“Because she’s like all the other grown-ups. Now she’s going to leave us, too,” Victor exclaims behind her.
“It’s not my choice, Victor. I’d stay if I could.” He doesn’t look like he believes her.
They stop outside the nursery. Beatrix kneels on the floor. “You twoneed to promise me you’ll never lose your curiosity.” She drops her voice to a loud whisper. “Even if the grown-ups don’t like it.” She looks at Victor. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he says grudgingly.
“Margaret?”
Margaret’s eyes well with tears. She throws her arms around Beatrix’s neck, almost bowling her over. “I promise.”
Beatrix swallows the lump rising in her throat and extricates herself from the girl’s fierce grip. “Look after each other, won’t you?” She forces a laugh to disguise the tremble in her voice. “And be kind to your new governess.”
Victor pulls a face, but one stern look from Beatrix sets it straight. The children trudge into the nursery, and Beatrix shuts the door behind them with a soft click. She slumps against the wall and blinks away the tears burning her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Oliver stands at the top of the stairs, his top hat clutched between his hands. Beatrix pushes off the wall. She wonders how long he has been standing there. How much he saw.
“It’s not your fault.” She is the one who told those foolish stories—the one who has become attached to those children—even though she knows better. She has no one to blame but herself.
Oliver falls into step next to her. “Those kids mean a lot to you.” He follows her into her room and shuts the door behind him.
“It’s just a job,” she assures him. Itwasjust a job.
Beatrix reaches under her bed and pulls out a small carpetbag. She crosses to the closet, the door ajar from Oliver’s escape. He watches her pack her entire existence away in a matter of minutes.
She fastens her bag and pulls on her coat and hat. “That’s everything.” She swallows back the urge to cry as she leaves her room.
Wisps of voices drift up the staircase from the dinner party. Beatrix searches the steps. Sometimes she would come back to her room in the evening to find Margaret sitting at the top, listening to the guests tell their stories, trying to catch a glimpse of them. Sometimes she would sit on the top step with her, and they would listen together. Tonight, there is no one.
They pass the nursery. Beatrix forces herself to keep moving. She has already said goodbye. There is nothing more she can do.
A lie, and she knows it.
She’s already been dismissed. She has nothing left to lose, nothing left for Mrs. Winfield to take. Her heart thuds against her ribs. She hands Oliver her bag. “I’ll meet you outside.” She gives him a reassuring smile and watches him disappear down the servants’ stairs.
When the hall is empty again, Beatrix takes a small silver key from her pocket, unlocks the door across from the nursery, and slips inside.
The professor’s library looks different under the overcast early-evening light, sharper and more real than it does under the flickering glow of a candle. She can picture him here, bent over his desk, oblivious to the party downstairs.
Beatrix goes to the table just inside the door, piled high with books and papers she has taken care not to topple during her silent nights spent reading here. She has only ever taken one book from this table, the copy ofGrimms’ Fairy Talesshe suspects previously lived in the nursery, now on her shelf in the schoolroom.
She can imagine Mrs. Winfield sweeping through the house in her mourning dress, gathering up anything that reminds her of her lost husband. She can imagine her bringing it all to the library, determined to shut it away with every other thing she can’t bear to look at anymore. She can imagine her freezing on the threshold, unable to bring herself to step inside the room that holds too much of him. Dropping everything onto the table and locking the door behind her.
Beatrix picks up a thin book bound in olive-green linen. She opens it to the title page.
My dearest Margaret & Victor…
She takes the next book in the pile, a thick leather-bound tome with unevenly cut pages.
A special gift on a special day…
She opens each book in the pile.
With all my love…
Love always…
Love, Papa
