The Tutor's Daughter (28 page)

At the center of the room, Lady Weston sat on a high-backed armchair, as regal as any queen. “Miss Smallwood, Lizzie tells me your missing journal page has been returned to you.”

Caught off guard, Emma glanced at Lizzie, who ducked her head, feigning interest in an article.

“Yes,” Emma acknowledged.

“I should like to see it, if you please,” Lady Weston said, holding out her hand as though Emma carried the page on her person.

Phillip had entered the room unnoticed and here interrupted. “Why should you want to see Miss Smallwood's journal, Mother?” He chuckled nervously. “Young ladies intend such things to be private, I believe. Not read aloud in the drawing room.”

Lady Weston's lip curled. “I assure you, Phillip, I have no interest in Miss Smallwood's private thoughts, whatever they may be. However, Lizzie tells me the page was returned with a drawing upon it. A ‘not very nice drawing,' she said. And she thought I should see it.”

Phillip looked at Emma, eyes wide in concern. “Is this true, Emma?”

“Yes. But I had no intention of showing it to anybody.”

He came forward. “But we must know if someone under our very roof is damaging your personal property.”

Emma squirmed. She did not want Phillip Weston, and certainly not Lady Weston, seeing that particular journal page. She said, “It was nothing but a harmless prank, I am sure.”

“Was it Henry, do you suppose?” Phillip asked.

It was not surprising he might assume so, since Phillip knew about Henry's more notorious pranks at the Smallwood Academy.

“I don't think so, no. I am not accusing anyone.”

“Show me the drawing, Miss Smallwood.” Lady Weston held out her hand once more. “I know everyone in this house quite well and will no doubt be able to identify whoever drew it.”

Perhaps noticing Emma's discomfiture, Phillip asked gingerly, “The drawing is not of you in a . . . shall we say, embarrassing state. Is that why you don't wish us to see it?”

Lady Weston blanched. “Good heavens, Phillip. What a thought!”

“No,” Emma rushed to say, cheeks heated. “Nothing like that. More violent than embarrassing.”

“Violent?” Phillip repeated, brows furrowing. “Dash it, Emma. Now you really have me alarmed. No one's threatened you, I hope.”

“No. I . . . I'm quite certain nothing was meant by it.”

“Gave me the shivers,” Lizzie said, half under her breath but loud enough for everyone to hear.

Phillip frowned at the girl. “And what were you doing looking at Miss Smallwood's journal? I doubt she showed it to you.”

Lizzie ducked her head, but Emma saw the dark flush rising. It was the first time she had seen the girl look repentant for anything.

Phillip looked at her earnestly. “Emma, I'm afraid I must ask to see this drawing. I promise not to look at the words you wrote, if I can avoid it. Otherwise I shall worry about you. Please?”

Emma huffed. “Oh, very well. I shall bring it down.”

A few minutes later, Emma left her bedchamber with the folded journal page and started back down the corridor, hands damp. She knew Phillip would be true to his word about not reading the words beneath, at least not intentionally. But she had no reason to expect the same discretion of Lady Weston.

She met Henry coming from the north wing. “Miss Smallwood, Adam is asking for you.” He said it with a touch of wonder in his voice. “Will you come and say hello?”

“Oh. . . . I would like to see him, but I am afraid I can't at the moment. I am . . . requested in the drawing room.”

His head reared back. “Requested? By whom?”

“Lady Weston. And Phillip.”

He studied her face. “Is everything all right? You don't look happy about it. In fact, you appear to be on your way to your own execution.”

She sighed. “I . . . didn't plan to tell anyone about this drawing. But Lizzie saw my missing journal page and told Lady Weston. And now I've been asked to produce it.”

He frowned, trying to follow her convoluted explanation. “You found the page?”

“It was returned to me. Under my door.”

His eyes narrowed, measuring her words. “I don't understand. Why should Lady Weston want to see it? Or Phillip for that matter?”

Again Emma sighed. Unfolding the paper, she said, “Please don't read the words themselves.” She held up the page, drawing side facing him.

He stared at it, brows drawn low. “Who in the blazes did this?” He snatched the paper from her and brought it closer to his face.

