Giles, as usual, so nervoused he blundered the whole thing. ‘Gee,’ he said, gazing around in a very theatrical way, ‘so many books. Who would have thought it?’
Miss Taylor watched him with just the twitch of a smile, but not without fondness; it seemed as if she couldn’t look at Giles without licking her lips, and I understood as I saw that smile that she knew all about my visits to the library. Still, I wasn’t about to come right out and admit it, so I turned away and strolled slowly around the room, spine-fingering a book or two here, touching the side of a bookshelf there. In this roundabout fashion, I made my way to the back of the room, toward the chaise longue behind which I secreted my blankets and candle. As I rounded the chaise, casual as you please, or at least so I hoped, Miss Taylor’s voice floated across the room to me, much as the motes of dust, stirred up by Mary no doubt, drifted in the beams of sunlight shafting through the long windows. ‘It’s not there, your little linen cupboard. I had it all taken away.’
I turned to brazen her. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
She was across the room like a whiplash; her hand shot out faster than a cobra strike and gripped my wrist. She put her face close to mine and I got it then, a powerful blast of dead lilies. ‘Don’t play the clever one with me, young lady. Don’t you dare!’
She released me, and the hand that had held me went up to her head, tidying her hair, as though she regretted her action. I gulped. ‘I – I’m sorry.’ It was out before I could help it and I wished immediately I could call the words back. I would not kowtow to her. But as things turned out it was the right thing to say, for she seemed to soften, not with liking, but because I had done that which I hadn’t wished to, namely acknowledged her as the one who held the upper hand.
She swivelled and sphinxed Giles. ‘And you, I suppose you’ve never been here either?’
Giles squirmed. ‘Well, I – that is, Miss Wh—, I mean, Miss Taylor, I –’ He looked to me for rescue.
I went and stood beside him and slipped an arm around his waist.
Miss Taylor’s face suddenly relaxed, and she smiled, not unkindly. ‘They tell me you cannot read.’
I defied her a look back.
‘Well, you and I both know that is nonsense, don’t we?’ Seeing me bewildering an answer, she went on, ‘I know your uncle has forbidden it, but that shows how ridiculously out of touch the man is. You might as well order the sun not to shine, or the tide not to come in.’
‘Like King Canute!’ exclaimed Giles, attempting to please her.
She condescended him a smile. ‘Yes, like King Canute.’ She turned and paced about the room a little, this way and that. Giles and I rooted to the spot. Finally she came back to where she’d started, standing before us. She addressed herself to me. ‘Now, listen carefully. This is what I propose. I cannot openly go against your uncle’s restrictions, ludicrous though they may be. But I see no sense in you sneaking about the place after books as you have been doing these many years, I’ve no doubt. Nor do I intend to waste my time trying to stop you. I suggest that when I bring Giles here with me to study, you accompany us with some piece of embroidery on which you are engaged. I suggest something quite large, bigger, say, than the average open book.’
I struggled to straight-face. I could not believe this. ‘If we are interrupted by one of the servants, you need simply to make sure the embroidery conceals anything – any object, you understand, I do not name what that object may be – that happens to be in your lap. You may also –’ she paused, ‘suggest books that you think Giles might like to look at later in the schoolroom and I will take them there. Perhaps I should point out that neither Mrs Grouse nor the servants are able to distinguish which books are appropriate for a boy of Giles’s age and which are beyond him. So they won’t question the presence of any book there. Well, what do you say?’
‘Yes, miss, thank you, miss.’
She turned toward the window and stared out at the sunlit lawns, as if lost in thought. I meantime gazed around the room. I had never before seen the books all at once and in all their glory. It near fainted me with overwhelming.
Miss Taylor turned abruptly. ‘There is just one thing.’ She looked at Giles. ‘You, I know, have kept your stepsister’s secret for many years and kept it well. You must continue to do so, for there will be difficulty for us all if you do not. And you, young lady, will have to learn not to be so interested in the affairs of others. You will not inquire about them, nor will you spy upon them by day or by night, or else I may begin to look what lies beneath your needlework. Is that clear.’
‘Yes, miss. Quite clear, miss.’
So there we were that afternoon, in the schoolroom, I at one end and Miss Taylor the other with Giles, teaching him his French verbs, all of which I, of course, already knew, although I silented in both that tongue and my native English, not wishing to do anything that might spoil a good thing. Opened on my lap I had the first volume of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. On the little occasional table at my elbow rested my embroidery, a cushion cover which I trusted would be like Penelope’s, that is, never finished but always there to help me in my quest to read every book in the library. How easily does the mind selfish! How readily do we put aside the prospect of future disaster for present pleasure! I ostriched for the sake of books. I put my little brother’s life at risk for my own guilty enjoyment, I do freely admit it now.
I halfwayed through the book’s second chapter when there was a knock at the door. I slammed the book shut and hastened the embroidery frame over it just as the door opened and Mrs Grouse walked in. She caught sight of me first and a smile lit up her face like a match a bonfire. ‘Why, Miss Florence, what a pleasure it is to see you so busily engaged upon your needlework. This is just what your uncle would want.’ She then evidently recalled what she had come for and the smile faded as she turned her attention to Miss Taylor, as though she recanted the compliment she had paid me because it complimented even more the teacher who had achieved the change. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Taylor’ – she said this with a hint of mockery so understated and subtle that you could not openly have found offence in it without embarrassing yourself – ‘but we have visitors.’
Miss Taylor looked up, her face somewhat troubled. I took it at the time that she was annoyed at being disturbed in the middle of her work, but later realised that might not be the reason. ‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, Mrs Van Hoosier and young master Theo. Come to pay their respects before they shut up the house and return to New York.’
Our new governess seemed discomforted for a moment. She fumbled the book she was holding and it fell to the floor and she bent hastily and picked it up. By this time she was almost her usual brusque self. ‘Well, now, children, we must not keep our visitors waiting, we must go and bid them farewell – or in my case hello and farewell – right away.’ She stood waiting for us and Giles gratefulled his book closed and stood up too. I waited a moment until Mrs Grouse’s back was turned so that I could slip The Woman in White from my lap and onto the side table, and then made to follow the housekeeper. Miss Taylor ushered us out the door after Mrs Grouse, and we had just stepped through it when there was a groan from behind us. We all three at once turned to see Miss Taylor leaning against the door jamb, one hand raised to her forehead as though in some kind of faint. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh, dear!’
Mrs Grouse instanted and caught her. She turned to us and hissed, ‘Go on, children. Run along to the drawing room and see Theo and his mama, while I attend to Miss Taylor.’
We did as we were told, glancing back to see Mrs Grouse supporting the governess with one arm around her waist and corridoring her in the direction of Miss Taylor’s room. Giles and I looked at one another and shrugged, but then, excited at the prospect of seeing Theo, even if only for the maudlin business of saying goodbye