to be at Stranje House?”

“I was bored.”

“That's all. You were bored?”

“
Naturellement
. Have you met my aunt? I needed
something
to pass the time. I thought it would be entertaining to study Miss Stranje's clever tricks.”

“You knew what the school was before you came?”

She jerked my arm. “You ask too many questions.”

“So I've been told.” I stomped on her foot.

She winced and doubled over but instead of letting go, she tightened her hold. “Come along, Georgiana, don't be difficult. Poor Tess is up here all alone. If you want to help her you must come with me.”

“She wouldn't have come alone. Lord Ravencross would not—”

“He's not Ravencross,” she snarled. “Don't call him that.” She shook with sudden rage. Even through gloves, her claws dug into my skin.

“What should I call him?”

“
Nothing
. Less than nothing. A dog.” She took a calming breath and reverted to the icy smooth voice she preferred. “Do you really think he would go alone with a young lady into the servants' bedrooms?” She grunted at my naiveté. “He may be a cur, but even he would not compromise Tess like that.”

“Perhaps not. But he will come looking for her if she doesn't return soon. Just as Lord Wyatt will look for me.”

“Oh, my dear girl, I'm counting on it. Although, for the moment, Lord Wyatt is too busy. He's off playing his annoying little games with everyone's lives.”

She twisted my arm until I feared it would break, and stuck something sharp into my side. “This is what
I
keep in
my
reticule.” She whispered next to my ear. “A dagger is much more useful than ink, no?”

Yes. Infinitely more useful
. I gulped back terror, anger, and wished to heaven I had a knife of my own at that very moment—a big sharp one.

“Such an elegant little blade.” She twisted it, taking a moment to admire the wretched thing. “It would be a pity to soil it with your blood. Now, be a love, and open the door.”

I yelped, as the point bit through the skin on my ribs.

“Quiet.” She pressed the blade deeper.

“I thought you didn't want to soil your knife,” I said, and gritted my teeth together to keep from crying out as I turned the knob. The door swung open. A small oil lamp flickered atop a bureau. I knew instantly Tess
had
been there. But she was gone. An empty chair sat in the middle of the small room, cords coiled loosely around the base. A still-knotted gag lay on the seat.

“Tess?” Daneska barely uttered aloud. Her panicked gaze flitted to the corners of the room.

Her hold on me weakened. I jabbed my elbow into her ribs and sprang sideways, lunging for a pitcher on the washstand. Something.
Anything,
I could use to bash her over the head.

She grabbed my hair. My head snapped back. Next thing I knew her knife was at my neck.

“I should slit your throat for that. A pity I need you alive.” Her fingers pressed hard against the soft place right below my ear. Her paralyzing grip made me dizzy, unable to speak or move.

If she wanted me alive, she needed to stop squeezing my neck. The room turned into a mass of bright swirling spots with an ever-expanding dark center.

“Sweet dreams, Miss Fitzwilliam.”

Blackness
.

*   *   *

I have no idea how much time passed before she slapped my cheek, rousing me. Daneska's face swam before my eyes. “Wake up, sleepyhead. This is no time for napping. We are about to have visitors.”

I struggled to find my way out of the murky depths of unconsciousness, but I couldn't move. She'd tied me into Tess's chair, and bound my hands securely behind me. In its stupor, my mind wandered backward to one of Jane's cryptic remarks, “One never knows when one might need to escape from being bound to a chair.” Oh, how I wished I'd had a few of Miss Stranje's peculiar lessons.

The ropes chafed my wrists as I tried to wriggle free. Through my grogginess, I heard someone in the hall demand, “Where is she?”

There was a scuffle. A few moments later two men came in, wrestling a third man between them. Daneska shut the door and held up a lantern.

I inhaled sharply. “Sebastian!”

“Tut, tut, Georgiana, that's Lord Wyatt to you.” She flaunted her knife the way another woman might waggle her fan at a beau.

Sebastian stopped struggling. His gaze flew to her and landed on me. Although he now had a wad of cloth tied in his mouth, gagging him, nothing could silence the panic that suddenly screamed through his eyes.

“Over there,” Daneska ordered. “I don't want him near the door.”

Two large footmen dragged him past my chair and held him against the wall by the window. Surely they couldn't be Lord Castlereagh's servants. Too burly. They looked more like sailors or dockworkers disguised as servants so they might slip into the ball unnoticed. They were hired thugs, not gentlemen. They couldn't possibly be knights of the Order of the Iron Crown. Napoleon would have granted that title only to gentlemen of means and members of the aristocracy.

When Sebastian tried to say something to me, one of the brutes punched him in the gut. I shrieked, but Daneska clapped her hand over my mouth and pressed the point of her knife against my throat. I felt the sting as the point pierced skin beneath my chin.

“Be a good girl, and do as you're told. A proper young lady does not scream.” She said this with a lilt in her voice as if it pleased her enormously to be teaching me manners. She withdrew her knife. “There. That's better. Now we can all be friends.”

Not in a hundred years
. I glared at her.

