Lady Mina Tretheway knows she’s destined for greater things than her fancy boarding school, where she’s being taught to be a proper English lady. It’s 1918, and war is raging across Europe. Unlike her father and brother, who are able to assist in the war effort, Mina is stuck sorting out which fork should be used with which dinner course.
When Mina receives a telegram that’s written in code, she finally has her chance to do something big. She returns to her childhood home of Hallington Manor, joined by a family friend, Lord Andrew Graham, and a dashing and mysterious young American, Lucas. The three of them must band together to work on a dangerous project that could turn the tide of the war.
Thrilled that she gets to contribute to the war effort at least, Mina jumps headfirst into the world of cryptic messages, spycraft, and international intrigue. She, Lucas, and Andrew have to work quickly, because if they don’t succeed, more soldiers will disappear into the darkness of war.
Release date:
January 22, 2019
Publisher:
Feiwel & Friends
Print pages:
288
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I SHOULD HAVE heard the creaking of the floorboards outside the old silver pantry, but I was too busy pretending to be a Romanian prince disguised as the school’s gardener. My friends, some of the other girls in the fifth form, were choking with laughter at my accent, so they didn’t hear the approach either.
I struck a dramatic pose and said my last line to the prince’s true love, whose part I had also played. “We will go to my castle and grow turnips together happily ever after.”
Bowing, I waited for the laughs. None came. Instead, looks of horror spread across my friends’ faces. I turned to see the heavy door opening with a groan.
Miss Climpson, the overlord of Winterbourne Academy, stood in the doorway. I braced myself for the wrath about to fall upon us, sentencing us to the perpetual writing of lines for our offense, but instead she just said, “Thomasina, I need to see you in my office. The rest of you girls, go to bed.”
Dorothy, her eyes wide, gave me a look that meant either Run for your life! or I’ll cry at your funeral. Pretending not to notice, I raised my chin and walked out of the pantry, not wanting the others to think I was a spineless ninny.
But as I followed Miss Climpson down the long central hall of the academy, I became a spineless ninny. My feet dragged more and more as we approached her office. Her door, the portal of despair, was open. Miss Climpson’s dark lair with the grim portraits struck terror in the hearts of all the students at the school and I was no exception, though at sixteen I shouldn’t have been scared of one tiny old woman who barely came up to my shoulder.
I knew she was going to lecture me about being a poor role model. She’d done it many times before, and it always started the same way: Now, Thomasina, the girls follow your lead; therefore, you should be a good leader. You should want to make your parents proud of you, even if your marks are not as good as they should be. Many more “shoulds” would follow, and I would be sufficiently contrite, until the next time.
“Come in and sit down,” she said. Her voice was warm and gentle, a tone we usually heard only when Miss Climpson spoke to parents. At those times, her grandmotherly charm was as sudden and shocking to us girls as a gramophone turned on in a quiet room.
I felt chilled as soon as I walked in. Miss Climpson never had a fire lit, even on the most frigid of days. Girls said it was so cold that dust motes froze in midair. With the shortage of housemaids since the Great War had begun, I could imagine dust accumulating until it would eventually look as if a snowfall had struck the office.
War with Germany was giving the former housemaids a choice to have far more exciting lives as nurses and ambulance drivers. If I were a housemaid with a choice between being stuck at Winterbourne cleaning under Miss Climpson’s thumb or dodging shells while speeding around in an ambulance, I would have chosen ambulance driving too. The danger would have been worth it in return for doing something to help the war effort.
The headmistress had a strange expression on her face, one I couldn’t place. It took me a moment to realize the woman was at a loss for words. When Miss Climpson motioned for me to come farther into the room, I saw it. A telegram envelope lay in the center of the desk, the pale yellow of the paper stark against the almost black wood.
I felt sick. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be a telegram. My brother, Crispin, had been missing for months now, and I’d mostly stopped expecting he’d be found, except when I’d pass too close to the old looking glass in the dark corner of the hall. Then time would stop in the wavy light, my heart would skip, and I could almost see Crispin making faces back at me. He loved practicing his silly voices in looking glasses before reading aloud to us. In one of his letters at the beginning of the war, he’d written that he read to his men from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to keep their spirits up. I supposed that Crispin playing the Mad Hatter in a dugout made as much sense as anything else in the war.
I made myself move to the desk and reach for the telegram, but then drew back my hand. What if it wasn’t Crispin? What if it was my father? It wasn’t as if each family could make one sacrifice and then be safe from having to make any more. If something had happened to my father, would such news come by telegram, or would someone in the Foreign Office come in person? Winterbourne didn’t have a telephone.
I felt a buzzing in my head and then the desk in front of me shrank as if it were moving far away, growing smaller and smaller. I wondered why the room had grown so hot and begun swaying back and forth like a cabin on a ship.
“Thomasina!” The headmistress took my arm, leading me over to a chair and practically pushing me down into it. “Put your head in your lap so you don’t faint.” I did as I was told, feeling Miss Climpson’s hand on my hair. It reminded me of my mother comforting me when I was a child, and that gave me the strength to sit up as soon as the buzzing stopped. The desk was back to its normal size, the telegram still there.
“Take all the time you need, dear. It may not be as bad as you fear.”
I wanted to believe her, but it still took all my willpower to pick it up and open it.
2 April 1918
Thomasina,
Your old father has a request. A friend has written that your cousin is ill. She needs you to come home to Hallington right away. Have your things sent as well. Get help from Mrs. Brommers if you need it. She will be glad to give it. To communicate with me, wire the Foreign Office if the situation worsens. Best you don’t tell your cousin you are coming. We’re at Thornhill but don’t know for how long. Once home, let us know of your safe arrival. Give my best to Julius. Remember, two are often better than one.
Father
I tried to clear my mind of the fear the sight of the telegram had given me so I could concentrate, but I was confused. This telegram was far longer than most, and it read like a joke. First of all, even though I had a cousin, Eugenia, she didn’t live with us. She lived in Scotland. It was also impossible to imagine Eugenia ill. The woman walked miles a day on her “nature rambles,” her storklike figure a common sight for everyone for miles around her home. She never took to her bed for any reason.
Second, I didn’t know a Mrs. Brommers, nor had I ever heard of a place called Thornhill. And who was the “we”? My mother was in America helping my uncle, whose wife was ill. My sister, Margaret, was in London.
Third, my father would never refer to himself as an “old father.” People often commented on how Reese Tretheway still looked much as he had in the days he was a valued secret agent for the British government, tracking spies across Europe.
And last, the only Julius I had ever heard of was Julius Caesar, because my father had read all his writings and subjected us to many of the man’s sayings. There were so many of them, I thought the man must have spent half his time sitting about thinking up pithy quotes to outlast him.
“Is it bad news, dear?” Miss Climpson asked gently.
I handed the telegram to her.
“I’m sorry your cousin is ill,” the headmistress said after she read it. “This is most irregular, but I suppose we should follow Lord Tretheway’s instructions. I’ll make arrangements to get you home as soon as possible.”
I was barely listening, still thinking about the strangeness of the telegram. A memory of my father’s voice tugged at me. He was sitting beside my bed, trying to get me to look at him. I was facing the wall, angry that he was insisting I stay in my room to recover from scarlet fever. It’s like a game, he coaxed. All spies must know ciphers and codes. Don’t you want to learn some? You’re a clever girl. Perhaps someday you can be a code breaker in the Foreign Office—the first girl ever to have such an important job.
A thrill of excitement ran through me. The telegram was strange because it was a cipher, and I knew just how to decipher it. I needed to get to my room to read it in private.
“Yes, I have to go home,” I said to Miss Climpson. “Right away.”
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