Pegasi and Prefects (17 page)

When she turns back, Harry puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Cheer up, kid. Perhaps she’s just avoiding me because I’m a stranger.”

“She’s gone,” Rosalind says, flatly. “I was trying not to admit it, but I’m certain.”

“Hard luck, old girl.” He puts a hand on her shoulder, his arm across the back of her head, protectively. “You know it might be for the best, after all. Perhaps her flight have found her, and she’s rejoined them.” He is kind enough to leave unspoken all the other, more horrible, possibilities unspoken.

Rosalind lifts her chin. “She’s all right, you know. I can tell.” She manages to smile, a little. “Thank you for being so nice. I’m all right, I promise.”

“That’s my girl.” He smiles down at her, patting her head like he has so often patted me when he thought I was showing pluck. There used to be a time when the most important thing in the world was having Harry’s approval, and Rosalind seems to feel similarly, given the slight brightening of her face.

I feel, despite my worry for Sunflame, a little left out. Rosalind looks so small and exquisite next to Harry’s height, and he’s so solid and dependable. And handsome. They look right together, as if someone like him was made to protect someone like her. I haven’t, somehow, found a word of comfort or kindness to say to her, or a touch, even though it was I who found Sunflame with Rosalind and helped nurse her back to life. I am the one who is supposed to be her friend.

A fairy flies too close, brushing my face with its sticky-soft wings. I brush it away in irritation. Useless things. It’s no good asking them where the alicorn went. They can’t stop anything bad happening at all.

Harry falls back a little with me, when we’re changed and heading back to the picnic.

“That’s a very nice girl, your little friend,” he says in a low voice. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find her filly for her. She’s pretty, too. I’ll fight you for her.”

My head jerks back in shock. All I can see on his face is teasing laughter. There’s no seriousness, no awareness that I might possibly want Rosalind in the way he, as a boy, might. Nothing to indicate that he thinks I have any kind of guilty secret held close to my heart. My brothers think it’s funny to treat me like I’m actually a boy, sometimes. That’s all it is.

Maybe, though, he is serious about liking Rosalind. She really is looking much better than usual, out of the school uniform and the childish hair. And she’s sweet, and gentle, and exactly the kind of girl to appeal to a protective nature like his.

I try not to hate him for it.

What he said keeps coming back to me, all through dinner, and out to a play. All through the next day, during which Rosalind is off doing something with Diana’s family, and we hire a car for a long drive that is never quite as exciting as flying, but can take us further.

Why not? Perhaps it is not so wild a surmise as it seemed at first. Harry has to marry someone, that is obvious. Come end of this year, I am perfectly sure that I will lose all my other friends. Cecily and Esther and Gladys to university and a life that doesn’t involve me, Miss Roberts because I will have no reason to hang around Briar Stables once I’ve left school. Rosalind. . . I don’t know what is planned for her future. To go be finished, perhaps, or be presented at Court. I’m a bit vague on what a girl of her family does, if she has no obvious ambitions of her own, but I suspect, horrid as the thought is, they involve being introduced to some agreeable boy of the right background and letting matters take their natural course.

Rosalind has already met Harry. She really does seem to like him; after all, he’s easy enough to love. We’re not from the same kind of family as she is, of course, but I don’t think we’re beyond the limits. Father, to put it in old-fashioned terms, is at least a gentleman. And Harry is so nice, and in line to take on the stud himself eventually. He’d take good care of Rosalind. She’d be surrounded by fabled beasts, and go riding or flying every day, with no pressure to hunt, and settle down in the country.

We’d truly be sisters. I’d never quite lose her.

It’s not as if the thought doesn’t hurt. It hurts less, though, than the thought of some stranger being the one to kiss and claim her. Harry belongs, in his own way, to me. He’d be good to her, she to him; he’s a complete darling, and so is she. I don’t see how they could fail to love each other, given half a chance.

By the end of the half term weekend, I feel sick to the heart, but I’ve determined on a course of action.

I don’t really know how I will bear it, that’s all.

That night, after lights out, Rosalind slips from her bed and pads over to my cubicle, something strictly forbidden, although I’ve never been quite sure of the reason for the rule. Visiting cubicles is perfectly acceptable in the day, and a terrible sin at night.