“I'll wager you can guess what I want? You see, by the time we found him, Lord Wyatt had already doled out your lovely ink.” She shook her head. “Well, except for two last vials. He smashed those. Most uncooperative, don't you think? But then our Sebastian is a very naughty boy. Aren't you, my darling?” She drew her finger along the bottom of his jaw. “I daresay your valet will be most annoyed, that ink is bound to leave a nasty stain on your coat pocket.”

His neck cloth had been lost in the scuffle. Daneska pouted and trailed her fingers intimately down his neck. “Poor Sebastian. It is too bad you are so … how do you say,
krótkowzroczna?
Shortsighted. Our Emperor Napoleon will soon be free and all of Europe will unite under the Iron Crown. What a pity you have chosen to fight against us.” She slid her fingers into his shirt where it hung open and torn. “Perhaps I can change your mind.”

It clawed at my skin the way she flirted with him in the middle of abusing us. I must've huffed at her impertinence. She snapped her attention to me like a dog on a scent.

“You're jealous.” She grinned.

I tried to wriggle free. When that wouldn't work I inched the chair forward hoping the leg would pinch her toes.

“Oh,
poor thing
. Did he talk sweet to you? Of course, he did. But you are too clever for that old trick. You knew he only wanted the ink. You didn't actually believe his sentimental rubbish, did you? Oh…” She tittered.

God forgive me, I hated her. I may have growled. Some noise came from my throat.

She laughed again. “But I can see you did. How deliciously gullible you are.”

Even though she still stood next to Sebastian, it felt as if she was strangling me. Her hand wandered brazenly inside his shirt. I wanted more than anything to slam my fist into her revoltingly beautiful face.

“I know Lord Wyatt quite well,” she purred. “He has a rather, er, how do you say …
vigorous
reputation with the young ladies. Surely, you didn't think a little red-headed peahen like yourself would snare such a prize?”

My heart slammed into my stomach. I thought I would be sick. It wasn't true. It
couldn't
be true. I looked at Sebastian. Pleading with my very soul for the truth. It shouldn't matter. Not now, when we were both probably going to die. And yet, it did. I desperately needed to know if he'd only been using me.

I cannot explain how, but where words might have failed to reassure me, Sebastian conveyed the truth in a single expression of his eyes. He told me more in that one wordless moment than he could have using a thousand words.

With cold clear certainty, I said, “You're a liar.”

“
C'est la vie
.” She acted as if it didn't matter, but her eyes darkened and her lips pressed tight. She closed her fist around his shirt and ripped it open. Buttons clattered across the floor. Fast as a snake strikes, she slashed her blade across his chest.

I shrieked as an arc of dark red blood bloomed on his chest and ran in rivulets down his belly.

Daneska clamped her hand over my mouth. “The wound, it is not so very deep. Not yet.” She sizzled poison in my ear. “You caused this small problem, yes? The Order, also, has a small problem. Coincidently, your fault, too. So unless you want small problems to become big problems…” She wiped the bloody knife across my bodice, taking care to make certain some of his blood smeared onto my breasts. “You will tell me your formula.”

There was a low rumble from Sebastian. He shook his head warning me not to say anything. Daneska nodded, and her servant slammed Sebastian's head against the wall.

“You must not listen to him, Georgiana. He is a man. Men are always so impractical. It is the women of the world who must live with the mess men make of it, no? This is between you and me.” She used the knife to indicate the two of us.

Ruthless witch. Your blade still drips with Sebastian's blood.

“We are pragmatists you and I. You are a scientist. Very practical. Me, I am practical, too. I want what is good for Europe. Peace and stability. The Order of the Iron Crown will unite the continent and stop all this pointless bloodshed. Your English King, he cannot promise peace or stability. Poor mad King George, he cannot even keep his own mind right side up.”

I had no answer for that. It was the sad truth.

“Ah. See. You know I am right.” She grinned and tapped my shoulder with her knife. “His foolish son, Humpty Dumpty Prince George, is no better. Your parliament, they made this fat buffoon Prince Regent of England. The fool. Your ruler gambles and chases skirts while his government makes war all over the world—America, India, Africa. You must ask yourself, what do these men want?”

I did my best to look confused. As long as she talked she wasn't hurting Sebastian.

“I will tell you what they want—the greedy swine. More and more for England.” She spit air through her lips.

I seethed, struggling to keep a mask of feigned interest. My brother had died fighting to free the continent from the very tyrant she worshipped. I knew the truth. She cared nothing about the welfare of anyone except herself. Daneska wanted
more and more
for Daneska.

She narrowed her gaze, scrutinizing me. “Your eyes—little mouse—they tell all. You are the skeptic.” She aimed the dagger over her shoulder. “It's him, isn't it? The charming diplomat has convinced you. Foreign service. Ha! A joke.
La grande farce
. Sebastian is England's pawn. Always sneaking around sticking his nose in where it does not belong. Always making trouble.” She screwed the blade through the air, twisting the point toward me. “The Order needs to know what mischief he and his pesky friends are playing at so we can keep it in check. You understand, yes?”

I nodded, frantic to keep her talking. I could practically taste how bitterly she hated him. Any second she might turn her venomous blade on him again.

She frowned and stood back. “This was a simple matter until now. Their codes were easy enough to decipher. But now, my dear”—she lifted one of my curls over my shoulder and arranged it against my décolletage—“now you have invented an undetectable ink.”