Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (14 page)

“Your hair looks smashing!” puts in Esther.

 
Rosalind takes a step back from me, touching her hair self-consciously. For the first time I fully notice that her long babyish braids are gone. Her hair is bobbed and stylishly cut, falling to her chin in shining waves. Her childish round spectacles have gone, too, replaced with more fashionable and flattering frames. The small changes have a remarkable effect on her appearance; it strikes me forcibly that, despite her small stature, she is the most grown up girl in the school. Even in a pleated skirt and tie and sensible thick stockings, she looks unnervingly grownup and sophisticated.

 
I’m not entirely sure I like it.

 
The other girls are crowding around now, asking Rosalind about the South of France and complimenting her on her new appearance. I fade gratefully to the background. Apart from that single, soul-melting moment, I don’t really want my reunion with Rosalind to happen in the middle of a crowd.

 
As we all get ready for bed, I sneak peeks at her. The new, sophisticated Rosalind makes me a little shy, as if she’s transformed into an elegant stranger overnight. I have to remind myself that she is still Rosalind, still uncomfortable with too much attention, still kind enough to give a polite greeting even to Diana who is studiously cutting her. She’s still my Rosalind, and I’ll have her to myself soon enough. And then…

And then. I find it hard to follow the thought.

It feels like everything conspires to keep me away from Rosalind that morning. She’s called in by Matron when we’re dressing and by the time she slips in late to breakfast Gladys and Esther have taken the seats either side of me. I catch a small, helpless movement of her hands before she takes her place between Frances and Miss Carroll. The combined presence of Cecily and our Headmistress, all that Sensitivity around me, in any case makes me unwilling to look too directly at Rosalind. I try to focus on what Gladys is saying about hockey fixtures instead, with indifferent success.

Even when we go in to morning prayers, I somehow fail to find a place beside Rosalind. Cecily is a solid wall between us, intentionally or not, I can’t tell.

Miss Carroll has decided, for some reason I cannot fathom, to tell us the story of the tumbling walls of Jericho this morning. Perhaps she means it to be inspiring, a story of faith overcoming all barriers. It’s a story I thoroughly detest, myself. All I can think of is the innocent women and children slaughtered, countered sinful and worthy of death merely by being born of the wrong tribe, and the poor woman who betrayed them, forced to live forever with what she has done. Maybe I really am constitutionally sinful and wrong. If I had a better and more beautiful nature, maybe I would see the story as beautiful and moving rather than horrific, and I’d be able to concentrate on Miss Carroll’s voice ringing out in the old war tale instead of my thoughts constantly sliding away from the cruelty of the story to Rosalind, sitting just a little way away.

When actual prayers start at last, I bow my head but keep my eyes open, seeking anxiously down the line.

Rosalind’s head is bent and her lashes lowered like the good girl she is. Hoping that Miss Carroll is confused by so many thoughts and emotions so close to her, I let myself give into the temptation to stare, hungrily. For all the stylish new look, she’s still my Rosalind, pointy face and thin cheeks and greyish hair, plain and oh so beautiful all the same. Her lips are moving in prayer. So endearing.

My gaze drops to her hands, clasped before her. Clasped too tightly, perhaps. With the sudden focus of intensity, I notice that her hands are more clenched than intertwined, her fingertips surely digging painfully into her hands. Her lips, too, are moving oddly: this is no pious following of Miss Carroll’s words. She is praying with a kind of fixed, desperate intensity.

For the first time, all this, the chapel and the prayers and the church services we attend every Sunday, looms in my mind as a threat, a terrible danger I blithely ignored. I had not thought Rosalind particularly devout; I’d assumed she believed what she was taught without any particular fervour, like the rest of us. Of course, I’d thought vaguely, she’s more good than the rest of us, so maybe she cares a little more than most—like Frances, perhaps, who takes her duty to God and King very earnestly. I’d never really connected the ritual of lecture and prayer after breakfast with that last night Rosalind was with me.
 

My stupidity slaps me in the face, stealing my breath away. The people of Jericho, condemned utterly, just for the way they were born. Born outside of God’s grace and honour. And Rosalind, my sweet, good, Rosalind, what does she think of herself now—of me? If I could hear her prayers, what would I hear?

Beside me, Cecily lifts her head a little and turns her gaze on me, catching my own. I realise dimly that, although she’s too plump to be known as much of a beauty, her eyes are rather heavenly, her deep brown irises rimmed with black and shadowed by dark brown eyelashes. Lovely eyes, kind eyes, very soft and sad. There are tears at the inner corners as she lays a hand on my arm.

I don’t want to know what it is that Cecily Senses that is making her eyes so very, dreadfully pitiful when she looks at me. I screw my own eyes shut, feeling the warmth of Cecily’s arm on my trembling arm, reassuring and terrible all at the same time.

When we finally break to go to lessons, I tear myself away from Cecily’s warning grasp and charge at Rosalind blindly, like a bull.

“Come to Briar Stables with me in break? We’ll just have time. I’m sure you’ve missed Ember and Sunshine.” For all my efforts to sound off-hand, I can hear the betraying shake in my voice. At least I’m not actually being sick.

The blue eyes raised to me and the anxious pressure of her lips against each other seem frightened and shy, as if it was the beginning of the last term and I am Cecily or Esther speaking to her. It hurts me. Then, I probably seem terrified myself. It’s all dreadful, and I can hardly wait for her to speak.

