Page 12 of The Redemption of the Shrew

No sarcastic tone of voice, either, she reminded herself. She didn’t love him anymore, so there was no reason for bitter mockery to combat his.

Very well, how about this?

It’s most chivalrous of you to stay to guard me, kind sir, but I couldn’t bear to inconvenience you.

No more stalking away in high dudgeon. She should have glided, or perhaps floated—Mama had tutored her in ladylike grace—downstairs to order Lord Hythwick’s coach. That would have been far preferable to spending five minutes in the privy, fuming and waiting for Philippe’s descending footsteps. When she gave up and unbolted the door, she’d found him sitting on the steps just above the landing, waiting for her.

Thank God she hadn’t succumbed to a bout of tears in the water closet, for he would have heard. But in spite of the painful twisting of her heart, she’d been unable to cry.

She had almost thrown up, though. Shock, perhaps, although whether from being attacked by one man or rejected by the other, she wasn’t sure. She made her way down the stairs, still queasy, to where Elspeth waited. Philippe didn’t follow to see how she fared.

Why would he? He’d only come to look at the Book of Hours, as Elspeth later told her. Gloriana was perfectly safe in the kitchen, and besides that, he didn’t love her.

Doesn’t love you, never loved you, the carriage wheels said again and again and again on the long ride south. By the time they reached London, Gloriana had stopped listening to the wheels. She was done with dreaming up reconciliation scenes. She thought about Philippe only a couple of dozen times a day. He would become a tedious memory before long. Till then, she would simply avoid him.

Bright and early the next morning, on a sweltering day even for London, she ordered her carriage and made a visit to the school for orphaned boys in Islington.

It was her school—her secret.

Well, not entirely secret. Elspeth knew, of course, and so, entirely by accident, did her most serious suitor, Mr. Bridge. At first, she had supported the school entirely with the income from a legacy from her aunt, who had died several months after her mother, but one day her suitor had driven past on a journey north and spied her on the doorstep of the school. He’d ordered the coachman to stop, jumped out to greet her, and that was the end of her secret.

A good end to it, though, for Mr. Bridge contributed regularly to the school’s upkeep. He’d even donated a mare and rented stabling in the nearby mews, so that the boys could be taught to ride. He had advised her to find other patrons, but she’d refused. “I don’t want the whole world to know.”

“Dash it all, Miss Warren,” he’d said. “There’s no shame in funding a school for orphan boys.”

“I’m not ashamed,” she retorted, “but I’d rather keep it a secret all the same.” She wasn’t about to explain why. Mr. Bridge, being extremely polite, neither insisted nor pried. Besides Philippe, he was the only man she’d seriously considered marrying. But apart from that vow she’d made, she didn’t love Mr. Bridge—he was merely a good, kind, tolerant friend.

Tolerant being the operative word. He deserved a much more agreeable wife than Gloriana would ever be.

Today, she stepped down from the carriage and sent it round to the stable at the Angel Inn. She dug in her reticule for the key to the front door of the pretty brick house she’d bought for the school.

“Mademoiselle Glow!”

She’d chosen her nickname as a pseudonym. No one at the school but Eric Alexander, the headmaster, knew her true identity, and he was sworn to secrecy.

Gloriana turned, her foot on the bottom step, as two boys and a girl pelted along the pavement toward her. One boy, Thomas Walters, was one of her school’s orphans, while the other two children were the offspring of Madame Brun, a widowed Frenchwoman who had emigrated to England during the revolution in France. Gloriana greeted the children with hugs and smiled at Madame Brun, who lived in a similar house a few doors down. “Good day, Madame!”

“How lovely to see you in London so soon.” Madame Brun was an exotic-looking brunette with a mischievous air and a warm heart. “I thought you were fixed in the country until autumn.”

So had Gloriana, until Philippe—

No. She would not think about him. “I intend to spend more time at the school.” Now that she had no elderly chaperone fretting over her, she could do precisely as she pleased, when she pleased, without upsetting anyone. She found great joy in sketching and drawing, so maybe she could teach it, if any of the boys showed aptitude. “My work here feels so much more worthwhile than anything I can do in the North. My brother and his wife are so good to their dependents, neighbors, and tenants, that I am superfluous, while here in London, there is never enough help to go around.”

“True,” Madame Brun sighed. “Mr. Alexander recently acquired two more boys for the school, but one ran away the very next day.”

This was only to be expected. Mr. Alexander, formerly the vicar of an impoverished parish, was a good judge of which boys to choose, but street ragamuffins sometimes valued their independence more than the promise of regular food and education. She didn’t blame them. They were used to broken promises, and in their experience, enticing offers usually proved more costly than they were worth.

She reminded herself that Philippe, too, was a promise-breaker. He had sworn he loved her, and then he’d shown precisely the opposite by running away when she’d given him the chance to prove it. She’d tried to make excuses for him over the years but without success. Why had she continued to love such a man? Maybe Elspeth was right, and God would forgive her for breaking her vow.

“Thomas is making great progress in French.” Madame Brun turned to the boy. “Show Miss Glow.”

Thomas, who had come to her two years earlier, foul-mouthed and louse-ridden, stood forward and gave a jerky bow. “Bonjour, mademoiselle. Comment allez-vous?”

“Très bien, merci,” Gloriana said. “Your accent is already better than mine.” She smiled at him, and he grinned back. How rewarding to see him now entirely the equal of the far better bred Charles Brun. She gazed fondly on the children, the paler, fairer Thomas and the darker, Gallic-looking Charles, and pretty little Elise. The boys were now fast friends, where in other circumstances they could never have known and trusted one another. Charles would have gone on to a respectable profession, solicitor perhaps, or physician, while Thomas would likely have been hanged or transported for theft. It went to show how completely accurate were Philippe’s theories of education, on which she had founded the school.

These were the same theories she’d argued against every time she met him, which made it impossible to seek patrons for the school. Society, including Philippe, would learn that she supported his views on education. Since she publicly disagreed with him at every opportunity, she would look like a fool, a madwoman, or both.

The more she thought about the role she’d played for the last several years, the less sense it made.