Chapter Two

“Miss Fuller, where is Miss Trent?”

Ophelia made sure to keep her voice steady and cool but inside, she was growing increasingly frustrated with the girl.

This very behaviour was the reason she’d cautioned against accepting the headstrong young lady into their school.

Since their meeting last week, Eliza had become even more disruptive during the classes she bothered attending. But since the missed trip to Gunter’s two days past, she’d failed to attend any of Ophelia’s.

She had feigned headaches and sniffles, yet appeared at every mealtime and hadn’t missed a single lesson with Miss Fisher or the other tutors.

No, it was only Ophelia she seemed to have waged a sort of war with.

Though when Ophelia had seen her at mealtimes, she had been rather pale.

The problem was that Ophelia wasn’t convinced it was illness making the girl pale.

“M-Miss Trent was unwell this morning, Miss Delacourt.”

Louisa Fuller was a sweet and conscientious girl. But she was lying. No doubt, at the behest of Eliza Trent.

“Very well.” Ophelia smiled and continued with her lesson, but she made a note to speak to Miss Fisher about the girl’s behaviour.

She was worried about Eliza.

Something wasn’t ringing true about these sicknesses. Yet exhaustion couldn’t be faked, and the girl had look over tired [JS2] this past week.

Ophelia finished her day’s lessons with another talk with the girls about their virtue and how imperative it was to them to keep it intact until they found themselves a husband worthy of it.

Her mind skittered back to that awful day when she’d been taken from Mama. Those moments of realisation as she grew older and came to understand just what Mama had been, and what that made Ophelia.

She wouldn’t allow any other girl to suffer her fate. To have to spend her whole life lying about her identity. To be treated like a shameful, dirty secret by her own flesh and blood.

And Ophelia had been luckier than most. Her brother may not love or even like her, but he had seen her educated, fed, and clothed. And would have seen her married relatively comfortably, if she’d allowed it.

Ophelia’s pride had stopped her from accepting Batten’s proposal of a dowry so long as she stuck to the orphaned cousin story.

She didn’t want to see any of her girls backed into the same sort of corner.

And Ophelia was indeed fortunate. Her life had been relatively easy – especially compared to how hard it could have been. But it wasn’t something she would wish on her students.

Eliza Trench had the chance to find a husband who loved her. To have children. The things that weren’t available to Ophelia, lest she spend her life and marriage lying about her origins to her husband.

And what sort of marriage was that, after all?

The clock on the mantle chimed the hour, and Ophelia dismissed the girls. She didn’t usually let her evening meetings with them run so close to the dinner hour, but her worry for Miss Trent had made her a little more garrulous tonight.

“Miss Fuller, a word, if you please,” she called as the shy brunette scurried past, her head down.

Louisa’s eyes widened slightly, but she nodded, stepping out of the flow of girls hurrying from the room.

Ophelia waited until the room and the hallway outside were empty before smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring manner at the young girl.

She’d noticed Louisa had become something of a pet to the much more confident Eliza. She followed the other girl around, somewhat in awe of her, it seemed to Ophelia.

“Have a seat, Louisa,” she said, using the girl’s Christian name in the hopes of creating an environment of camaraderie.

If Eliza was up to something, or indeed was in a situation that wasn’t altogether safe and Louisa knew about it, then Ophelia needed to know about it, too.

“Would you like some tea?” Ophelia asked as she picked up the bell to ring for a tray, watching from the corner of her eye as Louisa twisted the skirts of her modest dimity gown between her fingers.

She was definitely nervous. And though she could be of a rather nervous disposition, usually she was comfortable in Ophelia’s presence.

“I do hope Eliza is feeling better soon,” Ophelia said carefully, sitting across from Louisa. “I think that perhaps if these headaches continue, we might consider calling for Dr. Foster.”

She watched the widening of the girl’s hazel eyes before they fell again to her lap.

A knock on the door signalled the arrival of Hattie with a tea tray, so Ophelia set about thanking the girl and then pouring for herself and Louisa. It was one of the things Ophelia herself had learned at the school and not at home.

She and Mama had never received visitors that would require the knowledge of proper tea etiquette.

They drank their tea in silence, Louisa nibbling on the ginger biscuits Cook had sent up with the tea.

“Louisa, dear.” Ophelia put her cup down and leaned forward. “I do hope you understand that everything I do here, everything Miss Fisher does, is for the good of the students. Even if it doesn’t always seem that way, or if it sometimes feels – stifling.”

Louisa merely stared at Ophelia, wide-eyed and unspeaking.

