Anne took the two under her wing and noted almost immediately that one of them was going to need extra lessons in elocution, since her Cockney accent made the English language on her lips virtually unintelligible and that the other was going to have to be coaxed firmly and patiently-and with large doses of love-out of her unfortunate manner of belligerent bravado.

The following morning, the day pupils arrived and classes began.

For the next month life was busy. Anne fulfilled all her teaching duties and gave special care to the new charity girls. She spent most of her free time with David-who was excited at the promise Mr. Upton had made to introduce oil paints to his art classes after Christmas. She wrote and received several letters from the Bedwyn ladies and Joshua. She helped David reply to the letters Davy and Becky and Joshua had written to him.

Indeed, life seemed remarkably normal considering the fact that it was becoming increasingly obvious to Anne that there was nothing normal about hers at all. She had missed her courses before school started and had desperately tried to convince herself that it was merely because of the upsets in her life during the previous month. She had continued to hope even when she started to feel slightly nauseated after rising in the mornings-as she had done ten years ago.

But of course-had she expected a miracle?-she missed her courses for a second time at the end of September and thought about what Sydnam Butler had once said about choices. She had chosen a month and a half ago to lie with him because she had wanted him and he had wanted her and it was their last day together. And that choice had forever changed her life.

It was a terrifying thought.

But there was nothing she could do now to change that choice or avoid its repercussions. She could only move onward with her life.

She waited for a chilly Saturday morning after Susanna had taken most of the girls outside for games in the meadow and David had gone with them. Then she knocked on the door of Claudia Martin’s office and let herself in when she was summoned.

“May I disturb you?” she asked. She and Susanna and Lila had sat in Claudia’s private sitting room just the evening before, drinking tea and chatting on a wide variety of topics, and Anne might have remained when the other two retired for the night. But she had known that she needed a more formal setting for what she had to say.

Claudia looked up from her desk.

“The last of the stragglers has just paid the school fees,” she said. “I do believe we are going to do well financially again this year, Anne. Within two or three years I hope to be able to inform Mr. Hatchard that we no longer need the assistance of our benefactor.”

She set down her quill pen and gestured to a chair on the other side of her desk for Anne to sit down.

“You handled Agnes Ryde’s tantrum very well at breakfast, Anne,” she said. “You calmed a potentially explosive situation. You have a great gift with difficult girls.”

“She is still a little bewildered by her new environment, that is all,” Anne said. “When she is afraid, her experience of life has taught her that she must fight, with her tongue even if not with her fists. But she has an affectionate heart and a sharp mind, Claudia. I hope both will be nurtured while she is here. But I am quite sure they will be. This is a very good school. Any girl who is privileged to attend can only leave the better for having been here.”

Claudia cocked her head to one side and leaned back in her chair. She was silent for a moment.

“What is it, Anne?” she asked. “There is something I have been unable to put my finger on for quite a while now. You are as diligent and cheerful and patient as you have ever been. But there is some…hmm. There is some loss of serenity, if that is the right word. It has been of concern to me. Are you unwell? Shall I summon Mr. Blake?”

Mr. Blake was the physician who came to the school whenever one of the boarders was indisposed.

“I am going to be leaving here, Claudia,” Anne said abruptly, and somehow it seemed as if she were standing behind herself, listening to the words, appalled, as if someone else had spoken them. They were finally out. And they were true and irrevocable.

Claudia looked keenly at her but did not make any comment.

“I believe,” Anne said, closing her eyes briefly, “I am going to be married.”

She had planned and rehearsed this for a whole week, ever since last Saturday morning, when she had walked into the center of Bath to post her letter to Glandwr. But so far she had said none of the words she had practiced. And she had not smiled or looked bright and happy, as she had planned to do.

“Married?”

She realized that Claudia had spoken the single word.

“I met him in Wales during the summer,” Anne explained. “He asked me to marry him then, and I have decided that I will say yes. I have written to him.”

“My felicitations.” Claudia was looking at her rather sternly, her back ramrod straight. “Might I be permitted to know his name?”

