An excerpt from A Bend in the Road, a novella for the next Bluestocking Belles box set.
Justin Bannerville dismissed the children for the day and set about straightening the schoolroom. Putting everything away where it belonged was the last task he assigned every day, but it never ceased to surprise him how much even the older children missed. A lid off an ink pot. A crumpled piece of paper tucked out of sight under a desk. (Smoothed out, it proved to be the dart Gareth and Billy had been tossing back and forth until he caught them at it. He had wondered where that had gone.)
Several items went into his desk drawer for tomorrow, when he would hold each one up and ask the owner to collect it. He hoped a moment of shame might make the perpetrators more careful in future, but so far, it had not had the desired effect.
Was he expecting too much? The smallest of powder monkeys soon learned to keep his kit and his duty station immaculately tidy. Mind you, the navy used a heavy hand to enforce discipline, even on those most junior crew members. Justin had never liked the practice. Whipping or birching might enforce obedience, but it created fear and resentment, too. Justin had seen crews turn sour under the rule of a bully, and a surly crew was ripe for mutiny.
Justin would not have used birching in his schoolroom in any case, since he taught both boys and girls. No man worth his salt would raise his hand against a female, and Justin couldn’t consider it fair to birch boys and not girls.
“They are not a bad lot,” he reminded himself. Their untidiness might offend his navy-trained sensibilities, but they were mostly good students. With a few notable exceptions.
“Milly Stone is heading for a sharp set down.” Milly Stone was the daughter of the butcher, and revelled in her reputation as the prettiest girl in the village. She was fifteen, and her ambition in life was to better her mother’s achievement of marrying by sixteen and having her first child before her seventeenth birthday. She had set her sights on becoming the schoolmaster’s bride, and was doomed to disappointment.
“Silly chit. She is half my age and has considerably less than half my wits.”
As if his thoughts had conjured her up, Milly sashayed through the door, all ready for conquest. “Mr Bannerville?” She’d either been stung by a bee or she’d been pinching her cheeks and biting her lips. Given that she had also unbuttoned the top of her dress and folded the pieces back to give herself a decollatage that would not have disgraced the seamier streets of Paris, Justin was placing his bets against the bees.
“Did you leave something behind again, Miss Stone?” He attempted to infuse his voice with both ice and long-suffering boredom. It worked about as well as he expected. Milly was impervious to hints.
“I thought I might be able to help you, Mr Bannerville,” the girl simpered, batting her eyelids so vigorously that Justin imagined he could feel the wind.
“No, thank you. It is time for you to go home.”
Instead, she continued to advance across the classroom. “You are so diligent, Mr Bannerville,” she cooed. “So much better than our last teacher.”
Justin had replaced an elderly lady who used to set the work for her pupils each morning and spend the rest of the day asleep. She had been thrilled to accept when Lord Somerville, the school’s patron, offered her a pension and a little cottage of her own. And Justin had been delighted to take her place—still was, Miss Stone notwithstanding.
“Mrs Caldecott was an excellent teacher in her day, so I am told,” he said. “Do run along, Miss Stone. It is not appropriate for you to be here with me when the other pupils are not absent.”
“I don’t mind.” There went the eyelashes again, stirring up a hurricane. “Da won’t mind, either. He likes you better than my other suitors.”
Good Lord. “Miss Stone, I am not your suitor.”
Milly leaned forward to give Justin a better view of her mammary assets. “You could be, though, Mr Bannerville. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter if you are poor. Da is rich, and he likes the idea of having a gentleman as a son.”
Time for that set down, Justin. Pity you haven’t composed one. He’d just have to improvise. “Miss Stone, even if I was in the market for a wife, I would not consider a child of half my age.” Or a chit with feathers for brains and no more thought of what marriage entailed beyond a pretty gown for her wedding and the chance to lord it over the other girls in the village.
Another simper warned Justin that the palatable excuse had not been enough. “Da says a man is better to marry a young wife, so he can teach her how to go on.”
Mrs Stone was a timid woman completely in the shadow of her formidable husband and demanding daughter. Justin could not imagine Milly ever becoming a counterpart of her mother, no matter whom she married.
“You have my answer, Miss Stone. I will not change my mind, and if you continue to attempt to flirt with me, I shall tell your father that you are learning nothing at school, which is no more than the truth, and that you should stay at home and help your mother.”
For a moment, Milly looked her age, as she pouted and stamped one foot. “You are so mean,” she declared.
When the Blood Is Up series finale
