Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (7 page)

It doesn’t matter. After all, I’m making her hair pretty for Harry’s sake, not mine.
 

It worries me a little that, although my Harry and my other older brothers obviously like her, she seems to take them in a friendly, natural way, much as Cecily does, although more shyly. The one boy she seems to have attached to most is Bobby, who follows her around adoringly and clutches her hand in his sticky little one, climbing onto her lap whenever she sits down. She kisses his curls and tickles him and is altogether adorable with him, so I suppose it’s not entirely wasted on my brother. She’s very affectionate with the little girls, too. I can see Harry watching with approval the pretty picture they make, and it makes my heart beat faster.

I know I can’t expect them to fall entirely in love in one visit, not when Rosalind is still at at school, even though my own mother was married and expecting by the time she was Rosalind’s age. Still, I wish they were showing more obvious signs of noticing one another. It’s vital that Rosalind makes a deep impression. I’m so deathly afraid Harry will meet someone else while we’re at school, and it will be all up.
 

I suppose the problem is that they don’t spend any time alone, but I don’t know how to help that. It’s natural for a shy girl like Rosalind to cling to her friend in a house full of strangers, after all.

One afternoon, near the end of Rosalind’s visit, I am sitting halfway up a ladder to the hayloft in one of the stables and peering down at a new gryphon cub when a rung unexpectedly gives out under me and I tumble headfirst to the floor. In my surprise, I forget to twist in a sensible way, or fling out an arm to break the fall. My head strikes the ground, hard, and everything is oddly bright darkness or a moment.

Rosalind is kneeling by my side when I’m aware of anything. “Charley! Charley darling, are you badly hurt?” She sounds close to tears.

My tongue feels thick in my mouth and my eyes won’t focus. “Dizzy,” I manage. “Sick.” The pain is incredible, making my vision black. I turn my head and vomit in great heaving retches that manage to expel nothing but a little bitter fluid.

“Hold still, dear.” Rosalind’s hands gently cup my head, and I feel warmth spread, cancelling out the pain. My vision clears and the sickness recedes. Rosalind’s face is very close to mine, shining almost white in the dim light, the shadows under her eyes deep and dark. She looks like she has been ill for months, and her cheeks had been pink just minutes ago. I catch at her in alarm.

“Rosalind, you shouldn’t! I don’t want you draining your energy for me. I’m all right.”

“I can’t bear you to be hurt. Charley, you hit your head hard, that’s serious.” She puts her arm around me and helps me to a sitting position, supporting my weight with her thin arm. I feel weak but more myself, humiliated by the vomit on the floor. I try to wipe my mouth surreptitiously with the back of my hand. “You can see properly? Let me check your pupils.” She inspects me carefully, and then smiles. “Perfect.” She hesitates, then flings her other arm around me and clings close, shaking with sobs.
 

My arms go around her without thinking. “Don’t make such a fuss, silly old thing,” I whisper into her neck. “I’m more worried about you.”

“I’ll recover. You scared me. . .”

We stay there for a moment, her slight, soft form pressed to mine. I can feel her slim curves against my more substantial ones, and despite the mess I’ve made and how weak I still feel, something inside me melts and pools in warmth.

She pulls away a little, to scrutinise my pupils again, I suppose, and I realise how close our faces are to each other. I realise, too, that to anyone who entered unexpectedly and was fooled by my short hair and slacks, we wouldn’t look like school friends pressed together like this, but lovers.

The thought is too much for me. I’m too confused by the fall and too bewildered by love to think properly about any consequences. Rosalind’s tilting her head curiously, as if she’s trying to read my expression, and it’s no good, I know I’m going to kiss her. I hope she won’t hate me for it, I hope I can explain it away, but I need to kiss that gentle loving mouth in the pale face more than I’ve ever needed anything else, and I can’t help it. I raise a hand to her face and cup her pointed little chin.

There’s a step outside and I break the embrace. Too hurriedly, perhaps, because I push her away a little roughly. I’m filled with compunction when she loses her balance a little and has to put a hand behind her to keep her balance.
 

