The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page A

matrimony—”
    “Are dim to nil in any event,” I said, “as I look just like Sherlock.”
    I think my candor staggered him. “My dear girl.” His tone softened. “That will change, or it will be changed.” By my sitting for endless hours with a book on top of my head while playing the piano, I supposed. Days spent in torment, plus corsets, dress improvers, and false hair, although he would not say so. “You come from a family of quality, and with some polishing, I am sure you will not disgrace us.”
    I said, “I have always been a disgrace, I will always be a disgrace, and I am not going to be sent to any finishing establishment for young ladies.”
    “Yes, you are.”
    Glaring across the table at each other in the candle-lit twilight, we had given up any pretense of dining. I am sure he was aware, as I was, that both Lane and Mrs. Lane were eavesdropping in the hallway, but I, for one, did not care.
    I raised my voice. “No. Get me a governess if you must, but I am not going to any so-called boarding school. You cannot make me go.”
    He actually softened his tone, but said, “Yes, I can, and I shall.”
    “What do you mean? Shall you shackle me to take me there?”
    He rolled his eyes. “Just like her mother,” he declared to the ceiling, and then he fixed upon me a stare so martyred, so condescending, that I froze rigid. In tones of sweetest reason he told me, “Enola, legally I hold complete charge over both your mother and you. I can, if I wish, lock you in your room until you become sensible, or take whatever other measures are necessary in order to achieve that desired result. Moreover, as your older brother I bear a moral responsibility for you, and it is plain to see that you have run wild too long. I am perhaps only just in time to save you from a wasted life. You will do as I say.”
    In that moment I understood exactly how Mum had felt during those days after my father’s death.
    And why she had made no attempt to visit my brothers in London, or welcomed them to Ferndell Park.
    And why she had tricked money out of Mycroft. I stood up. “Dinner no longer appeals to me. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.”
    I wish I could say I swept with cold dignity out of the room, but the truth is, I tripped over my skirt and stumbled to the stairs.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH
    THAT NIGHT I COULD NOT SLEEP. INDEED, at first I could not even be still. In my nightgown, barefoot, I paced, paced, paced my bedroom as I imagined a lion at the London Zoo might pace his cage. Later, when I turned my coal-oil lamp low, put out my candles, and went to bed, my eyes would not close. I heard Mycroft retire to the guest bedroom; I heard Lane and Mrs. Lane tread upstairs to their quarters on the top floor, and still I lay staring at the shadows.
    The whole reason for my distress was not as obvious as may at first appear. It was Mycroft who had made me angry, but it was my changing thoughts about my mother that made me upset, almost queasy. It feels very queer to think of one’s mother as a person like oneself, not just a mum, so to speak. Yet there it was: She had been weak as well as strong. She had felt as trapped as I did. She had felt the injustice of her situation just as keenly. She had been forced to obey, as I would be forced to obey. She had wanted to rebel, as I desperately yearned to rebel, without knowing how I ever would or could.
    But in the end, she had managed it. Glorious rebellion.
    Confound her, why had she not taken me with her?
    Kicking off the covers to lunge out of bed, I turned up the oil lamp, stalked to my desk—its border of stencilled flowers did not cheer me now—seized paper and pencil from my drawing kit, and drew a furious picture of my mother, all wrinkles and jowls with her mouth a thin line, going off in her three-storeys-and-a-basement hat and her turkey-back jacket, flourishing her umbrella like a sword while the train of her ridiculous bustle trailed behind her.
    Why had she not taken me into