Not him, apparently—unless he was a better actor than she gave him credit for. The longer he stared at the page, the more Emma fidgeted. “I asked you not to read it. Please give it back. It's not meant for anyone else to see.”

“A bit late for that, is it not?” he said, scowling over the drawing.

Tentatively, she reached for a corner of the page and tugged it
from his grasp. “Excuse me. They are waiting for me in the drawing room.”

It was his turn to sigh. “I shall go with you.”

She trotted lightly down the stairs, and he followed behind her. When they reached the drawing room, he opened the door for her and gestured her inside, closing the door behind them.

Phillip looked up in surprise. “Henry, what brings you down early?”

“I happened upon Miss Smallwood in the corridor. She told me what was happening.”

“Have you seen this supposed drawing?” Lady Weston asked.

“Only a moment ago.”

Again Lady Weston extended her hand. But this time, Emma held on to the page firmly. “I shall show it to you, my lady.” She stepped forward and held it for Lady Weston to see, but not too close.

Phillip came and stood at his stepmother's shoulder to view the drawing as well. “What on earth . . . ?” he muttered.

“Pish.” Lady Weston huffed. “Much ado about nothing. It isn't even a drawing of you or even a person at all. It is simply a chess piece. A challenge to a rematch, I'd wager.”

Henry's jaw clenched. “A chess piece doesn't bleed, madam.”

Lady Weston frowned at him. “Surely you don't read a threat into this amateurish drawing?”

“It is not an invitation to a tea party,” he retorted.

Lady Weston looked from Henry to Emma, dark eyes simmering. “You are not accusing one of the boys, I hope.”

Emma said, “I am accusing no one, my lady.”

“I should hope not. Besides, Julian and Rowan both draw far better than that. I should know if one of them had drawn it—I would recognize their work.”

She looked up, lips parting as a new thought struck her. “Of course. It is suddenly quite obvious who drew this. Who in this house is capable of such a childish act, such unskilled scrawling?” She sent Emma a guarded glance, then continued in vague terms. “Nothing like this ever occurred here before . . . a certain someone
arrived. Missing journals, nighttime wanderings, beastly sketches. I told you, Henry, we ought to have kept the door locked, but you would not listen to me.”

“He did not draw this,” Henry insisted, nostrils flaring.

“How do you know?” Lady Weston challenged.

“It is not in his nature.”

“Excuse me, Henry,” Lady Weston said, “but you have known this person for little more than a month. You can hardly call yourself an expert on what he is and is not capable of. You cannot know he did not draw it unless you drew it yourself.”

“Did you?” Phillip asked quietly.

Henry huffed. “No, I did not.”

Lady Weston went on before Henry could say more. “For all we know he is capable of far more besides. Mark my words, if you do not begin keeping him to his room, we shall all live to regret it. Miss Smallwood, perhaps, most of all.”

Henry gaped at her. “Miss Smallwood? Are you threatening Miss Smallwood?”

“Am
I
?” Lady Weston touched the lace at her throat. “Good heavens, what a notion. I am not the one sneaking into Miss Smallwood's bedchamber at night, nor leaving her frightening pictures.”

Emma wondered who had told her someone had sneaked into her room at night. She said, “I don't think Adam means me any harm.”

“Adam? Since when is the tutor's daughter on a first-name basis with him?” Lady Weston's voice could have curdled cream. “Was I not clear in my instructions as to how and why he was to be kept apart?”

Oh dear.
Now she had done it. Exposed the visits to the off-limits north wing. Exposed Henry's part in it as well.

“I have only met him a few times, my lady,” Emma hurried to say. “I meant no harm, only heard him calling out and went to see what the matter was.”

Lady Weston studied her, expression skeptical. “And based on these brief meetings, you also claim to be an expert on what he is and is not capable of? Even though Sir Giles felt he had no choice but
to send him away for the other boys' safety? But you have decided he is incapable of harm? Are you a soothsayer, Miss Smallwood? Are you God?”

Emma's stomach twisted. “Of course not. I never meant to imply—”

At that moment they were interrupted by Sir Giles, Julian, and Rowan coming in together, laughing at some tale of mishap from the day's shoot.

