The Passion of the Purple Plumeria Read online

  “Good” wasn’t quite the word Gwen would have used. She turned to the French teacher. “How many students on the hall?”

  The hallway was far longer than the frontage of an average townhouse. Miss Climpson must have knocked two or three houses together to make up her school. The doors were neatly labeled with the names of the pupils who inhabited them, two or three to a room. The large rooms at the corners appeared to be reserved for those lucky pupils whose parents had secured for them a suite of their own.

  “Twenty-two on this floor, twenty-three on the floor above. The mistresses live on the floor with the students,” added Mlle. de Fayette quickly. “I and the games mistress on this floor and two other mistresses on the floor above. That way, there is always someone near.”

  Twenty-odd students to two teachers? The faculty didn’t stand a chance. It was a bit high for the students to try the trellis—not that she’d put it past them—but there were plenty of other ways for an enterprising young lady to effect an inconspicuous exit.

  “How many staircases are there?” asked Gwen.

  “There are three.” Mlle. de Fayette looked mildly surprised at the query. “The front stair and two back stairs.”

  Gwen exchanged a look with Jane. “Where do the back stairs let out?”

  Mlle. de Fayette was beginning to look distinctly nervous. “One by the garden and the other by the alley.”

  In other words, two potential means of escape. Having seen the standards prevailing in the rest of the school, Gwen would be surprised if the doors were bolted. The main stair was in the middle and the back stairs at either end of the long hallway, presumably the stairs belonging to each of the original houses. It would be ridiculously easy for the girls to wait until the mistresses were distracted at one end to make their escape down the other.

  Presuming, of course, they had left of their own volition.

  “This is the room,” said Mlle. de Fayette, opening the door onto a square chamber the size of one of the small anterooms at the Hotel de Balcourt.

  It wasn’t an unpleasant room. Two long windows looked out over the scraggle of the back garden, letting in the pale gray light of a rainy day. Water seeped mistily along the windowpanes. There was a narrow cot on each side of the room, neatly made with a plain blue blanket, standard issue from the look of it, although Agnes’s was embellished by two elaborately embroidered pillows. Fashion papers torn from magazines had been pinned to the whitewashed walls. Two desks gave testament to their owners’ personalities, the Reid girl’s cluttered with books and papers all jumbled together, Agnes’s neatly arranged.

  Jane began unobtrusively sorting through the material on Agnes’s desk while Gwen, without waiting for leave, opened the wardrobe. Matching white muslin dresses hung from pegs, seemingly all the same. It made it very difficult to ascertain whether any were missing—although, presumably, if the girls had run away, they would have had the sense not to do so wearing the uniform of the school.

  One thing, however, was missing. There was no sign of a portmanteau.

  Her curiosity whetted, Gwen stood on tiptoe to inspect the top of the wardrobe. Nothing there either. She felt a burst of euphoria. If the girls had taken bags with them, it made it more likely that they had planned their own departure. Kidnappers seldom afforded one time to pack.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Colonel Reid, looking to Mlle. de Fayette with an expression of appeal that Gwen was sure worked beautifully with most women, “is why my Lizzy would choose to run away. Was there any reason she might want to go?”

  Mlle. de Fayette shook her head. “Miss Reid seemed of the most happy. She was to play a shepherdess in the spring theatricals. She took the interest most keen in her costume.”

  “And the other girl?”

  “Agnes,” Gwen snapped, although the pronouncement lost some force when delivered with her head stuck under the bed. She had found the missing portmanteaux.

  Blast and botheration.

  “Agnes,” repeated Colonel Reid, with an apologetic smile. “Was she happy?”

  “Of all the students, Miss Wooliston was the most accomplished in her studies,” said Mlle. de Fayette. “The studies were a thing of great interest for her.”

  Jane had drifted from Agnes’s desk to Lizzy’s, leafing with seeming nonchalance through the blizzard of debris that coated the surface, not just papers, but bits of ribbons, a broken bit of jewelry, the cheap sort of bracelet one purchased at country fairs, and even a half-eaten biscuit.

  “Did the girls receive any letters?” she asked quietly. “Or packages?”

