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Because you are the villain.
Chasity clenched her jaw to keep from saying as much.
Mrs. Crenshaw shuffled around in the desk drawer. “Ah, here we are.”
She withdrew the folder and placed it on her desk. Shoving it across the top, she slid Chasity a triumphant look.
In a heartbeat, Chasity understood.
The witch had removed and likely destroyed the contract. This was the file Chasity had seen on the headmistress’s desk. The one Mrs. Crenshaw had slid beneath the ledgers.
“You’ll find Mr. Terramier’s letter of resignation, which I received yesterday afternoon, in the file as well.” Mrs. Crenshaw fairly crowed in triumph.
“His…resignation?” Chasity choked down the rest of the words ready to spill off her tongue.
Aston had already resigned?
What was it he’d said yesterday at tea?
She searched her memory.
I’ve decided to resign next month from my position at Balderbrook’s Institution for Genteel Ladies.
He hadn’t said he’d already given notice, but Aston also didn’t say he hadn’t. She’d assumed he hadn’t yet.
“Yes, his letter of resignation,” Mrs. Crenshaw reaffirmed with an insincere smile.
“I have it here,” Mr. Potterburger said to no one in particular, waving the foolscap for all to see. “Terramier. Terramier. Why do I know that name?”
“Because, Mr. Potterburger, Mr. Terramier is Viscount Woolbury’s rapscallion grandson,” Lady Balderbrook provided with the air of one who is superior in all things. “The boy flaunts his grandfather’s wishes and his birthright and carries on like common riffraff.”
Mrs. Crenshaw laid her palms flat on her desk and rose, leaning forward.
“And if I didn’t already have grounds for dismissing you, Miss Noble, your inappropriate relationship with Mr. Terramier was confirmed at the Trentholms’ tea yesterday.”
Looking entirely too self-satisfied, she fussed with the lace at the collar of her gown.
“My what?”
Confirmed? By who?
“Lady Finch-Hatten observed you disappearing into a remote part of the garden with Mr. Terramier. She is Esmerelda Finch-Hatten’s mother and saw fit to pen me a note yesterday afternoon informing me of your scandalous conduct. She thought it unfitting behavior for an assistant headmistress to dally with a gentleman.”
Chasity well knew who Lady Finch-Hatten was, and now she understood the visual daggers the woman had speared her all afternoon yesterday.
“Isn’t my Esmerelda the most graceful of dancers?
“My Esmerelda plays the violin like an angel.
“Esmerelda cannot share a chamber. She is such a light sleeper. She must? Well, then naturally, she must have her choice of beds. What do you mean she cannot breakfast in her chamber? Esmerelda’s toast mustn’t have any crust on it.”
And on and on and on.
Her elder daughter, Miss Saphira Finch-Hatten, had attended a prestigious finishing school in Paris, and thus, Balderbrook’s Institution for Genteel Ladies had been spared the busybody’s interference before now.
Lady Finch-Hatten routinely remarked on the inferiority of Balderbrook’s compared to L'Académie Pour la Bienséance et le Decorum. What a shame she hadn’t enrolled her younger daughter in the French seminary as well.
The woman was no pebble in one’s shoe. She was a monstrous, annoying boulder.
