Page 26 of Just Imagine
A Templeton Girl
Manners are the happy way of doing things.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“CULTURE”
5
The Templeton Academy for Young Ladies sat on Fifth Avenue like a great gray stone whale. Hamilton Woodward, Cain’s attorney, had recommended it. Although the school didn’t normally take girls as old as Kit, Elvira Templeton had made an exception for the Hero of Missionary Ridge.
Kit stood hesitantly on the threshold of the third-floor room she’d been assigned and studied the five girls wearing identical navy blue dresses with white collars and cuffs. They were clustered around the room’s only window to gaze down at the street. It didn’t take her long to figure out what they were staring at.
“Oh, Elsbeth, isn’t he the handsomest man you ever saw?”
The girl identified as Elsbeth sighed. She had crisp, brown curls and a pretty, fresh face. “Imagine. He was right here in the Academy, and none of us were allowed to go downstairs. It’s so unfair!” And then, with a giggle: “My father says he’s not really a gentleman.”
More giggles.
A beautiful, blond-haired girl who reminded Kit of Dora Van Ness spoke up. “Madame Riccardi, the opera singer, went into a decline when he told her he was moving to South Carolina. Everybody’s heard about it. She’s his mistress, you know.”
“Lilith Shelton!” The girls were deliciously horrified, and Lilith regarded them disdainfully.
“You’re all such innocents. A man as sophisticated as Baron Cain has dozens of mistresses.”
“Remember what we decided,” another girl said. “Even if she is his ward, she’s a Southerner, so we all have to hate her.”
Kit had heard enough. “If that means I won’t ever have to talk to you silly bitches, that’s just fine with me.”
The girls spun around and gasped. Kit felt their eyes taking in her ugly dress and awful hat. One more item to add to the ledger of hatred she was keeping against Cain. “Get out of here! All of you. And if I catch any of you in here again, I’ll kick your skinny asses straight to hell!”
The girls fled the room with horrified shrieks. All but one. The girl they’d called Elsbeth. She stood trembling and terrified, her eyes wide as teacups, her pretty lips trembling.
“Are you deaf or something? I told you to get out.”
“I . . . I c-can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I . . . I live here.”
“Oh.” For the first time, Kit noticed the room had two beds.
The girl was sweet-faced, one of those people with a naturally kind disposition, and Kit couldn’t find it in her heart to bully her. At the same time, she was the enemy. “You’ll have to move.”
“Mrs. . . . Mrs. Templeton won’t let me. I—I already asked.”
Kit cursed, yanked up her skirts, and sank down on the bed. “How come you were lucky enough to get me?”
“My—my father. He’s Mr. Cain’s attorney. I’m Elsbeth Woodward.”
“I’d say I was pleased to make your acquaintance, but both of us know it’d be a lie.”
“I’d . . . I’d better go.”
“You do that.”
Elsbeth scampered from the room. Kit lay back on the pillow and tried to figure out how she was going to survive the next three years.
