Page 23 of The Marriage Method

Nell was beginning to comprehend that. All that remained was to decide what form her exit would take. The frightening prospect of it—of her, existing somewhere, anywhere, outside of the school—gripped at her trembling vitals like a steel vise. “What about my students?” she asked.

“I’ll tell them myself after you’ve gone,” Miss Corvus answered. “They will be grieved to lose you, to be sure, but many will see it as a romantic adventure. As for the special girls…we might present it as a cautionary tale. Either way, I see no need for prolonged farewells. It would only upset them unduly.”

Nell agreed in principle, though her heart was breaking. Like Miss Corvus, Nell desired what was best for the school. She wanted to be part of the new generation of women advancing forward, not the cause of their being hamstrung and held back. If that meant she must withdraw from the field…

Miss Corvus clasped Nell’s arm briefly as she passed her on the way back to her desk. She didn’t speak, but the fleeting touch of her hand spoke volumes.

The last of Nell’s self-control crumbled. Hot tears spilled onto her cheeks. She swiped them away. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I-I have much to think about.”

She departed Miss Corvus’s office without looking back, blindly descending the stairs to the staff floor. Somehow, she found her way to her room, to the small, safe world she’d built for herself within the Academy’s impenetrable walls—the soft bed, the pink-painted wardrobe, and the little chair with the needlepoint pillow she’d stitched with such love and attention. It bore the unofficial symbol of the school—a raven with a white-tipped wing.

“An intelligent and prophetic bird,” Miss Corvus had once explained to Nell and Effie. “Ravens don’t abandon their young. They remain with them into early adulthood, flying beside them.”

But no more, it seemed.

Henceforth, Nell must fly alone.

• • • • •

By the time Miles found his way back to Mrs. Marigold’s Hotel for Women in Whitechapel, it was a quarter past four. His suit was stained, his hair rumpled, and his spirits decidedly worse for wear.

The news of Lawrence Cowgill’s murder had spread through the offices of the London Courant like wildfire. A wave of intense demoralization had followed in its wake. It was made worse by the growing whispers that the paper’s editor in chief—a man whose reputation the staff had formerly believed to be beyond reproach—had only that morning been caught beneath the skirts of a mysterious woman in black.

As if all that weren’t bleak enough, the reporter Miles had dispatched to track down Reverend Pettiman had been unable to find the man. There had been no trace of him at any of the nearby hotels or guesthouses. Which could only mean one thing: Pettiman had already returned home, possibly by the next train, his scandalous tale ripe for the telling.

There would be no mitigating the damage now.

It was crisis upon crisis, with no end in sight. Miles was dealing with it the only way he knew how—one catastrophe at a time.

Lawrence Cowgill’s tongue was now in the custody of Scotland Yard. It had been accompanied not by Cowgill’s notebook (which was presently locked in Miles’s desk at the Courant), but by the tissue of lies Miles had concocted to explain why he’d broken into Cowgill’s flat.

“Leave it with us,” the police inspector had told Miles and Higgins. “We’ll find who’s responsible.”

Miles took leave to doubt it. The London police were overworked and overwhelmed. Even if they did by some miracle solve Cowgill’s murder, they would have neither the time nor the resources to pursue the story that had led to it.

No. That was Miles’s job. He had no intention of shirking his duty. Not to Cowgill, the Courant, or anyone else to whom he owed the burden of loyalty.

He approached the reception desk in the hotel’s small foyer. A vinegar-faced older woman in a dark dress stood behind it, sorting letters into the rack of pigeonholes that hung on the wall, each of them numbered to their corresponding room.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked without breaking her task.

“Miss Trewlove is expecting me,” Miles said.

“Miss Trewlove is no longer in residence,” the woman replied.

Miles froze. “She’s checked out of the hotel?”

“She departed this afternoon. I summoned a hackney to take her to the railway station myself.” The woman turned, eyes squinted in inquiry. “You’re not Mr. Quincey, are you?”

“I am.”

“She’s left a note for you. I put it here somewhere or other.” The woman searched through the stacks of papers on the desk. “Ah. Here it is.” She passed him a folded note card stamped with the hotel’s name in blue ink. “Miss Trewlove said I was to give this to you if you should come calling.”

If?

Miles suppressed a harsh surge of annoyance. As though he couldn’t be relied on to keep his word! Temper simmering, he unfolded the note, scanning Nell’s familiar elegant script.

Dear Sir,