The Education of Portia (2 page)

Anyway, it was a pleasant enough place, Hornsey. The village, such as it was, drowsed
in the heat of the late August afternoon. Horse chestnuts towered over the
lane--Cress Lane--which led to Mansion House from the High Street. There were a few isolated
large houses nearby--the retreats of merchants and bankers he had been told--and The Three Compasses
Inn could be seen at the end of the street. To the north and west of the school spread a timbered
park--an ash wood he thought--and in the distance rose the gentle height of Muswell Hill.

Stadbroke's idle reflections were interrupted by the arrival of a horseman. A young man
dismounted and tossed his reins familiarly to the groom who appeared leading the viscount's own
mount. He was a well-set-up young fellow--stocky and good-looking--dressed with neatness and
propriety but no pretensions to fashion. He nodded politely to the viscount.

"Good day," Stadbroke said, taking no trouble to conceal his curiosity.

Perforce, the younger man stopped. "Caldwell Dent, at your service, sir. Teacher of art
and astronomy..." He jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder at the school even as he
bowed.

"I am Stadbroke, Mr. Dent. How can you...wait, Dent...Dent...an art teacher did you say?
Are you not a portrait painter?"

"I am, my lord. I am flattered that you recognize my name; I will be better known one
day."

"From what I have seen of your work, you will indeed. And why should you teach
here...given what I have seen of your art?"

"Needs must, my lord. It takes time to establish a
clientele
." The young man
was cheerful. "Besides in teaching we learn. Miss Crossmichael is my sister; she has been kind
enough to encourage my artistic career. I can do no less than support her educational endeavours.
Have you a daughter here?"

"I shall soon have three in attendance." Stadbroke reflected idly that Dent looked
nothing like his sister. A half-sister he decided; they carried different names after all. He
dismissed the thought. "I was going to ask how you could bear to be plagued by females all
day?"

"I find them pleasant enough company, Lord Stadbroke. My focus is on my work after
all, not the ladies, whatever their age."

"I shall leave you to it then, Dent. And think you a more patient man than I." Stadbroke
nodded and took charge of his bay mare from the groom.

Dent offered a quick farewell and, after taking the steps two at a time, entered the
school.

Stadbroke mounted, tossed a coin to the groom, and continued his ruminations as he
headed down the gravelled drive. The girls would be safe here, and happy, though he questioned
the ability of the reserved schoolmistress to provide as pleasant a course of learning as Miss
Thripton did at Stadley Place. He turned his horse's head and trotted down the lane without a
backward look.

The girls would learn a thing or two at the school; he had no doubt of that. Well, on their
own heads be it, he thought. He'd given them what they desired.

* * * *

Portia looked at the three youthful faces before her and wondered what it was that the
three daughters of Lord Stadbroke desired of her school.

They had arrived four days earlier in company with their father and a middle-aged
governess. Portia had taken immediately to the governess; she was just the sort of
commonsensical and intelligent woman she liked to employ as her teachers. She might find a
way to indicate to Miss Thripton that, should she ever seek to leave Stadbroke's employ, she
could apply to Mansion House School for a position.

Portia had taken care to speak only briefly with the viscount on his visit. Her comments
had been polite and businesslike. He had in his turn had little to say to her, and she told herself
she was glad of it. She had closely observed his exchanges with his daughters; to her surprise
they were both informal and loving. He had taken his leave quickly with a sensitivity to his
daughters' feelings that she could scarcely credit. She had been left with much to ponder and
again with that niggling feeling of familiarity. She had pushed it all aside in the bustle of
installing the young ladies.

They had been matter of fact and cheerful about the departure of their father and their
governess, had made their farewells with a modicum of sentiment and no melancholy. From all
accounts, they had been in good spirits since also. Portia had received reports of them from
various of the mistresses and masters, and the matron, and she had already a good notion of their
characters and capabilities.

