Fiona (15 page)

I spend the next few hours
berating myself for not fighting back, for not telling Blair and Poppy that nothing in this world would keep me from seeing Poppy triumph at her show. I hate that I let Blair win so easily. I'm in the library, unsuccessfully trying to concentrate on a book, when I hear someone approaching. Charlie is standing in the doorway.

“How did she do?” I ask him before he even has a chance to close the door behind him.

“She placed first, of course. Looked wonderful out there.”

Hopping off the windowsill, I let out a sigh of relief and smile, but he doesn't.

“Where were you?” he asks, stepping forward. “Blair said you wanted the night off. But you were even more excited about that show than Poppy was.”

“I know.” I try to keep my mouth shut, but I can't help but admit at least a little bit of the truth. “Blair wanted time to bond with Poppy.”

He nods, though the confusion doesn't leave his eyes. He picks up the book I'd been reading and examines the cover. “A history of the Black Death?” he asks softly. “So, light reading, then.”

“Blair told me she wanted to bond with her future sister-in-law.”

Charlie freezes, though his gaze is still intent on the book in his hand. I don't think he's even breathing. I know I'm not.

“Are you going to marry her?” I whisper before I can stop myself.

He turns toward me, setting the book down. The torture is plain in his green eyes, and suddenly his hands are on my shoulders, drawing me to him. For one dizzying moment, I let my eyes fall to his lips, and a strange buzzing sensation fills my entire body.

I pull my eyes back up to his to find that torture still twisting through them. He moves one hand from my shoulder to my cheekbone, brushing a finger along the line of it, then dipping that finger below my chin and lifting it up further.

My lips are a breath away from his, and I can't breathe.

All of a sudden, I feel myself stepping back, pulling away
from his touch. Someone gasps, and I'm pretty sure it's me. I spin and run out of the room, and he says nothing to stop me.

I nearly kissed him. He nearly kissed me.
He wants me
, I think as I hurtle myself up the stairs toward my room. The thought makes me glow.

But he's still going to marry her. I knew it when I saw the apology and torment in his eyes. I couldn't let him kiss me, not when I know how much more it would hurt when he still chooses her.

• • •

Charlie and I start to play the avoidance game with each other once again. I begin to grab breakfast from the kitchen in the morning, making excuses to Poppy so I can evade the dining room. I keep to my room during the day, reading books in bed instead of on the library windowsill. When Poppy and I study in her room, I scamper down the hall past the closed door of his bedroom, where he seems to be hiding away with his computers.

In a few days he heads back to Glasgow again, and I try to feel glad about that. I can't think clearly when we're in the same house, so maybe when he's gone I'll finally get my feelings under control. I haven't been able to sleep at night, knowing that he's only a floor below, in bed with her. The whispers continue, and some nights the voices are so vivid, as if they're speaking right into my ear. But even if they were to disappear,
the whispers in my head would be loud enough to keep me awake. I'm so exhausted that my eyelids feel permanently heavy, and I've started falling asleep in the library during the day, dozing in the winter sun on the window seat.

A week after Charlie leaves for Glasgow, I'm reading on that window seat when Blair strides in. We haven't spoken a word to each other in about two weeks, but today it seems as if she's seeking me out. The curtain is open, so I know she sees me.

“I'm sorry to bother you, but have you seen Poppy?” she says. “I wanted to invite her out on another shopping trip.”

“She's riding Copperfield.”

“Oh, of course,” she says, pausing and looking at me before continuing, “You should have seen her at the show. I can't stop thinking about it! It was as if she was born on a horse.”

“I wish I could have seen her,” I say quietly, trying to tamp down the anger boiling under the surface.

A shadow of a smile crosses her lips, though she does her best to hide it. “Well, if you see her before I do—”

I can't help it. “I won't let you do that to me again, you know,” I say. My voice is deadly cool, and I can't believe I just said that. But now that the words are out there, now that she's heard them, I can't take them back.

“Do what?” she asks. The polished veneer has been rubbed right out of her voice, revealing only bitterness underneath.

I stand and turn around to face her. “I won't let you shove me out of the way so you can be closer to Poppy. So that you can be closer to Charlie.”

“Who says you're
in
my way?” she asks, tossing her hair behind her shoulder and crossing her arms. “Do you actually think that Charles would ever choose
you
over
me
? The shabby governess over the mother of his child? Do you think he even
notices
you?”

It's been so obvious that Blair hates me, but I still can't believe it's out in the open. As mad as I am, at her and about this whole situation, I'm also relieved.

