His Wicked Sins (25 page)

words, Beth could read the truth in what she did not say. The situation at home had only

grown more dire. There was little money, little food, little coal. And there was no

improvement in her father's health.

Losing her employment at Burndale Academy was out of the question.

Glancing up at the girls, then down at the book, Beth finished reading another sentence

of the dictation and waited while they labored over their letters. She opened her mouth to

resume, only to stop as rapid footsteps echoed from behind. Turning, she found the maid,

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Alice, approaching.

"I am to fetch you, miss," she said, each word running rapidly one into the next. "Miss

Percy said you are to come at once."

Alice's words delivered a brutal blow to Beth's fragile control.

Glancing about, she saw that the girls watched her with wide eyes. Not once had she

seen Alice in the schoolroom prior to this day, and since coming to Burndale, Beth had

witnessed no other teacher called away from her duties in such a manner. The peculiarity

of the summons left her distinctly uneasy.

The headmistress had come to watch Beth teach several times in the past fortnight,

leaving after a few silent moments of observation. Twice, she had brought two men with

her, one very old and one of middle years, and their observation of her teaching methods

had brought expressions of mild dismay to their faces.

An inauspicious outcome.

Beth knew her methods varied from the other teachers', and she had wondered if Miss

Percy's benign expression hid approval or dissatisfaction.

Now the headmistress had summoned her, mid-lesson, an unheard of and unpromising

circumstance.

The time had come. Miss Percy meant to dismiss her. A cold knot of dread choked her,

and she stared at Alice in mute dismay, her pulse leaping and bounding, her heart

pounding in her chest.

She could not bear to fail. She could not
afford
to fail. Her family depended upon her

income for the meanest necessities: food, shelter, coal.

"Lucy," Beth said, grateful that the tenor of her words gave no indication of the tumult

of her emotions. "Please continue reading, here"—she showed the girl the place in the

book, then turned to the others—"and the rest of you continue to write out the passage.

Mark that you use a fair hand. Upon my return, I shall evaluate your work for both

penmanship and spelling."

She remained only long enough to ascertain that her pupils did as she bade, and then

she turned and followed Alice toward the door of the large classroom.

Delving deep for her reserves of composure, Beth willed her racing pulse to slow. Now

was a poor time for this dark, oily swell of panic to surge.

Why, oh why, must it come now? Save that one morning when Griffin Fairfax had held

her hand over his heart and helped her rein in her dismay, she had been so very adept at

controlling her panic since coming here.

Feeling as though the eyes of both pupils and teachers were upon her, Beth clasped her

hands together to still their shaking.

No, she must not allow this, must not allow her nervous imaginings to feed the dread

growing in her breast. She knew where this would lead. Having spent her life subject to

the horror of her attacks of dismay—the wash of clammy fear, the numbing thud of her

heart—she could not mistake the signs now of the terrible and overwhelming tide.

She followed Alice, feeling as though she traversed the distance to a gallows.

Beth's heart gave a hard thud.

She glanced to the right and found Miss Doyle peering at her over the top of a book,

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and the group of girls that surrounded her casting sidelong glances and whispering to

each other.

"This way, miss," Alice said when Beth stepped through the door and turned right.

Sending Beth a quizzical look, Alice walked left.

"Yes, of course," Beth murmured, the surge of unease growing and pulling at her. She

could not control it.

She
must
control it.

"Miss Percy said you must wait for her in her office. She will be with you shortly."

Alice paused and frowned, peering at Beth closely. "I'll leave you now, miss. You know

the way."

With that, Alice went off in the opposite direction, leaving Beth alone in the dim

hallway.

For a moment, she simply sagged against the wall, angry and frustrated that it had come

to this, that her will and control had failed her so miserably. With a sigh, she rallied,

forced herself to walk the long corridor, and in her thoughts she began to prepare her

arguments, her defenses.

Perhaps the headmistress could be swayed.

Reaching her destination, she found the door open, the room empty. Mindful of Alice's

words, Beth stepped inside to await the headmistress's arrival.

Blowing out sharp little huffs of air, she turned a slow circle, cataloguing the contents

of the room in an effort to maintain her control over her emotions. There was the

mullioned window, the heavy draperies, the little wooden desk with its scrolled legs. Two

straight chairs before the desk and one behind. A room designed for work rather than

lounging comfort.

She stared at the top of Miss Percy's desk. A tidy desk, with not a single speck of dust

to mar the surface.

Resting her palm flat against the base of her throat, Beth slid down onto the seat of a

hard-backed chair. She perched there for a moment, panic lurking like a scavenger at the

edge of her control. Nausea churned in her belly.

Well aware that her emotion far exceeded what was appropriate for the circumstance,

she was nonetheless caught in its violent thrall. As she had been caught so many times

over the years.

A sound carried from the hallway, and Beth twisted to look behind her through the

entry. Beyond the open portal, the hallway was poorly lit, a gray and dim domain. Again

came the scrape of a boot along the tile, and a shadow fell across the floor.

Pushing against the narrow wooden arms of the chair, she surged to her feet, rushed to

the door.

Mr. Waters, the handyman, stood some ten feet away, hammer in hand. On the floor lay

the splintered remains of a doorjamb, and beside them, a fresh cut piece of wood.

Hammer poised mid-strike, he turned his head to look at her, and she realized she must

have made some sound.

