A Great and Terrible Beauty

Page 43

This sends Pippa howling. "I think that's a splendid idea!" She slurs the word so that it comes out splendid .
"Wait a moment, that's mine" I say, reaching for the diary, but Felicity pockets it.
"I thought you said it came from the library," Ann says.
"Ha! Well done, Ann." Pippa smiles at her and I'm already regretting the beginning of their friendship. My lie has stuck me here, without the book and a way to understand what's happening to me, what my visions may mean. But there's no getting hold of it without telling them the whole truth, and I'm not ready to do that. Not until I understand it myself.
Ann passes the bottle to me again but I wave it away.
"Je ne voudrais pas le whiskey ," I slur in my terrible French-English.
"We've got to help you with your French, Gemma, before LeFarge bumps you down in the ranks," Felicity says.
"How do you know so much about French?" I ask, irritated.
"For your information, Miss Doyle, my mother happens to run a very famous salon in Paris." She gives salon the French pronunciation. "All the best writers in Europe have been entertained by my mother."
"Your mother is French?" I ask. My thoughts are a bit foggy from the whiskey. Everything makes me want to giggle.
"No. She's English. Descended from the Yorks. She lives in Paris."
Why would she live in Paris instead of here, where her husband would return after his duty to Her Majesty had been completed? "Don't your parents live together?"
Felicity glares at me. "My father is away at sea most of the time. My mother is a beautiful woman. Why shouldn't she have the companionship of friends in Paris?"
I don't know what I've said wrong. I start to apologize but Pippa runs right over me. "I wish my mother ran a salon. Or did anything interesting. All she seems to do is drive me mad with her criticism. 'Pippamustn't slouch. You'll never get a husband that way.' 'Pippa, we must keep up appearances at all times.' 'Pippa, what you think of yourself isn't nearly as important as what others say of you.' And there's her latest protegethe clumsy, charmless Mr. Bumble."
"Who is Mr. Bumble?" I ask.
"Pippa's paramour," Felicity says, drawing out the word.
"He is not my paramour!" Pippa screeches.
"No, but he wants to be. Why else would he keep paying his visits?"
"He must be fifty if he's a day!"
"And very rich or your mother wouldn't be throwing him at you."
"Mother lives for money." Pippa sighs. "She doesn't like the way Father gambles. She's afraid he's going to lose all our money. That's why she's so desperate to marry me off to a wealthy man."
"She'll probably find you someone with a clubfoot and twelve children, all older than you axe" Felicity laughs.
Pippa shudders. "You should see some of the men she's paraded in front of me. One was four feet tall!"
"You can't be serious!" I say.
"Well, he might have been five feet" Pippa laughs and it's contagious, sending us all into hysterical fits. "Another time, she introduced me to a man who kept pinching my bottom when we were dancing. Can you imagine? 'Oh, lovely waltz.' Pinch, pinch. 'Shall we have some punch?' Pinch, pinch. I was bruised for a week."
Our shrieks are animal sounds, loose and rambunctious. They die down to coughing and murmurs, and Pippa says, "Ann, Gemma. You don't have to worry about such things as impossible mothers trying to control your every waking moment. How lucky you are."
All the breath leaves my lungs. Felicity kicks Pippa hard in the shin.
"Well, that wasn't very nice, was it?" Pippa makes a show of rubbing her leg.
"Don't be so touchy," Felicity says snidely, but when she catches my eyes, there's a hint of kindness there and I understand she's done it for me, and I wonder for the first time if we really might be friends.
"How revolting!" Ann has been flipping through the diary. She's got some sort of illustration in her hands, which she tosses away as if it might burn her. "What is it?" Pippa rushes over, her curiosity stronger than her pride. We lean in close. It's a drawing of a woman with grapes in her hair coupling with a man in animal skins, a mask with horns adorning his head. The caption reads, The Rites of Spring by Sarah Rees-Toome .
We all gasp and call it disgusting while trying to get a better look.
"Methinks he's already sprung," I say, giggling in a high voice I don't even recognize as my own.