It Begins with a Kiss (2 page)

“Do you even know the man?” Fiona demanded, her own frustration lending a sharp edge to her voice. “I mean, how do you know you’ll suit?”

If only Sarah looked more excited. But she looked… resigned, and it didn’t bode well.

But there was nothing Fiona or Pip could do to change it.

“Actually, I do know him,” Sarah said with a quick smile. “Mr. Clark is a nice man. And he needs me. He’ll inherit a small estate down by Lyme Regis where we’ll raise wheat and a few milk cows and all manner of chickens.”

“Even better than babies,” Fiona offered, wishing she could feel enthusiastic about Sarah’s future. “You get to have animals.”

Sarah loved animals. She spent more time in the mews than the schoolroom. But this wasn’t the way to gain them. Not when they came with such a burden of debt. Fiona knew perfectly well that even bringing a solid dowry to her marriage, Sarah would spend the rest of her life paying Mr. Clark back for marrying a girl with no name, just as she’d spent the first sixteen years paying her parents back for taking in a bastard child.

Looking from one friend to the other, Pippin seemed to deflate. “You’re all leaving me.”

Fiona got to her feet, but Sarah already had the tiny blond in a big hug. “Nonsense. We’ll all keep in touch. We promised, didn’t we? A letter a week for the rest of our lives. And we’ll share house parties and visits to town and trips to the seaside.”

They wouldn’t, and they knew it. But it was a lovely thing right now to pretend.

“Besides,” Fiona said, gathering both her friends to her. “Lizzie will be back before long. I mean, how long can it take to mourn such a monster?”

“That’s just it,” Pip protested, shaking off the hugs. “She’s not coming back.”

It was Sarah’s turn to look shocked. “What? What do you mean?”

As if her legs had just given out on her, Sarah plopped down on the lone chair in the room. Pip knelt by the chair, holding Sarah’s hand. There was no mistaking what a shock the news was for poor Sarah. Fiona had no doubt why. Sarah had come to Last Chance Academy looking for friends. But with Lizzie, she had found far more.

If Lizzie had been there, it all would have been self-explanatory. Even though Lizzie was a rare beauty, there could be no mistaking the resemblance between her and the plainer, quieter Sarah, especially around the eyes, which Lizzie had always claimed to be her father’s.

The question had never been asked; it would have been too cruel. But the assumption had always hung over Sarah’s head that everyone knew exactly who her real father was. Her father, who had been dead only a week. No wonder she was being shipped off to an arranged marriage.

“Lizzie’s brother notified Miss Chase yesterday,” Pip said. “They have decided that Lizzie’s mother needs her.”

Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes. “I wanted to say good-bye to her.”

Pip nodded. “We all did.”

Fiona wanted so badly to ask Sarah if she knew—if Lizzie had admitted—what everyone suspected. Heaven knew that even for Lizzie’s legendary aloofness, she seemed to cherish her friendship with Sarah. But some things were simply too hard to ask.

Fiona sank back down to sit on her bed. “Poor Lizzie,” she said. “No more midnight picnics.”

Pip grinned. “Or kitchen raids.”

“Skinny-dipping,” Sarah said, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“Excursions to see the gypsies.”

“Hiring fairs.”

Sarah actually laughed. “We were lucky we escaped that mess,” she said, grinning at Pip. “You almost went for a scullery maid.”

“I would have made a brilliant scullery maid,” Pip defended herself.

“You would have made a terrible scullery maid,” Fiona protested. “You can barely rise before ten. Besides, since you won’t wear your glasses, you’d never see the dirt. You’d be sacked within the week.”

Pip sighed dramatically. “Well, we’ll never know. We’ll also never know whether Lizzie could have passed for a groom.”

That quickly the lighthearted mood died.

“Poor thing,” Fiona murmured, her gaze on her chapped hands. “To be sent back to that awful place with no hope for escape. At least here she had us.”