“I say,” Rowan proclaimed, surveying the assembled company. “What a lot of gloomy faces.”

“What is it, my dear?” Sir Giles asked his wife.

Lady Weston pointed at the page hanging limp in Emma's hand. “Someone has left a rude drawing on a page from Miss Smallwood's journal.”

“Oh?” Sir Giles turned to look at Emma, and she obliged him by lifting the page before him.

“I haven't got my reading spectacles, but badly done, whichever of you did it.”

“Don't blame Rowan,” Julian said quickly. “Just because he's the artist among us and keeps paints in his room. Why, I sneaked a peek into ol' Adam's room and he's got drawings of dead soldiers and other gruesome things in there. I imagine it was him who did it.”

Significant looks were exchanged around the room.

Henry appeared as though he would launch into another defense of his elder brother, but the footman came in and announced dinner.

Eager for escape and realizing she was late for her own meal, Emma excused herself and hurried to join her father and Mr. Davies, taking the journal page, folded safely away in her pocket.

At dinner, John Smallwood asked Mr. Davies about his boyhood education.

Mr. Davies wiped his mouth with a table napkin before answering. “Piecemeal, it was. My parents put me at a school kept by a poor blind woman, and then with a man ninety years of age if he was a day. Don't laugh—it's true.”

“A blind woman? But how could she judge your handwriting, your compositions?”

The steward's eyes lit with memory. “Lots of reciting aloud, as I recall. And she kept a scullery maid who could read—she'd check our work now and again, read it back to the mistress, and woe to any pupil caught reciting what he hadn't written down proper.”

Mr. Davies noticed her father's skeptical look. “You shake your head. But she was twice the teacher the old man was. And far kinder.”

Emma finished eating and then excused herself as the men continued their good-natured sparring about education in its various forms.

Crossing the hall, she saw Henry starting up the stairs. She called to him and he paused, waiting for her to catch up.

As they climbed the stairs together, she said confidentially, “Do you think Lady Weston has a point? That we don't really know what Adam is capable of? For all his sweet temper, his behavior can be a bit, well, unpredictable.”

Henry made no answer, apparently lost in thought.

Emma continued, “I don't want to believe it either. But he does have small hands, like the handprint left on my mirror. And he admitted he lost a soldier like the one I found. At the very least, it seems likely he has entered my room on two different occasions. If not more.”

“That I might believe of him. It was his old room, after all.”

“Was it? Goodness. I had no idea.”

“I wonder if he remembers,” Henry murmured.

“I imagine he does—that must explain it. At least why he may have wandered in.”

“Perhaps,” Henry replied. “Though someone has taken things from my room as well.”

At the landing, she turned to him in concern. “Really? What?”

He hesitated, appearing almost sheepish. “A small bottle of my mother's perfume.”

She stared at him. “Perfume?”

He defended, “I have very little of hers. To remember her by.”

She rushed to say, “I was not mocking you. I have kept a few things of my mother's as well. I was only remembering the perfume I smelled in my room after one of those nighttime visits.”

“Yes, I have thought of that too,” he said as they continued up the stairs. “I didn't see it in Adam's room. But I admit I have not asked him about it. Nor anyone else for that matter.”

“I wonder if it was Adam playing the pianoforte at night. . . .” Emma mused. “Lady Weston insists it must have been Julian, but he seems less certain.”

“Was the playing good?”

“Very.”

“Have you seen any evidence of musical ability in Adam?”

She thought. “No . . .”

“And hitting one key repeatedly is hardly a promising indicator.”

“True,” she allowed, recalling Henry's version of the scene. “But we do know he likes to draw . . . violent . . . things.”

His brow puckered. “Yes.”

Emma continued, “But the queen in the drawing looks exactly like the one missing from my set. And no one here could have seen it. Except . . .”

“Except me.”

“Yes. I'm sorry, but—”

“Don't be. I am the one who is sorry. I did take it. I've had it all these years. In the same box of mementoes as my mother's perfume. Unfortunately both went missing about a week ago.”