Anne sighed and slumped a little in her chair.

“I cannot do this,” she said, “as if you were simply a headmistress, my employer, and I a teacher. Or as if this were something I have been secretly considering for almost two months and have only now made a decision upon. I owe you better than this. I am so very sorry, Claudia. I told you everything about my month in Wales except the most significant part. He is Sydnam Butler, youngest son of the Earl of Redfield, and the Duke of Bewcastle’s steward at Glandwr.”

“Sydnam Butler,” Claudia said, “of Alvesley Park not far from Lindsey Hall? I remember him. He was an extraordinarily handsome boy.”

“I am with child by him,” Anne said bluntly.

Claudia stared at her, and Anne saw her jaw clench hard.

“Rape?” she asked.

“No!” Anne’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, Claudia. Nothing like that. No. I was a willing participant. He offered me marriage but I declined. I did promise, though, that I would let him know if I were with child, and allow him to marry me. I sent a letter off to him a week ago.”

There was a short silence.

“But you do not wish to marry him?” Claudia asked.

“No. Not really.”

But she had missed him far more than she could have predicted. Even before she had begun to suspect the truth with the absence of her monthly courses and the morning nausea, he had dominated her waking thoughts and haunted her dreams. And she had wondered-every day since her return to Bath she had wondered-if her answer would have been different if she had not taken sudden fright-and if he had asked differently.

If you wish, Anne, we will marry.

Such dutiful, kind, dispassionate words.

Now they were going to be forced into marrying. She must accept his dutiful willingness to put everything right, and he must accept that she had kept her promise but that he might never have a wife who could offer him physical warmth.

Part of her longed for him. Part of her was terrified. And all of her hated the circumstances that would propel them into matrimony. He would hate the circumstances.

“Then you must not do so, Anne.” Claudia set both hands on the desk and leaned forward, her voice and face firm. “He is the son of an earl and of wealth and privilege, and he is far too handsome for his own good-or yours. He is an associate of the Duke of Bewcastle. You will be miserable.”

“And what is the alternative, Claudia?” Anne asked. “To remain here at the school? You know that will be impossible.”

She watched the fierce light die out of Claudia’s eyes.

A number of parents had asked questions and expressed concern years ago when Miss Martin employed an unwed mother as a teacher-and when that teacher had had the effrontery to bring her bastard son with her. One girl had even been withdrawn from the school in protest.

“Besides,” Anne said, “I had no choice with David, Claudia, and life has been difficult for him as a result and will continue to be. I will not do that with another child when this time I do have a choice.”

“He will marry you?” Claudia asked.

“Yes,” Anne said.

With her heart she was quite, quite sure that he would. He would be here any day now. There was, though, an almost panicked doubt in her head. What if he did not come?

“Oh, Anne,” Claudia said. She slumped in her chair and sighed. “My dear, how could you have been so…foolish?”

What she had done had, of course, been very foolish indeed. But there was really no point in regretting it. It had happened.

“I ought to have told you sooner,” she said, “instead of waiting until I was absolutely sure-and even longer than that while I allowed time for my letter to reach him in Wales. You will need to replace me soon. Lila has been doing little more than apprentice work during the past month, but she shows great promise, Claudia. Like Susanna, she seems able to win the respect of girls who were her fellow pupils just a few months ago, and she is very popular with the new girls. Besides which, she is really quite brilliant in mathematics and earned top marks in geography every year I taught her. If you choose to promote her, I do not believe she will let you down.”

Claudia stared broodingly at her for several moments before pushing abruptly to her feet and rounding the desk and snatching Anne up into her arms.

“Anne,” she said. “Anne, I ought to shake the life out of you. But…Oh, my dear, tell me how I may help you. Is there even the smallest chance that you can feel an affection for Mr. Butler?”

Anne relaxed gratefully into the embrace. She had been so afraid that she would lose her friendships at the school-and it was of the very disciplined Claudia Martin that she had been most afraid. A woman who had twice been got with child outside wedlock could not demand the sympathy of her friends as a right.