I winced as Lady Beatrice stabbed her steak with her knife with force enough to make a sharp sound against her plate. "Who does that spinster think she is?"

  "Lady Beatrice, I am sure she meant only the best by it," I said quietly, hoping that she would stop attempting to murder her lunch.

  When we were out of sight from adults, Lady Beatrice had long since stopped showing any sense of propriety towards me. This, she demonstrated by finishing her cut with the knife with a flourish that ended with the knife pointed at me disrespectfully.

  "You wouldn't say that if you knew where she was coming from. I've done a bit of digging, and she's definitely a bad sort."

  "A bad sort?" This language returning left me with a sense of dread.

  "Her fiance died in a carriage accident on the way to their wedding. Twenty years ago."

  I merely raised an eyebrow, waiting to hear why this made her a bad person.

  Lady Beatrice continued, hardly skipping a beat.

  "She's been in a state of mourning ever since, officially. She took on public accounting initially for the money, but now she's a career civil servant for the Guldenfel government."

  "Okay? I apologize, Lady Beatrice, but I'm still not seeing your point."

  "Twenty years, Sophia. She hadn't even met him before but she's been too 'distraught'", this word was accompanied by her wagging her fingers, "to remarry. I bet she's just using it as a cover to avoid courtship. It's disturbing."

  "Personally, I find the idea of marrying a man you'd never even met before to be more disturbing," I thought, but simply let her continue on without remarking aloud.

  "I hope you weren't considering it, Sophia. Such menial tasks should be left to the commonfolk. Lady Ayda denigrates herself by bothering."

  "It does sound preferable to marrying Adrian, but I don't really have a choice."

  "Regardless, I'm sure Baroness Adler's lesson today will be much more edifying."

  I took the opportunity to turn to Gertrude, hoping that by inviting her to speak I could get some breathing room from Beatrice, "What do you think, Gertrude?"

  Gertrude suddenly looked markedly less enthusiastic, likely realizing what I was trying to do. "Uhm... I think Lady Dubois has the right of it, Lady Printemps. Baroness Adler does seem to know best."

  "And what about you, Lady Annabelle? Lady Marybelle?" I asked, hoping the twins would have more confidence.

  Lady Annabelle looked up from the peas she was pushing around on her plate.

  "It's a nice effort, I think, but I'm not sure I did as well as she seemed to have assumed... some of the questions were pretty hard."

  Lady Beatrice chimed in, "Well, of course it was hard. Ladies like us simply aren't meant to be pushing numbers around on a ledger. That sort of work is more suited to our lessers."

  At this, she glanced at Gertrude. Gertrude was roughly at my level in regards to mathematics, possibly even more so. She had been quite proud of it in the first few weeks of class, but suddenly became quieter one day. I suspected that Lady Beatrice had approached her, the same as she did for me, but Gertrude never talked about it.

  Lady Marybelle continued doodling flowers on her napkin in pencil. She rarely spoke these days, preferring to let her sister communicate for the both of them.

  I heard laughing from elsewhere in the lunchroom, and turned to see the girls in Class A celebrating their last day of classes as a group.

  Lady Beatrice turned up her nose at this. "Hmph. Well, I'm glad we all know better than to behave in such a manner."

  And so we finished our lunch in silence.

  ---

  When we entered Baroness Adler's classroom for our final lesson, I saw that it had returned to its original arrangement. The desks were placed into two neat rows facing the front of the classroom, and the chalkboard had been uncovered for the first time in a long while.

  The Baroness only occasionally used the chalkboard, preferring to have us participate in direct physical simulations using the positioning of the desks as analogues to real situations. For instance, when explaining the mechanics of seating arrangements and ballroom decoration, she had spent only a small portion of time drawing the various styles of ballroom decoration on the board before having each of us physically place the desks around the room as if they were tables and setting us to task decorating them as if the class really were a ballroom.

  On the board were several pre-drawn diagrams that made my stomach turn just a little bit. The Belles giggled amongst themselves at what they saw, while Gertrude flushed beet red. Lady Beatrice remained remarkably composed.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Baroness Adler cleared her throat once we had all sat down. "It is my understanding that some of you will be married forthwith, and that you have no older women in your family to teach you the matters of the bedroom."

  A long wooden pointer was used to direct our attention to the diagrams depicting a male body.

  "Your husband will surely be able to explain the mechanics to you, and so I shall spare you the details. This last lesson we share, I will turn our focus directly toward terminology, the legal ramifications of consummation, and the other social and moral duties expected of you."

  "Now, as we are all aware, the process of marriage ends with the consummation between a man and a woman." At this, I could have sworn that both the Baroness and Lady Beatrice cast a look in my direction.

