The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (5 page)

Of the non-cherub population, William counted four. A woman in late middle age, with a cap like an overgrown cabbage, sat in a chair before a tea table, flanked on either side by a man and a woman dressed in clothes of equally outmoded vintage. The man wore a frock coat and a slightly moth-eaten periwig, the woman a wide-skirted gown of heavy brocade. A slim girl in a blue gown stood by the windows, blending neatly with the draperies.

“Mr. Wooliston, Mrs. Wooliston, and Miss Wooliston.” Miss Meadows fired off the names like pistol shots. She nodded at the woman in the immense cap. “And that’s Miss Climpson, the prime preceptress of this academy, such as it is.” She grinned at him, rather grimly. “Let’s see if
you
can get any sense out of her.”

It felt like a challenge. “I’ll do my best.”

His companion indulged in a smile that looked alarmingly like a smirk. “Do,” she said. “Do.”

It was not entirely encouraging.

Advancing into the room, William approached the woman in the massive cap. “Miss Climpson? I’m William Reid. Elizabeth’s father,” he added when Miss Climpson looked at him rather blankly.

Miss Meadows gave him an “I told you so” look.

William turned his back on her and concentrated the force of his charm on Miss Climpson. “What’s this about my Lizzy going missing?”

The ribbons on Miss Climpson’s enormous cap bobbed dizzyingly. “It is most inconvenient,” she said spiritedly. “How is one to teach a girl when she is not on the premises? It presents a distinct pedagogical problem.”

William would have thought their problems were more than pedagogical. “How long have the girls been missing?”

“Missing,” said Miss Climpson, “is such a strong word. I prefer to think of them as having misplaced themselves. Most inconsiderately.”

“Are you sure she’s gone? She was always such a quiet child.” The woman in the old-fashioned gown peered at a chair as though expecting to find her daughter lurking between the threads of the upholstery.

“Can’t be trusted not to wander off. Temperamental things, ewes,” said the man in the periwig expansively, rising from his chair to greet the new arrival. “But they tend to find their way back to pasture, don’t they—er?”

William dodged a genial whack on the shoulder. “Reid. Colonel Reid. It seems we’re in the same boat—er, pasture. My ewe appears to have wandered from the fold as well.”

The man stuck out a hand. “Bertrand Wooliston.” He nodded to the woman in the brocade gown. “My wife, Prudence. And I see you’ve already met our Miss Meadows.”

“Yes,” said William guardedly. “You might say that. Now, about the girls . . .”

“Never a bit of trouble,” said Mrs. Woolison, squinting at him through a pair of pince-nez pinched far too low on her nose. “Agnes wound wool so beautifully.”

“There, there, my love.” Mr. Wooliston pounded her soundly on the shoulder, setting his periwig askew. “Leave them alone and they’ll come home; that’s how it goes.”

“Wagging their tails behind them?” Miss Meadows snorted, an emission of air that rather adequately summed up William’s feelings. “I sincerely doubt it.”

William was beginning to experience grave doubts about Miss Climpson’s academy. “Do the girls here misplace themselves frequently?”

“Fencing,” said Bertrand Wooliston firmly. “That’s what’s needed. Good, strong fencing. None of these doors and windows.” He nodded scornfully at the long sash windows that looked out into a scrubby sort of garden.

“Be that as it may”—William had always prided himself on his ability to adapt to the local idiom—“the, er, ewes have already left the pasture. I’d suggest we put our efforts to finding them, wouldn’t you? How long have they been missing?”

Miss Meadows cut into a confusion of garbled explanations and deliberations from the others. “Two weeks,” she said bluntly.

William’s eyebrows soared towards his hairline. “Two
weeks
?”

He’d sent Lizzy to England to keep her safe, by God. She’d lived those first few years with his wife’s mother, in Bristol, but when the letter had come suggesting Lizzy be sent to a young lady’s academy for a bit of polish—well, it seemed a good solution to an awkward situation. Mrs. Davies was Kat’s grandmother, not Lizzy’s. It was a golden opportunity for Lizzy, Kat had assured him. The school catered to the children of the upper gentry, the daughters of landed ladies and gentlemen. The reflected luster would smooth Lizzy’s way in the world, wiping out the taint of her birth. It was an opportunity William could never have afforded for her, and he had responded enthusiastically.

He had never imagined this. Didn’t the affluent of England keep closer watch on their offspring than that?

