Pegasi and Prefects (21 page)

“Rosalind, Esther didn’t mean to cause a break between us. She sent me after you. She’d be so terribly sorry if she thought she’d hurt you. And,besides—”

I swallow, my mouth dry, forcing myself to continue. “Besides, Rosalind, there’s no one in the whole world that I’m more fond of than you. Not Esther, not Cecily, not anyone. Don’t you know how much I care about you?”

My hands are sweaty where they are clinging to hers. Half of me wants, desperately, for her to understand, that she might as well be casting Glamours like Diana because as far as I’m concerned her pointed face is no longer plain at all but as lovely as Ember flaring off at dawn, that I love the way her hair glows dully against her creamy skin and the way her face lights up when she rides, her timid vulnerability and her unexpected fearlessness, the way she quietly makes up her own mind about things and won’t be shaken in her decisions. I want her to understand my completely unreasonable feeling that Rosalind belongs to me in some indefinable sense, and I belong to her.

At the same time I’m terrified that she will understand too much, because my heart is thudding more painfully than it did when Esther was leaning into me and it is all I can do not to kiss her. I feel as if Esther has awakened something very dangerous in me that is only barely under control and is, somehow, more about Rosalind than about Esther, and I am more in danger of losing everything than I have ever been.

Rosalind looks at me in that quiet, considering way she has when she’s judging things for herself, and then her rare smile flashes out and she says, quite simply, “I love you more than anyone else in the whole world, too.”

I can feel the grin split my face. “You’re
my
friend, then.” I flinch a little at the naked possessiveness in my voice, but I don’t care, she loves me and I won’t lose her, not if I can help it.
Loves
me. If I can’t ever be with her the way I want, I’m still the one who is special to her. I’m so happy it hurts, and it’s all I can do not to crush her close. “Let’s promise, then. That we’ll be friends forever and always be true—like sisters.”

“I promise. Like sisters.” There’s something a little odd in her voice, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far.

I’ve said it now and I can’t take it back. My heart is actually hurting and scaring me a little, it’s pounding so hard that I can feel the pulse in my own wrists and ankles, and there is a queer desperate ache, not only in my heart but in an entirely confusing place. Rosalind is flushed, and terribly grave looking, and I have this odd feeling that I am standing on the edge of a very steep hill. If I only set a foot forward, I will plummet headlong, and everything will change. Everything. I just need to take that step, and I don’t quite know what it is, and I’m frightened.

But Rosalind loves me best. I hold onto that. And she is so pretty like this, with the roses on her cheeks and those serious eyes bright and blue.

“I promise too, Rosalind. I’ll always be there for you.” She smiles at me and I open my mouth again, not knowing what I’m going to say, with a feeling that I am about to take that plunging step after all, and the door opens.

Diana makes a disgusted tutting sound as she takes in the scene, and suddenly everything is ghastly and ruined.

I can feel the blood rush to my face, and I drop Rosalind’s hands guiltily and scramble to my feet, clasping my own hands behind my back. Rosalind is so innocent, but Diana is far more worldly. She understands, I know, what was happening between Esther and myself better than I did, and now she’s come on me kneeling before Rosalind, holding her hands and gazing up into her eyes, and I feel like I have been caught doing something filthy and wrong. Something that will besmirch Rosalind, who is so good and trusting. I don’t know how to undo it.

“I’ve just come to get the things I left here,” Diana says to Rosalind, ignoring me. She gathers up some books, and a scarf. “And to tell you that I’m done with you, Rosalind Hastings. I’ve tried to be nice, I’ve tried to look after you, and
that
is what you’ve chosen.” She sweeps me with a contemptuous glance. “All your advantages—well, if you choose to throw them away, that’s your look-out. I’m done with you for good.”

Rosalind doesn’t speak or respond. The door clicks closed behind Diana, and Rosalind draws a shuddering breath.

“Are you very upset?” I ask Rosalind, in a low tone. “I know she was your friend, and I’ve driven her away.”