“Her father was ill,” Sarah reminded her.
Ill
being a euphemism for completely, barking mad. Lizzie had been sent to Last Chance after her father had tried to burn down the last two schools he’d sent her to. “It has to be better at home now.”

Pip scowled. “You never met her brother.”

For a long moment there was silence in the room as they thought of their friend. Fiona was going to miss Lizzie. She hadn’t been as close to her as Sarah and Pip, but Lizzie had still been a co-conspirator. Lizzie had always given their ragtag little group the illusion of dignity. It was no small thing to be the daughter of a duke. Lizzie knew exactly how to throw that kind of weight around. Except, evidently, with her own brother.

“I’m going to miss her,” Pip admitted, then offered a rueful smile. “Even if she could be a bit of a prig.”

“Prig?” Fiona countered. “Lizzie is higher in the instep than Lady Esterhazy.”

Sarah turned on her, eyes flashing, ready as always to defend the girl who looked so much like her. Just as quickly, though, her face melted into a wistful grin. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Lizzie would never lower herself to be compared to Lady Esterhazy. You meant the queen, at least.”

And with that, the three of them fell into a bleak kind of silence. Fiona considered her friends. Pip was right. Their time here as a little family was over. No matter what happened after tonight, they were splitting apart and going their own ways.

She wasn’t ready, suddenly. She wanted to crawl under her blanket, close her eyes, and pretend that nothing had changed. That no one had taken her sister from the little cottage where they’d lived. That there was no reason to leave her friends. To forfeit the measure of warmth and comfort they had been able to scratch out of their Spartan existence.

But there was every reason. And she had put off her escape too long. Climbing off the bed, she brushed crumbs from her moss green redingote.

“What now?” Sarah asked.

Fiona looked up. “I need to get as far away as I can before dawn.”

“How?” Pip asked.

“Why?” Sarah added.

Pip finally passed over the letter.

Sarah never wasted words on redundant expressions of emotion. “Well, it’s simple,” she said, handing the creased paper back to Fiona. “My coach should arrive here in an hour. Since there’s no reason for me to wait, I’ll set off right away. If you can get to the Bull Inn, Fee, we’ll pick you up there.”

“But Lyme Regis is the opposite direction from Edinburgh,” Pip protested.

Sarah thought about it a moment. “Not a problem,” she said, lifting her gaze to the window as if she could see the routes available. “We have to go through Newbury anyway. We’ll drop you at the Chequers Inn when we change horses, Fee. The Oxford Road is right there and you can catch a northbound coach. Since it would be much easier to go east into London to reach Edinburgh, no one will expect you to go west.”

“No!” Pip insisted, on her toes, as if an extra inch of height would make her argument. “Please, you have to listen to me. Alex is coming; I know it. I’m telling you, you’ll regret not being here.”

Fiona hated tears. Even so, they crowded her throat as she faced her dearest friends. “I can’t wait, Pip. Mairead is missing. I have to find out why; I have to discover where she is, and if I stay here, Miss Chase will find some way to prevent me.”

Before Pip could protest, Fiona gave her another bone-crushing hug. “I’ll be in touch. I promise.”

She refused to think what her life would be without the support of these special girls, who had made her exile here tolerable. She couldn’t even imagine how she would get to Edinburgh on the pittance she’d saved up. But she needed to get to Mairead. It was all she could think of.

“Please,” Pip begged. “Alex might know where Ian is—surely Ian will know what to do.”

Fiona shook her head. “Ian will be too busy.”

Ian had always been too busy.

She knew she shouldn’t blame him for everything, just because he was her older brother. But he’d been with the army when their mother had died; he’d shipped Fiona and Mairead to this awful place and then remained silent when Mairead had failed at it, as they all knew she would. And now, when Mairead had been taken from the home she loved, without even the support of their old housekeeper, he was gone.

It had always been up to Fiona to cope. It was now.

Folding up her letter, she slipped it into her coat pocket. “I need to say good-bye, Pip,” she said, her voice wavering only a bit. “You need to help me sneak out of school. I have a date at the Bull.”

