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“Apologize, apologize, apologize. That’s all we ever do.” Michel kicked at a chair.
“We’re bad. That’s what we are. We’re bad and we’re only going to get worse, just you wait and see.” Adele crossed her arms over her chest. “We’ll run away and join a traveling show. We’ve got many talents. And people will pay to see them.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Mari. “You’ll have to show me all of them someday. I’d like to know what it is you do when you run away.” Perform for money? And why would they need money when they had the expensive toys and clothing the duke showered them with? “But what’s all this talk about being bad?”
“Everyone says we’re bad,” said Michel.
Adele frowned. “Miss Dunkirk rapped our knuckles with a ruler.”
Mari’s heart squeezed. “I’ll never strike you,” she promised.
Michel tilted his head. “No matter how bad we are?”
“No matter the sin. We’ll reason through things together with our words.”
“But we have ever so many sins and vices.” Michel pointed at a large blackboard hung on the far wall, covered with writing in blunt chalk letters.
“What are the vices of youth?” Mari read. “Peevishness, Pride, Selfishness, Deceit, Uncleanliness, Heedlessness, Rashness, Fickleness, A tattling humor...”
She clenched her fists. She was intimately familiar with the pious, shaming methods of instruction favored by sanctimonious disciplinarians.
She’d been punished for the sins of pride and deceitfulness. Which just meant she hadn’t learned to keep her mouth closed, yet.
She’d been made to stand alone in the front of the schoolroom, atop a chair, for hours on end... until her legs trembled and she’d nearly fainted.
Until every other girl had gone to supper and the sun had sunk from the sky, leaving her in the cold and the dark.
She shivered.
She couldn’t believe the duke had allowed such teachings in his home. Did he not monitor what his children were learning?
Grabbing the rag that hung on a hook nearby, Mari scrubbed away the damaging words.
Next she scooped up the two copies ofDr. Pritchard’s Catechisms for Children, and dumped them into the dustbin.
Michel’s eyes widened. “You can’t throw books away.”
“I can if they’re tiresome rubbish. I’ll find better books for you to read.”
“You’ll learn to hate us, too.” Adele’s lip quivered. “Because we’re bastards.”
Mari froze. “Where did you hear that?”
“Miss Dunkirk told the second housemaid that we were sunburnt infidel bastards who didn’t deserve an English education,” said Michel.
“I found it in the dictionary.” Adele raised her finger. “Bastard: a child begotten and born out of wedlock; an illegitimate or spurious child.”
“A bad child,” said Michel.
Mari’s heart cleaved in half like a dry log beneath a sharp blade.
She should have jabbed Miss Dunkirk with a hairpin when she had the chance.
She walked to the bookshelf and found a dictionary, opening it at random.
“Bastard,” she proclaimed, running her finger along the text as if reading from the book. “A child simply bursting with potential, promise, and possibilities.”
“That’s not what it says,” said Adele.