She considers. “No. She was very kind to me—but I don’t think she ever really liked me for myself much. She wouldn’t have used magic on me, if she did.” The hurt is clear in her voice, and against all my better judgement I can’t help pulling her close in comfort. At first my arms are awkward around her back, until she sighs and settles her head against my shoulder, and my arms curve more naturally around her slender back, finding the right place to rest comfortably at her waist.

“
I
really like you,” I say, softly. She makes a sound I can’t quite make out, and snuggles closer, setting my heart thumping again.

I hold her for a moment until the feeling of her delicate form, with the soft swelling of her breasts under the gym slip, becomes too much, and I become afraid that she can feel how my heart is hammering or sense somehow the tense ache that is becoming worse with the contact. I push her gently away. “All fine and serene?” I brush the pointed tip of one of her ears with my fingertip.

She nods. “All fine and serene.” We stay there smiling at each other. At that moment she is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, thick glasses and childish plaits and all.

Frances is delighted at the change in Rosalind, and pulls me into the corridor to tell me so. “I knew you’d sort her out. I wanted to, but she’s such a funny girl. Won’t say boo to a goose. Why, sometimes I’ve thought she was scared of me!” She opens her eyes wide at the ridiculousness of the statement.

I have the impulse to tell Frances that I know, in my inmost soul, that Diana has been using a mixture of gossip and magic to make Rosalind scared of the other girls. I can’t do it, though. I have no proof, and it’s too much like sneaking. So I just squeeze Frances’ plump shoulder and say, “I think she’ll be a bit friendlier now.”

I do my prep. in the study Frances and Rosalind share rather than in my own or going to Esther or Cecily. I suppose Diana is no longer wasting any magical energy on Rosalind, because my friend is more chatty and easy-going with Frances that evening than I have seen her with anyone except myself. Frances, bless her, glows with pleasure at this new friendliness. I watch Rosalind talking to her with possessive pride, like a mother watching her child chasing her first pony club ribbon.

She’s a good sort, Frances. It can’t have been an easy term for her, without her cousin and with a study mate who is scared of her. I wish, vaguely, that I can reconcile her with Gladys, whatever the trouble between the cousins. I’m no good at these things myself.

I resolve to speak to Cecily about it. I am just so happy, so glowingly happy, that I want everyone to feel as happy as I do.

It’s only later that night, lying in my cubicle surrounded by the breathing of other girls and feeling both oppressed by it and happy because one of the sleeping girls is Rosalind, that I allow myself to relive fully what I have felt on this confusing evening, the feelings Esther awoke in me and the overwhelming rush of emotion in Rosalind’s study. I feel like something has changed inside of me that will never quite change back. Over and over again, I think about Rosalind telling me she loves me best of everyone in the world, the way she looked and the way her voice sounded, the way she felt snuggled in my arms.

The secret new ache inside of me is stronger and it makes me unbearably restless. I lie there playing the memories over again in my head, and in my imagination there is no need for courage and no need to fear disaster, I take that final step, I press Rosalind back in her easy chair and smother her white neck with kisses, find her pointed ear with my lips and whisper into it just what I my courage had failed me to say to her.

I turn my head into my pillow and whisper it into the fabric and pillows.

“I love you too, Rosalind. I love you so much.”

Charley’s adventures (and romance) continue in
Scholars and Sorcery #2,
Elves and Escapades
, due to be released March 2015.

In some disgrace after the events of the preceding term, Charley is determined to redeem herself as Games Captain, and resolve her complicated love life. The Christmas holidays change her life forever, but before she finds her feet again, she and her friends are drawn into dark, old magic.

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Elves and Escapades

Lying awake in the early hours of the morning, with toothache and a mind that won’t shut off its clatter, is a particular form of hell. I am entirely unable to leave the throbbing pain alone, poking it experimentally with my tongue in order to see if it still results in the kind of agony shooting across my face that it did the last hundred times I tried it. In the same way, I keep poking at my memory of the incident this morning.

