Black eyes slid askance. “How do you know that?”
“I might have…read something.” Amelia shrugged. “Somewhere.”
Another black curl fell as a second pin was drawn from Phoebe’s hair. “Then what?”
“Well, if I remember rightly… You insert one and hold it against the top of the lock whilst…wiggling the other. Something like that.”
“Hmm.” More huffing ensued but Amelia kept hush, until with a click, Phoebe whooped. “That was fun.” Another askance look. “You’re a very bad governess, aren’t you?”
Yes.
“A governess must have a broad knowledge, Phoebe. I can also render pupils immobile with no more than a red ribbon and a left-handed glove.”
Phoebe giggled with a young girl’s vigour, a hand upon her mouth, and it was such…a pleasure to hear.
“What would you like to do for the last hour then?” Amelia had earlier sifted through one of the ominous tomes on the bookshelf –A Guide to Genteel Pastimes. “We could embroider slippers as a gift for your guardian?”
Nose scrunched.
“Construct a paper-mâché likeness of a cat?”
Roll of eye.
“List twenty ways to amuse a gentleman with anecdotes on the weather?”
A lip curled.
“Wax flower models?”
A snort.
“Well, what then? You decide.” A touch rash but if her charge was content, Amelia may last longer in this household.
“Hmm…” Phoebe tapped a lip.
Amelia fretted…
Half an hour later, Miss Phoebe Thornton proudly grinned as she locked and unlocked her jewellery box for the twelfth time with her hairpins.
Amelia placated herself that if ever the girl found herself locked out of the house, at least she might get back in.
“Now, Mama’s cameo,” murmured Phoebe, and she drew out a delicate brooch with the finely carved profile of a lady against a black background.
“It’s exquisite,” said Amelia.
Inside the jewellery box also lay ten gold bangles in an array of sizes, each with a precious gemstone. They were most charming, and Amelia sighed, remembering the baubles she’d had as a young girl – all sold now.
“Were the bangles your mother’s also?”
“Oh no, Uncle Hugh gifted one to me for each birthday from when I turned five years.”
“That must have been costly for him,” she muttered without forethought.
Phoebe made a noise like a choking dog. “Uncle Hugh has more money than Midas. Diamond mines in Brazil, shops on Bond Street and he owns half of Mayfair’s townhouses. All the swells lease from him.”
Amelia frowned at this casually slung information.
For if neither money nor some seductress were a motive for Mr Cadwalader to turn traitor, what else could it be and why did the Foreign Office consider it a possibility?
What had she not been told?
She returned her gaze to the window but the roses that Mr Cadwalader had chosen for the schoolroom desk caught her eye.
Today they were an opulent yellow.
Sharp thorns on every stem.