  “Miss Wooliston had very little correspondence.” Mlle. de Fayette took a deep breath. “Miss Reid had many packages from her brother—in India, sometimes as many as two in a month. There was one just before she left.”

  “That would be my Alex,” said the Colonel, and there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. “My oldest. He’s always taken an interest in the little ones.”

  Mlle. de Fayette looked up in confusion. “I had not thought— It was not an Alex of which Miss Reid made mention. It was another brother.”

  “George, then,” said the Colonel, nodding knowingly. “He’s the closest to Lizzy in age. A good lad.”

  Gwen squirmed up from under the bed, putting an end to the Reid family reminiscences. She thumped the portmanteaux down on Agnes’s bed. “Well, we know one thing. If they left, they didn’t take any luggage with them. Their bags are still here.”

  “If I were running away,” said Colonel Reid, a certain reminiscent gleam in his eye, “I shouldn’t want to be weighing myself down with baggage. That’s a sure way to catch someone’s eye. No, I’d be rolling a few things up in a bundle, as small as possible.”

  As much as Gwen hated the notion of agreeing with Colonel Reid, the idea had merit. “Street clothes beneath their school dresses,” she guessed. “They could discard the school dresses later on, in an inconspicuous alleyway. They might even have gone dressed as boys.”

  Colonel Reid nodded thoughtfully. “Not a bad notion, that. I don’t know your Agnes, but our Lizzy could pass as a lad right enough. She’d probably think it a lark.”

  “Hmm.” Gwen pursed her lips. “Well enough for a short period of time, but hardly for two weeks. Unless you’re in a Shakespeare play, breeches roles are difficult to maintain for any length of time.”

  She must have spoken with a little too much authority, because the Colonel gave her a curious look. Fortunately, she was saved by Jane, who was frowning over a crumpled piece of paper on Lizzy Reid’s desk.

  “Mademoiselle de Fayette? What was the name of the girls’ friend? The one who disclaimed their appearance.”

  “Fitzhugh,” Mlle. de Fayette said promptly, hurrying across the room. “Miss Sally Fitzhugh.”

  “There’s a fragment of a letter, rather blotted”—from what Gwen could see, that was a kind assessment; the letter appeared to be mostly blots—“expressing an intention to shortly pay the recipient a visit. The name on the top isn’t Sally, though. It appears to be Kit.” Jane turned the letter this way, then that. “Or Kat.”

  “Kat? That will be my older—” The Colonel broke off, his face lighting up like the royal fireworks on the King’s birthday. “That’s it! By Gad, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! That’s where they’ll be.” He looked eagerly from Gwen to Jane and back again. “Don’t you see? Lizzy will have gone to Kat.”

  He was all but dancing a jig in the middle of the room.

  “To whom?” said Gwen with great attention to diction.

  A great smile broke out across Colonel Reid’s face. “My older daughter, Katherine. She lives with her grandmother in Bristol. It’s as simple as that. She’s been all but a mother to Lizzy. Lizzy will have run to her, you mark my words.”

  “Bristol isn’t so very far from here,” said Jane slowly. “It’s an easy trip by stage.”

  “That’s what it is,” said Colonel Reid with great certainty. He let
out a gusty waft of air. “She’ll have gone to Kat, the minx.”

  Before Gwen’s eyes, Colonel Reid performed a remarkable feat of reverse aging. He seemed to drop ten years in as many minutes, the lines on his face clearing, his back straightening, his eyes glowing. Even his hair seemed springier. He slapped one leg with a resounding smack.

  “And after all the bother they’ve caused! They’ll be safe as safe can be with Kat’s grandmother. Nothing to worry about at all. Mother Davies is a minister’s widow. She’ll have them reciting psalms until they’re begging to be allowed back.”

  It was certainly an attractive image, but Gwen wasn’t entirely convinced. “If so, why haven’t they sent word? Why hasn’t Mrs.—”

  “Davies,” supplied Colonel Reid. His smile lit up his face like a candle. It was a most remarkable effect. His happiness was dizzying. “Mrs. Davies. She’s my Kat’s grandmother.”

  “Whatever her name may be,” said Gwen crushingly, “you would think she would have written.”