Mlle. de Fayette stepped forward. “It is not entirely as it sounds,” she said hesitantly. “In the beginning, you see, it was thought that Miss Reid and Miss Wooliston followed one of their schoolmates to her home. Miss Reid was of the most unhappy when Miss Fitzhugh left the school.”

“You’ve sent to this Miss Fitzhugh?” said William brusquely. He hadn’t much of a temper, as a rule, but the idea of harm to his Lizzy . . . Lizzy, whom he hadn’t seen in ten years. He could see her as she’d been when he put her on that ship, seven and without guile.

“We sent to Miss Fitzhugh at once!” Mlle. de Fayette hastened to assure him. Her face fell. “Miss Fitzhugh expressed the confusion entire.”

William grasped at straws. “It’s sure you are that she was telling the truth?”

Mlle. de Fayette lowered her eyes. “Miss Fitzhugh was of the most indignant at being, as she said, ‘left out of the fun.’ Her brother, Monsieur Fitzhugh, was of the most accommodating. He searched through all the wardrobes and under the beds, and even under the vegetable beds in the gardens. The girls, they were nowhere to be found.”

“All right, then,” said William grimly. “Where else?”

Mlle. de Fayette and her employer exchanged a long look.

“In other words,” said Miss Meadows, before William could, “you haven’t the slightest idea where they are.”

“We know where they aren’t,” provided Miss Climpson brightly, and it was only with the greatest effort that William kept his hands from closing around her shoulders and giving her a hearty shake. There were no words for the nightmare images that assaulted him. They were too terrible to be given a name. “By the process of elimination . . .”

“There are only several million places the girls might be,” said Miss Meadows crisply. William looked at her with gratitude. “This is useless. We need clues.” She paced across the room, drawing all eyes as she whipped back and forth, back and forth, tossing out directives as she went. “The Fitzhugh girl will need to be questioned, as will the staff. Is there a porter in this establishment? No. Then we’ll need to interview someone who can tell us of their comings and goings.”

“Really, Miss Meadows,” protested Miss Climpson. “I don’t see why that should be necessary. The girls are most strictly chaperoned. . . .”

“Then why aren’t they here?” said Miss Meadows with withering sarcasm. “Right. Let’s to business.”

Young Miss Wooliston untangled herself from the curtains and stepped forward, her voice pleasant and level, a soothing patch of calm in the whirlwind that was Miss Meadows. “Were there any letters before they left? Any”—she cast a glance over her shoulder at the older Woolistons—“billets-doux?”

“She means love letters,” said Miss Meadows baldly.

Love letters? William’s mouth opened indignantly. He could picture his daughter, all tousled curls and sun-browned hands, a little imp of mischief. Why, his Lizzy was too young for that sort of thing, practically a baby yet. She was all of—

Seventeen.

The realization of it hit him like a stone. Seventeen. His Maria had been fifteen when he’d met her, sixteen when they’d married. When he remembered what they’d got up to behind her parents’ backs—well, it was a distinctly sobering thought. William’s mouth snapped shut again.

“They’ve not been”—William had trouble getting the words out—“consorting with men?”

The French mistress hastened to correct him. “Oh no. They were not the sort. I have seen”—with a guilty look at the headmistress, she quickly caught herself—“that is, one comes to recognize the signs of an affair of the heart. These girls, they were still girls.”

Oh, one did, did one? “You’ve had girls run off with men before?” William asked faintly.

“‘Run off’ is such a harsh term,” said the headmistress. “It was really more of a precipitate departure.”

“It was only the once,” put in the French mistress. “The gardener who passed the notes, he was—how do you say?—let go.”

William failed to find that entirely reassuring.

“I think,” said Miss Meadows crisply, “that we ought to see their rooms.”

“Yes,” William agreed hastily. “Yes, we ought.”

Miss Meadows regarded him imperiously. “Come along, then. Mademoiselle de Fayette, you’ll show us the way? No, no, Prudence, no need to come with us. We’ll see ourselves back, won’t we, Jane? Bertrand, see your wife home; there’s nothing more for you to do here.”

William watched with amazement and admiration as Miss Meadows neatly sent everyone packing. The elder Woolistons departed for their lodgings. Miss Climpson, routed, made excuses about seeing to the girls. Miss Wooliston watched the proceedings with a faint smile of amusement.

“Well?” Miss Meadows turned to William with a raised eyebrow. “What are you standing around for? Are you coming to their room or going home?”

