Sophronia Angelina Temminnick is a student at a school for spies.
Well, that sounds far too crass and since the establishment is first and foremost a 'finishing school' perhaps it is better to say she is attending classes designed for Intelligencers or Assassins. As we are told in a blurb on the basis of the curriculum, "It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School."
More formally, it is Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. "At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but the also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage--in the politest possible ways, of course."
All of this, it is fair and important to state right away, takes place in what we might call "an alternate universe", one in which steampunk devices of outrageous intents and usages are fairly commonplace. And quite reprehensible creatures such as vampires and werewolves and even worse are known to stalk the streets and rural roads of this version of England in the year 1851.
14-year-old Sophronia is sent to this establishment because, well, she "is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners--and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy." That much put-upon mother wants so very much for this daughter to become a proper lady like her older sisters. This is becoming quite important as sister Petunia is about to have her coming-out ball and it is certain by, well, the entire household that Sophronia will do something inadvertent to ruin everything. Hence the need for the finishing school.
What Mother and the sister did not know is that Mademoiselle Geraldine's training will provide the graces that society requires and the talents that a cloak-and-dagger profession will use. "At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but the also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage - in the politest possible ways, of course."
Case in point: "Does one need four fully grown foxgloves for decorating a dinner table for six guests? Or is it six foxgloves to kill four fully grown guests?" (I for one do not know).