“All right,” she says, slowly and almost unwillingly. Then she lifts her head and actually smiles, as if taking courage. “I’d like to see them again.”

I smile back at her gratefully, my own courage rising in response. She won’t fail me, I tell myself. I won’t and can’t lose what she was brave enough to give me. In this moment, I don’t care if it’s wrong or not, or what Cecily thinks.

In morning break, instead of heading for cocoa and buns, we wrap up warmly and trudge across the grounds, without saying much to each other. The silence is hurting my head. I want to reach for her hand or offer her my arm. Self-consciousness holds me back. Silly, when I walk arm-in-arm with Cecily or Esther without thinking twice about it. It should be much easier, with this girl, when we’ve shared so much. I keep thinking about it, about reaching to close the gap between us, with my arms still swinging freely by my side.

 
We ease through the gap in the hedge. Rosalind stands stock-still on the other side, staring across the fields. There’s something in her stillness that makes it hard to say anything at all. I draw in a breath, icy cold enough to hurt my lungs, in order to try.

 
“Charley, I’m so terribly sorry.”

 
I halt as if I’ve been shot. Rosalind is still turned slightly away from me. Her shoulders are as stiff as her voice. “Rosalind?”

“I’ve been dreading this conversation all hols. Can we—not talk about it? I know I don’t have the right to ask. I’m so ashamed of myself that I simply can’t bear it. I must have been mad. I’ve been thinking and thinking out what to say when we’re alone together and I just can’t think of the words except that I am so, so sorry that it happened and it won’t happen again. I was upset about going home and feeling lonely and—I’m sorry. It was wrong.”
 

I can’t think of a single thing to say in response. All I’m conscious of is a kind of bleak emptiness. This, I think, must be what it is like to be stabbed and not realise it. “You want—you don’t want to be—my friend any more?”

She turns to me at last, with something like eagerness. There are tears in her eyes behind the new fashionable spectacles. “Yes—oh, yes. If you can bear to still be my friend. I don’t want to lose your friendship, I don’t know what I’d do without it. Can’t we just forget about—all that —and start over?”

 
“Of course, old girl.” My voice is hoarse in my own ears. I cough a little to clear my throat, so that I can at least say the words that will stop me losing her completely. Surely, surely she must hear or sense through the lightness of my tone that my heart is breaking. “We swore to eternal friendship, after all, whatever happens. We won’t speak of it again, if you don’t want to.”
 

 
“Thank you. Oh, Charley, thank you. You’re so good, always.” She moves her hands jerkily up in my direction and then drops them, as if about to hug me and thinking better of it. She turns instead and takes quick little steps across the muddy road to Briar Stables.

 
I follow her across to the stables in a dreamlike state, having to concentrate much too hard on where I’m putting my feet. Miss Roberts is busy in the yard, talking to a couple of fourth formers who are arranging rides. For no particular reason, I want to scream at them to leave. I can’t bear the thought of them looking at me in my shame and desolation and guessing what is in my heart. Or guessing that I had spent the last fortnight expecting a lovers’ reunion, like a fool.

Without warning, even to myself, I grab Rosalind’s arm and pull her, quite roughly, into one of the stalls, out of sight.
 

“Charley.” She’s pale and frightened and I can’t bear that she is looking me that way, as if I will hurt her at any second. I would rather die than hurt her. I just need to know for sure.

I do the only thing that my heart can find to do. I finally do what I have done so often in my imagination, push her against the wall of the stable, kiss her long and deeply, trying to put everything I feel for her into the kiss, all the love, all the loss, all the tenderness and anguish. She’s rigid and resisting for just a moment, and I’m afraid that in a moment I will have to let her go now and forever, because it’s not in me to force anything on her, it’s only that I have to try to reach her, just this once.
 

Then her lips relax and part under mine, her hands wind up around my neck, her fingers tangling in the curls at my nape, and she melts back against me, returning my kiss, clinging and clinging and perhaps my heart isn’t broken and dying at all, because it is racing against hers with renewed life.

When our lips part I press my cheek against hers, crushing her possessively tight. I can feel the cold metal of her spectacles pressing uncomfortably against my face and don’t care.
 

“Please listen to me, Rosalind, darling girl. If it’s truly what you want, I won’t ever kiss you like that again, I promise. I can be your friend and sister if that’s all you want, if you really don’t want the rest or if you. . . if you think it’s wrong. You know I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you.” She makes a small noise in her throat. I can’t tell if it’s protest or agreement. I rush on. “But first, we need to be perfectly straight with each other about what we’re thinking and feeling.”

“What—what do you think and feel, Charley?” I can barely hear her voice in my ear. I cling to the fact that she’s not attempting to free herself, her arms are still about me.

“I’m scared and hurting,” I admit. “Oh, Rosalind, please tell me. Do you—do you truly in your heart not love me and want me the way you seemed to that night? Don’t you care for me the same way I care for you? Because you seemed to. You did. You really acted like you did.” Tears are spilling out of my eyes.

Her fingers are still caught in my hair. They tighten, almost painfully.

“You never said you cared for me that way, Charley.”

“What?” I pull away to stare at her, incredulously. “Didn’t I?”

“You said you liked me. And that I could kiss you. And you never wrote.” Her voice rises plaintively. “Not once. I thought you wanted to pretend it had never happened.”