Candlelight Wish (3 page)

Home—at least until she could find some way to escape the drudgery of academy life. That wouldn’t be for a while yet though, not until Thomas graduated from Cambridge and joined the ranks of lowly curates. Even then he would need some form of supplemental income until he was able to secure a vicarage with a comfortable living.

She picked up her young brother’s latest letter and found some solace in rereading the lines crossed so carefully to save her the expense of receiving a second sheet. His studies prospered—but then they always did. In fact only one of his many paragraphs disturbed her. It grieved him, he wrote, that he had yet to make the sort of connection that would assure him of a living when he graduated so he would no longer be a burden to her.

Phoebe’s fingers tightened on the page. He would meet someone or obtain a recommendation or discover a patron among the wealthy and influential gentlemen who maintained their old ties to their university. It might take time of course—another month, perhaps another term—but he would manage it. He had to. In her own subservient position she had no chance of finding him a patron. She was lucky enough to be able to earn sufficient funds to help meet his expenses.

Of course if she’d enjoyed a Season and been able to marry— But that had never been financially possible. Best to shove such a wistful dream to the back of her mind. She knew all too well that brooding over the impossible did no good. A suitable marriage, while it would solve so many of her difficulties, would not come her way. Setting aside Thomas’ letter, she prepared for bed and slipped between the sheets.

Even without a patron, she and Thomas would manage, she assured herself as she drifted toward sleep. She had only to retain her position for two or three years more at the most.

But she had to retain it. Both she and Thomas desperately needed the money she earned.

An image rose in her mind of Sir Miles Saunderton’s tall dynamic figure, of the implacability of his expression and her heart shrank within her.

* * * * *

Phoebe entered the dining room a trifle late the following morning to be met by a frown of disapproval from a gaunt lady of advancing years and receding patience. The spinster wore her usual austere gown of brown merino, made high at the neck and long in the sleeve and the steely gray plaits of her hair wound about her head in a style that defied so much as a single tendril to dare to escape confinement. The irascible temperament of Miss Aurelia Crippenham, the junior of the sisters who ran the Academy, had never been known to improve one jot with the consumption of her breakfast.

Phoebe murmured an excuse, very much aware of the agonized gaze of Miss Lucilla Saunderton following her as she filled her plate and took her accustomed seat.

The elder Miss Crippenham, a softer plumper version of her younger sister, appeared in the doorway. The gaze she cast about the assembled company held resignation and regret and more than a little annoyance. It settled on Lucilla. “Miss Saunderton,” she said in a weary voice, “you will oblige me by coming to my office if you please.”

Phoebe looked up and met the unspoken plea for reassurance in Lucilla’s eyes. She gave her a smile of encouragement then resolutely studied her plate while the girl hurried from the room. Lucy had nothing to fear. Her brother must have returned and would shortly whisk her from the clutches of the martinets who ran the Academy, leaving Phoebe to bear the brunt of their annoyance. While Lucy set forth to enjoy an undoubtedly successful London Season, Phoebe would remain here in deep disgrace until some new problem redirected the attentions of the Misses Crippenham. Disgrace she could bear as long as she retained her position—and her salary.

The meal continued in a silence unusually tense. Only an occasional whisper sounded, to be hushed when Miss Aurelia fixed the culprit with an icy stare. Phoebe kept an eye on the door but Lucilla did not return. At last as the hour neared for the first lessons of the day, she gathered her other students, shooed them up the stairs and set them to their task.

A short while later a sudden whispering and giggling erupted in the schoolroom that should have contained only the sounds of young ladies hard at work composing letters of acceptance and refusal to a variety of social engagements. Phoebe looked up from the poorly phrased example she corrected. Five of her six charges remained at their writing tables but one had crept to the window which looked down on Queen’s Square.

“He’s stepping down,” hissed Miss Georgeana Middleton, an enterprising sixteen-year-old. “I can see him.”

