to force me harder to the wall. She spread her legs and jammed her foot up against my case again.
I had not grown up in the halls of Blisshaven for nothing. I freed my own foot and kicked down against her instep. For someone my size, I was surprisingly strong.
“Oh, I’m awfully sorry,” I said sweetly, meeting her outraged look. “Was that your foot? I had no idea. It’s so dreadfully tight in here, don’t you agree? I swear, I can hardly breathe.”
I had to do that twice more before she got up and left.
• • •
The hours crept by. As the sky beyond my window grew glummer and darker and the stops more frequent, the train began to empty. Around four I rummaged in my case and found the meal that had been packed for me back at the Home: an apple, a thick slice of buttered bread, and an actual, amazing seared pork sausage.
The Home had never been overly generous with food, and meat was already becoming scarce. I stared down at the sausage in its waxed-paper packet, genuinely shocked that someone in the kitchens had thought to give it to me. Perhaps it was meant as a final farewell.
The air raids were taking their toll, and the government had recommended sending as many children out of London as possible. Blisshaven itself had been hit nearly right off. No one had been killed, but the entire northern section, a decrepit labyrinth of leaky pipes and peeling paint that had served as our schooling arena, was now rubble. Most of us considered it an improvement.
So the Home had been emptied. I was, in fact, the very last orphan to leave, and I knew this was not because I was the eldest or the youngest or the least or most attractive, or any of the other rumored criteria that had been whispered about the dormitory in the days after the hit.
I knew I was the last because I was tainted. I had been sent to Moor Gate.
All the other wards had been scattered to the four corners of the kingdom, sent to whichever other foundling homes had room to take in more of the unwanted.
But for me. I hadn’t been assigned to another orphanage.
“The Iverson School for Girls,” Mr. H. W. Forrester had informed me, examining me like a nearsighted owl from over the tops of his spectacles. “It enjoys a sterling reputation. You are fortunate indeed they had an unexpected opening for a new charity student.”
“Yes, sir,” I had replied. I had been summoned to the hallowed office of the director, seated with well-mannered precision at the edge of the chair before his desk. The room was cramped with bookcases and cabinets and the lace curtains behind him were caked with dust; it was a little surprising more of it hadn’t flaked off from the air strikes.
Mr. H. W. Forrester had fleshy jowls and salt-and-pepper hair greased with pomade and veiny, restless fingers that tended to tap across the scattered sheets of paper before him. I was very careful never to look even once at the diamond stickpin in his tie.
“It’s on the southern coast, set near Idylling. Seat of the dukes of Idylling. The Louis family, you know.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Lovely area. I myself spent a holiday there once.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze taking on a faraway cast. “Sandy beaches. Balmy breezes. One may sea-bathe in utter comfort.…”
I counted silently to twenty, then cleared my throat. “What happened to her, sir?”
Mr. Forrester lowered his gaze back to me. “To whom?”
“To the other girl? The one who left the opening for a new student?”
“Why, I’m certain nothing happened to her, Eleanore. Really, what a question. I trust you will manage to curb that macabre bent of yours once at Iverson. You won’t make many friends that way.”
“No, sir,” I agreed, and pressed my lips shut.
London wasn’t the only part of the country being attacked. The dailies were full of articles about how the Germans were beginning to bomb the coasts, as well, as far as they could go in their massive zeppelin airships.
Wessex. I’d bet the sterling school of Iverson had found itself with a sudden slew of student openings.
“The headmistress, Mrs. Westcliffe, has been made aware of your particular … personal history and has decided to take you in anyway. Provisionally, I might add. The duke himself sponsors the school, you know, and has granted it a very generous endowment for a select few impoverished