I’d been straightening my tie before breakfast. I find putting on my tie somehow an awkward process these days, with the glimmering pins on it, as if making myself neat was somehow bragging to myself about being Games Captain unless I studiously avoid my reflection. Esther drifted across to retie it more neatly for me. It’s not an unknown thing for her to do, Esther likes patting my hair and Cecily’s into place or sorting out our collars, although it feels a little different these days when I catch a vaguely resentful restlessness from Rosalind when Esther sorts me out. I suppose Esther does seem very proprietorial, at times, in a way that is queerly different from the way Frances mother-hens Rosalind.

Not, to be honest, that I like it much when Frances, in her maternal way, brushes Rosalind’s lovely masses of hair.

Esther had straightened me out, stood on her tiptoes, and whispered into my ear: “When I need a big favour, Charles, and I will, please remember that I am being very nice to your little Rosalind, and not ripping her limb from limb.”

Before I could respond, she’d slipped back to her own cubicle, leaving me feeling vaguely disturbed. I don’t like the idea of owing Esther a big favour. Somehow, being in Esther’s debt feels quite dangerous, especially when I has no idea what she had in mind.

Besides, everyone should be nice to Rosalind. She never says a bad word against anyone. I resent a little the idea that being decent to her is somehow a huge favour to me.

Now, in the darkness, the pain fretting me, I turn the incident over and over in my head, to no resolution. Of course, often Esther is provoking just for the sake of it. I just don’t want the happy, uncomplicated flow of the last few days interrupted by Esther’s perverse schemings.

In the end I clamber from the bed, sitting heavily on the end for a moment as the movement sends pain coursing through my face. When I can move, there’s enough light from the moon in the window to manage my slippers and dressing gown.

I dread the thought of bearding Matron in her den. I would go back to bed if it wasn’t for the fact that if I don’t have some clove oil soon to deal with the pain, I will never sleep, and between sleeplessness and toothache the poor First form will wish I’ve never been born when the time comes to take them for prep. For their innocent sakes, I tell myself, I have a duty to brave Matron’s grumpiness.

Our cubicle curtains never shut all the way. I’ve never been quite clear on the reasoning why closed curtains are a sin. Privacy is unhygienic, or something. It means that I can see the others as I pass, Cecily curled on her side like a small child, Valerie with her blankets tangled around her knees. I can’t resist the temptation to stop for some ridiculously soppy moment, that I would absolutely die if anyone found out about, to peek at Rosalind, her moonlight-pale hair spread over her pillow and shining softly. She would look like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for an elvish prince to kiss her back to consciousness and full magic powers, if she hadn’t fallen asleep sucking her thumb. I grin and move on.

Next to Rosalind’s cubicle, Diana’s bed lies empty.

At first, I don’t think particularly much of it. There is one very straightforward reason that all girls leave their beds at night at one time or another, even though it is frowned on. I’ve actually passed on down the aisle before something clicks in my head, a little detail that I’ve noticed. I turn back to Diana’s cubicle.

Her dressing gown is still hanging on the back of her chair. It’s a chilly night; there’s no way anyone would venture out in her pyjamas. There is, however, no blazer with the clothes folded neatly on her chair. Slippers by the bed, not shoes.

I curse under my breath, a very bad word I once heard a stable boy use. I don’t want to care what Diana is up to. I want to get my clove oil and go back to bed and curl up in the warm and fall asleep and leave Diana to her own devices.

I suppose, once you start thinking like a Senior Prefect, there’s no escape from acting like one.

I brave Matron’s wrath, first of all, because I know my temper will be much worse if I’m in pain. Once the clove oil has first escalated the pain into hell fires of torture and then dulled it, I return to the dormy, half hoping that Diana has made it back and I can confine myself to scolding her in the morning. No such luck. I sit on the end of my bed, resisting the lure of the pillows, and give myself up to thought.