Fairchild by Jaima Fixsen Read Free Book Online

a gentleman’s education. Moreover, he needed to meet the sons of gentleman and he wasn’t going to meet any of them in Suffolk. They couldn’t even hire locals as servants and had to import all their domestics from London.  
    Tom raged, sulked, and begged, but he was packed off to Rugby nonetheless, accompanied by the shattered remains of his tutor and a generous bribe for the headmaster.  
    The tutor left Tom in the hall; the headmaster pocketed the bribe and promptly dropped Tom into the snake pit that was the first form of boys.  
    These little serpents knew immediately that Tom was not of their kind and so they made his life hell, as only boys can. No one spoke to him, unless it was in mockery; the name they gave him was more commonly used for excrement. Under his clothes, Tom’s spindle-shanked body was a lacework of bruises.  
    Tom’s letters home made his mother weep, and though his father wanted to bring him home, he could not. What if he had given up the first time he encountered an ocean storm, sold goods at a loss, or lost a cargo? Tom must persevere. The time for indulgence was past.  
    In his second year at school, Tom gave up on Latin and learned to sneak away to the village instead, where he could sell his possessions for real food. Even if his schoolmates allowed him to keep his portions, the food at school was terrible. In six months Tom sold nearly everything—his books, his jackets, all but one pair of stockings—and ate better than any of the thieves who shoved him in the hallways and twisted his arms until he gave up his meals. Tom grew six inches and made friends with the village smith, the local boxing champion. That was a turning point. After Tom knocked an older boy unconscious, no one challenged him. Not alone, at any rate. Tom learned to trail close to crowds everywhere he went. His friend the smith taught him to bar his door by wedging a heavy stick between the door and the wall.  
    They caught him anyways, leaving him with a split lip and a black eye. That night, Tom ran away.  
    It was an impulsive, ill-planned flight. Three days later Tom was pulled out of the stagecoach he was riding by two solid looking Bow Street Runners, hired by Henry Bagshot to track down his son. They hauled him back to the village, where his father and mother were waiting at the local inn. Once he was sure of Tom’s safety, Mr. Bagshot’s panic gave way to wrath and he blasted Tom with spittle and invective for a good five minutes.  
    “You frighten your mother again like that and I’ll skin you alive! You will not leave that school. You’ll face them and win!”  
    Sally interrupted her husband by handing him a glass of water. Her husband’s face was scalding red, and his doctor had warned him against such fits of temper.  
    “Must he go back?” she asked.  
    “Yes, dammit! I’ll see my son a gentleman while I live—”
    “I’ve told you what it’s like—” said Tom, but he hadn’t, not all, for the truth hurt his pride. “You still want me to go back?”  
    “I want you to have this. It’s the only thing I can’t give you. The one thing you must claim for yourself.”  
    “I don’t want it. You do,” Tom said, and Henry, who’d calmly accepted a lifetime of insults and snubs, exploded.  
    “Yes, I bloody well do! My son will not be sneered at. My son will be welcomed at their clubs and their frippery parties and—”
    “Fine. I’ll go now.” Betrayed and furious, Tom stormed out of the inn’s parlor and flung himself outside into the stable yard. His arms were inflexible iron at his sides, but if he looked at his father for one more second, his rigid control would break.  
    Another word, and I’ll knock your daylights out . Silently, he heaped insults on his father. If his classmates had been flinging them, he’d have broken their teeth.  
    Mr. and Mrs. Bagshot returned Tom to the headmaster, and though Tom suffered his mother’s teary caresses, he wouldn’t