“Are his grays hitched to the curricle?” whispered Miss Honoria Weyland, a fair-haired seventeen-year-old with pale skin prone to freckles. She fixed her bright eyes on her informer with avid interest.

Lady Jane Hatchard, a long-faced child with dark hair and a supercilious gaze, wrinkled her nose. “Only you’d care about such a paltry thing as that.”

“Paltry! Why I daresay they are almost as famous as he is,” asserted the indignant Miss Weyland.

“How has he tied his neckcloth?” demanded the plump and quite pretty Miss Hanna Brookstone in hushed tones that carried all too well. Several giggles answered this question.

“Silly. I can’t see it from here,” said Miss Middleton. “He’s wearing a driving coat though and it has upward of sixteen capes and the largest, shiniest buttons I have ever seen.”

“No, has it really?” Miss Brookstone sprang to her feet. “Is he wearing his Hessians? And are they shining so one can see one’s face in them?”

Phoebe stood, straightening to her full if decidedly uncommanding height. “You will oblige me,” she said in icy tones, “by coming away from the window and not behaving as if you were raised in a stableyard.”

“That is only Honoria,” declared Lady Jane.

“But it is Rushmere!” cried Miss Middleton, making no move to obey her preceptress’s injunction. “He has come to take Juliana on a visit to her grandmother, for the old lady hasn’t been well. It’s been in the papers, you know, that the dowager marchioness has been staying here in Bath to take the waters and that Rushmere has been in frequent attendance upon her.”

“In Laura Place,” added the well-informed Miss Brookstone.

Phoebe regarded them with disapproval. “Your behavior goes beyond polite interest. You seem to think a marquis is a raree at a fair.”

“Not just any marquis,” explained Miss Middleton in the tone of a social superior explaining the obvious to a hopeless outsider. “It is Rushmere. Even you must be aware he is a noted Corinthian.”

“A Nonpareil,” added Miss Weyland in a voice of awe.

“A widower,” stuck in the socially aware Miss Brookstone. “It is a pity he is so very old. He must be five-and-thirty if he is a day.”

Miss Sophronia Farhnam sighed. “What does that matter? He is quite the handsomest gentleman I have ever seen.”

“You think every gentleman you see is the handsomest,” came Lady Jane’s prompt and withering response.

“Well, Rushmere is-is—” Miss Farhnam faltered, searching her limited vocabulary for words to express her opinion.

The embodiment of the dream of every schoolroom miss, reflected Phoebe. Not to mention every schoolroom instructress. She’d indulged in a few daydreams herself since first she’d encountered him in the office of the Misses Crippenham. He’d seemed the ideal of masculine perfection.

A horrid realization thrust itself into her mind. The Marquis of Rushmere had been eclipsed, his perfect Corinthian image fading before that of another, less noble but more commanding, gentleman.
The devil take Sir Miles Saunderton
, she fumed. How dare he invade her private daydreams? And how dare the mere thought of him set her pulse beating faster?

It has to be with anger,
she reassured herself. He was far too disagreeable to stir any other emotion within her. What she really needed was to encounter Rushmere again, to allow his obvious good breeding and elegant appearance to soothe her ruffled composure. Of course the only time she’d been introduced to him, when he’d been awaiting his thirteen-year-old daughter on a previous occasion, he had barely acknowledged her. But that was only to be expected in a nobleman of his rank.

“He’s the handsomest!” finished Miss Farhnam, giving up the struggle.

“And he is a leader of society,” added Miss Middleton, “which you would know, Miss Caldicot, had you ever been to London. Even if he weren’t a marquis he’d still be important.”

“And handsome,” asserted Miss Farhnam.

“He is a hardened rake!” pronounced the whey-faced Miss Amabel Grisham in tones of disdain. “I have not the least interest in seeing him.”

“That’s because you’re such a baby. You’re only fourteen,” laughed Lady Jane from the lofty advantage of being almost eighteen months her senior. “Besides, what would you know of him? Or of rakes for that matter?”

“And what makes you think it is acceptable to speak of such things?” demanded Phoebe, without much hope of being attended to.