And then, trying her best to ignore the tears sliding down Pippin’s face, she gathered her friend into a fierce hug.

Why was it always up to him? Snapping his whip by the leader’s ear, Alex Knight guided his curricle around a long curve in the Bath Road. His head was splitting and his stomach threatening revolt from the hangover he’d earned the night before. Not the best time to be rousted out of bed and sent on an urgent mission. By curricle. In the drizzle.

“How do you know she’s coming this way?” he demanded, too tired and wretched to be polite.

Alongside him, his sister hung on to her bonnet with one hand and the side rail with the other. “Because Sarah is taking her as far as Newbury so she can catch a mail coach north. I gave her my pin money.”

Alex glared. “Couldn’t you just once keep your nose out of someone else’s business?”

He could feel the resentment radiate off Pip like steam. “She’s my friend, Alex. Would you expect me to desert her the way that brother of hers has?”

“I would expect you to respect the wisdom of your elders.”

She snorted. “The same elders who left her in that school to be caned and starved like a felon?”

He sighed, his head throbbing like a broken foot. “Theatrics are unnecessary, Pip. I said I’d go after her, and I am.”

She flashed him a bright grin. “You came so fast, too. How did you do that?”

Alex wasn’t about to tell her the truth, that he hadn’t even gotten her missive. He’d been sent by his superiors with specific orders to meet with Miss Ferguson. The information he needed to impart wasn’t his to share with anyone else, though, not even with his little sister.

“I was going to be in this area anyway,” he said, “and the pater asked me to check in on you. He seemed less than amused by the reports of your latest prank.”

She scowled. “It wasn’t a prank. We were attempting to keep Jenny Packham from being punished again.”

“It’s not your job to decide who deserves punishment, Pip.”

This time it was she who glared. “No seven-year-old girl deserves such treatment. I don’t care what you say.”

He smiled at her. “Bread and water and sermons, I suppose?”

She blinked. “You really think I’d risk Father’s displeasure for sermons? Just how frivolous do you think I am?”

“Frivolous enough to dress a little girl as a chimney sweep and hide her in the mews.”

“So she wouldn’t be caned for the third time this week.”

Alex shot her a look of disbelief. “Come, Pip. No one canes seven-year-old girls. And spinning tall tales will not get you sent home. Father sent you to Miss Chase’s to be civilized, and so you shall be.”

Pip stared. “You really don’t believe me.” Briefly she turned away. When she spoke again, her voice was flat and small. “You were never going to help at all, were you?”

He shrugged. “You have been known to… embellish the truth from time to time.”

“Did I ever once try to run away from school, Alex? Did I ask you to help me escape? I asked you to convince Father to come see for himself. I asked for help, because the little ones couldn’t do it themselves.”

He shot her a brief look and saw something perilously close to grief in his little sister’s eyes. He’d never seen her like this. Not even the day their father had banished her to boarding school for participating in a bareback horse race through Hyde Park. A surprising sense of dread crawled through his belly.

“No,” he said. “You can’t expect me to believe that the girls in a select academy are being caned and starved.”

Pip turned away, as if she’d already given up. “How else do you control an incorrigible girl?”

He snuck another look to see that Pip was serious. The light that always brightened her piquant little face was missing. She looked… bleak.

Something twisted hard in Alex’s gut. Pip might have an excellent imagination and enjoy a good tantrum every so often. But she was right. She had never once asked him to bring her home. Oh God, what had he missed?

He fought a red tide of rage. “You’re telling me you’ve been caned.”

“Of course.” Her grin was unrepentant. “I’m
cheeky
.”

He clutched the reins so hard he almost ran them off the road. She’d been
caned
? He was going to kill someone. He had been assured that Miss Chase’s was safe.
Safe.
Safe meant that his little sister never need be afraid. That she was cossetted and comforted during the time her own family couldn’t do it. It did
not
mean…

Giving the reins another sharp flip, he focused on the road. There was nothing he could do until he finished this bit. But when that was done? There was going to be hell to pay.