The Unmapped Sea (26 page)

“LIES,” she said. “How fitting.”

“I thought so as well. Now all I had to do was arrange an introduction.”

“Between the Babushkinovs—and me?”

He nodded. “To secure them an invitation to Ashton Place seemed unlikely. However, it was surprisingly easy to get the Ashtons sent to Brighton.”

This made her stop and think. “Dr. Veltschmerz!” she realized. “That awful man!”

“He is a terrible doctor, but what a cheerful fellow! Old Charlie was always the life of the party when we gathered at the club. He owed ‘Judge Quinzy' a great deal of money from all the times I had beaten him at cards. He was only too happy to be forgiven those debts in exchange for one small favor.”

The look on Penelope's face must have betrayed her disgust. Edward Ashton smiled. “Did it never occur to you that his instruction to take a January beach holiday was a rather . . .
unusual
prescription? Yet think of all the good it has done! My son and his wife are as happy as they have ever been. Constance is aglow with health. I daresay they are even looking forward to the child.” A shadow crossed his face at the mention of his future grandchild, but it passed, and he went on.

“I gave Veltschmerz detailed instructions about what to tell Fredrick, but a comical mix-up over the
hotel names threatened to foil my plan! The fool sent them to the Right Foot Inn instead of the Left, where the Babushkinovs were staying. Happily, it proved a simple matter to get the Russian family thrown out of the Left Foot Inn. Posing as a busboy, I merely let it be known to the captain that the front desk clerk's name was Napoleon. It sent him into a frenzy. He challenged the terrified fellow to a duel, and those spoiled, belligerent children of his did the rest. No disrespect to your future students, of course,” he added wryly.

“Now,” he went on, “with the Ashtons and Babushkinovs under the same roof, and the Babushkinovs craving an English governess the way a jewel thief craves diamonds, all that was needed was a catastrophe. A chance for you, Miss Lumley, to show your mettle.”

“First, ice. Then, fire.” The dark words of Princess Popkinova came to her mind. “You set us loose on thin ice,” she said. “You were the man from the BIP.”

He smirked. “Brighton Ice Patrol, at your service! There was no way to predict who would fall in, but it did not matter. I knew your heroic tendencies would be put on display. It is your nature, although I suppose that school of yours had something to do with it. You see, Miss Lumley, in my own peculiar way, I hold a very high opinion of you.”

“I fear I cannot return the compliment,” she said sharply. “And if the Babushkinovs knew how you endangered their children merely to get what you want, they might change their opinion of you as well.”

“I will do
anything
to get what I want, Miss Lumley. Never forget that!” He seemed overwrought, and muttered to calm himself. “But no. There is no point in saving the family at the expense of its good name. There will be no murders at Ashton Place! No clumsy acts of violence while my son is nearby! Nothing that can cause a scandal. Time is running out, but still, I must have patience. Siberia would be ideal, but Plinkst is a start.” He looked at her, a madman in the dark. “And without your watchful eye over them, I will have an easy time dispensing with the wolf children as well. If only those horrible Babushkinov children had not been with them in their room tonight! Don't glare at me like that, Miss Lumley! I would not have harmed them so blatantly. However, I would have persuaded them—oh, yes, I have no doubt that I would have!—to stow away aboard the ship that carries you to Plinkst. I would have prevailed upon their affection for you in the most tender way. Then I would have had all four of you in my clutches, far from England, where your gruesome fates would forever remain unknown. . . .”

“You are a monster,” she said simply.

His eyes flashed yellow. “If I have become one, blame that crazed mother wolf. Would that the admiral had killed her, too, when he shot her flea-bitten litter! Think of the trouble it would have saved. Instead we find ourselves here, in the freezing dark, standing on a bridge to nowhere.”

He turned around slowly, as if to take in their surroundings. “Dear old Brighton! Once more, Miss Lumley, you and that callow, swaggering playwright friend of yours led me to my prize. To pose as the admiral was a brilliant stroke, and so obvious I was shocked to not have thought of it myself. But no matter. The old fool, Pudge, told me precisely what I needed to learn. Finally, I know what happened that long-ago day on Ahwoo-Ahwoo.” He tipped his head back and let his eyes half close. “There were five cubs killed by the admiral. Five cubs to be avenged. Now I understand. To end the curse, I will have to extinguish all five of you. . . .”