“I
know
he notices me.” My voice sounds even, confident, but inside I'm shaking.

“You're delusional,” she scoffs.

Her words hit me like a slap, but I try not to flinch. “And you won't win,” I snarl. “Whatever game you're playing, you're going to lose.”

“We'll see about that,” she says with a growing smirk. She turns to leave, but just before she's out the door, she says, “The truth is in the lily pads.”

“What?” I say, but she's already gone.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?

My hands are shaking. I grab a pillow from the window seat and squeeze until my knuckles turn white. I want to run
through the hallways, yelling that I was right about Blair—that she's a manipulative, psychotic bitch, just like I thought. But still no one would believe me. No one else seems to see past her facade, and I would be the one looking like a madwoman.

So what can I do? How can I fight, now that I know who the enemy is?

She's clearly trying to do whatever she can to get rid of me. Maybe she's even the one whispering at night, trying to annoy me, drive me out.

I'll have to return the favor.

If I'm going to fight,
I'm going to need allies.

The next day, I visit Mrs. Mackenzie in the kitchens and ask her what she thinks of Blair, pretending that I'm worried about keeping my job once she becomes mistress of the castle.

Mrs. Mackenzie fixes me with her usual no-nonsense look. “At least the girl doesn't come down here and ask me useless questions,” she snaps. “Now either start helping with the pie for tonight or get out of my kitchen.”

I check Mrs. Mackenzie off the list and decide to go find Albert. I head outside to the carriage house, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that I'm crunching through a thin layer of frost and a tiny powdering of snow. I've never seen real snow before, and I crouch down, touching the icy brittleness that lies
over the grass. I smile, entranced for a moment by this beautiful cold. I stand up, and it hits me how far I've come from the red-dirt everyday sameness of Mulespur. I don't ever want to go back there. I walk on, more determined now than ever.

The snow doesn't seem to faze Albert, whom I find in the courtyard washing the car. He greets me cheerfully, but when I bring up Blair as casually as I can, he just sighs and looks at me with pity in his eyes.

“She seems to make the lord happy, lass. And he's probably going to marry her, so I don't worry myself too much wondering what I think of her.”

“Well, that's exactly it—I worry about the lord. And Poppy, of course. You don't think she's a bit . . . fake?”

“No, but it sounds to me like you do,” he says as he wipes down the passenger side mirror. “I've never seen her be anything but polite and kind myself. But I'm just an old man—everyone's nice to old men. What do I know?”

“You're right,” I say, realizing that Albert's clearly not going to be any help. “Of course you're right. I'm sure I'm just reading too much into things.”

“Happy to help, my dear.” He nods, and I turn back to the castle, realizing that my list of potential allies has dwindled to about zero. The maids and kitchen staff have been useless, even
though I did my best to sound like I was only looking for a bit of friendly gossip. The only one I haven't approached is Alice, who won't even talk to me.

There's only one other person I can think of, but I'm not sure if I can get him to talk to me either.

That afternoon, while Poppy is out on her ride, I pull my hood up against the wind and trudge through the glittering frost to the stables. The trek out there seems to take longer than usual, though I don't know if it's because of the freezing air or the dread I'm feeling about talking to Gareth.

My breath is coming out in puffs and my fingers are aching with cold by the time I make it to the warmth of the stables. Gareth is there, brushing down Oliver, stopping for only a moment when he spots me before going back to his task.

“Poppy's still out,” he says. “Probably won't be back for another half hour, maybe twenty minutes if she gets cold.”

“I'm here to talk to you, actually.”

He sighs, puts the brush down, and comes out of the stall to face me. “What about?” he asks.

I start with the most important thing, even though I'm pretty sure he's already aware of it. “Well, first, Alice knows about us. About us, uh, kissing, I mean.” I stick my hands in my coat pockets, not knowing what else to do with them.

He breathes out one short, ironic-sounding laugh. “Yeah,
she made that pretty clear a few weeks ago when she came out here, slapped me across the face, and stomped off,” he says with a wry smile.

“She slapped you?” I ask, kind of impressed.

He nods. “Hard.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I deserved it. For that and for many other things.”

I swallow, gathering my courage. “I'm also sorry that I kissed you. And then ran away. I didn't explain—”

“If this is one of those ‘It's not you, it's me' speeches,” he interjects, “I really don't need to hear it. I'd rather just pretend it never happened.”

“Okay,” I say, relieved. “That's fine with me.”