Now they had been invited to take tea with her in the school's parlour, a small nicety that
she practiced with all her new students. When she thought they had settled in to their new
surroundings, she gave them opportunity to tell her if all was well with them.

The weather had broken and autumn rain lashed the closed windows. The colza lamps
had been lit against the dreary day, and a substantial fire warmed the pleasant room. It held a
variety of chairs and sophas, well-filled bookshelves and useful tables. Some of Caldwell's
oils--his occasional still-life renderings--decorated the softly distempered walls. The parlour served a
variety of uses in the daily life of the school, particularly as a meeting place for the senior girls in
the evening after their supper. The young ladies were encouraged to read and study in the
parlour, work at their needlework, and turn over the newspapers that were brought each day from
London. Portia thought of it as the social heart of her school.

The Misses Perrington stood before her in a neat stepped row on the India carpet after
their orderly entry. Lord Stadbroke must be justifiably proud of his offspring, for they were
pretty girls and well-behaved. They were gowned in simple kerseymere dresses as befitted the
cool day. Everything about their garments bespoke quality, but they wore no ornaments.
Someone had carefully conned the list she had bestowed on the viscount, and kept the young
ladies' apparel within its guidelines.

Portia regarded them thoughtfully, and they returned her scrutiny without dissimulation.
Sabina, the eldest of the three, already showed a charming figure and her piquant face, with her
father's dark eyes, would only gain in beauty as it gained in maturity. Melicent, the middle child,
was inclined to moodiness; Portia had heard of hints of drama already. No doubt the avid
intelligence that peered at her from a triangular face would enhance an elfin charm in later years.
The smallest girl, Penelope, had displayed none of the homesickness that she might have
expected from any other eight-year-old. The child had taken to dormitory life with sturdy
independence--as her father had indicated she would--and had already begun to gather her own
coterie
about her.

Examining the threesome, Portia experienced again that strong sensation of familiarity
their father had engendered. And suddenly the reason for it came to her. She had encountered the
viscount before--long before--during her single Season in the heart of the
beau monde
.
She had had that season eleven years previous; it had been just three unfortunate months in the
bosom of society. Being tall and thin--all awkward angles and corners--and shy, she had not
garnered any notice and certainly no popularity. She had been a hanger-on at the season of her
cousin who, being both vivacious and pretty, had taken. At every ball, every rout, and every call
she had had time to watch her cousin with yearning and observe all the other bright and beautiful
creatures enjoy themselves.

Yes, she had seen both the viscount and his wife during that season. The encounter she
best remembered had been at a ball--which one she could not now have told--but at a great,
glittering affair that she had experienced from its margins. The Viscount Stadbroke--he'd been
the Honourable Ingram Perrington then--had been the darling of the
ton
and he had
looked the happiest, most carefree, young man in it. He was then only a few years wed to the
beautiful Honoria Wickson, and the grace and gaiety with which he had danced with his
exquisite wife, and showered attentions upon her, had stayed with Portia in all the long years
since. Hidden in her subconscious yes, but nevertheless that vision had stayed with her.

She had wanted, during that humiliating season, to be the lovely Mrs. Perrington, to be
the cynosure of all eyes, and the darling of a virile and attractive husband. She had dreamed
dreams then that she had long since dismissed and she had entertained fancies and fantasies that
even then she had known would not come true.

No wonder the Perrington girls were handsome; their mother had been a beauty. She
remembered that lady's loveliness with a familiar wistful pang. She would not permit herself to
envy others' beauty, but she would always regret her own lack of comeliness.

Her calm good sense reasserted itself and satisfaction with her current situation flooded
back. Her recent impressions of the viscount made nonsense of her former immature daydreams;
he was no longer her
beau ideal
. She could smile at her youthful self.

"Miss Crossmichael?"

"Ma'am?"

She heard absently the interested query in the elder girls' voices, but it was Penelope's
impatient tug on her gown that finally caught her attention. That hasty pull at her plum-coloured
merino skirt which set her keys to jingling brought Portia back from her reflections to her own
parlour, in her own school, and to her prosaic life.

