Page 1 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
Chapter One
Brighton, England
December 5th, 1831
Iknow who you really are, Felicity Nightingale.
In her small office within Mrs. Lewis’ Seminary for Young Ladies, hunched over her desk in the dying candlelight, Felicity read the note over again and again, searching for any hint as to who the sender might have been. But as with the others she’d received over the last weeks, there was nothing. No return address, no particularly identifying flourishes to the neatly-printed letters which might have revealed some hint as to its source.
They had been meant to incite fear, these letters, filled with oblique references to her past. There would be a demand, eventually, when the writer dared to put it to paper. The only question would be whether or not it was within her meager means to pay. But the letters had thus far done the job for which they had been intended—to instill dread.
She lifted the letter and touched the corner to the sputtering flame. Watched it burn to ash, and wished that the flame could so easily burn away the sour pit of unease that churned within her stomach. Tried, futilely, to reassure herself that it would come to naught. She had been Felicity Cabot for more than half her life now. She had been Felicity Cabot longer even than she had once been Felicity Nightingale.
And still she could not quite convince herself that an accusation to the contrary would carry no weight. That her past would carry no consequences, even if those buried secrets were none of her doing. She was meant to be above reproach; charged with molding young, impressionable minds. If someone had dug up the ghosts of her past and intended to cast them up to haunt her, she could so easily be judged unworthy of such a responsibility.
This life that she had built for herself, small though it was, would be over. Done in with only a hint of scandal.
No. There was no sense in lingering upon it, for it would avail her nothing. The ash smeared upon her fingers as she pinched off the wick of the candle and plunged the room into the black of midnight. The darkness didn’t matter; this small office had been hers for ten years now, and she knew exactly how many steps would bring her around the desk, how many to the door. She closed the door behind her, heading toward the stairs, listening as she ascended—as she always did—for the telltale signs of a student out of bed.
There were just two students out of twelve who had stayed past the end of the Michaelmas term, rather than spending Christmas with their families. Felicity had learned over the years that she ought always to expect a few boarders to remain—for any number of reasons—but the fact that Dorothea White was always one of them caused no small amount of stress. The spirited girl had been particularly problematic of late, with her predilection for flouting authority of any sort.
With so few girls in residence, the staff had been reduced to just those most necessary. Which Felicity would not have resented half so much if Dorothea had even the slightest willingness to respect those charged with her care.
There was almost no possibility that the girl could have got past her, but Felicity paused before her door and peeked in anyway, breathing a soft sigh of relief at the faint snore that slipped through the cracked door. Revealed in the moonlight drifting through the window, there was a familiar blond head settled onto the pillow. One more worry eased for another night.
Time, now, to seek her own bed. Thank God for the Christmas holiday, which would allow for a badly-needed rest. Even if she didhave to watch Dorothea like a hawk, still it was a reprieve from the rigorous instruction schedule that dominated her life during school terms. But then, there was much that went into educating girls into becoming the lovely, well-mannered, accomplished young ladies they would be upon their matriculation.
Perhaps she would allow herself to sleep in a bit later tomorrow. Perhaps even—
The sound of muffled sobs met her ears as she neared her room. A distressing sound at any time, but at this hour? And on this floor—it couldonlybe Nellie Lewis, the owner and headmistress of the school.
A queer, anxious feeling curdling in her stomach, Felicity rapped gently upon the door. “Nellie?”
There came the sound of a nose being blown vigorously into a handkerchief, and then Nellie’s voice, stuffy and thick with tears, “You may as wellcome in.”
Cautiously, Felicity eased the door open. Nellie sat upon the end of her bed, half-buried beneath a thick layer of blankets. Her salt-and-pepper hair—more salt now than it had had when Felicity had first come beneath her care as a girl of just fifteen—was tousled, falling out of its loose plait. “Nellie, whatever is the matter?” she asked as she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“I’m ruined,” Nellie whispered tremulously, her eyes dropping to her lap.
That apprehensive feeling grew stronger still. Prone as Nellie might be to the occasional bout of theatrics, still Felicity had never seen her quite so distraught. “It can’t be all that bad, surely,” Felicity said.
“It’s worse,” Nellie confided, and blew her nose again into the handkerchief clutched in her quivering hands. “I may very well be bound for a debtor’s prison.”
“Debtor’s prison!” The words emerged on a shrill squeak. And then, following swiftly upon the heels of the revelation, a good number of things began to make sense. The frugality that had been employed across the school just lately; candles rationed; poorer cuts of meat gracing the dinner table; oil lamps half-filled at best. Repairs going unmade, with varying excuses toward the lack of attention. Staff sent home over the holiday—far too many of them.
Felicity sank onto the bed beside Nellie. “What happened?” she asked. “I thought—I thought we were doing quite well.” But she had never been allowed to see the accounting books, for all that she had been trusted to manage so many other facets of the school.
“We were,” Nellie said. “For years, we were.” A sniffle; a clearing of her throat. “But that string of bad luck last year—”
“Yes, I remember.” A part of the roof above the servants’ quarters had torn during a particularly nasty storm. The cellar stairs had collapsed, necessitating an expensive and lengthy repair. And the families of two girls had been arranged matches for them, and had not sent them back after Christmas, depriving the school of their tuition fees.
“Well, we weren’t destitute, but one more calamity might well have ruined us,” Nellie said. “So I went to see a man in finance. He told me he could treble our money in only three months on the Exchange.”
“Oh, Nellie,” Felicity sighed. “And what did you give him?”
“Everything,” Nellie said tearfully. “Everything we had. I thought—”She pursued her lips against the defense that tucked itself behind her teeth. “He was gone when I went to collect. Entirely gone. He took our money, and he—he—”
Vanished. Because that was what such men did. They preyed on the vulnerable and the desperate, promising the impossible. “I’ll forego my salary until we recover,” Felicity said staunchly. “My needs are not so great.”
