Pegasi and Prefects (10 page)

Under it all, too, I have the uncomfortable knowledge that it’s not Rosalind I’m supposed to be befriending, it’s Diana. I can’t help thinking that any concerted effort to win Rosalind’s friendship is hardly going to improve matters with that young lady.

When I get back to the dorm that night I hesitate a little, then check out my reflection in the mirror, searching for the boyish charms Esther claims to see in me. I don’t see anything special. A face that is clearly a girl despite the cropped hair and a rather square chin, but not a particularly handsome girl at that, not like Esther or even Gladys. I’ve never cared, particularly, about my looks, but for the first time in my life I feel a little stab of disappointment that I’m not better looking.

The next time Diana brings Rosalind into our study, I don’t flee to Cecily or Esther. I sit writing a composition on Pyromancy, something Gladys has been very helpful with, waiting for the right moment to insert myself into the conversation. Every now and then I try to perceive Diana’s Glamours, but there’s no sign of them to me, no giveaway signs of magic. Just a pretty girl who is rather ordinary looking apart from her film star figure.

When Diana mentions going down the the village on Saturday, I force myself to ask if I can tag along. I can hear my own voice in my ears, sounding false and elaborately casual, and squirm internally with shame. It’s really not like me to force my way in where I’m not wanted.

Diana doesn’t bother to hide her dismay at the idea of me joining her cosy little group. “Aren’t you down to take Detention on Saturday?”

“Gladys is taking it,” I say, as if I’ve actually spoken to her about it. I have no doubt she’ll lend a hand. She loves nothing better than to order the youngsters around, especially if they’re already in disgrace and deserve it at least a little. A born prefect if there ever was one. “I wanted to get some special things for Ember.” I watch Rosalind through the corner of my eye as I speak. Now that I’m paying attention, I notice that she lights up a little as I mention the pegasus. “You can’t go in a group of less than three, so we might as well go together.”

“Valerie is coming,” Diana says stubbornly.

“Valerie, you know very well, has extra French.” Valerie generally has extra
something
; nearly every piece of work she hands up gets returned. You can see Cecily watching her and calculating how it will affect our chance of the Shield every time Val puts some work on a mistress’ table. “Don’t say you’re telling a prefect that you were intending to go shopping as a twosome.”

Diana glares at me. “We’ll ask Frances—”

“Why shouldn’t Charley come with us, if she wants to go to the village anyway?” Rosalind asks.

I grin at her, while Diana thrusts out her lower lip in irritation. She’s not used, it seems, to Rosalind expressing an opinion of her own. “That’s settled, then.” I pick up my pen again.

I’m conscious, as I try the churn out in my composition book the things Gladys has told me about magical fire, that Diana is truly furious. She barely says a word to Rosalind afterward, until the poor girl takes the hint and slips back toward her own study. I could almost be a Sensitive, the way I can feel Diana’s temper from across the room, the impatient sighs and huffs as she does her own prep. for once.

She seems altogether too angry for her temper to stem merely from being saddled with someone she doesn’t like for a walk to the village shops. It makes me curious. Very curious indeed.

As it turns out, I get a chance to make my first overtures toward Rosalind before Saturday.

I’m arm-in-arm with Cecily, making my way back from a particularly acrimonious Prefects meeting. Cecily’s sweet temper is unusually sour; the always troublesome Fifth have been caught out of bed after lights-out acting up in a way that requires punishments severe enough that it’s too much to hope that the mistresses won’t notice. Worse, the the School House seem to have provided the ringleaders among the wrongdoers. Cecily, her precious School Banner in the balance, is taking quite a lot of soothing.

“I don’t even know where they dug up a roulette wheel,” she mutters as we make our way down the stairs. “Oh, Charley, stop laughing, it isn’t funny!”

I snort, causing her lips to twitch just a little. “Oh, all right. Just a bit funny. But you have to admit that horror of a Kitty Eversleigh isn’t amusing at all, the way she can look right at you with those big innocent green eyes and lie straight to your face. She shouldn’t have made it to the senior school without having some sense of honour knocked into her. She doesn’t even seem to imagine telling stories is wrong. And she was using some kind of Charm on me, I’m sure of it. Every time I lost concentration I stopped thinking of what she’d done and started thinking about what a sweet, ill-used girl she was instead. Appalling little beast.”

