She waited for Mr. Cross to condemn her. To meet her confession with a cool remark, or a look of masculine condescension.

He did neither.

“I don’t think it’s shocking,” he said. “It’s…it’s good to learn things.”

Some of the tension left her shoulders. His words were an unexpected balm to her frayed nerves. “That’s certainly how I’ve always viewed it. When he was at home, Simon often shared his lessons with me. Until—” She stopped herself, realizing too late what she’d almost said

Mr. Cross looked at her. “Until what?”

A familiar chill threatened at the edges of her wellbeing. It was a bad memory, nothing more. Sometimes she could almost convince herself that it hadn’t happened at all. Or else that it had happened to another person.

“My brother used to be tutored at home by our local squire’s son. He was a Cambridge man himself and was helping to prepare Simon for university. But then…four years ago, Mama decided it was best if Simon went away to school. She sent him to a proper boy’s school in the north. A year later, he left for Cambridge.”

It was the truth, though not the whole of it. She’d omitted her own part in the matter. The conduct that had lost Simon his tutor, and Clara her place as teacher at the village school. It was her own cross to bear. Her secret shame. And besides, it was long ago. Years and years now. It had no relevance to her conversation with Mr. Cross.

“And you continued your studies by post?”

She nodded. “I’ve been accustomed to receiving Simon’s packets of notes twice a month. But lately, some have begun to seem similar. And on Monday, when I arrived, I received an actual word-for-word copy of an earlier lesson. I can’t even be sure it was my brother who wrote it.”

“If he didn’t, then…?”

“I haven’t any notion. It’s all exceedingly strange. I begin to think I’m mistaken or have imagined it all in some fit of fancy.”

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I pray my mother will advise me when she replies to my wire.”

If she replied.

And there was the rub of it. Mama had always put her own work ahead of the demands of her family. Clara admired her for it. Had even sought to emulate her. But in times of crisis, it was rather hard.