The Mastermind Plot Read Free Page B

looking forward to seeing Will. Grandmother let go of my cheeks and stepped back, her gaze turning serious.
    â€œWe must settle you into your room before the seamstress arrives to fit you for an academy uniform. Come, come.”
    She started for the foyer. I set my full cup down, splashing some steaming tea onto the saucer.
    â€œAcademy?” My parents had said I’d most likely have a tutor for the few months I’d be in Boston.
    Grandmother’s extreme hourglass figure twisted as she looked back at me. “I’ve decided to enroll you in the best academy in all of Boston, and it just so happens to be right here, in Lawton Square. Your education will not be neglected under my watchful eye.” Grandmother smiled, obviously pleased with herself.
    Nellie made an approving noise from her seat on the sofa. “And hopefully it will hold the girl’s interest better than the school in Loch Harbor did.”
    I couldn’t help it if school was a bore. Given the choice between learning arithmetic and learning how to handcuff a criminal, I’d choose handcuffs every time.
    Grandmother straightened the tapered sleeves of her frilly dress. “Oh, it most certainly will interesther. Miss Doucette has the finest reputation here in the city.”
    My pulse streamed out an extra few beats. “Miss Doucette?”
    Maddie Cook had once bragged about attending a marvelous academy and Doucette rang a bell.
    â€œYes. You’ll be starting first thing on Monday at Miss Lydia Doucette’s Academy for Young Ladies.”

The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him. — Sun Tzu, Chinese general
    T HE SHARP TWANG OF HARP STRINGS, THE bubbly roll of piano keys, and the hollow breath of flutes filled the music room inside Miss Lydia Doucette’s Academy for Young Ladies on Monday afternoon. I sat in a cushioned chair as far into the corner of the room as possible, and partly behind the floor-length drapes. My first day at the academy had proved as wretched as I’d anticipated. Right when Grandmother’s carriage had rolled up beside the four-story, Gothic-style schoolhouse on Graylock Road, which was only three blocks from 224 Knight Street, my stomach had flipped like one of the Bay of Fundy’s porpoises. And I’d been correct to be nervous.
    Though Miss Lydia Doucette had greeted Nellie and me in the foyer with warmth, my introduction to the academy girls had been awkward, to say the least. The girls looked to range from age six to sixteen, andnearly all of them had stared at me with awestruck expressions when Miss Doucette ushered me into a classroom with rows of wooden desks, as if I was some sort of circus freak. Nellie had left almost immediately to go to the depot and return home as planned, and I’d been tempted to beg her to take me with her.
    One girl acted differently, though. She sat at the center desk in the second row, her posture perfect, her glossy black curls loose around her shoulders. Her bright, gray eyes had immediately caught mine and held me in their clutches. Her stare had not been the mesmerized one plastered to the rest of the faces in the room, but one of loathing and suspicion. It seemed I’d already made my second enemy in Boston, and I couldn’t form a single theory as to how I’d done it.
    Music was, thankfully, the last lesson of the day. After French, geometry, European literature, and composition, my head felt stuffed with all sorts of knowledge I feared I wouldn’t remember the next day. The cold, silver-plated flute slipped around in my sweaty palms as I fiddled with it in my lap. My fingers tapped ignorantly at the keys along the top of the instrument. Everyone was expected to learn a musical instrument, and right then we were supposed to be warming up for lessons. I was too mortified to even lift the flute to my lips for a test blow.
    A girl, perhaps a