While I have long enjoyed the Mandie series, I feel that this book is too full of historical inaccuracies to enjoy fully. As a young Victorian lady of means, Mandie by this time would have had it drummed into her that she is not to do anything that might damage her reputation. The European voyage with Jonathon was bad enough, but having Mandie deliberately go to a place where she could very well have something horrible happen to her is so out of character for the time. There's no way that a real Heathwood's would have allowed her or Celia or April for that matter to continue their education there with the questionable mark on their reputation, regardless if one of their grandmothers did own the school. I know that the books are written for children, but still, there has to be some recognition of the mores of the age that Mandie grew up in. ( )