“Urgh!” Felix’s head hit the desk this time. “I really can’t be bothered with mathematics again. It really is a pointless waste of my time.” Assuming that she couldn’t see, his feet nudged the already sleeping Norbert beneath his desk to encourage the dog to distract him. Delighted, the big dog jumped up, stretched, and began to furiously wag his tail as he waited to see what fun his manipulative young master had in store.
Wise to that trick, Georgie retrieved a chunk of carrot from her desk and called his name, wiggling it. As he loved carrots almost as much as sausages, the dog instantly headed her way, then sat obediently at her feet as he awaited it. “Good boy, Norbert… now lie down.” She pointed to the floor beside her desk and he collapsed there, his big brown eyes transfixed on the drawer where he now knew the carrots lived in case another chunk was forthcoming.
“If you look at the diagrams on your desks and imagine that the circles are apple pies that need to be sliced ready for a tea party—”
“I don’t feel well.” Looking in the finest of fettles, Marianne suddenly stood. “May I be excused so that I can go and lie down?”
“No.” Georgie folded her arms to reiterate how unconvinced she was. “Sit back down and stop wasting everyone’s time.” Then, because all three of them were behaving oddly, she shook her head. “What on earth is the matter with you all today? I’ve never seen you all so distracted so early in the day.”
“I am going to be sick.” Rather than comply with Georgie’s instruction, the girl folded her arms too, but across her stomach, then feigned a few fairly convincing gagging motions to add credence to her lie. “The room is spinning.” That was where the performance failed,as Marianne was overacting now for all she was worth. “I might even faint too if I don’t lie down soon, Miss Rowe.” The subsequent swaying would have been comical if Georgie hadn’t been so irritated by the blatant attempt at sabotage. She was almost as irritated by that as she was by her unpalatable, imagined, intimate, and amorous nocturnal surrender to the captain—of all people.
Drat that damp shirt!
“Some fresh air would help.” Felix bounded to the French doors, and with no whiff of any additional carrot to keep him where he was, Norbert bounced beside him as the boy wrestled with the lock. The second it opened, his theatrical sister collapsed in a graceful heap on the floor, and believing it—or in cahoots with it—Grace flew out of her seat to fuss over her.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Georgie’s fists made their way to her hips as she gave them all her best schoolmistress’s stare. “Do you all think that I was born yesterday?” As Felix already had one foot out of the door and Norbert was prancing about on the terrace in readiness, she marched toward them and yanked the doors closed with the dog on the other side of them. “Go sit down this second, Felix.” Her pointed finger brooked no argument, but still he dragged his feet as he belligerently did as he was told. “And you can get up, too, Marianne. I am well aware that you are playacting and I am not the least bit impressed by it.”
Marianne remained prostrate, her eyes too tightly clenched to be in an actual faint, testing Georgie’s mettle. Grace, however, started to waver under her steely teacher’s glare and shook her sister to encourage compliance. When her sibling refused to wake, she glanced up at her with a trembling bottom lip. “I think she might be dead, Miss Rowe.” Within a split second, tears spilled over the little girl’s cheeks, and the moment they did, Felix used it to his advantage.
“Marianne is definitely dead.” He wrapped a brotherly armaround his weeping baby sister’s shoulders. “It’s just us now, Grace. Just you and me. No more Marianne. No Mama. No Papa. Even Uncle Harry has deserted us. We are all alone now.”
That was too much for the sensitive five-year-old to bear and, clearly believing it, the little sniffs turned into full-blown cries as her whole world fell apart. Beyond the glass of the French doors, the now-exiled Norbert followed suit and howled in sympathy for all he was worth.
With her lesson plan now unraveling faster than the sensible bun she had pinned her horrid hair in, it was Georgie’s turn to huff as she gathered Grace into her arms. “Marianne is not dead, darling. Your brother and sister are playing a cruel joke, is all.” While Marianne still did her level best to resemble a corpse on the floor, she turned her most evil eye to Felix. “A very cruel and callous joke indeed, and they should both be heartily ashamed of themselves for upsetting you so.” A crime that could not go unpunished, so she sighed again. This time for herself.
As much as she preferred to spare the rod, Miss P had instilled in her the need to ensure that punishments were fair, fitting, and had to be followed through if you wanted to be taken seriously. Empty threats or deferring the power to their uncle when he returned, or their parents, weakened her stature in both the short term and most especially in the long. Seeing as the two eldest were already testing her authority today, she had to stand firm now or she might as well wave the white flag of surrender and give up all hope of ever being an effectual governess to these three until August. “As penance, they have both lost all playtime privileges for the rest of the day, which means that during the morning break and after luncheon, neither of them will be allowed outside.”