  "Until the consummation is performed, the marriage can be annulled by either party, and so it is traditional for an older member of the house to verify that the act has taken place."

  My skin began to crawl, and as the lecture continued, I allowed myself to tune out most of it.

  ---

  For my final evening at remedial academy, I found myself wandering out to the training yards once more. Initially I had started visiting them hoping to see Jerem or Charlotte again, but even after it became apparent that they wouldn't be here anymore I continued to come here to watch the knights train.

  The students of the academy did not learn any particular family style, like William or Adrian had. Instead, they were taught from Guldenfel's own manual: a cobbled together mixture of various techniques purchased from knights' families that together composed a serviceable art for use by the kingdom's military.

  The students here struggled, and they fought. Their fighting style was dirty, rough, and occasionally reduced the students to wrestling on the ground after they were too tired to continue swinging their swords. And I loved it.

  The swords in their hands moved purely by their own efforts and struck true only by their own dedication to learning how to wield them. When the sword no longer served, their hands would do. They would fight to the last, and although they all came from different families, they all knew that in the end they would fight as one.

  There was nobody on the yard that evening but me, so I took the opportunity to walk among the practice circles and see what they felt like from within.

  A blunted practice sword had been abandoned in one of them. I made a small tutting noise, smiling. Its owner would surely be in a bit of trouble for having left it out overnight.

  I stepped over to the blade, and reached down to try to pick it up. However, its weight surprised me, and I nearly toppled over; not because it was too heavy, but because it was too light. I held the sword out in front of me, feeling the extended blade pull against my arms, and gave it a few swings, enjoying the noise it made as it thrummed through the cool evening air.

  After a short while, I found myself dancing with it, using its weight to balance myself as I gave a solo performance for the moon and myself alone.

  I loved dancing. I loved the sword. "Maybe one day dancing with swords will be a real art I could practice."

  But when my dance was finished, I was left huffing and puffing and sweating clean through my dress. As it turned out, although swords were lighter than I had thought, they were still heavy enough.

  I looked up at the stars, and watched a moth go by as I slowly caught my breath. "There are things that I love."

  I then set the sword back where I found it sheepishly, and laughed at myself on my way back to my room.

  ---

  I sat with my back to Erika as she combed my hair. Our ordeal here was nearing its end, as the end of winter was nigh. Now that classes had ended, we would soon be on our way to the king's estate. There, I would be declared of age, and I would remain there until my debut. Since I doubted that Father would bother to pay for a solo debut for me, I would likely debut with the rest of the girls my age at a debutante ball hosted by the queen. After that, Erika and I would be going directly to the Hiems estate as the first, and potentially only, stop on my introductory circuit.

  So much lay ahead of us. I wasn't looking forward to being made to put everything I had learned in Baroness Adler's lessons to use.

  My stomach turned again. "Especially that last one."

  But today, at least, we could relax. There would be no more mock tea parties to attend or tiresome lunches with Lady Beatrice. There would be no more difficult evening lessons with Lady Ayda.

  There would be no more passing by that moonlit hallway.

  I took a deep breath, and flopped over onto my side, spurring protest from Erika. Her eyes were more sallow than ever before, and I could tell that whatever work she had been doing through the winter to keep our finances afloat had ground her down to a sorry state.

  There would, hopefully, be no more of that, either.

  We would be moving on.

  ---

  "Good to see ye again, m'lady!"

  Tor's grin stretched so wide that I thought it might split his head in half.

  He whistled a merry tune as he and the coachman loaded our luggage onto the carriage. The coachman gave me a cordial nod before assuming his place at the reins, and Tor helped me up into the carriage.

  Of the guards, I only recognized him. To my surprise, one of them was a woman. She wore a Lombardi style jack, same as Tor, and I noted that they were both dyed the same shade of black. I turned to look back at Tor, to ask him who she was, but he had already assumed his own position and Erika was closing the carriage door behind her.

  She let out a sigh of relief as the carriage began moving again.

  "Things should be easier from here on out, no?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Well, we're heading to the king's estate, in Doromare. Your father, Duke Printemps, will have a much harder time neglecting your needs under the watchful eyes of the Queen's court. It would reflect far worse on him than on you. "

  She slumped down in her seat and covered her chest with one hand as she breathed deeply. "Which means, a real allowance for once. I can't wait to spend all his money. Maybe we can bankrupt him before the season is over."

  At this, she laughed, but I didn't feel like I understood well enough to laugh with her.

  "Well, don't worry about it Sophia. Just let me handle it. You focus on your debut, and I'll make sure you're the prettiest girl there."

  I took a deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh as I turned to look out the window. As I watched the streets of Guldenfel pass us by, I let my thoughts wander.

  "The prettiest girl..."