Mlle de Fayette had also said something about a parentally arranged betrothal. If Catherine were to be chivvied into marriage over Christmas, that might be cause enough to drive her to do something desperate. Like an elopement.
Elopements were bad. Very, very bad. Catherine was on Arabella’s floor, Arabella’s responsibility. If Catherine eloped, Arabella would be to blame. She could lose her position over it.
The light in the garden twinkled again and then went out.
Arabella’s desk chair rocked on its legs as she ran for the door. Outside, the hallway was quiet and dark, all the candles in the sconces already snuffed for the night. In the light from the landing window, she could just make out the shadowy outline of door after door, all closed, just as they should be.
Her own breathing was loud in her ears as she stood there, one hand on the doorknob. From behind the ranks of closed doors, she could hear the usual nighttime sounds: the thwack of a pillow being pounded into place, the creak of a mattress, the hushed rustle of a blanket. There was nothing the least bit out of the ordinary. Even the dust lay quiet on the wainscoting.
Arabella applied her knuckles lightly to Catherine’s door. “Miss Carruthers?”
No response.
“Catherine?”
Silence.
A bristling shock of ragtag ends popped out from the doorway next door. “Catherine’s gone out again, hasn’t she?”
It looked like a sea monster, all bristling locks and staring eyes. It was, in fact, Lizzy Reid, her hair done up in rags and her eyes alight with curiosity, like a squirrel scenting a cache of nuts.
“I’m sure she hasn’t,” Arabella said bracingly. “She must just be sleeping heavily.”
Lizzy looked like she believed that just about as much as Arabella did.
Brilliant. She couldn’t even fool a sixteen-year-old.
Lizzy wagged her rags. “That was what just Miss Derwent said.”
“Miss Derwent?”
“The mistress who was here before you,” said Lizzy blithely. “She was asked to leave.”
“Because of — ” Arabella tilted her head towards Catherine’s door.
Lizzy nodded.
Perfect. Just perfect. She should have known something was a little too easy when Miss Climpson gave her the job. There was a word for the position she had filled: scapegoat.
Pity Miss Climpson hadn’t specified that in the advertisement.
When Catherine Carruthers’s family found out Catherine had gone missing, Arabella would be out on her backside in the street faster than you could say “Christmas pudding.”
“She could be asleep,” repeated Arabella, with more hope than conviction.
She could feel Lizzy’s pitying gaze on her back as she tapped on the door, louder than last time.
“Catherine?”
Still nothing.
So much for the subtle approach. Arabella turned the knob. Unlike hers, the door was well oiled. It didn’t make a noise as she pushed it open. Holding her candle aloft, Arabella ventured into the dark cubicle.
“Catherine?”
She held her candle down towards the lumpy form in the bed. It didn’t move. It also didn’t look like a human, unless Catherine had spread in some places and shrunk in others.
“Pillows,” pronounced Lizzy, scurrying along after her like a one-woman Greek chorus.
“I knew that,” said Arabella.
There was a patter of feet in the hall as the rest of the Greek chorus came scrambling in to join the fun, appropriately garbed for their parts in long white nightdresses and bare feet. The only jarring notes were the nightcaps, adorned with an idiosyncratic variety of ribbons and bows. Miss Climpson’s dress code only extended to daytime attire.
“Has Catherine snuck out again?” Miss Agnes Wooliston panted.
Like Lizzy, she didn’t look the least bit surprised. They had obviously been here before. With Miss Derwent.
“Of course she has,” said Lizzy, rag curls bouncing. She didn’t bother to whisper. Why should she? The entire hall was already awake, with the sole exception of Annabelle Anstrue, who had already demonstrated her ability to sleep through the advance of a French artillery column, cannon and all. Or at least through Miss Climpson’s morning calisthenics, which amounted to much the same thing. “It’s Catherine.”
“She’s probably in the garden,” announced Sally, craning around Agnes for a better look at the pile of pillows. Her nightcap boasted a particularly elaborate concoction of pink and green ribbons. “That’s where she usually goes.”
Arabella felt as though she was rapidly losing control of the situation. Of course, that would be to suppose that she had ever had control of the situation. Was it too much to have hoped to get through to Christmas without major disasters?
“Back to bed,” she said, shooing them in front of her. Like geese, they clucked and flapped but didn’t go very far. “I’ll deal with Miss Carruthers. I’m sure she just went to the necessary.”
“You might want to take the back stairs,” said Sally, ignoring Arabella’s theory. “That’s the fastest way to the garden.”
“And you would know this how?” said Arabella sternly.
Lizzy grinned at her. “Best not to ask. You really don’t want to know.”
“You mean you don’t want me to know,” muttered Arabella, wondering whether there was a gate on the garden, and, if so, whether there was some way to lock it. Not that there would be much use to it. She had no doubt that the girls would find a way to pole-vault over the fence.
“It’s safer all around that way,” said Sally. “What Miss Climpson doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”
“Or us,” chimed in Agnes earnestly.
“Ignorance is bliss!” contributed Lizzy.
Windowless towers. That was what was needed. Highly underrated things, windowless towers. Preferably with moats around them.
“You,” said Arabella, “are all going back to bed. Right now. And as far as I know, you know nothing about any back stairs.”
Lizzy smothered her in a quick hug. “We love you, Miss Dempsey.”
“I should have stayed in London,” muttered Arabella, and made for the back stairs.
She was tempted to take the front stairs, just because, but what was the point of cutting off her nose to spite her face? She liked her nose. And the girls were right; the back stairs were faster.
She could hear scratching and scurrying noises as she approached the main floor. Human or rodent? Arabella wasn’t sure. Keeping her skirt close to her legs, she let herself through the green baize door into the first-floor hallway. The schoolrooms lay in demure ranks on either side of the neatly papered wall, doors closed on their secrets. The music room, the dance studio, and the lesson rooms all lay shuttered and silent, waiting to be wakened in the morning with the arrival of the servants who lit the hearths and refreshed the ink and tidied the remains of the previous day’s debris.
The drawing-room door stood open.
Through the open portal, Arabella could hear a rustling sound, like the whisper of a skirt against the ground or the snick of fabric against fabric. Catherine and her lover? It made sense as a meeting place. The drawing room overlooked the garden, low enough to the ground for an enterprising suitor to wiggle his way through the long sash windows, but shielded from view by high hedges that grew on either side.
It was a pleasant room in the daylight, used occasionally for the purpose of receiving family members, but generally ceded to the older girls for use as a sort of lounge, where they wrote letters, muddled their way through lessons, and sprawled before the hearth engaging in imagined affairs of the heart. By night, the bright blue and white paper darkened to a decidedly ominous gray, the ornamental lozenges like staring eyes and open mouths in the gloom.