“Five?” Penelope's brow furrowed. If she and the Incorrigibles were the four descendants of Agatha Swanburne, as she suspected—then who was the fifth?

He must have seen the confusion on her face. “You still do not know, do you? You do not know the truth
of how you and Agatha Ashton—pardon me, Agatha Swanburne—and those howling pupils of yours are related?”

There was no point in lying. She shook her head.

“Would you like me to draw your family tree? I could do it tonight, in the sand of the beach. How fitting it would be, to draw it all by moonlight—names, dates, places, all of it!—and then watch the tides wash your side of it away.”

“There is no need,” she said. Of course there was nothing Penelope would rather have seen than a glimpse of her own family tree—but no. She would not hear it from Edward Ashton. If anyone owed her an explanation, it was Miss Charlotte Mortimer, and that was a conversation that would simply have to wait until—when? The reality of her predicament hit her like a blow. When
would
she see Miss Mortimer again? Or anyone she knew, or loved? Surely not in Plinkst!

“No need?” he repeated, his voice smooth with contempt. “As you wish. Still, it would be terrible to meet your gruesome end without ever knowing the truth. Fear not, Miss Lumley. I promise I will tell you, someday. Someday quite soon. In Plinkst, perhaps, or someplace even colder. It may be the last thing you ever hear.”

The clouds knitted together then, and swept them both into darkness. His voice continued, softer now, everywhere and nowhere. “In the meanwhile, it seems I shall have to pay another visit to your parents.”

“My parents!” she cried. “But what—I mean, where—I mean, why on earth—?”

But when the soft light of the moon reappeared, Edward Ashton was gone.

P
ENELOPE COULD NOT SLEEP THAT
night, of course. Through the wee hours of the morning, she sat up by the porthole window in room fourteen and waited for the dawn to come. When there was enough light to see by, she packed the few things she had brought with her.

Ought she take her book of melancholy German poetry in translation, or leave it with the Incorrigibles? She was torn, for the book had come with her everywhere since the day Miss Mortimer had given it to her. It was her most treasured possession. She tucked it into Alexander's sock drawer, where he could not miss it. “Better for the children to have it,” she thought. “It may comfort them, when I am gone. Besides, I know all the poems by heart.”

The children, being children, could not stay awake,
no matter what sort of dramatic events swirled around them, and they slept well into the morning hours. In one bed, Alexander curled on his left side, Beowulf on his right, their foreheads nearly touching. Together they made the shape of a heart. In the other bed, Cassiopeia lay flat on her back. Her tiny snores fluttered the strands of shining auburn hair that lay tangled across that sweet elfin face.

There was a part of Penelope that wished she might sneak out right then, and not have to say good-bye, but the boat did not leave until one o'clock, or so it said on the voucher of passage that had been slipped under her door during the night. But she would never do that, of course. Soon she would wake them, as she always did, and they would rise, and bathe, and dress, and have breakfast, and perhaps do a final lesson or two, for who knew how long it would be before she saw these three precious children again?

There was a soft tap at the door. A somber Mrs. Clarke stood there, holding a tea tray.

“Lord and Lady Ashton have asked that you stop by their table during breakfast. I thought you'd do well to have a cup of tea first,” she whispered, so as not to wake the children. “I surely could use one myself. Might I join you, my dear?”

Penelope nodded and gestured for her to enter. They sat together wordlessly, drinking the soothing, restorative beverage, and Penelope was grateful for it all: the tea, the companionship, and the silence.

T
HE CHILDREN WOKE HAPPILY, AS
they always did, but when they remembered what had happened the previous evening they immediately fell into despair. The march to breakfast was like a march to the gallows. It would be their last breakfast together for a long time. Each of them knew it, and there was no need to say it, but it was impossible to think of anything else, and so they walked in silence.

The Ashtons were already in the dining room, seated near the Babushkinovs. The Babushkinov children made a great show of not noticing the Incorrigibles walk by; if Penelope had not been so sad, she would have scolded them for their rudeness. “Yet I suppose there will be plenty of time to teach them manners,” she thought, and let the matter drop, for now.

