Curtsies & Conspiracies

Lady Linette interrupted her reverie. “You chose the sewing scissors and one of the handkerchiefs from the next test. Why?”

“We have not completed knife training with Captain Niall, so I wasn’t confident in the letter opener, but I know I can work scissors to my advantage, and it is always good to have an extra handkerchief.”

“Why not the fan or the gloves?”

“White kid is impractical for a lady of covert activities. We have not had any fan training yet.”

“The crumpet?”

“Oh, no, I’m not worthy.”

“Lastly, we had you send a coded message. Give it to me.”

Sophronia presented her with the bag of sweets tied with the bit of ribbon.

Lady Linette nodded her approval. “Ribbon used to indicate character of the sender. Nice touch, Miss Temminnick. You made use of the scissors from the previous selection.” She opened the bag and poured out the contents, including the one carefully broken sweet with the blood inside.

Lady Linette sniffed it and examined the stain. “Show me your hand.”

Sophronia removed one glove to display the finger she had pricked.

“You would have had to set up the code ahead of time. Nevertheless, an innovative method of getting a message across, and virtually untraceable, particularly as your recipient can eat the sweet.” Lady Linette looked once more down at the printed paper, then produced a stick of graphite and made some notes at the bottom.

Sophronia could feel her shoulders tensing and fought to keep them down. Were my choices correct? Do they want the expected route, or is it better if I did something out of the ordinary? Will they send me down? Sophronia was in ever greater fear that her sojourn at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s might come to a premature end. Only half a year ago she had resisted finishing school with every fiber of her being, until she realized Mademoiselle Geraldine’s offered no ordinary education. Now she dreaded the possibility of returning home to her former life.

Lady Linette said, “Everyone’s results are given together. You will receive your final marks in front of your peers.”

Sophronia’s heart sank. This explained the pale faces of the other girls—anticipated trauma. Agatha, in particular, hated public exposure.

“However, my initial assessment is that your capacities are suited to our institution. You are overly independent. I suggest focused study in social congregation and deportment. Groups, Miss Temminnick, are your weakness. Generally speaking, most lone intelligencers are men, not women. We ladies must learn to manipulate society.”

Sophronia could feel herself flushing. It was a fair assessment, but she did not like criticism. She knew she was good. Better than many of the other girls of her age-group. True, Sidheag could beat her in physical combat, Dimity and Preshea were more ladylike, and Monique was better at social graces, but Sophronia was the best at espionage. Nevertheless, she held her tongue and stared at her hands, forcing herself not to clasp them tightly. Lady Linette had only said that most lone intelligencers were male. Perhaps once in a while there was room for a female.

“Thank you, Miss Temminnick. You are dismissed.”

Sophronia bobbed a curtsy. It was just shy of being too high and too brief and thus rude. But before Lady Linette could comment, Sophronia swept from the room in a manner so grand that no teacher at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s would critique the action.

RESULTS DISORIENTATED

Sophronia found Dimity waiting in the hallway. Her friend’s face was white, and her lower lip trembled.

“Oh, Sophronia,” she cried. “Wasn’t that perfectly ghastly?”

She’s getting more and more dramatic, thought Sophronia. Overexposure to Mademoiselle Geraldine. “It certainly was odd.” Sophronia’s gift for understatement was almost as good as Dimity’s gift for overstatement.

“I poured the cold tea,” admitted Dimity. “Did you?”

Sophronia nodded.

“Oh, good, I thought you might. You’re usually right about these things.”

“Not always.”

Dimity was crestfallen. “Oh, dear. Your assessment wasn’t wholly positive?”

“Not by half!”

Dimity brightened. “Really? Neither was mine. That’s good, then. Perhaps I won’t fail.”

“I thought you wanted to be sent down. I thought you wanted to be put into a real finishing school, to become an ordinary lady with a respectable parliamentary husband and no concerns beyond planning the next dinner party.”

“I did. I mean, I do. But Mummy would be so very disappointed, and I would have to leave you. And Sidheag. And Bumbersnoot.”

Sophronia could only agree with Dimity’s logic. “True.”

“Speaking of which, I must talk with you about this letter I received.” Dimity flashed a suspiciously embossed missive.

Sophronia grabbed for it.

Dimity was faster. “No, you can’t see it until we are with the others.”

Sophronia stuck her tongue out but waited obligingly until after luncheon. Due to the presence of Monique and Preshea in the drawing room, Agatha and Sidheag joined Sophronia and Dimity in their private room for a gossip.

Dimity produced the letter, both embarrassed and excited. “It’s from Lord Dingleproops!”

“Dimity,” objected Agatha, “should you be getting private correspondences from an unattached gentleman friend?”

“No, but this is the first. I didn’t write to him! And it can’t be that bad; our families are acquainted.”