“I do know,” persisted Miss Grisham. “Better than any of you. He danced with my sister Louisa once and she said he flirted with her in the most outrageous manner and put her to the blush so many times she was near to tears.”

“Louisa Grisham is always near to tears,” exclaimed Miss Middleton. “She’s a pea goose. My brother says so.”

“Your brother—” began Lady Jane but subsided under the quelling glare directed at her by Phoebe.

“That is quite enough of that.” Phoebe strode to the window and pulled the curtains. A useless gesture, she knew, for the marquis had long since disappeared within doors, denying her the chance of a glimpse of him as well. But he would come out again and as much as she might be tempted to imitate Miss Middleton and peek out the window at this elegant personage, she would do no such thing. Nor, she determined as she turned back to the room, would she permit her charges to so indulge themselves either. “Now I presume, since you all have so much time to fritter away on gossip, that you have each completed your letters? If so then you will not mind writing an invitation to a house party which I expect you to hand to me before you meet with
Mademoiselle
Dupre for your French lessons.”

A series of groans greeted this pronouncement but Phoebe had the satisfaction of seeing the young ladies return to their tasks with determination if not with enthusiasm. That would do, Phoebe reflected.

The marquis would be gone by the time she went downstairs to the music room where she next must spend a painful hour or more instructing her young ladies upon the pianoforte. A pity, for a glimpse of him would have quite brightened her day. Repressing a sigh, she returned to her desk and resumed her interrupted task of trying to decipher the illegible scrawls of Miss Honoria Weyland.

She had not been at this long when
Mademoiselle
Dupre herself came in, saying she was to sit with the girls while Phoebe attended the Misses Crippenham in their office. A stab of panic pierced Phoebe’s usual calm but she managed to quell it. She would be reprimanded of course. She expected it. But it wouldn’t be more than that. The ladies probably wished to discuss Lucilla’s withdrawal from the Academy. It was even likely they would inform her she would have a new pupil arriving to begin classes on the morrow. Their Academy enjoyed an exalted reputation—probably because of their rigid discipline and high standards.

She made her way down the stairs and noted with a touch of regret that the marquis was nowhere in sight. Well she must count what blessings she possessed. At least there wasn’t any Miles Saunderton lingering about to make her morning any more unpleasant. She knocked on the office door then entered in response to the call from within.

Both the Misses Crippenham sat behind the great desk upon which only a very few papers lay in a neat stack. The surface was so tidy it always made Phoebe uncomfortable. Everything about the room screamed precision. Books lined up in perfect rows on the shelves, chairs stood at identical angles, the triple-branched candelabrum rested in the exact center of the occasional table which in turn stood exactly midway along the side wall.

The two ladies, when seen together, bore a striking resemblance to one another. Though Miss Crippenham, on the verge of her sixtieth birthday, possessed features less sharp than her younger sister’s, their eyes shared an uncompromising steady stare. Daughters of dukes had been known to quail beneath their regard. They might wear their graying hair in different styles, Miss Aurelia’s in a braided crown and Miss Crippenham’s in a chignon but the same precise neatness characterized both. In matters of dress though, Miss Crippenham proved herself the less austere. Her dove gray gown boasted a knot of ribands and—daringly—a narrow flounce.

At the moment neither of the two ladies radiated goodwill. Miss Aurelia, the younger by three years, regarded Phoebe without speaking, her expression stern. Her elder sister emitted a sigh eloquent of resigned disappointment. “We have had Sir Miles Saunderton with us this morning,” she said.

Phoebe’s heart sank. Yet even these high sticklers for the proprieties could hardly blame her for Lucilla’s escapade. But in that she found herself wrong.

Miss Crippenham cleared her throat. “You have been shockingly remiss in your duties, Miss Caldicot,” she said with a note of sincere regret. “That is something we do not tolerate at our Academy.”

“Not in anyone,” added Miss Aurelia. “Lucilla Saunderton has been sent away.”