Lady Constance was plump and pink as a piglet and more radiant than ever. Lord Fredrick looked pale and fatigued as he tended to be the day after a full moon, but other than a few scratches and a throbbing headache, he seemed none the worse for wear. (
Unbeknownst to anyone, he had spent the rest of the night in the laundry room of the hotel, with his head buried among the clean linens. It had done little to muffle his howls, but it had proven a quite comfortable wolf den, and now he smelled pleasantly of soap.)

Lady Constance saw them come in; with a wave she bid them approach. “What glorious clear cold weather we have here in England! None of that awful smoke and burning smell that seems so characteristic of Italy. I suppose it has to do with Mount Vesuvius, and all those pesky eruptions. And speaking of volcanoes, you have a rather smoldering look about you this morning, Miss Lumley. I hope you are not unhappy about your new circumstances. Remember, travel broadens the mind! I myself feel quite a changed woman, since visiting Rome.”

She placed a small box wrapped in pink paper on the edge of the table. “I will not pretend it has always been pleasant having you and the wolf children running about my house, for it has not. But I would not like it said that I am ungrateful! Therefore, I have a gift for you, in appreciation for your many months of service in our household.”

Nothing could have surprised Penelope more than to receive a gift from Lady Constance; in fact, the idea
made her nervous. Hesitantly she picked up the box.

“It is a seashell!” Lady Constance blurted proudly, before Penelope had even finished taking off the lid. This was not quite true, for it was one of the prop shells that the Incorrigible children had fashioned out of papier-mâché and paint, and that Lady Constance had gathered during their escape. Still, Penelope was overjoyed to have this keepsake made by the children.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “I have been happy at Ashton Place. I am sorry to have to leave so abruptly.” Somewhat against her better judgment, she added, “I hope I have done nothing to offend you during my employment.”

Lady Constance trilled a careless laugh. “Oh, it would have happened soon enough, now that Fredrick and I are starting a
real
family,” she said, with the emphasis on “real.” “Really, Miss Lumley, you ought to be grateful to have found a new position with so little effort! As soon as we return to Ashton Place, a suitable home must be found for these three.” She gave a dismissive wave at the Incorrigibles.

“A suitable home?” Penelope repeated, stunned.

“Surely you did not imagine that we would keep them on at Ashton Place, now that we will soon have a child of our own? But never fear. I imagine some
orphanage or workhouse will be glad to take them, especially if Fredrick offers a charitable contribution to sweeten the tea, so to speak! Money can be very persuasive, you know. I am sure he would pay any price to get these awful wolf children away from our baby.”

Orphanage . . . workhouse . . . Penelope felt she might be physically ill. Ironically, it was the words of Edward Ashton that gave her comfort. “There will be no murders at Ashton Place,” she thought. “That is what he said.” The Incorrigibles would not be wholly safe anywhere, of course, not as long as Edward Ashton remained set on their destruction—but nowhere would they be safer than at Ashton Place.

Her voice shook with emotion. “Lady Constance, please reconsider! Ashton Place is their home. The children have known no other. Please—I beg you—let them stay—”

Lady Constance flinched. “Calm yourself, Miss Lumley! It is unseemly to beg, and I should not like to remember you that way.” She turned to her husband. During this entire conversation, he had been slumped in his chair, holding an ice pack to his head while waiting for someone to bring him a headache lozenge, as his last one seemed to have disappeared. (Clearly, he did not recall giving it to Napoleon Smith, but he had
not been wholly himself on that occasion, either.)

“You agree with me, don't you, Fredrick?” she said brightly. “It is absolutely essential that we send these Incorrigible creatures far, far away before the baby comes. Who knows what dreadful habits our child might pick up from them? Barking and howling and baying at the moon!”

As she spoke, a look of bliss spread over Lord Fredrick's worn features.

“Dreadful habits, you say? Barking, howling, baying at the moon?” Suddenly energized, he leaped to his feet. “Miss Lumley is going away, of course, that's all settled. It seems I signed an agreement, though I don't remember a thing about it. A perfectly shocking amount of money was paid for your contract, too. And here I thought only Ashtons had money like that!” He chuckled uneasily, then grew serious once more. “But the Incorrigible children must stay at Ashton Place. Finders keepers, what? I'm their guardian, I found them, I'm keeping them, and that's that.”