The Governess Affair

a great clamor. The other boys who were studying in this upstairs library—all four of them—were only too happy to leave their books and press their noses to the windows that overlooked the fracas.
    A crowd was forming on the green below: a mix of boys of all ages gathering in a circle around one child. While Robert watched, an older boy grabbed the child by the collar; another hit him.
    “Someone should stop that,” Sebastian said next to him.
    Someone was going to have to be Robert. He usually did put a stop to these rows; it was what a knight-errant would do. And while Robert would never admit it to the other boys, he still fancied himself one.
    “Who is it?” Sebastian added, peering down at the crowd. “Is he new?”
    “Yes. He’s a first form lag,” someone else said. “A Colleger.”
    “Ah,” one of the older boys said. “A scholarship student. No wonder. Who are his parents?”
    “Some kind of farmers. Or soap-makers.”
    A derisive noise came at that. But Robert brushed his hands and stood up. Knights protected the weak, after all.
    “Even worse,” the older boy was saying. “Davenant asked the boy who his father was, and he said, ‘Hugo Marshall.’ When Davenant said he’d never heard of him, the little lag said, ‘It doesn’t matter; he’s a better man than your sire, anyway.”
    Robert froze.
    Sebastian hadn’t moved from the window, but the other boy snorted. “He’s got stones, that’s for sure. Not so clear on the brains, unfortunately.”
    Robert’s own brain fogged over. He set his fingertips against the glass and peered down once more. “Who did you say his father was again?”
    “Hugo Marshall.”
    Robert had heard that name before. He had heard it a few years ago, after another awful round of arguments ended in vicious separation. That time, it had been his mother who had left the house in a slamming of doors and a pointed ordering of carriages; his father had stayed morosely behind in the study.
    Robert had tiptoed into the room, and, gathering up all his courage, he’d spoken. “Father, why is Mother always sad?”
    Sad wasn’t the right word, but at the time he hadn’t yet learned tumultuous.
    His father had tipped back his glass of spirits and stared at the ceiling. “It’s Hugo Marshall’s fault,” he’d said after a while. “It’s all Hugo Marshall’s fault.”
    Robert hadn’t known what to make of that. What he’d finally ventured was: “Is Hugo Marshall a villain?”
    “Yes,” his father had said with a bitter laugh. “He’s a villain. A knave. A cur. A right bloody bastard.”
    That right bloody bastard had a son, and at the moment, that son was surrounded by other boys. In the upstairs room, his friends all turned to Robert. The library seemed too small, the air too hot.
    “Never say you know who this Hugo Marshall is,” the older boy said.
    “I have no idea.” It was the first time in a very long time that Robert had told a lie. “I’ve never heard of him,” he added swiftly, hoping the burn of his cheeks wouldn’t give him away.
    On fine summer days after his talk with his father, Robert had wandered in the paddocks outside, wielding a switch instead of a sword, and challenging white-headed daisies to duels. Sometimes, he imagined himself fighting dragons. But usually, he fought villains—villains and knaves and curs, all named Hugo Marshall. When he defeated him—and Sir Robert always defeated his villains—he brought the right bloody bastard home, trembling and bound, and laid the cur at his mother’s feet.
    After that, they all lived happily ever after. No more shouts. No more silences. No more separations.
    “Do we stop it?” Sebastian asked.
    Three boys turned to look at Robert. Possibly, Robert conceded, they might have looked to him because he was the only duke’s heir at Eton. Maybe it had to do with the clear, blue eyes he’d inherited from his father—eyes that he’d learned made other boys nervous, if he simply stared. But the most likely reason they looked to Robert—or so he told himself—was that they sensed he was innately a knight, and therefore superior in morals and worthy of following.
    “No,” he said. “We encourage it. The little lag thinks he’s superior to us. When he’s drummed out, he’ll know better.”
    Beside him, Sebastian frowned in puzzlement.
    Robert turned away sharply. “You don’t have any questions, Malheur, do you?”
    “No,” his cousin said after a long pause.