She kneels down by by bed and puts her mouth close to my ear to whisper to me. “It’s quite all right, Charley. Thank you for trying so hard to help us. I know she just knew she was going to be taken away from me soon, and she didn’t want to. She’ll come back to me, when I really need her.”

I try to make out her face in the darkness, her eyes even rounder and huger without the spectacles.

“I hope so, dear, I really do,” I whisper gently.

“I know she will. I love her and she loves me and we’re bonded, so she can’t possibly leave me for good.” She hesitates a moment, then kisses my cheek, quickly, and slips back to her own cubicle.

I touch my cheek with my fingertips. It was just a quick touch of lips to my skin, nothing more. Rosalind is, of course, far more demonstrative than some ass of a girl who couldn’t so much as give her a comforting squeeze when she lost her precious alicorn.

She’d have no idea at all how it makes me feel.

I wish, oh I wish, there was some way to keep hold of her other than throwing her at my brother’s curly head.

Despite the missing alicorn, I think the second half of the term is the happiest time I have ever spent at Fernleigh Manor. I have someone to ride with, to confide in, someone to even share my fears about the future with. Rosalind listens gravely, taking me seriously, as she takes everything seriously, promising to think about things I can do. She doesn’t laugh at me; but then, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rosalind laugh. She smiles, rarely and sweetly, without laughing. But then, I don’t laugh much myself. It’s Cecily and Esther who joke around all the time. I’m not always very good at seeing the point. Too thick-headed.

I don’t have Rosalind entirely to myself, of course. She persists in her friendship with Diana, and I know better than to argue. I’m beginning to understand Rosalind better now, that under her timidity and natural bent for compliance she is anything but truly weak. There’s a streak of iron under all that softness, when she feels it really matters. It’s simply my misfortune that her loyalty to Diana is something that really matters to her. And that, unreasonably, it hurts every time Rosalind smiles up at her, as if she should only ever smile at me.

But then, I tell myself, would she really be my Rosalind if she wasn’t steadfastly loyal, even to someone as rotten as Diana Struthers?

My Rosalind. I catch myself thinking that, and I sensibly keep the thought quite to myself. I can’t help thinking it, though. Even if. . . When. . . she marries, I suppose, some part of me will secretly, stubbornly, hurtingly think of her as somehow belonging to me. I really am an idiot.

It’s not as if I spend my time idly pining away for her attention. Incredibly, I seem to get even busier as the term wears on. The Fifth, especially Kitty and her crowd, are acting as if Old Nick has got into them. Even with the prefects from all houses sharing the burden, overseeing their punishments, taking detention and hearing lines is fantastically time consuming.

I’m once more at my desk, desperately trying to keep up with my reading preparation while listening to Diana’s speaking. Diana and Rosalind for once, to be truthful, which is even more distracting. Rosalind has her lap filled with sewing— Diana has her helping with costumes for the play, which to be fair Rosalind claims to enjoy—and the script on an end table beside her, reading the other roles while Diana struts up and down in the role of the Princess.

They are rehearsing the final scene, in which Hilarion confronts the Princess with the idea that, if she lives in a female community, there will be no second generation. I abominate the scene. I can’t help taking the Princess’s resignation from the university personally. Of course, there must be children. Children are wonderful. It’s just that there is no good reason that the Princess must marry to have them, when so many other women do.

In Rosalind’s halting voice, Hilarion is supremely unconvincing. He’s right, though. It is normal and natural to want to marry. After all, I’ve made the best plans for Rosalind’s future I can. She and Harry would have adorable children together. I feel slightly ill, and wonder about escaping once more, to one of the other studies. I simply, I decide, cannot bear to hear the arguments for marriage presented in Rosalind’s voice.

I shut my eyes and reach out with my mind for comfort, finding a tiny fire sprite in our fire. The feel of its self-absorbed, warm little mind soothes me a little. I wrap my thoughts around it, jumping a little when it suddenly sparks into confusion. I open my eyes and find Rosalind watching me. She must have reached out to the sprite at the same moment.

