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Hester slipped down from the seat, curtseyed to her aunt, and then went to her for a kiss. She turned to the girls. “I am so glad you are come! So glad!” she said.
The governess raised her pencil-thin eyebrows. “And what do we say?” she questioned.
“Oh! Please, won’t you sit down, Mrs. Shore?” Hester said quickly. “And will you take some refreshment? A glass of lemon water? A small ale? Or chocolate?”
“You can call me Aunt Shore, I should think,” Alys remarked, one eye on Miss Prynne to see if she would object. “And I’ll take a small ale. What would you like, girls?”
“Lemon water,” Mia answered for them both. “How old are you, Cousin Hester? Do you speak Italian?”
“I’m thirteen,” the girl said. “But everyone says I am small for my age. But I am fourteen in three months.”
“Same as me,” Mia said, pleased.
“And I can read Italian quite well, but I don’t speak it. Do you speak both?”
“And French,” Gabrielle said. “But we weren’t ever really taught, so it doesn’t count. Papa speaks Italian to us and Mama English.”
“My father said that you are going to school?” the smaller girl asked.
Mia nodded. “We hope so. But he said we can study with you first. I think he’s not sure that we’re clever enough.”
“Oh really!” Alys exclaimed. “I’m sure Rob didn’t say such a thing!”
“Gentlemen have a low opinion of the abilities of women,” Mia said with a cheeky smile at her grandmother.
“Of ladies, you mean,” Miss Prynne corrected.
Mia turned her dark head and looked at the governess. “Are women different from ladies?” she asked limpidly.
The governess flushed. “Of course!”
“Less or more clever?”
“Now, Mia,” Alys interrupted.
The governess rose to the challenge: “No female can challenge the intelligence of a male,” she ruled. “We are called the weaker sexfor a reason! But we can be educated—I may say that I am an example of that!”
“And anyway, I’m sure Rob just meant that you should have a chance to learn from Miss Prynne before you go to school,” Alys said.
“I can’t prepare a young lady to compete with a young gentleman,” Miss Prynne said icily. “I would not know where to begin.”
“Are you not well read?” Mia asked bluntly.
Miss Prynne flushed scarlet, and Gabrielle leaned gently against her sister’s shoulder.
“Smettila, stop it,” she said so quietly that only Mia could hear.
“You misunderstand me,” Miss Prynne said, her voice growing a little shrill. “I know what is expected of students at the great colleges—Oxford or Cambridge or the colleges of law—my own brothers attended Oxford. But I would have no idea what is learned by young ladies at a school run by a master’s wife. Does she teach classics? Rhetoric? Literature? Philosophy? However does a wife find the time?”
“Can you teach all them?” Mia inquired. “Because I would like to learn them.”
Miss Prynne showed her a completely false smile. “Why would a young lady want to learn philosophy?”
“Why not?”
“Mia and Gabrielle are unusual girls,” Alys intervened. “You will make allowances for them, I hope. They are scholarly. And their mother could not satisfy their desire to learn in Venice. That’s the very reason they have come to us. That’s why my brother Rob said that they might study with you. I do hope that they can share Hester’s lessons with you.”
“I can teach them,” Miss Prynne confirmed. “But I don’t know if dear Mrs. Reekie would want them preparing for serious academic study in our house. She asked me only if they might share Hester’s morning lessons, and perhaps read some of the improving fables suitable for young ladies, from the doctor’s library.”