“Miss Trench – Eliza – she might have been upset that she missed the trip to Gunter’s. But the safety of our students is of paramount concern. You are all innocent, gently bred ladies. You know nothing of the dangers that can befall a young woman if she is not suitably chaperoned or suitably equipped to deal with such things. Now, I know that –“

“Oh, Miss Delacourt – I worry so for Eliza. I have tried to tell her that place is dangerous. Scandalous beyond anything I can even imagine. But she won’t listen.”

Ophelia could only stare in shock as Louisa burst into noisy, heaving sobs.

“Every night, I lie awake praying for her safe return. I don’t know what to do.”

Good heavens, Ophelia thought, alarm and fear snaking through her. What has the girl been up to?

“Louisa.” She pressed a handkerchief into the sobbing girl’s [JS3] hands. “What are you talking about?”

Her tone was a little sharper than what she would have liked. But concern for the impulsive but still young Eliza was at the forefront of her mind.

There were times that Ophelia found the girl challenging, admittedly. But there was a sort of grudging admiration, too, for Eliza’s feistiness. Ophelia had never indulged such a temperament, preferring not to draw attention to herself, lest she accidentally let slip that she’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

She didn’t want to kill the girls’ boldness or sense of adventure. She just wanted them to harness it in the right way. She wanted them to be safe. Most of all, she wanted them to avoid the life her mother had chosen. Not just for herself, but for Ophelia, too.

Right now though, she would happily lock Eliza Trench in a tower, if it meant keeping her from whatever she had gotten herself into.

For Louisa would not be so distressed if it weren’t something quite serious, Ophelia was sure.

“I promised I wouldn’t tell, Miss Delacourt. But I fear for my friend,” Louisa said pitiably.

Ophelia was out of her chair and crouching before Louisa, her own grey muslin skirts billowing out around her.

“You do your friend credit by trying to keep her secret,” she said, keeping her voice as calm as possible. “But if she is at risk, you must tell me. We don’t want anything happening to her, do we?”

“N-no.” Louisa sniffled.

Ophelia’s patience was holding on by a thread as the young lady sniffed and pulled at her handkerchief.

Finally, she huffed out a breath and looked Ophelia square in the eye.

“She – she has fallen in with a young man, and they’ve been exchanging letters.”

Ophelia felt her jaw drop.

Exchanging letters? But the post came to her or Miss Fisher before being distributed to the girls. There was a policy about letters. They had rules.

“Letters?” Ophelia repeated. “But –“

“She paid one of the maids to fetch them back and forth, Miss Delacourt,” Louisa said. “And – and then he invited her to a party. We all cautioned her against it, and she refused at first but –“

Here, the girl hesitated, and Ophelia nodded encouragingly. It was all she could manage just then.

The idea that this had been happening under her very nose – it shocked her into silence, frankly.

“But when you still refused to allow her to come to Gunter’s, she was so upset and – and that night, she snuck out to go with him.” [JS4] [LM5] [JS6]

Ophelia’s stomach dropped at this piece of information.

She had driven a young girl to do something so dangerous, so potentially ruinous!

She felt sick and as though she wanted to burst into tears. But of course, her countenance remained outwardly calm. It wouldn’t do to upset Louisa further, and it was imperative that the entire story come out, now that the girl was talking.

“To where?” Ophelia asked, her voice mercifully steady.

Inside she was in turmoil. Guilt, fear, shame – they all vied for priority inside her.

All these years, she’d thought she was keeping her girls safe and on the right path.

How many of them had exchanged letters with men under her nose? How many had snuck out whilst under her care?

It was a sobering and humiliating train of thought.

“I cannot remember the name of the gentleman who hosts the parties. He is a Peer of the realm, though not one known to my family.”

Louisa frowned in concentration while the silence shredded Ophelia’s nerves.

“Lord Guilford!” she suddenly exclaimed. “It was Lord Guilford. Apparently, he runs with a most debauched set, Miss. Eliza said the place was terrifying. But exciting, too. And she —she went back there tonight.”

Louisa’s eyes filled with tears once again.

“She’ll be so angry that I told you, Miss Delacourt. But – but it sounds so frightening. So ruinous. I – I don’t think Eliza should be going there.”

Ophelia’s entire body froze.

The Marquess of Guilford.

The girls wouldn’t yet know of that man and his ilk since Ophelia, Miss Fisher, and the other tutors did their best to protect the girls from the lifestyle of such men.

But Ophelia knew the man – if not by sight then certainly by reputation.

His name was plastered over the scandal sheets more than any others.

His parties were the stuff of nightmares for people like Ophelia, whose job it was to keep impressionable young ladies away from people like him.

And one of her girls was there right now.

Walking into the den of rogues.

Into the clutches of the worst rogue of all.