William saluted. “I am yours to command. At least so far as the second landing.”

Miss Wooliston covered a smile.

Miss Meadows regarded him haughtily. “Hmph,” she said. “Come along, then.”

Without waiting to see whether they followed, she stalked towards the stairs.

“I seek my daughter,” quoth bold Sir Magnifico.

“Seek her not here,” warned the Mother Superior, “for she is not within these walls.”

She spoke him fair, but Sir Magnifico’s misgivings misgave him. “Show me to her cell,” he commanded, “and then we shall see what is to be seen.”

The Mother Superior regarded him with a weary eye. “Bold sir,” she said, “it is not what is seen but what is unseen that we needs must see.”

“Madame,” quoth the knight, “your speech be passing strange.”

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

G
wen didn’t like any of this. She didn’t like it one bit.

All her instincts, well honed over years of midnight raids, were shouting “trouble.” How much of the trouble was coming from the situation and how much from a certain sun-bronzed colonel was a matter for debate. Bad enough that Agnes had gone missing; worse yet to have to deal with the parent of the other girl, poking his nose in—however attractive a nose it might be—and posing questions that might prove inconvenient for everyone.

And by everyone, she meant the Pink Carnation.

The last thing they needed was someone else taking an interest in the matter. Not that she thought there was a matter, of course. Until proven otherwise, she was firmly of the opinion that those empty-headed chits had simply jaunted off on some expedition of their own, never thinking whom they might worry in the process.

Even so, just on the off chance, on the very, very off chance, there were anything more nefarious about it, anything that came in a tricolor package with a faint whiff of frog, much the better to keep it all as under wraps as possible.

Behind her, Gwen could hear Colonel Reid gently quizzing that insipid gudgeon of a French mistress, drawing her out about the number of pupils in the school, their routines, their habits. His accent was a lilting drawl, distinctly un-English without being recognizably anything else. There was a pleasant burr to it, deep and musical. And quite, quite deliberate, Gwen reminded herself. She knew a born rogue when she saw one. There might be threads of silver among the red of Colonel Reid’s hair, but that crooked smile was pure danger.

No matter. Gwen was proof against that sort of thing. He wasn’t going to get anything out of
her
. She had learned her lesson the hard way—unlike the weak-willed Mlle. de Fayette, who appeared to be lapping it up, relaxing in the Colonel’s company, taking the arm he offered to help her up the stairs as she told him everything and anything he wanted to know.

Catching her eye, the Colonel had the effrontery to wink at her.

To wink! As if they were in some sort of conspiracy together. Admittedly, they were the only ones with any wits in the room, but he was a fool if he thought she was going to let herself be drawn in that way.

Stiff backed, Gwen marched up the stairs. The use of charm as a tool made her hackles rise. She respected a more direct approach. A battering ram approach. At least one knew where one stood with the battering ram, none of this butter-wouldn’t-melt nonsense that could mean yes, no, or maybe.

Not that Colonel Reid didn’t get results that way, she admitted grudgingly. He was doing far better eliciting answers from the French mistress than she had. The woman had simply stared pop-eyed at her. No spine, no spine at all.

“The room, it is this way,” said Mlle. de Fayette, gesturing diffidently down the landing. “If you would be so good?”

“Good” wasn’t quite the word Gwen would have used. She turned to the French teacher. “How many students on the hall?”

The hallway was far longer than the frontage of an average townhouse. Miss Climpson must have knocked two or three houses together to make up her school. The doors were neatly labeled with the names of the pupils who inhabited them, two or three to a room. The large rooms at the corners appeared to be reserved for those lucky pupils whose parents had secured for them a suite of their own.

“Twenty-two on this floor, twenty-three on the floor above. The mistresses live on the floor with the students,” added Mlle. de Fayette quickly. “I and the games mistress on this floor and two other mistresses on the floor above. That way, there is always someone near.”

Twenty-odd students to two teachers? The faculty didn’t stand a chance. It was a bit high for the students to try the trellis—not that she’d put it past them—but there were plenty of other ways for an enterprising young lady to effect an inconspicuous exit.

“How many staircases are there?” asked Gwen.

“There are three.” Mlle. de Fayette looked mildly surprised at the query. “The front stair and two back stairs.”

Gwen exchanged a look with Jane. “Where do the back stairs let out?”

