Page 21 of The Marriage Method

At last, Miss Corvus glanced up. Her lips compressed in a hard line. “Miss Trewlove.”

“Ma’am,” Nell replied.

Miss Corvus didn’t rise. She gestured to the upholstered chair opposite her desk. It was the very place a teacher or student might sit if they’d been summoned in order to be called to account for something.

Stiffening her spine, Nell crossed the study and sat down. She saw no need to beat about the bush. “Miss Sparrow informs me that you’ve had an express from Reverend Pettiman.”

Miss Corvus wordlessly picked up a letter from her desk. She offered it to Nell.

Nell took it. Her blood went cold as she read the reverend’s unvarnished report of what he’d seen in the editor’s office of the London Courant. The words immoral, shameless, and disgrace jumped out at her from the page.

“Well?” Miss Corvus prompted. “I presume you deny his account?”

Nell returned the letter to Miss Corvus’s desk, relieved at the steadiness of her hand. Miss Corvus prized self-control. She had taught them, as Nell now taught her own students, that a lady’s greatest strength lay in keeping her composure. “I can’t deny what he saw,” she said, “only his interpretation of it.”

“Then you were on the floor of the newspaper office, with your skirts lifted, and a gentleman between—”

“Yes,” Nell cut in. Mortification burned in her veins. “But not for the salacious reasons Pettiman imagines.”

Miss Corvus sat back. Her face was tight. “Pray enlighten me.”

Nell didn’t prevaricate. She described the events that had led up to her being discovered by Reverend Pettiman as swiftly and succinctly as possible.

Miss Corvus listened, revealing not so much as a glimmer of amusement. Rather the reverse. Her expression seemed to grow harder and more forbidding by the second.

Nell continued with an effort. “So you see,” she concluded, “it was all an unfortunate accident, caused by a frightened cat caught in the tapes of my crinoline. Mr. Quincey took no liberties in removing her. He was perfectly gentlemanly.”

Miss Corvus met Nell’s explanation with ominous silence.

Apprehension coiled in Nell’s stomach. By some miracle she kept it from creeping into her voice. “Do you doubt me?”

“You’ve never given me any reason to,” Miss Corvus said. “Yet it doesn’t change the facts.”

Nell’s already sagging spirits sank still further. “I know. I know. It’s why I came back immediately. I thought to warn you before—” She stopped herself. “But I didn’t consider he’d send an express to you.”

“Not only to me. If he’s sent one here, you can be assured he’ll have sent something similar to one or more of our patrons.”

Nell had contemplated that very possibility during those frantic moments after she’d been caught in Miles’s office. It made it no easier to hear.

“We rely on their generosity,” Miss Corvus said. “Many are women like us—forward-thinking, subversive—but not all. It’s the latter that concern me. Specifically, Lady Summers, Mrs. Crookshanks, and Mrs. Weaving.”

Lady Summers, Mrs. Crookshanks, and Mrs. Weaving were their three largest benefactors. Respectable Christian women all, none of whom knew the true purpose of the Academy.

“How long do you think their annual donations will continue if they are persuaded my deputy headmistress is a light-heeled wench who’s no better than she ought to be?” Miss Corvus asked.

Nell flinched at the coarse description. “I will explain the circumstances to them myself.”

“It won’t matter.”

“I’ll tell them—”

“It won’t matter,” Miss Corvus bit out. She stood abruptly. Arms folded, she paced across the study, her black crepe skirts swishing with bottled fury. “We are held to a higher standard here. Higher still because our outward show of modesty protects the true purpose of our work. What you have done, however inadvertently, puts us all at risk.”

Nell clasped her hands tight in her lap. During all her years at the Academy, she had never received a dressing-down. The worst of Miss Corvus’s ire had always been reserved for Effie and Gemma. Nell, by contrast, had rarely merited a single word of rebuke.

She had spent her life doing her duty as best she knew how. Always looking out for her sisters, her students. Always putting the Academy first. It’s why she’d gone to London in the first place. And all for this to happen. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

“Would that I was rich enough to subsidize all this myself,” Miss Corvus went on. “But we rely on these charitable ladies and their ilk. When they come to me, along with Pettiman, demanding that I dismiss you—”