AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There is a connection! But the nature of that connection had just been called into question. He’d come looking for an evil man who sold women and children into a short and terrible existence for profit, but Isabella had said the Archangel had brought Emma and Rose here.
I need to know everything, and I need to know now. His reason for going to the library forgotten, Will retraced his steps down the hallway. It was time to confront the headmistress and learn the truth. But as he passed the entrance to the school’s front reception hall, he paused. Her office hadn’t contained the information he sought. Perhaps it was kept someplace else? Going in, he looked around the foyer.
There to the right was the door to Mrs. Sloane’s rooms. He’d long wondered why the woman quartered there, separated from everyone else. Now he suspected it was so that she could admit new arrivals in the dead of night without the whole place being awakened.
Sloane was currently outside monitoring the students.
On the opposite side of the foyer were two more doors, one bearing a plaque marked RECEPTION and the other EXAM. The latter was likely for Dr. Horton’s use. Will went to the other one and found it locked. Pressing an ear to the door, he listened. Hearing nothing, he knelt and took out the little wallet of special implements he always kept on his person.
Grimacing, he selected the appropriate tools and went to work on the lock, thankful for having taken lessons from a former thief-turned-Taker. He was soon rewarded with a gratifying click.
In another life, I might have made a decent thief. Pocketing his tools, he went inside. It was dim, but the light streaming in from the high, narrow window was enough to see a desk at one end of the room. It held the standard writing implements, as well as several neat stacks of papers. Glancing through, he determined them to be of no significance. The cabinet behind the desk, however, looked more promising.
Opening it, he discovered several shelves of identical leather-bound folios. Plucking one out, he read the name “Antoinette Bellmonde” on its label. It wasn’t a name with which he was familiar. He laid it aside and pulled out another. This name, he did recognize.
If she’s in here, then Emma should be, as well.
They appeared to be ordered alphabetically by last name. Skimming down the line, he looked for Stone. On finding it, he saw the folio bore not one name on its label, but two. Emma and Rose. At last. Opening it, he carried it into the light.
Approximate dates of birth were recorded, physical descriptions… He brought the document closer and peered at it. To his trained eye, the ink in which their names were written appeared much darker than the rest of the intake record. It varied slightly in color, also, meaning it was from a different pot. Below, an accidental drip of this same ink obscured another word.
Their names had been filled in after the rest of the information had already been entered.
Laying the document aside, he pored over a report detailing their intake health exam, which was noted as having been performed by Dr. Whitehall. In it, the physician proclaimed them both to be in acceptable physical health, although he expressed concern over the older girl’s state of mind.
Long-term distress on behalf of the younger sister the likely cause of sleeplessness and stomach complaints. Recommend mild, nightly dose of laudanum to help induce sleep until it passes. Do not recommend separation for at least six months. Symptoms should be reassessed in two months.
Now why would Emma be “distressed” over her younger sister to such a point? And why would the physician recommend they be kept together? Had Rose been ill? He checked Rose’s record, but it showed no indication of any illness.
To his disappointment, there was nothing telling him who’d brought them to the school. They were merely listed as “secured and accepted.” Laying the file aside, he returned to the shelf.
In Janet Fairfield’s file, he found a bit more information. Parents Fred and Mary Fairfield were listed as deceased. He opened her intake health report, and his heart began to race as he read.
According to Whitehall’s notes, little Janet had been found unconscious, her broken body stuffed in a crate and left outside a grocer’s stall in the dead of winter. Malnutrition, evidence of severe physical abuse, right fibula broken, multiple phalangeal fractures, left orbital fracture suspected…
His stomach turned as he read on and he remembered how the little girl had flinched away from him when they’d first met. Someone had indeed beaten her. According to this, very nearly to death. The memory of her laughing, flowerlike face turned toward the sun as she’d played in the courtyard earlier today swam in his mind’s eye.
Anger washed the image in scarlet. That anyone could be so inhuman ought not to surprise him anymore, but it did.
Apparently, I’m not as jaded as I thought. With nothing upon which to vent his fury, Will swallowed his bile and forced himself to read on. There was no information concerning who had found Janet or who had brought her here.
He went back to the Bs and pulled out the file belonging to Suzette Bagley. Found on a street just off Cheapside, she’d also been brought in by an unnamed individual. He read down the list written by Dr. Whitehall. Malnutrition, exposure—
Shock nearly made him drop the file. The pox? The entry date was almost two years ago, which meant the girl had to have been one of Trouvère’s first students. According to the list he’d been given when he’d first arrived, Miss Bagley was now thirteen. Horror and pity welled up inside him. Though he was almost afraid to do so, he read on.
Claims to be the oldest of four children; whereabouts of parents and siblings unknown. Presume abandoned due to illness.
Two months later, another entry: Sufficiently recovered to attend lessons. Patient declared sterile as a result of disease. Recommend final work placement in an all-female home or institution.
“May I assume you’ve learned what you wished to know?”
Stifling a yelp, Will turned and saw Trouvère standing in the doorway, arms akimbo, her face an inscrutable mask.
Bollocks. He hadn’t even heard her come in. “I meant only to seek your advice about a student. I came in here thinking to find you, but—”
“My office is upstairs. And I know for a fact this door was locked.” She held up a ring of keys. “You will explain how you got in and what you are doing.”
He’d been caught. There was nothing for it but to tell the truth—or some of it, anyway. “I had questions that needed answering,” he blurted, avoiding the issue of his entry. “I’m sorry to have done it this way, but I saw no other means. You have been unwilling to talk to me.”
