She thought of Anne by some very strange coincidence applying to Mr. Hatchard for a teaching position at her school when she lived a mere stone’s throw from the Marquess of Hallmere’s home in Cornwall.
She thought of Susanna being sent to the school as a charity girl at the age of twelve just shortly after the coincidence of having applied for a position as Lady Freyja’s maid.
She thought about Lady Freyja Bedwyn paying a call at the school one morning several years ago.But how had she known about the school or where to find it?
She thought about Edna’s telling her just a few weeks ago that Lady Freyja knew about the murder of her parents in their shop years ago—just before Edna was sent to the school in Bath.
She thought about Anne and Susanna trying to tell her down the years that perhaps Lady Freyja, Marchioness of Hallmere, was not quite as bad as Claudia remembered her.
She thought about the fact that when Lady Hallmere and her sister-in-law had needed new governesses for their children, they had looked for them in her school.
She thought…
If the truth were a large mallet, she thought, it surely would have flattened her head to her shoulders years ago.
“It was you,” she said. The words came out as little more than a whisper.“It was you!”
Lady Hallmere raised haughty eyebrows.
“It was you,” Claudia said again. “Youwere the school’s benefactor.”
“Oh, the devil!” Joseph said.
“Now you have done it,” the Marquess of Hallmere said, sounding amused. “The proverbial cat is out of the proverbial bag, Free.”
“Itwasyou.” Claudia stared at her former pupil, horrified.
Lady Hallmere shrugged. “I am very wealthy,” she said.
“You were agirlwhen I opened the school.”
“Wulf was a Gothic guardian in many ways,” Lady Hallmere said. “But he was remarkably enlightened when it came to money. We all had access to our fortunes when we were very young.”
“Why?”
Lady Hallmere tapped her hand against her side, and Claudia sensed that she would have been more comfortable if she had been holding a riding crop. She shrugged again.
“Nobody but you ever stood up to me,” she said, “until I met Joshua. Wulfric did, of course, but that was different. He was my brother. I resented the fact that my father and mother had died and left us, I suppose. I wanted to be noticed. I wanted someone other than Wulfric to force me to behave myself. You did it by walking out on me. But you were not dead, Miss Martin. I could wreak revenge on you as I could not with my mother. You cannot know what satisfaction it has given me over the years to know that you depended upon me even while you despised me.”
“I did not—”
“Oh, yes, you did.”
“Yes, I did.”
Joseph cleared his throat and the Marquess of Hallmere scratched his head.
“It was magnificent revenge,” Claudia said.
“I have always thought so,” Lady Hallmere admitted.
They stared at each other, Claudia tight-lipped, Lady Hallmere feigning a haughty nonchalance that did not look quite convincing.
“What can I say?” Claudia asked at last. She was horribly embarrassed. She owed a great deal to this woman. So did many of her charity girls, both past and present. Susanna might have been lost without this woman. Anne might have continued to live a miserable existence with David in Cornwall. The school would not have succeeded at all.
Oh, goodness, she could not possibly owe everything toLady Hallmereof all people!
But she did.
