To Seduce an Angel (7 page)

“How were the children treated at the Grimsby School for Foundlings?”

She almost choked. He coolly offered the altered name. So that had been the error. He waited for her to correct him. She swallowed her tea. She had mixed up the English name of the town.
Grimston
.
Grimsby
. The endings sounded equally English to her ear. She had no idea which was right. She had supposed all the names in her false papers to be inventions, but apparently only the Mertons were a fiction. Grimsby must be a real place, and one that he knew.

The trick was to keep going, to mix truth with the lies. It was like paying one's shot with promises. There would be a day of reckoning. She lowered her cup to the saucer. “Everyone had shoes and sufficient food and plenty of outdoor exercise and singing.”

“Singing, Miss Portland?”

Emma smiled to herself. He thought he'd caught her in another falsehood, but not this time. “Do your boys sing?”

“They whistle. Do you recommend singing?”

“I do.” She sat a little straighter to deliver him a truth. “You can't mope when you sing. When a lesson is hard and students are struggling, I find a song restores their spirits and makes them willing to try again.”

“What songs did you teach your students?”

“They taught me their favorite tunes.” She would not be trapped again naming names of English songs he might know.

“Did you study music yourself?”

“No.” There was another truth. No pianofortes for girls in prison.

That seemed to silence him while the little clocks went on measuring the awkward moment with indifferent ticks and whirs, and Emma waited to see whether he would keep her for the trial period or not.

She had begun to think the clocks in the room had wound down when he spoke again.

“What time tomorrow do you wish to begin?”

“I think it's wise for boys to take some exercise before they are made to attend to lessons. Do they ride or fence? What? Why do you smile?”

“Did your foundlings fence, Miss Portland? There are no fencing masters in London streets. The boys box, and they do play at games.”

She studied the lovely porcelain in her hands. She and Tatty had had tea sets to play with just as fine. Sipping tea from a delicate cup and sitting on a golden settee, she'd made another mistake, thinking of Leo's boyhood training, not the life of orphans and street urchins. Her education was full of gaps, an odd mixture of rules and tricks and truths picked up in palaces and prison. Nothing for it but to go boldly on. “I recommend an hour of games for boys each morning.” She announced it as a philosophical principle of education.

He stood with an instant shift from languid ease to command. “Let me get you paper and a pen, and you can write a plan of the day for them. I'll see that everyone helps to keep the boys to your hours.”

“Thank you.”

Emma took the pen and paper he offered. When she had written out her plan, he led her by a stair up past the chapel entry to the room he'd chosen for her.

“The room suits you?” her polite host asked, once again distant, detached.

She nodded.

“I hope you'll find it convenient to be here below the schoolroom. Good night, Miss Portland.”

Inside her room Emma leaned against the door. Her brain hurt from juggling truth and lies. She would just lean and rest for a moment before she summoned Ruth to help her undress.

In the corridor a neighboring door opened and a gruff voice spoke. She recognized it as belonging to the big man, Adam Digweed.

“Don't like ta leave ye alone, sir.”

“I'm never alone, Adam.”

“Who's to keep watch while I'm gone then?”

“The boys and I will look out for each other. Take these papers to Will. He'll investigate Miss Portland. If there's anything amiss in her credentials, Will can find it out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Show him this bit in her handwriting. It doesn't match the original letter, and I'd like Will to see what he makes of the change in handwriting.”

“Odd that she takes such a dislike to fish if she's lived in Grimsby, sir.”

“No accounting for taste, Adam.”

“That's as may be, sir, but Grimsby's famous for the fish.”

Emma held her breath. Her hands curled until her nails dug into her palms. She strained to catch the end of the conversation over the rapid pounding of her heart. She had misjudged Daventry entirely. She had believed he had genuinely hired her, and that she was the deceitful one. She had trustingly put her hand to the paper he offered, but he didn't believe her in the least. She had had little time to study the documents Aubrey had created. The English names meant nothing to her, but after she had rejected the soup, Daventry instantly caught her error over the town.

He had been testing her. She would be investigated, exposed. She might not have much time. His servant could be in London in half a day. She unclenched her fists and made herself take a slow breath. Sending inquiries north about her fictitious school would take longer. She knew nothing of the English post or English roads or of how thorough Aubrey's planning had been. If only Tatty's message had reached the duchess before Aubrey had discovered Emma. If Emma knew that Tatty was safe, she could leave. She could put the walnut dye back in her hair and take to the road.

Until she knew Tatty was safe, her masquerade was needed. With it she bought time for Tatty to reach the rendezvous and board the ship for America and a new life for herself and Leo's son. The first spy was dead. When the news of it reached home, another would be sent. In the meantime, she was a fugitive from English justice. As long as their enemies searched for Emma, Tatty and the babe were safe.

The door next to hers closed. She heard the big man's footsteps in the corridor. A new thought hit her, striking in its clarity. Daventry had given her the room next to his. Once again her impression of him turned upside down. He was suspicious of her papers. He would send his own personal ogre to investigate her, but he was not indifferent to her person as he appeared in the golden drawing room. Tatty would say his choice of a room for Emma meant only one thing. Emma agreed. More bad luck.

D
AVENTRY'LL sack 'er if we don't heed her lessons.”