“I don’t think she means any real harm.”

“You’re just too open and lacking in suspicion, my sweet Charles. You’d think a yara-ma-yha-who didn’t mean any real harm if it was stalking your baby sister.”

“I’d love to see a yara-ma-yha-who,” I agree. “Do you think you could arrange it, if I came to visit your people? I could bring Babs as bait, if you truly think it would help.”

Cecily starts to laugh at last, squeezing my arm. Perhaps it’s because I’m grinning at her, pleased that I’ve managed to lift her uncharacteristically black mood, that I half tumble over someone hovering by the bottom stair. Cecily manages to disengage herself from the collision just in time, so it it only me who ends up tangled up with another girl, looking into a pair of wide blue eyes behind thick glasses.

Cecily, without even trying to help me up, says brightly, “Hello, Rosalind. Don’t sit on the stairs, girls, you’re underfoot. I must run, I promised to go over Esther’s lines with her. So long!”

I glare after her retreating form, then concentrate on getting myself to my feet and helping Rosalind to hers. “Sorry about that. I always seem to be trampling all over you.” I give her a half-hearted grin and hunt for something to say. All very well to tell me to befriend the girl, or to decide myself that I don’t mind doing so. Starting confidential girlish chatter has never really been my strong point, and it’s not as though Rosalind seems to be much use at it, either.

I remember Cecily’s instructions and seize on them with relief. “I’m just headed down to the stables to check on Ember before dinner, and Cecily seems to have run off on me. Want to keep me company?”

“Are you sure you want me?” she asks, a little timidly. The question makes me shift uncomfortably.

“Of course. Why do you think I asked?”

“You never showed any sign of wanting my company before,” she says, apparently without rancour.

It’s uncomfortably true, of course. Rosalind has been in my study nearly every evening since term began. I’ve always ignored her, slipping out to another study as soon as decent. Leaving a shy new girl to Diana’s tender mercies, and not even wondering if she was hurt by the way I cut her. Miss Carroll was right about my selfishness.

I decide to resort to at least partial truthfulness. “I’ve never heard you tell off Miss Evans before. Makes me think you’re a pal worth cultivating. Come on, old thing. Have you ever been down to Briar Stables?” For some reason, it seems very important not to let this girl brush me off, now that I’ve made the first friendly advances.

Rosalind shakes her head, plaits swinging, cheeks red. “I wanted to. My name is down to ride. But Valerie says it’s a dreadful place, and that the woman who runs it is awful.”

“She would. I wouldn’t put too much faith in what Val says, my girl. There are pixies around the stables, although I’ve never seen or heard of them doing any harm, and Valerie is the kind of girl who always thinks the unicorns are thinking about goring her. I don’t think
you’d
be frightened of a unicorn,” I say, smiling down at her, and she smiles back up, shaking her head. It’s a very sweet smile. “Come on, let’s get our things and go.” I tug her toward the cloakroom.

“Don’t tell me we’re leaving school grounds as a twosome, and you a Senior Pre.,” she says, her thin cheeks dimpling in an unexpectedly mischievous way. We wrap ourselves in coats, scarves and hats. “Not after what you said to Di.”

“There won’t be just the two of us. There will be Ember,” I say, and I distinctly hear her giggle as we step out into the autumn sunshine.

CHAPTER FIVE

SUNFLAME

Miss Roberts is shovelling manure in the ‘special’ pegasus-proof paddock when we arrive. I introduce her with careful offhandedness, mindful of Rosalind’s shyness.

I needn’t have worried. The moment the girl catches sight of the occupants of the ‘special’ pen, her timidity slides off her shoulders like snow in a thaw. She can barely contain herself long enough to be introduced before she heads straight for Ember.

Miss Roberts eyes them warily, as there have been a few unfortunate incidents with Ember being spooked by girls approaching him with more admiration than care. While dry straw and anything else unduly flammable is carefully kept away from him, there’s still a risk, not to mention the need to bandage burned hands. I’m not worried. When Ember presses his head affectionately against Rosalind’s shoulder, I can feel right down to my toes the loving warmth of his response to her overtures. I smile reassuringly at Miss Roberts.