“Come on, dear. No good waiting here like a couple of sentimental schoolgirls. You look all done in, and I know I feel it. Let’s go inside and rest.” I try to smile naturally at her. She’s silent a long while, then she nods, and we help each other to our feet. Rosalind holds tight to my arm as we go inside and I can’t bear to disengage it.

That night, lying alone in my bed, no breathing of other girls around me to remind me that I’m never alone, I think of that moment, and how close I came to disaster, and I ache. For the first time ever, in the privacy of my bedroom, I let one of my hands go to the source of the ache, slipping inside my pyjamas.

The intensity of it shakes me. I never could have believed that so light a touch could feel like—could feel like that. My fingers explore gently at first, as I shudder, then find both the right place, almost unbearable to touch, and a natural rhythm, and I muffle the small sounds I make in my pillow. And all the time, I think of Rosalind, asleep in the next room. Soft and warm and sweet—my Rosalind, who calls me darling when she is afraid I’m hurt. . . 

Later, exhausted, shaken, and still feeling a desperately unfilled longing, I realise that I’ve reached a certain knowledge. I knew, in rough terms, what a man might do with a woman, although it always seemed to me awkward and joyless. I had no idea what two women who were sweethearts might do, if it was even possible. But if my own finger, just rubbing gently, could do that—

I don’t want the knowledge. I’ve spent too many nights lying awake and aching for Rosalind already, without knowing what I wanted. The last thing I want is to have my longings start to take on physical form, to be knowing in this way. I know I’m twisted already—the last thing I want is my imagination given more distinct shape. It’s as if I’ve harmed Rosalind somehow, besmirched her without even trying, by thinking of her like this.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing has really changed. So long as I keep my hands and my lips to myself, what does it matter what I secretly feel, or even secretly do?

I’m utterly miserable.

In the morning I wake to a timid knocking on my door. I call out, expecting my mother or one of the kids. Instead, Rosalind hovers by the door, looking down at me with one of her deep, unreadable expressions.
 

“Hullo.” I pat the bed, and she comes to sit on it, just as if we were back in Blue Dormitory. Meggs materialises beside her, obviously taking my gesture to be an invitation to him as well. He’s far too big to sleep on my bed these days, but I don’t have the heart to scold him.

“Good morning.” Rosalind plucks at a loose thread on her dressing gown. “I’m sorry to wake you. It’s just that—I was worried about yesterday.”

I’m fully awake now, my nerves thrumming. I had been so close, so ridiculously obviously close, to kissing her. She had to have noticed.

I push myself into a partly sitting position, framing apologies in my mind. Rosalind is winding the thread around her finger and watching it pull her skin tight.

“Charley—do I cling too much?”

It’s so unlike what I expected her to say that I don’t answer. Perhaps, I wonder, she thinks she caused me to forget myself, that my sins are her fault.
 

While I’m wordless, she rushes on. “I’m always hanging on to you. I don’t want to annoy you.

“No—no, old thing. You don’t ever annoy me. I—I like it when you cling.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I say firmly.

“I suppose it was a silly thing to ask.” She slides off the bed, sitting on the floor with her back to me, her head leaning against the mattress so that all I can see is the soft platinum of her hair. It’s become tangled at the back in her sleep and she hasn’t combed out the snarls. “It’s just that—I told you I had one friend at my last school. A very good friend. I loved her terribly much,” she says, simply.
 

Something cold closes over my heart at the words. I don’t want to sit here listening to how much more she loved her last friend than she loves me. Somehow, I make an encouraging sound.
 

“She made a pet of me. I’m not so bad at magic, you know. I suppose I showed off a little. She always seemed so admiring. I talked of home, a lot. I didn’t know better. It was just what I was used to. And I used to love walking arm and arm with her, or holding her hand.”

“What happened to spoil the beautiful friendship?” I ask. My voice is thick with jealousy, but she doesn’t seem to hear.
 

“Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves.” Her voice is as bitter as I’ve ever heard it. “And apparently it’s worth putting up with a friend constantly clinging and touching and never letting you get a free breath, and making you sick to your stomach, if her blood is elven enough and her parents are a Baron and the daughter of an Earl.”

“She was a beast.” I feel guilty for my relief at the lack of lingering love in her voice as she talks about this other friend. “You know none of that is why I want you as a friend.”

“That’s not all. She said—she other things, Charley.” Her voice is halting. “Indelicate things. Like the kind of things Diana thinks about you, and Esther. That’s how I knew Diana was mistaken about you, because Mavis said those things about me, and I didn’t—I hadn’t done anything bad. And neither had you and Esther. You’re like sisters, I know that.”

I lie there in silent misery as she stumbles on with her pitiful little story. “I—I couldn’t bear it, Charley. I couldn’t let her know I’d heard, but I was so ashamed. So ashamed. I felt like I had done something wrong, something truly shocking, and everything was ruined. I knew she must have said the same to everyone, she wasn’t even particularly friends with the girl she was talking to. I didn’t know what else to do. When I caught a chill, and I was in the San. and I didn’t have to face anyone, it felt like an answer to prayer. I was actually glad when it turned to pneumonia and they took me home. I didn’t even try to get well. I didn’t want to go back to school. I played up my cough and complained constantly of headaches and weariness. And in the end, when I got better and couldn’t pretend to still be desperately ill, I just—I just refused to go back. I didn’t tell anyone what was wrong. I just cried every time they suggested I go back and said it would make me sick again. I worried the life out of Mother. I should have faced them them down—I’m a coward, Charley.”

I hurt for her so much, the poor sensitive girl who forgives others so readily yet is no good at making friends, who is as innocent as the day and painted black, so scared of being seen as bad. Selfishly, I hurt for myself as well. After this, I have to be more careful than ever. She’s good enough to believe me as innocent as she is, and I can’t ruin that. It’s clear enough how she would feel, even my Rosalind who sees the best in everyone.

“You’re the bravest girl I ever met,” I tell her. “Look at what you did yesterday—swooping straight up that cliff face on Marigold.”

Rosalind twists her hands. “Flying is easy. It’s people who put me in a funk. Anyway, after a while, I became ashamed of the way I was behaving, rather than ashamed of what was said about me. So I told Mother that I would go back. Not to my old school, I wanted to make a fresh start. I promised myself I wouldn’t run away again.” She shifts, her head rustling against the sheets. “But I was afraid of the other girls—really afraid. I hadn’t realised that I would still be terrified, with girls who had known nothing bad of me. Only not of Diana and Valerie, because they were so kind to me—and not of you. It wasn’t just Diana making me frightened, you know. I’m a coward,” she says again.

“No. No, old girl, you’re not a coward. It’s Diana, you must know that. You’d been hurt, and you were shy and scared, and Diana used magic and gossip to work on you and make you terrified.” I reach down and stroke her hair, like she was a frightened foal.

“I suppose it didn’t help. I still would have been afraid, though. Every time I look at another girl, I imagine them thinking I am bad and wicked and I can hardly bear it.” She reaches up and catches my hand, holding it. “Charley, I liked you always, so much. You were so candid and kind. I felt like you were the kind of girl who would never turn on someone scared and alone, just protect her. I used to wish and wish you would be my friend, but I thought you’d find me too dull and timid. Now I’m scared that I will cling too much and drive you away, like I did Mavis.”

“Just you try it.” I squeeze her hand hard. “Now I’ve got you as my friend, I’m not so easily shaken off.”

“So—you’re not upset, that I hugged you yesterday?”

I hesitate for a moment. It would be better for us both, I’m sure of it, if Rosalind was more wary of being so demonstrative toward me. I know it’s not safe, feeling as I do. I tell myself that the only reason I think telling her to back away on the expressions of affection is a bad idea is that she’s been hurt too much already and I don’t want to be like the mysterious Mavis, whose unknown ears I itch to box until she squeals, duplicitous little snob.