  “Not if the girls haven’t told her they’re away without leave,” said Colonel Reid cheerfully. “If I know my Lizzy, she’ll have told her it’s half term, or whatever it is they call it here. She can spin a tale, that one.”

  His Lizzy wasn’t the only one. “Arriving by themselves without luggage?” Gwen said witheringly.

  “My Lizzy will have found a way to make it sound entirely plausible,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “After that,” said Gwen tartly, “I don’t see why I should.”

  For a moment, the Colonel was taken aback. Then he let out a hearty bark of laughter. “Fair enough! I’ll not deny the gift of the gab runs in the family. Come with me, then, and see for yourself.” He turned to Jane. “You said it’s not far to Bristol?”

  “Only two hours by stage,” said Jane, who knew the routes of every major method of transportation and the relative travel times involved.

  “Well, then,” said Colonel Reid, his blue eyes sparkling. “We can be there and back in no time. Shall we go retrieve those erring ewe lambs?”

  The full force of Colonel’s Reid’s smile was a dangerous thing indeed. “The stage will have already gone,” said Gwen.

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said heartily. “I shall call for you in the morning.”

  “No need,” said Gwen coldly. “I can just as easily meet you at the White Hart. The stage leaves from there at—”

  “Nine twenty-three,” Jane supplied.

  “As you like,” said Colonel Reid easily. “Then we can collect our wayward lassies and give them the dressing-down of their lives, eh, Miss Meadows? Unless”—he had caught something of the look that had passed between the ladies—“is it not the thing for the chaperone to go unchaperoned? I’m new to these conventions. I can just as easily go myself, and faster, too.”

  “Nonsense,” said Gwen, stung by the implication that she couldn’t go anywhere she chose. “I’m far past the age of scandal.”

  The Colonel was too happy to be wise. “Hardly that far, Miss Meadows,” he said gallantly.

  Gwen looked at him loftily. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Colonel Reid.”

  “Not even to Bristol?”

  Was he flirting with her? If so, it was time to put a quick stop to that. “You can try your charm on the stage master,” retorted Gwen, “but I suspect he’d prefer hard coin to empty words.”

  “Sure and that’s preferable to hard words and empty coin,” the Colonel concurred blandly.

  “It’s a soft wit that turns hard coin to hard words,” said Gwen scornfully.

  Colonel Reid waggled his brows. “But a sure wit that turns empty words to hard coin.”

  Jane and Mlle. de Fayette turned one way and then another, like spectators at a tennis match.

  “In that case,” said Gwen triumphantly, “you can book our passage for tomorrow, and there are my empty words for your hard coin.”

  “As they say, touché.” Colonel Reid assayed a bow. “Madame, I bow to your powers of persuasion. One passage to Bristol, at your disposal.”

  “And back,” Gwen reminded him.

  Colonel Reid caught her eye and grinned. His eyes were blue, pale in his sun-browned face. The lines around them crinkled when he smiled. “And back,” he agreed. “It will be my honor and my privilege.”

  Gwen let out a crack of laughter. “That’s doing it a bit too brown, Colonel Reid. It will be your honor, certainly, but many would question the privilege.”

  “Then,” he said, with a courtly tilt of his head, “they are both foolish and rude.”

  Jane cleared her throat slightly. Nobody paid her any mind.

  “I look forward to our journey tomorrow,” said Colonel Reid cheerfully. “And to retrieving my wayward Lizzy.”

  “And my wayward Agnes,” Gwen reminded him.

  Jane cleared her throat again, more loudly.

  “We’ll herd them safely home,” agreed Colonel Reid.

  “If I might be so bold?”

  The Pink Carnation’s voice came dangerously close to a shout.

  “Forgive me for interrupting.” Jane waited until she had their full attention before saying, mildly, “It might be simpler to send a message to Mrs. Davies to make certain the girls are with her. If a note were sent by the mail tonight, you might have a reply by noon tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Gwen decidedly. There was no way she was backing down from this trip now, and the more she thought about it, the more she was certain that the Colonel was right. Where else could the girls have been for two whole weeks without exciting comment? No, they must be with this grandmother in Bristol. “Messages go astray. Let’s put an end to this now. Colonel Reid and I will go in the morning and bring the girls back—if they’re there,” she added, just to put the Colonel in his place.