We share a secret little smile and I feel better, especially when Diana peevishly demands of Rosalind why she is missing her lines. Rosalind apologises sweetly.

She doesn’t manage even one more line before Cecily storms into the study, ignoring Diana’s presence, and tips a handful of shining badges onto my lap.

“I say, what on earth is this, old girl?” I turn one over in my hands, hoping I’m wrong.

“The badges of every prefect in the Fifth,” she says grimly. I try not to show my horror, but it’s no good with Cecily. “Oh, Charles, darling, don’t look at me like that. What else could I do? I passed the form where they were having prep., and it sounded like a barnyard. I went in, and Miss Spears had been called out of the room. That Kitty was in front of the class, imitating her. Oh, you know her little ways, the way she walks and talks. They were jeering and catcalling to a man—even the prefects.”

“It must have been a shock, having the Head Girl walk in.”

“Apparently not enough of one.” Cecily looks around for an empty chair, fails to see one, and settles herself on the floor crossed-legged instead. “I told them exactly what I thought of senior girls being put on their honour to work carefully and instead being so shockingly disrespectful to a mistress, like a herd of small boys. They started to settle down, and I think some of them were actually properly ashamed of themselves. Then. . .” Cecily hesitates, shooting a look across at Diana, then squares her shoulders, her face reddening a little. “Kitty started up mimicking me, repeating my lecture in what I suppose she thinks is an Australian accent. Quite an odd mix with her brogue.”

“What did the others do?” It’s Rosalind’s voice, quiet enough, but I spare a moment of pride in her for talking to Cecily at all. Since finding out about Diana’s magical abilities, I think she really has made an effort to speak up and be more friendly with my crowd. “Surely they didn’t let her cheek the Head Girl?”

“I think they were too shocked to say anything, at first. Then Anne Crompton started up with that bleating laugh of hers, and the others—oh. So I’m afraid I lost my temper and raised my voice. A bit.” Cecily grinned. “That did make them shut up. I’m not a ladylike little Head Girl like Hilda was, you know. I can make my voice heard across three paddocks when I have to. Then I confiscated all the badges. I don’t care how deep the prefects were in this, they’ve shown themselves completely incapable of keeping order in their own form, let alone any other, this year.”

I can’t hide my dismay. “So we only have prefects from the Sixth?”

“I’m sorry. I truly am. I know it will be a lot more work, and you and the others have been trumps already. I didn’t see what else I could do. Besides, it was that or pick up a ruler and give Kitty Eversleigh the spanking of her life.”

I sigh, and reach down to stroke her brown hair consolingly. “I quite see your point.”

“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.” She peeps up at me from under her thick fringe of hair. “I also banned them all from games for a month.”

“Oh, Cissy!” I wail. Half my decent players are from the Fifth.

“I really am sorry. I knew how you’d feel, but I felt I had to. Oh, do be a dear and forgive me, and come outside for an evening stroll around the courtyard. I need to walk all this bad feeling off.” She clambers to her feet and holds out her hands.

I take the proffered hands and let myself be hauled to my feet. “I suppose I can forgive you. If you apologise humbly enough and promise to score at least two goals when we go up against Hindley.”

“That’s my own sweet angel of a Charley,” Cecily says, more cheerfully. “Come on, and we’ll have a good Senior Prefect to Head Girl confabulation.”

“You need it, I should say,” Diana says, very smoothly. “You don’t seem to be doing a good job as Head Girl.”

My own temper flares suddenly, just as the fire sprite shoots up a hail of sparks. I know all too well that Diana is voicing exactly what Cecily most fears. There’s been dark lines under her brown eyes lately, and I’m sure that she’s staying awake at nights worrying about how she is doing.

“Cecily is doing wonders. And she’s far too good a Head Girl to take a ruler to you, Di, but I’m warning you that I’m not. Come on, Cissy, before I do something I’ll regret.” I grab my friend’s arm and pull her from the room.

As I leave, I catch the look on Rosalind’s face. Hurt, and a little left out. I feel a stab of compunction. The fact is, though, Cecily needs a pal right now, and it’s my job to buck her up a bit.