Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (15 page)

“Oh, Rosalind.” I’m laughing despite myself, hating the laughter, because it is not in the least funny, it is a tragedy that I am so clumsy and have bruised her like this. “I’m such an idiot. Such an idiot. I did tell you that I’m in love with you, truly, only I think you were asleep at the time.”

“You’re in love with me,” she repeats, wonderingly. “I’ve been so scared. And you told me—you told me when I was asleep.” Her face is suddenly fierce and her grip is tight. “Tell me now. So I know. While I’m awake, you idiot.”

“I love you. Not just as a friend or a sister, but. . . completely. And I want you completely for my own.” I can’t say it without my voice trembling. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” she whispers. “Oh, Charley, you are hopeless.” With that she’s kissing me again, sweet and open-mouthed and loving.

“I’m sorry,” I say, when our lips part. “I’m such a donkey.”

She smiles up at me, her blindingly sweet, rare smile, her eyes shining. “I forgive you.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. At least you’re a sweet donkey.” She presses a kiss on my throat, quick and soft, keeping her head down. “I’m not forcing you into this?”

I smooth the silky hair at the back of her head. “I don’t understand how you could possibly think something like that. Not after. . . not after what we’ve done. I’m not the only idiot here, you know.”

She presses her head down against my shoulder, so hard that part of me remains aware enough to worry that she is pushing her spectacles into her own face. “Mother.” The word is muffled, but distinct.

“She—she knew how I felt about you?” I remember that intelligent, pointed face. A woman who, like her daughter, watches and notices and thinks and holds her thoughts to herself. There’s a cold fear at the memory. “Or did she guess what we did?”

“Not—not how far things have gone between us. I’m sure of that. But when I came home, she took me aside and gave me cocoa as if I was a little girl and… talked to me about you. About our friendship, and schoolgirl crushes, and what happens if you are silly about them and take them too far.”

“I thought she liked me,” I say, in stupid hurt. After all, I’ve amply fulfilled any lack of trust any mother could have in me as a friend for her cherished and very marriageable daughter, even if it’s not entirely my own fault. I have no grounds for bruised feelings, not holding the lady’s daughter in my arms like this, like any mother’s worst nightmare. It hurts anyway.

“It’s me she doesn’t trust, not you.” Rosalind is abruptly matter-of-fact, lifting her head. “She doesn’t really know what happened at my last school—and nothing did, really,” she adds quickly, as I bite my lip in sudden jealousy. “Not the same way, at least. But she seems to guess at something. She said—she told me you’re a very nice girl, but you didn’t seem very grown up in some ways, and that she worried about you. That it doesn’t do, just because you’re boyish, to expect you to be a boy for me. Do you understand, Charley?” She searches my face.

I’m not sure at all what I understand at all of this extraordinary speech. “Do you think of me as a boy?”

She shakes her head, in some confusion. “No, darling Charley, that’s not it at all. But perhaps I do force you to act as a boy, for my sake. And when I think that you might want marriage and children and it would be all my fault, because I want bad, wrong, things, and twist and pervert you into giving them to me, I want to die. I don’t want to ever hurt you.”

“It’s too late in any case. I didn’t feel about boys that way in the first place,” I say, thinking of the last holidays, which feel so long ago now, and my first kiss, and everything that has happened since. “I don’t want to marry anyone but you.”
 

I am too honest to claim not to want children, knowing how I feel about the kids at the school. But maybe. . . I remember what Esther said about orphans. Maybe there already is some child somewhere who needs my love.
 

“I don’t want anyone but you forever and ever,” she says, and there’s nothing I can do but kiss her.

“Was that all it was?” I ask gently afterwards, stroking her hair.
 

 
“Not just that. I kept thinking, all through the hols. About Esther. About how pretty she is, so much prettier than me, and how she is with you. The way she treats you like—well, like you were a boy, and her sweetheart. She flirts with you, and makes you blush, and I never could even think of how to start talking to you like that.”

“I don’t really want Esther to be like that with me.” I lift my hand in protest. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Oh, Charley, don’t you see, that’s the thing? You look like a unicorn freezing for the hunter. You’re too chivalrous, and too innocent, and I know you love her and don’t want to hurt her, so
she
knows she can do exactly what she likes with you.” There’s bitter jealousy in her voice. “Then I came to your room and. . . oh, Charley, I was so frightened that I had done the same thing to you, only worse. When you didn’t write to me at all, I thought you were disgusted at what we did. That I swept you along and when you could think about it, you were horrified, but you would go on doing it and never let on how you felt it was what you thought I wanted.”

“You darling, sweet, idiotic angel. It’s not the same at all.” I kiss her forehead and her cheeks, over and over. ”I’ve spent night after night lying there, loving you, wanting you and never thinking I could have you.”

“Oh, Charley.” She presses her lips again briefly to my neck, just above where the tie holds my collar closed, and it sends a jolt through me. I tilt her head back and kiss her again, deeply and possessively.

It’s only by a miracle that I hear the crunch of gravel at the door. I fling myself back, suddenly feeling ill with terror. Rosalind reacts more slowly, still leaning against the stable wall, lovely blue eyes blinking under glasses pushed slightly askew, her expensively cut hair messy and tangled. All I can think is that we have spent a ridiculous amount of time in here talking, I have no idea how long, and we are both breathless and flushed and clearly guilty and the consequences for me will be bad enough if I’m caught but oh, for Rosalind. . . The disgrace we are risking opens up before me like a precipice.

“Good morning, girls,” says Miss Roberts, quite as if nothing is out of place, although her bright eyes are surveying us in a kind of shatteringly detached gaze from one to the other. “Rosalind dear, it’s nice to see you back and looking so well. I was worried that you were away from school because your health was affected by the chilly weather.”

