A Great and Terrible Beauty

Felicity nearly trips in her mad rush to get out the door,

"Mademoiselle Felicity! There's no need to hurry."

"Pardon, Mademoiselle LeFarge." She glares at me. "I've just remembered that I need to retrieve something important before my next class."

When the room thins out to just the two of us, Mademoiselle LeFarge settles her bulk behind her desk.

The desk is clear except for a tintype of a handsome man in uniform. Probably a brother or other relative. After all, she is a mademoiselle, and older than twenty-fivea spinster with no hopes of marrying now, otherwise what would she be doing here, teaching girls as a last resort?

Mademoiselle LeFarge shakes her head. "Your French is in need of much work, Mademoiselle Gemma. Surely you know this. You will have to work very hard to stay in this class with the other girls your age. If I don't see improvement, I will be forced to demote you to the lower classes."

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"You can always ask the other girls for help, if need be. Felicity's French is quite good." "Yes," I say, swallowing hard, knowing full well that I would rather eat nails than ask for Felicity's help.

The rest of the day passes slowly and uneventfully. There are elocution lessons. Dancing and posture and Latin. There is music with Mr. Grunewald, a tiny, stooped Austrian man with a weary voice and a look of defeat stamped across his sagging face, every sigh saying that teaching us to play and sing is one step below being tortured slowly to death. We're all competent, if uninspiring, with our musicexcept for Ann.

When she stands up to sing, a clear, sweet voice comes pouring out of her. It's lovely, if somewhat timid. With practice, and a little more feeling, she could be quite good, actually. It's a shame that she won't ever get the chance. She's here to be trained to be of service, nothing more. When the music is over, she keeps her head down till she finds her seat again, and I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.

"You have quite a nice voice," I whisper to her when she takes her seat.

"You're just saying that to be kind," she says, biting a fingernail. But a blush works its way into her full, ruddy cheeks, and I know that it means everything to her to sing her song, if just for a little while.

The week passes in a numbing routine. Prayers. Deportment. Posture. Morning and night, I enjoy the same social outcast's status as Ann. In the evenings, the two of us sit by the fire in the great hall, the stillness broken only by the laughter coming from Felicity and her acolytes as they pointedly ignore us. By week's end, I'm sure I've become invisible. But not to everyone.

There is one message from Kartik. The night after I discover the diary, I find an old letter from Father pinned to my bed with a small blade. The letter, rambling and sloppy, had hurt to read, and so I had stuffed it into my desk drawer, hidden away. Or so I thought. Seeing it on my bed, slashed, with the words you have been warned scrawled across Father's signature chills me to the bone. The threat is clear. The only way to keep myself and my family safe is for me to shutter my mind to the visions. But I find I can't close off my mind without closing off the rest of me. Fear has me retreating inside myself, detached from everything, as useless as the scorched East Wing upstairs.

The only time I feel alive at all is during Miss Moore's drawing class. I had expected it to be tediouslittle nature sketches of bunnies nuzzling happily in the English countrysidebut Miss Moore surprises me again. She has chosen Lord Tennyson's famous poem, "The Lady of Shalott," as an inspiration for our work. It's about a woman who will die if she leaves the safety of her ivory tower. Even more surprising is that Miss Moore wants to know what we think about art. She means to have us talk and risk giving our opinions instead of making painstaking copies of cheery fruit. This throws the sheep into complete confusion.

"What can you tell me about this sketch of the Lady of Shalott?" Miss Moore asks, placing her canvas on an easel. In her picture, a woman stands at a tall window looking down on a knight in the woods. A mirror reflects the inside of the room.

It's quiet for a moment. "Anyone?"

"It's charcoal," Ann answers.

"Yes, that would be hard to dispute, Miss Bradshaw. Anyone else?" Miss Moore casts about for a victim among the eight of us present. "Miss Temple? Miss Poole?" No one says a word. "Ah, Miss Worthington, you're rarely at a loss for words."

Felicity tilts her head, pretends to consider the sketch, but I can tell she already knows what she wants to say. "It's a lovely sketch, Miss Moore. Wonderful composition, with the balance of the mirror and the woman, who is rendered in the style of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, I believe." Felicity turns on her smile, ready to be congratulated. Her apple-polishing skills are the true art here.