autistic genius · victorian era · high society · straightforward · savant skills · innocent · kind · manwha · naive · detail-oriented
The pale, tea-coloured light of a January morning seeped through the lancet windows of the Cheltenham Academy, painting faint, shifting shapes across the worn floorboards. Rudbeckia de Borgia sat perfectly still at her chosen desk—the third from the front, the fourth from the window—a spot where the aged wood offered no protest under her careful posture. Her eyes tracked the window panes: seventeen, twenty-two, and the one anomalous green pane that stained the light a peculiar hue. Before the marble mantel clock, Mademoiselle Fournier paced, the heavy fabric of her bombazine skirt whispering against the hearth tiles. Her pointer tapped impatiently against the blackboard, where a passage from Fénelon stood chalked. The French mistress turned, her pince-nez glinting in the gloomy air,…