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“Here’s your ending,” said Michel, sitting up so that Edgar could see the tips of his ears sticking out from his head. “They’re on the deck, see.”
“Yes, I can see it,” said Miss Perkins. “The crew of bunnies set upon by the hideous rat with glowing red eyes and razor-sharp teeth.”
“That’s right,” said Michel. “And then P.L. shouts ‘slit that rat from his gullet to his boots!’ and the bunnies set upon the rat and, because it’s four of them to one of him, they gut him and throw him to the sharks and—”
“And then,” Adele jumped in, bouncing so that Edgar caught a glimpse of the crown of her head, “an enormous sea serpent swallows all of the rabbits whole, even P.L., and they have to live for years in its belly and they have to poke him from the inside with their swords and tell really bad jokes until he vomits them onto a beach.”
There was a pause.
“Well that’s one potential outcome,” replied Miss Perkins. “Rather bloodthirsty, I must say. But when you write your own stories you can make the characters do whatever you want them to do. If you want them to become sea serpent vomit, well then, you may.”
“Did you write a lot of stories when you were a little girl?” Adele asked Miss Perkins.
“Hundreds. And they were all about P.L. Rabbit. I have them all recorded in the pages of my journals. Should you like to write stories in a journal?”
“I guess so,” said Michel. “But you’ll read them, won’t you?”
“Absolutely not,” said Miss Perkins. “They will be your private journals. For your eyes only.”
Adele yawned and stretched her fists over her head. “It’s strange to think about you as a little girl, Miss Perkins.”
“Even your tall, formidable father was a child once,” said Miss Perkins.
Formidable, eh?
“I can’t picture that,” said Michel. “He must have been a proper boring milksop. Spouting off his sums and always knowing the right answers.”
Excuse me?Was that what they thought of him? Edgar had to stop himself from joining the conversation.
He’d been cocky, headstrong, full of the devil. Always in the thick of everything, the instigator, the troublemaker.
Quick with his fists. When the lads at Eton had taunted him for being a namby-pamby duke’s heir born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d shown them.
“Sums do have practical applications, Michel. They’re not just a unique form of torture devised by governesses. Your father must have applied himself to learning his sums in order to be able to design steam engines.”
At least she was defending his honor.
“Perhaps he will come to the schoolroom someday and help you with our sums,” Miss Perkins said.
“Oh no,” said Adele. “He would never come to the schoolroom.”
Michel nodded. “He doesn’t even want us here at all.”
Edgar flattened his palm against the wall.They thought he didn’t want them?
But he’d taken them in and purchased them the best of everything.
“Oh my dears. Of course he wants you.” Miss Perkins bent closer to Adele. “He’s extremely occupied at the moment, that’s all.”
“He doesn’t want us,” insisted Michel. “That’s why he’s sending me away to Eton. To be rid of me.”
“We’ve never been apart,” said Adele with a sad note in her voice. “Not even for one day.”
Miss Perkins made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
Edgar had never thought about how strong their bond must be, having faced so much adversity. It gave him pause.
He was separating them for their own good. Because it was a mark of honor and distinction for the males of the family, legitimate or otherwise, to attend Eton.
