Read Online The Passion of the Purple Plumeria by Lauren Willig - Free Book Online

any of this. She didn’t like it one bit.
    All her instincts, well honed over years of midnight raids, were shouting “trouble.” How much of the trouble was coming from the situation and how much from a certain sun-bronzed colonel was a matter for debate. Bad enough that Agnes had gone missing; worse yet to have to deal with the parent of the other girl, poking his nose in—however attractive a nose it might be—and posing questions that might prove inconvenient for everyone.
    And by everyone, she meant the Pink Carnation.
    The last thing they needed was someone else taking an interest in the matter. Not that she thought there was a matter, of course. Until proven otherwise, she was firmly of the opinion that those empty-headed chits had simply jaunted off on some expedition of their own, never thinking whom they might worry in the process.
    Even so, just on the off chance, on the very, very off chance, there were anything more nefarious about it, anything that came in a tricolor package with a faint whiff of frog, much the better to keep it all as under wraps as possible.
    Behind her, Gwen could hear Colonel Reid gently quizzing that insipid gudgeon of a French mistress, drawing her out about the number of pupils in the school, their routines, their habits. His accent was a lilting drawl, distinctly un-English without being recognizably anything else. There was a pleasant burr to it, deep and musical. And quite, quite deliberate, Gwen reminded herself. She knew a born rogue when she saw one. There might be threads of silver among the red of Colonel Reid’s hair, but that crooked smile was pure danger.
    No matter. Gwen was proof against that sort of thing. He wasn’t going to get anything out of
her
. She had learned her lesson the hard way—unlike the weak-willed Mlle. de Fayette, who appeared to be lapping it up, relaxing in the Colonel’s company, taking the arm he offered to help her up the stairs as she told him everything and anything he wanted to know.
    Catching her eye, the Colonel had the effrontery to wink at her.
    To wink! As if they were in some sort of conspiracy together. Admittedly, they were the only ones with any wits in the room, but he was a fool if he thought she was going to let herself be drawn in that way.
    Stiff backed, Gwen marched up the stairs. The use of charm as a tool made her hackles rise. She respected a more direct approach. A battering ram approach. At least one knew where one stood with the battering ram, none of this butter-wouldn’t-melt nonsense that could mean yes, no, or maybe.
    Not that Colonel Reid didn’t get results that way, she admitted grudgingly. He was doing far better eliciting answers from the French mistress than she had. The woman had simply stared pop-eyed at her. No spine, no spine at all.
    “The room, it is this way,” said Mlle. de Fayette, gesturing diffidently down the landing. “If you would be so good?”
    “Good” wasn’t quite the word Gwen would have used. She turned to the French teacher. “How many students on the hall?”
    The hallway was far longer than the frontage of an average townhouse. Miss Climpson must have knocked two or three houses together to make up her school. The doors were neatly labeled with the names of the pupils who inhabited them, two or three to a room. The large rooms at the corners appeared to be reserved for those lucky pupils whose parents had secured for them a suite of their own.
    “Twenty-two on this floor, twenty-three on the floor above. The mistresses live on the floor with the students,” added Mlle. de Fayette quickly. “I and the games mistress on this floor and two other mistresses on the floor above. That way, there is always someone near.”
    Twenty-odd students to two teachers? The faculty didn’t stand a chance. It was a bit high for the students to try the trellis—not that she’d put it past them—but there were plenty of other ways for an enterprising young lady to effect an inconspicuous