Pip wasn’t prepared for the sudden, tight embrace.
“So, Miss Knight,” Miss Schroeder said with a grin, pulling back. “You are to be my savior? I think that only appropriate since I was yours those years ago at school.”
She had been, too, coming into their awful boarding school and cleaning it up, literally and figuratively. There was something different, though. It took Pip a moment to figure it out.
“Where is your accent?” German, to be exact. A precise accent the girls used to mimic sometimes.
Miss Schroeder looked and, unfortunately, smelled as if she had been in this room for quite a few days. But her answering grin was bright and rueful. “Ah well,” she said. “That comes and goes as needed.”
“You aren’t German.”
“I am not. Are we leaving?”
“Not just yet. I must notify Mr. Hilliard and ask what we need to do. My job was just to find you. It seems I have found two other ladies we need to rescue as well. Tell me. Is the red card significant?”
Miss Schroeder nodded. “They call us the Lion Admissions. If the officials come, we are to be quietly disposed of.”
Pip shuddered. She suspected she knew for certain what that foxglove was for. “Can I ask how long you have been down here? Certainly, longer than the three days I have been working here. Did they catch you exchanging information with Mrs. Baxter?”
And if so, why didn’t they kill her then?
It was as if Miss Schroeder had heard her. “They did catch us. But they are so certain they will prevail that they just needed us out of the way until their plan worked. In fact, they still believe I am Mrs. Riordan.”
“They haven’t hurt you?”
“Besides leaving me in absolute darkness on a hard floor with only a chamberpot for relief and gruel for meals?” She smiled again, that indomitable woman. “I don’t wish to brag, but I have withstood worse. Mrs. Baxter has not, though. I do worry for her.”
So did Pip. “I cannot do this by myself,” she apologized. “I must inform Diccan Hilliard as soon as I can.”
“Of course, you must. First, however, let me quickly give you the information Diccan needs. Can you remember it all?”
Pip grinned. “Are you saying you aren’t certain whether you taught me well enough?”
That earned her another smile and the information about the planned attacks and assassination attempt scheduled to happen in just two days. Not on the Duke of Wellington, however. Their target was the Prince Regent himself. Thankful she had gotten to Miss Schroeder in time, Pip quickly repeated the information back and nodded.
“One more thing,” she said. “Theo Drummond. You said you knew where he is.”
“We think he embedded himself with the smugglers to follow their trail and possibly disrupt the plans. Although he’ll need help to do it. He’ll be with them at Bristol and wearing a blue knit cap. So, they need to watch out for him.”
Pip nodded, and then realized something. “How did you escape the laudanum?”
Miss Schroeder’s eyes twinkled as she pointed to her chamberpot. “Those are handy for more than relieving oneself of too much tea. Now, go, before someone catches you in here. We don’t need any more souls in the quieting rooms.”
Pip could think of nothing more to do than shake her head. “Indeed. I hope we can have you out in the next day or two. Will you be able to move fast?”
“Do not worry about me,” she said. “I have been playing this game a while now. I know how to protect myself.”
Pip shook her head. “I wish I’d known this at school. Think of what you could have taught us.”
They were both still smiling when she locked her old headmistress back into the dark.
Her work was almost finished. She just needed to make her constitutional a bit longer tonight. In the meantime, she had a lot of work to do as the maid.
* * *
Diccan had madeit easy for her to pass on her information. When she took her walk, she meandered over the modest-sized grounds of the asylum set at the edge of the city. Diccan had told her that if she needed to talk to someone, put a candle in her window—unlit—and they would have someone meet her at the corner.
And when she slipped out that evening, there he was. A man sat slumped against the brick wall of the building next door, a tin cup on the ground in front of him. Then she saw the empty sleeve and breathed her first sigh of relief. Blessed Brian’s bottles, she thought, briefly closing her eyes. When this was over, she was traveling straight to the seaside and sit all alone for weeks just to watch the water. She had had quite enough of this unrelenting fear. She would say this task would have been easier with Beau, but he never would have let her into that asylum in the first place.
