“He can’t be,” Diana gasped, her brow knitting into a scowl.
As Harrison and John came into view at the top of the stairs, Diana grabbed Bea’s arm and dove into the nearest classroom. Before Bea knew what was going on, Diana had both of them with their backs pressed to the wall on the other side of the open door. Annie had leapt into the room with them and looked completely baffled by Diana’s behavior.
“What are you doing?” Bea whispered as Harrison’s and John’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, growing nearer.
“The true question is what are they doing here?” Diana whispered in return.
“Do you know Lord Lichfield and Lord Whitlock?” Annie crowded against the wall with them, her eyes sparkling with the mischief she must have thought she was getting up to.
“Yes, we know them, all right,” Diana said ominously. “We know them better than they know themselves.”
Bea sent her friend a wary look. Her vendetta was getting a bit out of hand if it meant the two of them were crouched in hiding in a schoolroom. Although her ears did prick up at the conversation Harrison and John were engaged in as they passed the room.
“…don’t know what I’m going to do,” Harrison was in the middle of saying. He was clearly distressed. “Grandmama is going to have my hide for this.”
“Grandmothers seldom approve of anything their grandsons do,” John said as they passed right in front of the door.
Diana sank deeper into the room, dragging Bea with her, so that there was no chance the two of them would be spotted. Bea had just enough of a view to catch Harrison bending over to pick up a roll that had spilled out of one of their baskets.
“That’s odd,” she thought she heard him say before going on with, “I’ll likely be disowned once she finds out what I’ve done. She’s always guarded the family honor and the trappings of that honor religiously. I’ll be drummed right out of the family for losing something so precious.”
“I doubt it’ll be as bad as all that,” John said, his voice fading as the two of them walked on toward the orphanage’s main room. “You can always find another one. Pretty jewels like that are available all over the city.”
They stepped out of earshot, and Diana snapped straight so fast a loaf of bread spilled out of her basket. “That villain,” she growled, her face like a thundercloud. “To suggest that women are jewels that can be bought and sold and replaced on a whim. Ugh!”
Bea’s heart was too bruised by what she’d heard to shush her friend into silence. Did Harrison’s grandmother not approve of their match? Is that why he’d taken so long to declare himself? He hadn’t really declared himself in the end, he’d only kissed her. If his family didn’t approve of her, no wonder Harrison was so reticent about speaking to her father.
“We aren’t going to let them get away with this,” Diana said, sneaking carefully out of her concealment.
“Get away with what?” Annie asked in an awed whisper.
Diana hesitated before saying, “Whatever it is they’re plotting.”
“I’m not certain they’re plotting anything,” Bea said, rubbing a hand over her sore heart.
“I’m certain they are,” Diana insisted. “We’ll take these things to the kitchen, then follow them to see what they’re up to.”
Bea sent her friend a wary, sideways look, but followed her out of the classroom and down to the kitchen, as careful as Diana was not to be seen by Harrison or John, who had disappeared, likely into the main hall. They delivered the baskets to Mrs. Ross, Annie’s mother, then left the two women to sort through them as they headed to the main hall.
“We should just make ourselves known and ask why they’re here,” Bea said with the strong feeling that she needed to be the voice of reason where her friend was concerned.
“I’m sure they—”
Diana was cut off by a blood-curdling scream from the floor above them. A moment later, that first scream was joined by a few more. Within seconds, a stampede of girls poured down the stairs, pursued by half a dozen ferrets.
“Get away from me, get away from me,” one of the girls shouted as they all spilled into the downstairs hall, dodging around Bea and Diana in their rush to the orphanage’s main room.
“I think they’re cute,” a lone girl at the top of the stairs, who held ferrets in each hand, said.
“They are not cute, they are rodents,” an older girl shouted at her.
Several more ferrets dashed down the stairs, as if chasing the girls.
Mr. Siddel darted into the hall, adjusting his glasses. “What in heaven’s name is going on out here?” he asked.
“Ferrets,” one of the girls moaned. “A whole, big box of them. Somebody left it in the dormitory, and when we opened it, there were dozens of ferrets everywhere.”
Bea didn’t know whether to laugh or scream along with the girls. She’d never been overly fond of the creatures herself, though she knew people kept them as pets. All the same, she leapt into action, helping Mr. Siddel when he gave the order to catch the animals and gather them in one spot.
“Where is the box they came in?” he asked, lunging to catch one of the slippery creatures before it could escape into the schoolroom.
“I’ve got it right here,” a young lad—who Bea remembered seeing at the hall in Clerkenwell—said, charging down the stairs with a large crate in his arms.
Mr. Siddel nodded to the lad and pointed, ferret in his hand, toward the orphanage’s main room. “We’ll take them to the hall and put them all back in the box.”
“Who would do something like this to us?” one of the older girls wailed, shying away from Mr. Siddel as he marched past with a handful of ferrets.
“It was them,” Diana declared, as though personifying vengeance itself. She marched along the hallway and burst into the main room as if expecting to uncover a coup. Sadly for her, neither Harrison nor John were in the main room. “I know it was them,” Diana raged on, searching as though the two men would materialize out of nowhere.
“Diana, I don’t think Harrison and John would do such a thing,” Bea said, resting a hand on her friend’s arm.
“They were just here,” Diana said with a calculating look. “And didn’t you say that Harrison had come from Hope Orphanage before arriving, late, to your house last night? There was a prank at Hope Orphanage as well.”
Bea swallowed uncomfortably. It was true. And the first prank had happened at St. Joseph’s. Were Harrison and John there as well? They wouldn’t possibly attempt something so childish…would they? Perhaps that was why Harrison’s grandmother would disown him.
“We have to go after them,” Diana said, looking like the goddess she’d been named after. “Where did they go?”
“Who, the nobs?” the lad who had brought the crate into the hall asked. When Diana turned to him, he bobbed into a bow and said, “Beggin’ your pardon, my lady.”
“You.” Diana approached the boy. “Your name is Burt, isn’t it?”
“It is, my lady,” Burt said.
“Do you know where Lord Whitlock has gone?”