Felix’s sharp intake of breath told her that he considered that afate worse than death, whereas Marianne remained unmoved, determined to remain as tragically dead as Pyramus in act five of her belovedA Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Furthermore, should Marianne refuse to be resurrected from the grave in the next ten seconds, then she will also go to bed tonight without any supper for playing such a cruel trick on Grace.” The girl stiffened slightly but still refused to budge. “One… two… three…” Georgie’s expression was purposefully deadpan, her tone simultaneously clipped but calm. “Four… five…”
Felix nudged his sister with his foot. “I think she means it, Marianne.”
“Six… seven… eight…”
“Marianne!” Felix kicked her this time. “Stop!”
“Nine…”
With a Sleeping Beauty–type yawn, the middle Pendleton stretched as if she had been indeed in the deepest of slumbers and cracked open one eye. “Did I pass out?”
Clearly, it was going to be a very long and arduous day.
“Get back in your seat, both of you, and pick up your pens.” Dispassionately, she walked to the door, still carrying the hiccuping Grace, and let Norbert back in. Thankfully, his howling stopped immediately, but sensing the suppressed anger held inside her, rather than bounding in, tail wagging, his scruffy tail hung limp. So did his ears as he edged in, as quiet as a mouse, before he collapsed, contrite, beneath Felix’s desk, staring at Georgie intently over his crossed paws in case she decided to give him a telling off too.
“As I previously stated, a fraction is a smaller portion of a whole…”
Georgie had higher hopes for a better Tuesday after the miserable Monday. After the fake faint in the first lesson, and despite the punishments she had been forced to dole out, the rest of that day had gone rapidly downhill, necessitating both Marianne and Felix to go to bed without supper. Even little Grace lost all her playtime privileges after she decided to run in a rapid circle around the classroom and then accidentally crashed into the wall. They had all clearly made the collective decision to do as little work as possible and to test her boundaries—and test them they had.
But Tuesday was as challenging as Monday had been and the less said about the shambles that had been Wednesday, the better. Now, everyone in the classroom was as miserable as sin—including Georgie. Even Norbert’s plaintive but lackluster howling from the back of the house where he had been banished had lost all hope, as if he didn’t expect this miserable existence they were all trapped in together to get any better. The only consolation was that the captain wasn’t around to inspect the shambles. But as the days stretched since she had last seen him on the landing, the threat of the next inspection when he returned while she was now fighting a war with the children was keeping her up at night. Almost as much as the memory of him in that dratted wet shirt.
This wasn’t the sort of teacher she had always wanted to be, and these dry, uninspiring, desk-bound lessons resembled nothing that she had ever wanted to teach. The children certainly had no enthusiasm for the silent book learning she had been forced to implement to get them to realize that poor behavior would not be rewarded. The written work they had produced in the last three days was at best substandard, at worst nonexistent, and they hadn’t been able to do anything even remotely fun at all as a result. The only positive was that they were halfway through Thursday and, so far, she hadn’t hadto lock horns with anyone nor hand out any serious reprimands. Instead, the three Pendletons sat dejected, pens in one hand and depressed chins in the other, willing the interminable day to end.
“Pens down, everybody.” Someone had to break the tense monotony, and it stood to reason that someone was her.
Praying that she could salvage things before the die was cast for all eternity and without the classroom reverting to anarchy again, she smiled at them all for the first time since Felix’s initial rebellion. “I think we can all agree that, so far, this week has been a thoroughly awful affair.” Warily, both Felix and Marianne nodded.
“If it is any consolation, this…” Georgie gestured to the comprehension questions she had written on the board concerning the dry text they had been studying because the excitement ofGrimms’ Fairy Taleshad proved too distracting. “Is not how I envisaged teaching the three of you the usually joyous subject of English literature. I had planned to do things that were a bit more fun and intended for us to turn ‘Hansel and Gretel’ into a play that we could perform for Simpkins and Mrs. Rigsby…” Marianne’s eyes lit up at that. “But couldn’t because, unfortunately, the three uncooperative Pendletons who have been sitting in this classroom since Monday are not the same three that I taught last week. We did have more fun last week, didn’t we?”