"Miss," he said, and bobbed his head.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Waters." Beth looked past him down the dim corridor. For an

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instant, she wondered if it could have been he who followed her that morning two

weeks past, who lurked in the garden and on the road. Then she cast aside such

ponderings, for what reason had she to think it?

Turning to his work, he set a nail and brought the hammer down in a sharp blow. The

sound made Beth jump.

Mumbling to himself, he scratched his head, looked about him, then ambled off.

Beth backed into the office, paced across the rug to one wall, then the other and back

again, keeping her eye on the open door and her ears attuned for Miss Percy's footsteps.

Midway through her third mad dash across the small room, the door swung shut with a

solid bang.

She froze. A half turn and she faced the door once more. The closed door.

Panic swelled, and Beth looked about sharply. She stood, trembling, her arms wrapped

about herself, mortified and horrified that she had allowed her emotions to sink her to this

place, to carry her so deep into the pit of her attack of dismay that she felt as though she

might not claw her way free. It was like a murky bog, sucking her tinder, filling her mouth

and her throat and her lungs until she could barely breathe.

The walls grew dark and darker still, pressing in upon her until they seemed to crush the

very breath from her chest.

No! She could not bear to be closed in.

The tiny box. She felt as though she were trapped in the tiny box of her nightmares,

pushing and pushing at the lid, but it held fast, refusing to budge.

She looked about, frantic, seeing not the headmistress's office, but only cloying gray

fog. Unable to trust her senses, to trust herself to know what was truth, she wrapped her

arms about herself and fought the thick tide of her panic.

She was
not
back there. She was
not
.

Frowning, she dropped her hands, clenched her fists tight am her sides, and willed

herself to see Miss Percy's desk, her chairs, and not the wooden box from her memories.

On jellylike limbs she crossed to the door, yanked on the handle. With a creak, it swung

open. The hallway was empty, but she could swear she heard the rapid retreat of booted

feet.

Had someone followed her, watched her, waited for Mr. Waters to leave? Slammed the

door? To what purpose? What end?

Who could know that it would distress her so?

Extending her arm, she pressed the flat of her hand to the wall, bowed her head, and

struggled to master herself. This would not do. She knew it would not do. If Miss Percy

came upon her like this, in a frenzy of nerves and emotion, she
would
have cause to

dismiss her.

Dear heaven, she knew better than to allow herself such delusions.

Turning, Beth walked at a sedate pace—oh, the effort she put into holding herself

back—to the mullioned window that overlooked the front drive. A band of iron closed

about her ribs, squeezing might. Her hands shook. Beads of sweat gathered on her upper

lip. She laid her trembling palm flat against the cool wall and stared out at the late

afternoon sky, a clear, blue canvas with only a single wispy cloud far, far in the distance.

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Distance. Wide open space. Relief touched her, cool and sweet.

There. That was better. She could breathe a little now. She could breathe. The sky was

vast. Vast and endless and open.

There was no reason for her to feel distress. So she told herself over and over.

No one followed her.

No one watched her.

And she must believe that the headmistress had not summoned her to dismiss her.

Perhaps she merely wished to discuss a particular pupil, or some aspect of the lessons.

Dragging a handkerchief from her sleeve, Beth patted her lip, her brow, then tucked the

cloth away once more.

In the next instant she heard them coming, footsteps and voices, Miss Percy and a man.

"…to dinner…" came a low, masculine murmur. Beth thought the voice belonged to

Mr. Fairfax. A strange flutter echoed through her veins, a leap of her pulse that had

nothing to do with her fears and dismay. Her emotions tangled one with the next in a

twisted knot until she thought it would take a patient hand indeed to pick the strands apart.

"I am not certain that it is appropriate," Miss Percy remarked, her crisp tone carrying

along the hallway into the room.

"Likely not, but the devil take that. I want her there, and so I will have her. Isobel will

like it, and she is my sole concern."

"I, too, have concern for Isobel, but I must also exercise responsibility for Miss

Canham."

They were speaking of her, Beth realized with a jolt.

"Then I must point out that Miss Canham, as Isobel's teacher, is of the same ilk as her

governess. And I sat across the table from Isobel's last governess every night for two bitter

months. Does that moderate your concerns?"

"It—" Miss Percy stopped abruptly in the doorway as she caught sight of Beth standing

by the window.

Beth attempted a smile. Her face felt stiff, like starched linen. From Miss Percy's frown,

she gathered that she might look as sickly as she felt.

"Ah, Miss Canham, you are here," Miss Percy said. "How fortuitous that I also

happened upon Mr. Fairfax in the hallway."

Beth's gaze snapped to Mr. Fairfax, who stood just behind Miss Percy.

Their gazes met across the room, locked, and Beth thought that Mr. Fairfax's dark eyes

missed nothing, not the sheen of sweat on her lip or the way her palm pressed hard against

the wall by the window or the shudders that racked her frame though she wished them

away.

He was intense, unsmiling, his attention focused wholly on her.

In some vague part of her thoughts, Beth recognized the charged tension in the small

room. An awkward triangle they made, Miss Percy and Mr. Fairfax and Beth.

She ought to drag her gaze away. Ought to speak, to fill the void of silence. But she did

nothing. Only stared at him, the hard, captivating beauty of him, and wondered again if

perhaps she was going mad.

After a long moment, Miss Percy stepped deeper into the room. Mr. Fairfax followed.

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Beth studied the two of them, her back rigid, her hands trembling, her belly twisting and

writhing like a nest of snakes.