“He won't sack 'er.”

“Why not?”

The urgent voices stopped when Emma turned the knob on the schoolroom door. As quiet as she was, they heard the lock click. She needed more practice yet. When she entered, Lark's sullen gaze swept once over the others. There was no question that, away from Daventry, Lark was their leader.

The pyramid was gone, and the desks and chairs had been arranged in two rows. She motioned the boys to sit, and they slouched into their seats. Scrubbed faces and combed hair did not mean willingness to learn. Emma was pretty sure that all of them were not against her, but Lark was, and the younger ones would not defy him.

Lark's deep reddish brown hair framed a sullenly handsome face. He looked to be fifteen with a distrustful gaze that dared her to try to reach him. “Are you going to finish your story today?”

“You are when you've learned your letters.” Emma stood straight and still and told herself that Lark's resistance was a good thing. It would keep her on her guard. She had felt too safe in the duchess's employ.

“You think you can snap your fingers and make us learn'em in a fortnight?”

“You can learn to read what's on your slate.”

“You mean we'll be like circus dogs, trained to jump on your command.”

“Not at all. We'll see what you already know and add to your knowledge.” She refused to lose her composure.

“But wot's the use of learning one word?” Jay asked.

“Depends on the word.”

“Daventry knows hundreds of words. He reads a great many books, big ones.” Robin was clearly loyal to his hero.

“Dull ones on the law,” Lark mocked.

“But he's not dull.” Finch's defense came from behind his hand.

“He's a prime gun in the ring, miss, handy with his fives,” Swallow assured her.

“She doesn't know what you're talking about, Swallow.”

“It's prizefighting, isn't it?”

“Yes, miss, and Daventry's teaching us, too, every week when his brothers come,” Jay told her.

Rook held up his slate. “Why don't you just tell us our words?”

“Because you'll not gain independence that way.”

“What if I do this?” Rook deliberately rubbed his jacket sleeve over the slate, wiping it clean.

Emma shrugged. “I can write it again, or you can write it yourself when you know it. Words are like that. Once you own them, you can spend them any time you like.”

“Will reading make us rich like Daventry?” Raven asked.

“It will let you make your way in the world.” She would make them no false promises.

“Will Daventry send us away when we can read?” Robin asked.

“Oh no. I'm sure he means you to have a home with him as long as you want it.” She looked into seven unconvinced faces with sharp chins and doubting eyes. What did her assurance mean? They knew the world to be a precarious place.

Lark summed up the judgment of the group. “You don't know anything useful, do you?”

“Nevertheless, Daventry has made me your grinder for now.”

“For now, Miss Portland. Grind away.” He neatly reminded her that it was a trial period. Daventry's man was off starting an investigation of her false credentials and his urchins were testing her. At night she was well guarded. By day she would be confined to this bare room with Daventry's wards. She could hardly plan her escape if she didn't know the house, its inhabitants, and its patterns. She looked at the wary faces turned her way, and a strategy came to her. She would use her lessons to search the house.

“Stand up,” she ordered them.

She began with Robin. “How many arms do you have?”

“Two.”

“Finch, how many legs do you have?”

“Two,” he answered through his fingers.

Emma turned to Swallow. “How many legs do Finch and Robin have together?”

She avoided Lark, and in a few minutes she had the younger boys counting and adding and multiplying—arms and legs, eyes, ears, and noses, hearts and tongues, heads and feet. Doing mathematics. Until a breathless Robin finally complained that they were running out of things to count.

Emma resisted the temptation to smile. She had them sit down.

“What's next?” asked Raven.

“Next, we measure,” Emma declared.

They measured each other with fingers, hands, and arms, and the schoolroom, using their bodies. The room was ten Robins long by four Swallows wide. When she had trained them in counting and measuring, she gave them each a slate and a pencil and had them lead her through the hall. Each new room had objects to count and measure and record while Emma made a note of where they met footmen on duty and where each staircase led.

In the south wing, they had to show her Daventry's library. Plainly they expected him to be there. They gathered at the open door looking in, and Emma knew that she was truly spying, trespassing in a space that was his. The shelves had been raided, leaving books tilting against one another across the gaps. Open books covered the carpet like flagstones. The number of volumes, stacked one on top of the other, suggested an insatiable, curious mind at work. They crowded every surface so that there was no place for a companion to sit or stand. Daventry obviously worked alone.

A passing footman stopped to tell them Daventry was in the hall with a visitor from London.

Jay shrugged. “Dav might be a great reader, but it looks like a dull lot of words to me. No pictures.”

“Anyway, miss,” Finch assured her, “he's great with his fives.”

“Where does he box?”

“Oh, we've a ring out back, miss,” Raven told her. “His brothers come once a week.”

Swallow chimed in with more praise for Daventry. “Soon, he's to have a real match, and Lark says we can bet on him, and because he's an unknown, we'll clean up.”

Lark gave Swallow a withering stare for that comment, and Emma urged them on to another room.

By the end of the morning she knew where the sleeping quarters were for the boys and the servants. She had seen most of the vast house, with its countless doors and windows, and knew her employer's haunts. The boys hurried her along from wonder to wonder until they came to a door on the upper floor of the south wing.

Swallow reached to open the door, when Lark stopped him.