Then Miss Crewe took a dainty sip of ale, as though they were speaking to one another at a duchess’s afternoon tea. “Miss Anybody,” she said. “What a surprising pleasure to see you again.” She licked her lips, her tongue a flash of deeper pink.
Sophie felt faint and swallowed hard.
Miss Crewe patted the cushion beside her. “Won’t you have a seat?”
Sophie sat. Entirely because she didn’t trust her shaking knees not to give way beneath her. Certainly not because it brought her nearer to Miss Crewe than she had yet been.
For defense’s sake—her own or Miss Crewe’s?—she folded her hands tight atop her knees and tucked her feet beneath the sofa, away from the spread of the beauty’s skirts, as gray and soft as cobwebs.
Sophie feared she was already caught.
“That’s better,” Miss Crewe said. She took a last draught of ale, and set the tankard down with a meaningful click. “What is it you want, Miss Anybody?”
“Sophie,” Sophie blurted.
Miss Crewe’s head cocked. “I’m sorry?”
“My name is Sophie Roseingrave,” Sophie said. “Notanybody.”
“Maddie Crewe,” said Miss Crewe, with a flourish of her hand. “But then, I suspect you knew that already.” She turned slightly, facing Sophie, those hazel eyes burning with reflected flames. “What is it that youwant?”
One thing Sophie wanted—badly—was to put a hand on the nape of Miss Crewe’s neck and pull her forward for a kiss. It was a disastrous impulse, to be resisted at all costs. Had she learned nothing from the last year? “In order to answer, I need to tell you a story,” she said.
“Oh, how nice,” said Miss Crewe, her tone desert-dry.
“We used to live in London,” Sophie began. “My father, mother, my siblings, and me. Father ran a workshop that built pianofortes—good ones. Not as many as Mr. Broadwood turns out from his factory, but a few of the experts believed ours were better. So when Father was approached by a musician named Mr. Verrinder, who had nothing but praise for his work, it didn’t strike him as unusual. Mr. Verrinder was very charming, and had so many ideas about how my father could better employ his talents, and make a great deal more money for everyone.”
“Ah,” Maddie Crewe said. Her tone was low, almost as though she hadn’t meant to let the sound escape, and the amount of heavy sympathy in it made Sophie’s teeth ache. “Which idea was it?” Miss Crewe asked. “The joint-stock company? The patent application?”
Sophie shook her head. “Mr. Verrinder said he could revolutionize the teaching of piano. He believed students could be taught in groups, rather than singly. That way an instructor could charge less per student—meaning more pupils would be able to afford lessons—but still earn more in total than even the masters who charge a guinea a lesson.”
“A guinea a lesson!” Miss Crewe whistled, pursing those rosy lips and making Sophie clench her hands until the knuckles went white. “I had no idea piano-teaching wages ran so high.”
“They don’t, for most of us,” Sophie said. “I’ve never been able to charge a pupil so much. Those who do are the popular concert performers, the composers whose names are known by the public.”
“In short, the people you and your father both wanted to impress and to surpass.”
Sophie blinked. She had never thought of it that way. But it was true. Miss Crewe was sharp.
Then Sophie remembered: Miss Crewe was sharp because this was the kind of game Miss Crewe was used to playing. She steeled herself against beauty’s onslaught. It would do her no good to notice that one wayward auburn curl had slipped free to tremble against the delicate skin of Miss Crewe’s long throat.
“Father and Mr. Verrinder set up a piano school,” she said, pulling her gaze away. “Twenty Roseingrave pianos, for twenty pupils, under Mr. Verrinder’s instruction. A building rented in a part of town where the wealthy wouldn’t hesitate to send their children. Once the enterprise was a success—as it was sure to be, Mr. Verrinder said—we could open more schools, and charge the teachers a percentage of the profits.”
“All the money, none of the work,” Miss Crewe responded.
Sophie flushed. “He made it sound nobler than that.” She rubbed an imagined ache from her wrists, and forbore to mention the chiroplast. A device meant to train and control, and by some measures it had succeeded. But she wasn’t about to reveal her deepest shame to a liar and a trickster. “He ruined us,” she said instead. “It came out that he’d been selling the project to all my father’s colleagues, friends, and rivals, using his connection with us as a sign of his reliability. When he was exposed as a charlatan, he fled—and left my family holding all his debts: the twenty pianos built in expectation, the investments people had made, the teaching fees Mr. Verrinder had already started collecting in some cases. We had to sell everything to recoup what we could—the workshop, the storefront, back stock, our home. We had to let all Father’s employees go, and hope the stain of our names and reputation wouldn’t follow them. Or us.”
“And you came to Carrisford, because it is cheaper to start over here than London,” Miss Crewe said, and reached again for her tankard. “It’s a very sad story, Miss Roseingrave, but I fail to see how it pertains to me.”
“Because you are doing what Mr. Verrinder did,” Sophie said bluntly. “You are running a swindle.”
Miss Crewe went still, her drink held just shy of those rosebud lips.
Sophie smirked, just a little. “I asked Mr. Giles about you.”
“Mr. Giles lies,” Miss Crewe said at once.
“Both you and Mr. Giles are liars,” Sophie shot back. “I want to know whose lies are worse.”