Agatha was properly concerned. “Has he permission to court you?” Agatha Woosmoss was small, round, and redheaded, with a freckled face that wore a perpetual expression of distressed confusion, not unlike that of a damp cat.

Dimity flushed even redder. “No, but I’m certain he would.”

Sidheag was reading the hastily scrawled note. “It’s worse than simply a letter. He wants to meet with you, in private and secretly!”

“Dimity!” Sophronia said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dimity was truculent. “Because I knew you’d be all Sophroniaish about it. That’s why. It’s not that bad, is it? He probably only wants to chat a bit about the weather or something.”

Sidheag, still in possession of the shocking missive, said, “Since it says here that he intends to come to you on this airship, it can’t be that banal.” Sidheag Maccon was an overly tall young woman, almost of an age with Sophronia. She had a long, proud face and a general attitude of indifference to both manners and dress that drove their teachers to distraction.

Sophronia was having none of it. “Dimity, he’d have to steal an airdinghy and then try to find us. I’ve no idea where we are over Dartmoor, do you? I’m sure he doesn’t. Besides, I don’t think Bunson’s has airdinghies. The whole idea is foolhardy.”

Dimity liked Lord Dingleproops rather more than she ought and was disposed to think well of him. “It must be important, then, mustn’t it? Perhaps it’s a declaration!”

“Oh, Dimity, really!” said Agatha.

Sophronia added, “You’re only just fourteen, and he’s what, sixteen?”

Dimity protested, “My birthday was weeks ago!”

Sidheag, the blunt one, said, “He isn’t even holding yet. He can’t declare without his parents’ permission.” Sidheag could be quite crass, the result of having been raised by men, or Scots, or soldiers, or werewolves, or all four. Since she was also Lady Kingair, her crassness would have been an accepted eccentricity—in a much older aristocrat. In a fourteen-year-old, such vulgarity was as odd and uncomfortable as last season’s hat.

Sophronia took the missive out of Sidheag’s hand and examined it. It under the Earl of Dingleproops’s heading, which gave it a certain weight. But she did wonder what the son was doing with his father’s stationery. Probably using it to write angry letters to poor tradesmen in his father’s name and to torture decent young ladies like Dimity.

“He wants to meet with you on the back squeak deck in a week and a half?”

Dimity nodded. “Isn’t that romantic?”

Agatha protested. “You’re not going?”

“Of course I’m going! He will have come all this way.”

“It’ll all end in tears,” foretold Sidheag morosely.

Sophronia said nothing further; Dimity could be awful stubborn. Privately, Sophronia vowed to follow Dimity. Lord Dingleproops was up to something.

They were made to wait until the end of the week for their test assessments. At long last, after supper, instead of the customary parlor games and card counting, their age-group was separated from the others. Agatha looked like she might faint, or cry, or palpitate, or all three—which would be a real feat. Preshea—small, dark, and unreasonably lovely—looked like she intended to kill someone. But then, Preshea always looked that way. Dimity’s round porcelain face was set. Monique, having been through this before, swept her skirts behind her with an air of determination. Sidheag loped along as though she hadn’t a care in the aether. Sidheag could be irritating like that.

Sophronia wondered how she herself was showing tension. Not at all, to those who did not look at her shoulders. She would have been surprised by how impressed Lady Linette was with this accomplishment. Lady Linette had also been impressed when Sophronia ate only the vegetables from the meal provided after the exam. Sophronia was the only student to have considered that the test might include the meal. Even Monique, who should have known better, had eaten seven bites of her meat and all her pudding.

Lady Linette led them to her own teaching quarters. These were decorated as if a boudoir had procreated with the set of She Stoops to Conquer. There were red curtains, a good deal of gold, and chaise longues instead of chairs. Several fluffy cats with funny scrunched-up faces and possessive attitudes to hassocks lounged about.

Lady Linette left the six girls there.

They sat in expectant silence. Agatha stared at her feet. Sidheag slouched. Both knew better but were regressing into bad habits out of anxiety.

Professor Lefoux entered the room.

An almost audible groan met the appearance of this, the harshest of their teachers.

Professor Lefoux was not so much a battle-ax as a pair of pinking cutters—sharp, toothy, and uneven in temper but very useful. They hadn’t any lessons with her yet. Rumor had it she was deemed too fierce for the younger girls. Tall and bony, with a stiff face and hair scraped back into a bun, she looked mean. She also had a French accent, which hundreds of years of animosity had trained nice young Englishwomen to suspect as evil.

Professor Lefoux did not bother to explain her presence. “Monique de Pelouse, your assessment is not really one of six months, as you have now been in attendance at this school for four years and eight months. Nevertheless, due to your attempted theft of the crystalline valve prototype last year and your regression in status as a result of that failure, you are undergoing public review along with the others of your rank.”

Monique sat silent, her gaze straight forward, her attitude one of superiority rather than penance.