She nods back. “I’m impressed. Why haven’t you brought this one down here before? You usually can’t wait to show Ember off.”

I shrug, a little embarrassed. “I think I haven’t been a very good friend to her. I’m beginning to think that was a mistake.” I try to pitch my voice low enough that Rosalind doesn’t hear. I’m not sure I succeed. She shoots me a kind of sideways glance as she moves down to touch one of the unicorns.

Miss Roberts gives me a vague pat on my shoulder, and addresses Rosalind in her rather loud voice. “Have you brought riding gear with you?”

Rosalind, now deeply involved in communion with a unicorn with a glossy golden coat, startles a little. “No—I mean, yes. Not here, back at the school.”

“I always have some spare stuff on hard for lower formers, so I should have something to fit you,” Miss Roberts says, fairly tactlessly. “Charley, you can make do with my gear, can’t you? Sunshine needs a good run, and Ember hasn’t been out nearly enough.”

I raise my eyebrows at her. The ordinary horses are available for hire to the girls whose parents have put their names down, but the fabled beasts like Sunshine are strictly off limits to schoolgirls, Ember obviously aside. Too fast, too wilful, too dangerous.

Miss Roberts shrugs back. Of course, most schoolgirls can’t bond with a pegasus in two seconds flat. Rosalind is going to be fine.

Rosalind looks like she’s been handed the key to a blue castle in the sky for a moment. Then her face falls. “It’s nearly dark. We have to be back at supper in half an hour.”

“There’s a good hour of twilight left, and Sunshine has excellent night vision,” Miss Roberts says briskly. “I’ll give you some tea when you get back, and ring up Miss Carroll so she won’t fret. You’re in her house, too? Right, then. You might get a mild scolding, that’s all. All right, Charley?”

I hesitate for a moment, thinking of the Senior Prefect badge on my collar. It won’t go down well if we miss supper, even with Miss Roberts putting a word in for us. I know it’s not a good example to set for the babes.

On the other hand, I’ve been good all term, so very good. This is the first time I’ve slipped out without permission. I’ve coached the little ones, I’ve overseen prep and detention, I’ve backed Cecily up in everything. Surely I can be forgiven one small breakout. Especially since, I tell myself, I’m doing exactly what Cecily asked me to do.

“I’m game if Rosalind is.”

Rosalind is quiet for a moment, obviously weighing it up in her mind. Then her mouth curves in the sweet smile that completely changes her pointed face.

“I’m game.”

We change quickly into our riding gear, eager not to waste what remains of the light.

Rosalind looks much older with her hair coiled under a bowler for riding, instead of in two childish plaits. Still a slight figure, just not the middle former I had at first taken her to be. It surprises me so much that, as we prepare to mount, I ask her how old she is.

“I turn nineteen at half term.” She flushes at my astonishment, her translucent skin changing colour easily. “I know I’m small for my age.”

“You’re almost a year older than me!” I bite my lip, realising that I’m still showing too much incredulity. Somehow, it turns around all my ideas of her, knowing she’s probably the oldest girl in the school. “What made you come to Fernleigh so late?”

“I haven’t been at school at all for two years,” she says, concentrating on fastening buckles. “I was badly ill, with pneumonia, and I just didn’t seem to get better.” For some reason, her colour deepens still more. Perhaps it’s because she hates talking about herself; this is the most I’ve heard her say about herself in all those evenings in the study. “When I got better, Mother was determined I have at least one more year of education before going to finishing school. My doctor said the outlook was healthier here than my old school. He has a daughter in the Fourth, you see. So… here I am. I can’t do games, but I can ride, and I’ve been very much better.”

“You seem well,” I say. I’ve never noticed her cough or wheeze. I’m a little foggy on how pneumonia affects someone, especially for so long, without leaving them with at least some kind of hacking cough. She is pale enough, when she’s not blushing. Perhaps it was depression, or nerves. I’ve heard that can come after a bad dose of the ‘flu, and probably pneumonia is much the same. None of my family, who all enjoy the rudest of health, are prone to that kind of complaint, but Rosalind seems a much more sensitive type.