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suspended in a somewhat childlike world. I did not deem it likely she would find any sort of position
at all until the day the Secretary-General came calling. He wanted a British girl for his wife, he said.
She required nursing. Some vague ailment that required the attentions of a fair-skinned attendant.”
“But you said Adelaide was unfit for elevated employment,” Emma broke in. “And now
you are suggesting she was trained as a nurse?”
“Excuse me,” Miss Hoffman said, abruptly pushing to her feet. She walked to the edge
of the portico and called out something to a couple of girls who were straggling toward the school
and they halted obediently, then stooped to drag a heavy black hose to a new part of the field.
“You speak Hindustani to your students?” Emma asked in surprise, when Miss Hoffman
turned back.
“Both Hindustani and English,” she answered. “The girls need to be equally capable in
both languages, for who knows what sort of life they’ll be called to?”
“Do some of them go into mission work as well?” Geraldine inquired.
“Some,” Miss Hoffman said, plopping down in her chair so emphatically that Trevor
noted there was something masculine in her movements. This is a strange business, he thought. She
has the charm of things which do not try to be charming and yet there is an abruptness in her
manner that is rather….well, he wouldn’t say she was unfeminine, for that sounded like a criticism.
Perhaps it was more accurate to say that Leigh Anne Hoffman was a half-breed of sorts herself.
She was not at all his type, his tastes leaning more toward dainty, ladylike girls of good
family, which made it all the more strange that he couldn’t seem to stop staring at her. Perhaps his
tastes were becoming more catholic as a result of his international travels - or perhaps he was
merely having a bit of trouble shaking off the lingering effects of viewing the erotic wall. His mind
kept drifting back to, of all things, the mosaic image of the woman’s face. The direct and almost
challenging way she observed those who had come to observe her, her unapologetic smile of delight.
It was not that she was merely doing what she was doing, it was that she appeared to be enjoying it.
Demanding more of it, in fact, extending some sort of invitation which Trevor had briefly imagined to
have been directed solely to him. The woman on the wall had the standard issue of female body
parts, of course, but that was not the core of her appeal. Thanks to the whores of Whitechapel he had
seen the bits and pieces often enough. But he had never seen that expression on an Englishwoman’s
face.
“It is hard for some of the girls to leave us,” Miss Hoffman was saying, all the while
crossing and uncrossing her legs in a manner Trevor found most distracting. “This is the only home
they have ever known, of course, and the alternatives are not always attractive. Faced with a choice
of marriage to a junior officer they’ve scarcely met or genteel servitude in the homes of the Raj,
perhaps it is not surprising that a few of them suddenly declare a devotion to Christianity just as they
are on the cusp of leaving the school.”
“This is what happened with Adelaide?” Geraldine asked. “She decided to become a
nurse rather than leave the school and take her chances in the broader world beyond?”
“She wasn’t really trained as a nurse,” Miss Hoffman said. “But then again, Mrs.
Weaver wasn’t really sick. As I mentioned, white servants give a Bombay household a certain
panache and within seconds of our interview I gathered that the Secretary-General was precisely the
sort of old windbag who would gladly pay for that panache.”
Geraldine had flushed at his unflattering summation of Anthony Weaver’s personality
but, having met the man but once, Trevor suspected Miss Hoffman’s evaluation of his motive was
accurate.