Page 3 of To Tame the Wild Rake
Charlotte lifted her eyebrows. “Clearly, some particular incident prompts this expression of your concern.” The word diatribe would only exacerbate the situation. “Tell me what has happened, Mrs Porter.”
Before the matron spoke, Charlotte knew the name of the pupil who had set off the storm. It would be Tony Tweedy, of course. A child of the slums—sly, wild, and defiant—he had been ruffling Mrs Porter’s feathers from the day Charlotte tempted him into her lessons with a demonstration of Euclid’s third apostolate.
His face—his uncanny resemblance to a portrait in the home of her godmother the Duchess of Haverford—had won her attention. His restless intelligence held it.
He had already been able to read and write after a fashion, but had taken to other lessons with hungry enthusiasm, as long as his teachers did not try to curb his rebelliousness or his imagination. His passion, though, was mathematics.
Outside of lessons, or in lessons he didn’t enjoy, he found creative—even inspired—ways to circumvent every rule of the school, and he loathed Mrs Porter almost as much as she loathed him.
Mrs Porter was too well behaved to spit, but the way she said Tony’s name came close. “The Tweedy boy. He is disruptive and disobedient. It is your lessons, Lady Charlotte. You mean well, I suppose.” The expression on her face suggested she supposed no such thing. “But treating a slum boy as if he is intelligent? It gives him ideas above his station. He is–”
Charlotte interrupted the tirade, which she had heard before. “What happened this time?”
Tony’s trespasses were of three kinds: pranks that displayed a creative sense of humour and a sharp awareness of how best to annoy; an insouciant defiance of those he despised that skirted the edges of outright rebellion; and a wilful misinterpretation of any rules he regarded as unnecessary or stupid.
Today’s escapade had been all three, eclipsing even the introduction of a piglet into morning prayers and Charlotte’s personal favourite, the day Tony had managed to marshal the entire school, plus a succession of idlers from the street, to search the building for suspected smugglers.
“Let me see if I understand you,” Charlotte ventured, after Mrs Porter had interrupted her involved explanation for the fifth or sixth time to repeat her vituperative assessment of Tony’s birth, intelligence, and moral character. “Someone stole your chamber pot from behind the screen where it is kept, filled it with slugs, and balanced it on the door to your private study.” Mrs Porter coloured, whether at the direct reference to the receptacle—she herself had only hinted at its personal and private nature—or at the insult to her person.
“Not someone,” she insisted. “It was that little slum rat. Tweedy.”
“Someone saw Master Tweedy during his commission of this activity?” Charlotte asked. Not that she had any real doubts about the rascal’s guilt, but Mrs Porter would have blamed the boy anyway, even if he were completely innocent.
“It was him, Lady Charlotte, and you know it. If he hadn’t run off, I would have bea—got it out of him.”
“The boy has gone? But today is my lesson!” A silly statement. As if he would wait around for a mathematics lesson when Mrs Porter was breathing fire and talking about calling the constable.
Mrs Porter breathed deep, thrusting her bust up like a poulter pigeon. “I shall be writing to the Board of Trustees, Lady Charlotte, to ask them to close down your mathematics classes. You give these children ideas above their station.”
Charlotte took her own deep breath before she spoke, the better to keep her voice calm and even. “And what, Mrs Porter, is the station of a boy who is brilliant at mathematics, to the extent that he has, in two lessons a week for six months, come from simple arithmetic to grasping concepts and solving equations that university students find challenging?”
“I know that the little brat has pulled the wool over your eyes, Lady Charlotte. You see what you want to see. I’ll not deny that he’s sly; his sort are. But you won’t find real intelligence in the son of a whore.”
“I disagree, Mrs Porter.”
“If you will excuse me saying so, Lady Charlotte, you are a woman. I am sure the Trustees will understand the damage caused to these children by allowing a young noblewoman to practice her hobby. As if a woman could understand higher mathematics any more than a slum brat.”
So. The gloves were off, were they? Charlotte smiled, though it really wasn’t funny. “Go right ahead, Mrs Porter. However, I can assure you that it is not my place at this school that will be questioned. Remember that the patroness of this school, my godmother the Duchess of Haverford, is an ardent supporter of the right to education—for the poor, as well as for women. And she has chosen Trustees who agree with her.”
Mrs Porter glared. “You nobles. You think you know so much better than anyone else. You don’t know what those wicked children are capable of, and Tweedy is the worst of them all.”
“You might be happier in another job, Mrs Porter,” Charlotte suggested. “If you cannot subscribe to the same principles as the Trustees, you will be unable to carry out your duties here. I will teach mathematics to those capable of learning, and other teachers will also present opportunities to those with different talents. I suggest you think very carefully about whether you have a future here.”
And Charlotte, who had no heart for the lesson that should have commenced half an hour ago, would go and teach the students who remained while fretting about the one who got away.
2
Aldridge poured the Marquess of Sodfield another brandy, and held it for him while the Marquess took his turn at the billiard table. Sodfield was the last hold-out, and even he was beginning to bend to three weeks of persuasion, logic, explanation, and all the considerable charm Aldridge had at his fingertips.
After nearly a year as Duke of Haverford in all but name, Aldridge seldom had to convince someone to accept his authority. Sadly, when it came to bills before the House of Lords, even bills to allow a canal across land that included a Haverford estate, he was on the same footing as any other landowner’s steward. Which was shaky footing indeed, when the men responsible for blocking the bill were long-time adversaries of Haverford eager to put the boot into the duke, now he could not defend himself.
Sodfield missed his shot and retrieved his brandy. “At least you are not trying to sell me shares in some railway,” he commented, as Aldridge studied the table.
Personally, Aldridge was betting on railways becoming commercial propositions sooner rather than later, but the canal was going to go ahead; the mills and collieries it would serve couldn’t wait a decade or more for alternative transport. Taking the more circuitous route that opposition to the canal demanded would add months and thousands of pounds to the construction. For those bankrolling the project, the extra time could make the difference between recovering costs or going bankrupt.
“In time, Sodfield,” he predicted. “For now, a canal on the route we’ve agreed will give us the best return.” Sodfield had heard all of his arguments. No point in repeating them. He managed a cannon off the other two balls and stood back to give Sodfield his turn.
He’d finally convinced enough of the doubters to his side that he was almost certain the bill would go through. Sodfield would make it certain.