Mlle. de Fayette was beginning to look distinctly nervous. “One by the garden and the other by the alley.”

In other words, two potential means of escape. Having seen the standards prevailing in the rest of the school, Gwen would be surprised if the doors were bolted. The main stair was in the middle and the back stairs at either end of the long hallway, presumably the stairs belonging to each of the original houses. It would be ridiculously easy for the girls to wait until the mistresses were distracted at one end to make their escape down the other.

Presuming, of course, they had left of their own volition.

“This is the room,” said Mlle. de Fayette, opening the door onto a square chamber the size of one of the small anterooms at the Hotel de Balcourt.

It wasn’t an unpleasant room. Two long windows looked out over the scraggle of the back garden, letting in the pale gray light of a rainy day. Water seeped mistily along the windowpanes. There was a narrow cot on each side of the room, neatly made with a plain blue blanket, standard issue from the look of it, although Agnes’s was embellished by two elaborately embroidered pillows. Fashion papers torn from magazines had been pinned to the whitewashed walls. Two desks gave testament to their owners’ personalities, the Reid girl’s cluttered with books and papers all jumbled together, Agnes’s neatly arranged.

Jane began unobtrusively sorting through the material on Agnes’s desk while Gwen, without waiting for leave, opened the wardrobe. Matching white muslin dresses hung from pegs, seemingly all the same. It made it very difficult to ascertain whether any were missing—although, presumably, if the girls had run away, they would have had the sense not to do so wearing the uniform of the school.

One thing, however, was missing. There was no sign of a portmanteau.

Her curiosity whetted, Gwen stood on tiptoe to inspect the top of the wardrobe. Nothing there either. She felt a burst of euphoria. If the girls had taken bags with them, it made it more likely that they had planned their own departure. Kidnappers seldom afforded one time to pack.

“What I don’t understand,” said Colonel Reid, looking to Mlle. de Fayette with an expression of appeal that Gwen was sure worked beautifully with most women, “is why my Lizzy would choose to run away. Was there any reason she might want to go?”

Mlle. de Fayette shook her head. “Miss Reid seemed of the most happy. She was to play a shepherdess in the spring theatricals. She took the interest most keen in her costume.”

“And the other girl?”

“Agnes,” Gwen snapped, although the pronouncement lost some force when delivered with her head stuck under the bed. She had found the missing portmanteaux.

Blast and botheration.

“Agnes,” repeated Colonel Reid, with an apologetic smile. “Was she happy?”

“Of all the students, Miss Wooliston was the most accomplished in her studies,” said Mlle. de Fayette. “The studies were a thing of great interest for her.”

Jane had drifted from Agnes’s desk to Lizzy’s, leafing with seeming nonchalance through the blizzard of debris that coated the surface, not just papers, but bits of ribbons, a broken bit of jewelry, the cheap sort of bracelet one purchased at country fairs, and even a half-eaten biscuit.

“Did the girls receive any letters?” she asked quietly. “Or packages?”

“Miss Wooliston had very little correspondence.” Mlle. de Fayette took a deep breath. “Miss Reid had many packages from her brother—in India, sometimes as many as two in a month. There was one just before she left.”

“That would be my Alex,” said the Colonel, and there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. “My oldest. He’s always taken an interest in the little ones.”

Mlle. de Fayette looked up in confusion. “I had not thought— It was not an Alex of which Miss Reid made mention. It was another brother.”

“George, then,” said the Colonel, nodding knowingly. “He’s the closest to Lizzy in age. A good lad.”

Gwen squirmed up from under the bed, putting an end to the Reid family reminiscences. She thumped the portmanteaux down on Agnes’s bed. “Well, we know one thing. If they left, they didn’t take any luggage with them. Their bags are still here.”

“If I were running away,” said Colonel Reid, a certain reminiscent gleam in his eye, “I shouldn’t want to be weighing myself down with baggage. That’s a sure way to catch someone’s eye. No, I’d be rolling a few things up in a bundle, as small as possible.”

As much as Gwen hated the notion of agreeing with Colonel Reid, the idea had merit. “Street clothes beneath their school dresses,” she guessed. “They could discard the school dresses later on, in an inconspicuous alleyway. They might even have gone dressed as boys.”

Colonel Reid nodded thoughtfully. “Not a bad notion, that. I don’t know your Agnes, but our Lizzy could pass as a lad right enough. She’d probably think it a lark.”