  “Oh, they will be,” said the Colonel cheerfully. “They will be. I can’t imagine where else they could be.”

  • • •

  “You seem rather keen to go to Bristol,” commented Jane as they made their way back to the Woolistons’ hired house in Laura Place.

  She didn’t say “with the Colonel,” and for that, Gwen was grateful. Jane did show odd inclinations towards matchmaking from time to time.

  The rain had stopped and the women had furled their umbrellas. Gwen used hers to poke at a wayward cobble. “I’m keen to get those troublesome chits back. The sooner they’re home, the sooner we can get back to doing what we need to do.”

  “Assuming they’re in Bristol,” said Jane.

  “Why would we assume otherwise? There were no signs of a struggle.” Gwen began ticking points off on her gloved fingers. “The schoolmistress said that they were annoyed at the departure of their friend. This Lizzy girl sounds like the sort who would egg Agnes on to run off. And it’s ridiculously easy to sneak out of that so-called young ladies’ academy. I saw three ways within five minutes.”

  “I know,” said Jane, tucking her chin into her collar. “I know.” Then, “Mademoiselle de Fayette seemed quite nervous, didn’t she?”

  “You would be too, if you had to tell a parent his child had gone missing,” retorted Gwen. The change in the Colonel, once he had solved the mystery of his missing child, had been remarkable. He had looked like a sinner who had been assured the hope of salvation.

  “I suppose,” said Jane.

  Gwen looked at her charge with mingled affection and frustration. There were times when Jane’s reserve sorely tried her patience. Not that she’d ever pretended to have much of that particular commodity. “What is it, then? Out with it!”

  “It’s not anything I can put my finger on,” said Jane hopelessly. “Just a feeling. I know, I know. I sound like the heroine from one of your novels.”

  “Not my novel,” said Gwen, offended. She had begun working on her novel several years before, and the project was dearer to her than she liked to admit. “My heroine would never indulge in such foolishness.”

  “I know,” said Jane with a slight s
mile. “She would go charging forward, parasol at the ready.”

  Once, they had both gone charging forward. This new reluctance on Jane’s part . . . Gwen didn’t like it.

  Gwen rapidly changed the subject. “I’m surprised you were able to find anything on Miss Reid’s desk. It looked as though Bonaparte had dropped a shell on it.”

  “Yes, it was rather mussed, wasn’t it?” said Jane. “Whereas Agnes’s was . . . almost a little too tidy.”

  Gwen looked at her shrewdly. “What are you saying?”

  Jane picked her way carefully across the rain-slick cobbles. “If you were to search someone’s desk, you wouldn’t leave it looking as though a shell had exploded. You would put everything back in what you believed to be its place. Wouldn’t you?”

  Gwen didn’t like where this was going. “It seems a trifle extreme to abduct two girls simply to rifle through one desk. And if so, why not the other girl’s as well?”

  There were dark purple circles beneath Jane’s gray eyes. “You know why.”

  Her silence spoke louder than words. She didn’t need words. They had worked together long enough for that. Lizzy Reid’s desk would be of no interest to someone looking for anything that might incriminate the Pink Carnation. Agnes’s, however, would be.

  If someone wanted a bargaining chip, they could have found no surer one than the Pink Carnation’s youngest sister.

  “It’s one thing to put oneself at risk,” Jane said in a small, tight voice. “But one’s family . . .”

  “You’re starting at shadows,” said Gwen firmly. “It’s nothing of the kind, you’ll see.”

  She could tell Jane wasn’t convinced. She could tell in the way she pressed her lips together, in the way she stared unseeingly at the street ahead. But all she said was, “I hope you’re right.”

  “Aren’t I always?” said Gwen. “I’ll even bear with the company of that Colonel tomorrow to give you peace of mind.”

  “Bear?” Jane raised an expressive brow. “You seemed to be enjoying him, rather.”

  “The man’s a born rogue,” said Gwen repressively. “All stuff and no substance. I know the kind. And so ought you, young lady. A rogue’s a rogue.”