“Th—thank you, Miss Roberts.” Rosalind is covered in confusion. “I was on holiday in the South of France. It was quite warm.”

“You must tell me about your travels, but not now. You’d better hurry back. You’re already late for morning class.”
 

We obediently turn to go past her, eager to escape. She reaches out and touches my shoulder.

“One moment, Charlotte Forest. Rosalind, you run along.”

I stop still, terror still choking in my throat. Miss Roberts looks steadily at me with no fathomable emotion showing on the weatherbeaten face under the cropped grey hair.

“I’ve been very glad for you that you’ve found such a good friend of your own, Charley. It’s important, though, to remember to be sensible. After all—prefects have certain appearances to keep up. It wouldn’t do to be late for class too often because you’re lurking in stables. A love of pegasi will only take you so far as an excuse.”

“No, Miss Roberts,” I gasp, half-delirious with relief and gratitude. “I’ll be more careful in future.”

“That’s my good girl. Now run along and catch up to your friend.”

We’re through the hedge before Rosalind says, breathlessly, “She saw us, I know she did. She’s a perfect trump.”

“I think she understands,” I say slowly. I wonder what has led to Miss Roberts living all alone at her stables with her horses and magical beasts. If she’s happy. I never thought to ask, and I don’t see how I can pry into her affairs.

“Perhaps you’re right.” Rosalind tries to smooth her hair back into its stylish waves. “Only we do have to be more careful.”

“Yes.” My agreement is absent. Rosalind and Miss Roberts are both right, I know. We do need to take care. Wasn’t I just sick with knowledge of the risks we were running?

 
It makes no sense to have a sudden wild rebellion surging in my breast. I just can’t help feeling that Rosalind and I shouldn’t have to run around in this dishonourable, hole-in-corner way, as if we deserve to be ashamed. I’m sure, deep in my heart and soul, that what we feel and do isn’t actually wrong. Surely there are other people who feel the same way.

We have to be careful and secret. It’s the way it is, I know. I simply wish it was different.

I want to take her hand and hold it so tightly that she will never escape. I don’t dare.

six

K
ITTY
S
NEAKS

I’M NOT USUALLY fanciful, but the next fortnight makes me feel like I’m contained in an iridescent bubble of happiness that might be solid crystal, or might be a thin skin of soap that might burst at any time.
 

On the surface, nothing much has changed. Our narrow escape has made Rosalind and me wary. In a way, it’s worse than ever, the wanting to hold and kiss her, now I know what it’s like to do so and where it leads. There are moments when looking at the curve of her lips, at her small, long-fingered hands, or at the way her lashes brush her cheeks, can make me blush and burn. There is the omnipresent worry of Cecily or Miss Carroll or any other Empath in the school being alerted to our decidedly unschoolgirlish feelings, enough to make us very careful.

I’m not a saint, after all, and neither, it seems, is she. There are stolen kisses, when we get away on rides, when we risk for a few moments someone opening my study door unexpectedly, and of course the omnipresent worry about alerting Cecily. These incidents make everything, in a way, harder to bear, but I still crave them like I used to crave sweets as a child. For the most part, however, we behave like any two close friends, with no touch more intimate than walking arm-in-arm.

The real difference is that underneath it all is the joyous knowledge that nothing is as hopeless as it seemed before. I’m loved the way I love. With Rosalind’s simple acceptance of the situation between us, the shame and guilt has burned away like a puddle on a summer’s day, leaving everything fresh and clean. I no longer worry that something is wrong with me, something bad, because that would mean thinking Rosalind bad and wrong, which is utterly impossible. I feel more free and more myself. The longings I feel at night are no longer hopeless longings. If I don’t sleep for frantic thinking, it’s only to search my mind for a plan to secure our future together. I’ll find a way somehow. I promised.

With this new happiness in my heart it feels like a light is shining over every aspect of school life. My friends have never seemed so dear to me, so kind and amusing, so nice to Rosalind. My work in lessons and prep. seems easier. The weather clears and hockey practice has never seemed so invigorating. Most of all, flying is a joy, swooping on Ember with Rosalind galloping on the trail below me.

It only takes a touch to destroy a bubble. It’s inevitably darling Diana that pinches the sparkling surface, although not directly.

Diana has been barely visible in the usual Sixth form haunts outside of class. I still clear out of the study on the assigned days to let her have what company she chooses, so I see very little of her as a study mate. Quite apart from that, Diana seems to be consciously isolating herself from the Sixth. Valerie has broken with her completely at some point, announcing that Angela is nothing but a common little Glamour-user and not worth the effort of kindness. She herself has taken up with the Russell twins from East Tower, who are happy to discuss fashion and beauty treatments with her and rather chuffed at the unwonted attention from pretty Valerie.

I learn that Diana has started hanging around the School House Fifth common room when Emily complains at a prefect meeting that the older girl is making a nuisance of herself and ignoring suggestions to clear out. It makes me wonder a little; surely Diana should be able to Charm her way into a welcome. I wonder if her powers are flagging for some reason, or if she simply can’t be bothered with turning them on anyone but Kitty.
 

The prefects can’t do much about it. There’s no absolute rule against spending time in a lower form common room if invited, and unless Diana actually breaks the rules it’s rather hard for Emily to officially turf her out.

Personally, I am selfishly glad that Diana’s hostile presence is somewhat removed from Rosalind and myself, especially when I am afraid we give ourselves away with every look and smile. Diana, with her worldliness, in a way is more of a threat to discovery than even Cecily.

It is Kitty who brings Diana back into my life. The Fifth former is leaning on the door as I come out of English, a little breathless and weary after a particularly futile attempt at pretending enthusiasm in such a way as to please Miss Evans.