But now he looks disappointed, and I want to kick myself. I'm only hurting him worse by being here. I shift to move past him, giving up on my quest for allies.

“Hey,” he says, and I stop. “What else did you come here to talk about?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Just say it, Fee.”

I take a deep breath. “This might sound random, but . . . I'm curious: What do you think of Blair?” I ask.

“What about her?” he asks, confused. Clearly he wasn't expecting this topic of conversation.

“Nothing,” I say quickly, moving past him toward the exit. “I'm just—it's stupid, sorry.”

“I think she does a very good job of pretending,” he says, stopping me when I'm almost out the door.

I turn around, trying to hide the joy that I know has crept into my eyes. “You think she's fake?” It's only then that I realize I didn't really expect him to agree with me, that I was practically convinced that I really was the only one who saw her differently.

“I think everything about that girl is fake,” he says, his eyes serious as he watches me. “And I think you should stay away from her if you want to keep your job.”

“But I haven't done anything to her!” I cry, half out of anger and half out of joy, now that I've finally found someone who gets it. “She just seems to hate me for no reason.” It's not quite the truth, but I can hardly bring up my piano sessions with Charlie.

Gareth steps closer to me. “Just be careful, Fee,” he says.

I'm so relieved that I find myself dangerously close to flinging my arms around him and sobbing. I'm not crazy, I'm not alone. Someone else sees underneath her meticulous mask, too.

“I'll be fine,” I promise.

• • •

Gareth is right. I need to stay away from Blair. She's got something planned, and now that she's shown me just how nasty she
can be, now that she finally let that sweet-girl act slip, she's even more of a threat.

But as big as the castle is, it's not big enough to hide me. She finds me in the library again that night.

As soon as she pokes her head in the door, my heart stops. And then starts racing.

She enters the room with a smile. One of those carefully practiced smiles. Why is she smiling at me? “Hey, Fee. Have you seen Poppy?” she asks. Her voice is high, bright, unconcerned.

I stare at her. “Why are you talking to me?” I ask finally.

She blinks, her mouth slightly open in confusion. “What do you mean?” she asks.

I stand up from the window seat, trying to ignore how much my knees are shaking. “After what happened yesterday, you think you can just waltz in here and talk to me?”

“What? What happened yesterday?” she asks, her brow furrowing in a very good facsimile of a mystified expression.

“The fight,” I say, not fooled by her innocent act and not backing down.

“What fight?” she asks. When I raise an eyebrow at her, she just shakes her head. “Fee, I'm sorry—I'm really sorry if I did something to offend you, but I have no idea what you're talking about.”

I stare at her, trying to see past this perfectly executed semblance of ignorance. “You really don't remember?”

She shakes her head slowly. “We didn't have a fight, Fee. It's been days since I've even seen you.” She pauses, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe you dreamed it?” She sounds almost concerned.

I picture the fight again in my mind: the moment her polite veneer dropped, her disdain as she asked me if I thought Charlie even noticed me.

Could I have dreamed it? It happened in the middle of the afternoon; I wasn't sleeping. Unless I drifted off and didn't realize it? I've been so tired lately.

Or was it worse than a dream? Was the fight a delusion?

My blood turns to ice at the thought, freezing me from the inside out. No. Of course not. I remember it perfectly. She's just trying to confuse me so she can get away with everything.

“Fine,” I say finally, lacking the energy or the focus to argue with her anymore. “Sorry. I'll tell Poppy you were looking for her.”

“Thanks,” she says, peering at me once more before turning for the door. As she turns, I think I catch a glimpse of a small smile gracing her lips.

I stare at the door for a long moment after she leaves, trying to puzzle everything out. Why would she deny that the fight ever happened? To avoid more confrontation? Because she had
gone too far and shown too much of her hand and wanted to pull back?

One persistent memory nags at me: the odd comment she made at the end of our fight, about the truth being in the lily pads. That's the sort of nonsense I could only expect from a dream, isn't it? I've been catnapping on the window seat for days now. What if it really
was
a dream?

No, I decide, brushing that thought away. I remember the thunder in her blue eyes, the dizziness I felt when I finally told her what I thought about her. I couldn't have dreamed that. The lily pad comment was just another clever diversion to try to throw me off.

But this all seems so convoluted, even for someone as fake as Blair. Why not just persuade Charlie to fire me? He would choose her over me if she forced a decision like that on him. Why does she need to go to all this trouble?

Whatever the reason, I get the feeling she's planning something bigger. Like she's playing a long game, and I have to be ready for whatever's coming.