“Hmm.” Gwen pursed her lips. “Well enough for a short period of time, but hardly for two weeks. Unless you’re in a Shakespeare play, breeches roles are difficult to maintain for any length of time.”

She must have spoken with a little too much authority, because the Colonel gave her a curious look. Fortunately, she was saved by Jane, who was frowning over a crumpled piece of paper on Lizzy Reid’s desk.

“Mademoiselle de Fayette? What was the name of the girls’ friend? The one who disclaimed their appearance.”

“Fitzhugh,” Mlle. de Fayette said promptly, hurrying across the room. “Miss Sally Fitzhugh.”

“There’s a fragment of a letter, rather blotted”—from what Gwen could see, that was a kind assessment; the letter appeared to be mostly blots—“expressing an intention to shortly pay the recipient a visit. The name on the top isn’t Sally, though. It appears to be Kit.” Jane turned the letter this way, then that. “Or Kat.”

“Kat? That will be my older—” The Colonel broke off, his face lighting up like the royal fireworks on the King’s birthday. “That’s it! By Gad, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! That’s where they’ll be.” He looked eagerly from Gwen to Jane and back again. “Don’t you see? Lizzy will have gone to Kat.”

He was all but dancing a jig in the middle of the room.

“To whom?” said Gwen with great attention to diction.

A great smile broke out across Colonel Reid’s face. “My older daughter, Katherine. She lives with her grandmother in Bristol. It’s as simple as that. She’s been all but a mother to Lizzy. Lizzy will have run to her, you mark my words.”

“Bristol isn’t so very far from here,” said Jane slowly. “It’s an easy trip by stage.”

“That’s what it is,” said Colonel Reid with great certainty. He let out a gusty waft of air. “She’ll have gone to Kat, the minx.”

Before Gwen’s eyes, Colonel Reid performed a remarkable feat of reverse aging. He seemed to drop ten years in as many minutes, the lines on his face clearing, his back straightening, his eyes glowing. Even his hair seemed springier. He slapped one leg with a resounding smack.

“And after all the bother they’ve caused! They’ll be safe as safe can be with Kat’s grandmother. Nothing to worry about at all. Mother Davies is a minister’s widow. She’ll have them reciting psalms until they’re begging to be allowed back.”

It was certainly an attractive image, but Gwen wasn’t entirely convinced. “If so, why haven’t they sent word? Why hasn’t Mrs.—”

“Davies,” supplied Colonel Reid. His smile lit up his face like a candle. It was a most remarkable effect. His happiness was dizzying. “Mrs. Davies. She’s my Kat’s grandmother.”

“Whatever her name may be,” said Gwen crushingly, “you would think she would have written.”

“Not if the girls haven’t told her they’re away without leave,” said Colonel Reid cheerfully. “If I know my Lizzy, she’ll have told her it’s half term, or whatever it is they call it here. She can spin a tale, that one.”

His Lizzy wasn’t the only one. “Arriving by themselves without luggage?” Gwen said witheringly.

“My Lizzy will have found a way to make it sound entirely plausible,” he said. “Trust me.”

“After that,” said Gwen tartly, “I don’t see why I should.”

For a moment, the Colonel was taken aback. Then he let out a hearty bark of laughter. “Fair enough! I’ll not deny the gift of the gab runs in the family. Come with me, then, and see for yourself.” He turned to Jane. “You said it’s not far to Bristol?”

“Only two hours by stage,” said Jane, who knew the routes of every major method of transportation and the relative travel times involved.

“Well, then,” said Colonel Reid, his blue eyes sparkling. “We can be there and back in no time. Shall we go retrieve those erring ewe lambs?”

The full force of Colonel’s Reid’s smile was a dangerous thing indeed. “The stage will have already gone,” said Gwen.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said heartily. “I shall call for you in the morning.”

“No need,” said Gwen coldly. “I can just as easily meet you at the White Hart. The stage leaves from there at—”

“Nine twenty-three,” Jane supplied.

“As you like,” said Colonel Reid easily. “Then we can collect our wayward lassies and give them the dressing-down of their lives, eh, Miss Meadows? Unless”—he had caught something of the look that had passed between the ladies—“is it not the thing for the chaperone to go unchaperoned? I’m new to these conventions. I can just as easily go myself, and faster, too.”

“Nonsense,” said Gwen, stung by the implication that she couldn’t go anywhere she chose. “I’m far past the age of scandal.”