Jane saw the evasion, as she always did. Her jaw clenched.
“He is tending him at this moment,” Elise added, because she owed Jane at least that much truth.
Jane’s voice fell to a whisper. “You have put a wounded man in the house, under the care of a gentleman we scarcely know, and you expect me to be calm?”
“I expect you,” Elise said, meeting her gaze steadily, “to help as you always do.”
Jane’s breath shuddered out. For a moment she looked very young—an orphaned girl again, left behind by a Navy that swallowed fathers and returned only their effects. Then herspine straightened, and the housekeeper—no, the mistress of order, the guardian of twenty girls—reasserted herself.
“Tell me,” Jane said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
Elise held her gaze, grateful and miserable all at once. “We must be prepared to move the girls.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed. “Move them—where?”
Elise’s mind, always too practised at contingency, had already begun assembling a plan out of whatever fragments lay to hand.
“The Admiral’s cottage,” she said first, “if it is habitable.”
Jane frowned. “But the roof?”
“Mr. Leigh has ordered repairs. A builder has started work. We must know whether it can shelter any portion of the girls, even for a short time. Perhaps the other wing may be habitable. If not—” She drew a breath. “—then the vicarage; families who owe us favours; relatives.”
Jane stared. “You mean to send them away?” Jane’s voice sharpened again. “Because you believe they will come here?”
Elise looked down for a moment because looking at Jane made it harder to keep herself composed. “If someone is asking after me—after this house—and if they were willing to do what they did to Blake, then they will not scruple to frighten girls or harm them to reach what they want.”
Jane’s face went very still. “What is it they want?”
Elise’s throat tightened. She could not—would not—name the cipher here, not with walls and servants and children and the very air seeming suddenly treacherous.
“Something of Charles’,” she said, “and Blake?—”
Jane’s eyes went to Elise’s pocket, as if she could see through cloth to the note hidden in the lining of a box upstairs. “Blake knows what they want?”
“Yes.”
Jane’s hands clenched. “Do you think they will search the house?”
Elise’s voice was soft. “I fear they already have the intention. The school is a target of convenience—a woman’s establishment, a place men assume will contain nothing more harmful than needles and nothing more dangerous than French grammar.”
Jane swallowed, then said, “How do we explain it to the girls?”
“We do not,” Elise replied at once. “Not truly. We must give them a reason that will not alarm them, nor invite questions among mothers which will travel back to the ears of men who listen.”
Jane’s brow furrowed, evidently already calculating. “An illness?”
Elise nodded. “An illness. Influenza, a fever, anything seasonal and plausible. We say we have had a case among the kitchen maids. We say we must separate the girls from the household to preserve their health.”
Jane made a sound of disgust. “As if Cook could ever permit the word ‘illness’ to be spoken in her kitchen without producing an onion poultice and declaring herself immune.”
“She will comply if I instruct her to do so,” Elise said, with the faintest attempt at humour.
Jane looked away, breathing hard through her nose. When she spoke again, her voice was steady. “Where shall we start?”
“Mrs. Grealey,” Elise said. “She must know about the Admiral’s roof. You must go to her at once. Ask whether the cottage is sound enough, or how quickly it might be made so.”
Jane grimaced. “You would have me enquire of the old tyrant housekeeper whilst you—where will you be?”