"My dears! I was wool-gathering. You must forgive me." She waved the girls to seats
and took her own place behind the tea tray. "Now, how do you go on? Have you everything you
need? Do you miss your home and your papa?" She poured out for them, watching them
unobtrusively. They were consulting in unspoken language about their response. Young ladies,
in her experience, were remarkable communicators.

Finally, Sabina spoke. "We do miss our home, ma'am, but we have come here precisely
so that we need not yearn for our father this winter."

Portia was briefly at a loss. She passed her young guests the plate of raspberry tarts for
which her cook was rightly renowned, and assumed an enquiring air.

"Papa ith an ornament to society. And a pillar of government," young Penelope
explained earnestly as she chose a sweet. Her gaze strayed to the cluster of suspended keys and
watch that included her
etui
at Portia's high waist.

"Last winter, he left Stadley Place in October to attend at Parliament, and from then to
the end of May we saw him only at Christmas." Melicent frowned ferociously.

"Lincolnshire is a vatht distance from London, Mith Crothmichael." Penelope was
possessed of an occasional lisp--caused by half-emerged front teeth--which disturbed her not at
all. It did not either interfere with her careful consumption of her chosen tart.

The lisp bestowed a droll charm upon her words that made Portia wish to smile. But
anger with the viscount overrode all other emotions. How could he desert these delightful
children? An ornament to society, indeed! No doubt the viscount was in search of another wife,
for surely he would want a male heir. That would be the reason he had left his daughters in
Lincolnshire, so that he could search London unencumbered for a second lovely lady.

"We asked if we might come, with Miss Thripton, to stay in our new Hill Street house,
but he refused us permission." The injustice of the viscount's prohibition evidently rankled with
Melicent. She broke her own tart into shards upon the fine china plate she held.

"We thought all last winter that if only we were at least near London, we could see Papa
much more frequently. Attendance at a school seemed our best possibility for a removal from
Lincolnshire." Sabina took control of the conversation with a minatory look at her younger
sisters. "We heard of your school, Miss Crossmichael, from the cousin of one of my dearest
friends. She said everyone who attended here had the most wonderful times, and learned more
than they could have imagined. Mansion House School seemed a quite perfect answer to our
needs."

"When he was at home in the summer we plagued him the entire time, pleaded and
begged." Melicent said with smug satisfaction. "We were determined to come south with him.
He soon agreed."

Portia thought that it would take someone experienced indeed in the ways of children to
withstand the machinations of these three. She hoped her own knowledge was sufficient to the
task. A chuckle threatened her composure; she turned it into a cough. "I am very happy that we
may be of service. I think though that I had rather have pupils come to me because they wish to
learn what we have here to teach." She tranquilly drank her tea, and allowed her words to be
digested.

"Oh we do want to learn!" Sabina was quick to understood the delicate criticism and
even quicker to counter it.

"Miss Thripton doesn't teach German or astronomy," said Melicent, proving that she had
studied the curriculum of the school. She chewed the fragments of her tart thoughtfully.

"Yet Miss Thripton may suffer because of your attendance here. Did that occur to you?
Why should your father continue to employ her if you are here at school?"

Penelope's round eyes grew yet more round. "He wouldn't...he couldn't. Oh, Mith
Crothmichael, he would not send her away, would he?"

Even Melicent looked concerned.

Sabina said, with a worried frown, "We have been selfish. She seemed so supportive, so
certain that we were right in wanting to be nearby to Papa." She set her teacup on the Pembroke
table that sat beside the sopha on which she perched.

"I think Miss Thripton would put your needs beyond her own interests. But perhaps a
letter to your father asking if you have endangered Miss Thripton's livelihood might be in order."
Portia made her suggestion with a show of disinterest.

She was rewarded by an immediate response.

"Yes!" Sabina rose.