A Great and Terrible Beauty

Page 90

"Hello, Gemma. Ann." Ann's face is the picture of panic. Cecily sizes up the situation. "Ann, will you be singing for us later? Ann has the sweetest voice. She's the one I told you aboutthe scholarship student."
Ann shrinks down low in her chair.
Grandmama's confused. "I thought you said your parents were abroad"
Ann's face contorts and I know she's going to cry. She bolts from the table, knocking over a chair on the way.
Cecily pretends to be embarrassed. "Oh, my, I hope I haven't said the wrong thing."
"Every time you open your mouth and speak it's the wrong thing," I snap.
Grandmama barks, "Gemma, whatever is the matter with you today? Are you ill?"
"Yes, forgive me, everyone," I say, tossing my wadded napkin onto the table in a heap. "My cholera is acting up again."
Later, there will need to be an apology sorry, so sorry, can't explain myself, sorry . But for now, I'm free from the tyranny of their need masquerading as concern. Gliding through the ballroom and down the stairs, I have to put a hand to my stomach to keep from breathing too fast and fainting. Thankfully, the French doors are open to allow a breeze and I walk out onto the lawn, where a game of croquet has sprung up. Fashionable mothers in large-brimmed hats knock brightly colored wooden balls through narrow hoops with their mallets while their husbands shake their heads and gently correct them with an arm here, an embrace there. The mothers laugh and miss again, deliberately, it would seem, so as to have their husbands stand close again.
I pass unnoticed through them, down the hill to where Felicity sits alone on a stone bench.
"I don't know about you, but I've had quite enough of this absurd show," I say, forcing a surly camaraderie into my tone that I don't feel at all. One hot tear trickles down my cheek. I wipe it away, look off at the croquet game. "Has your father come yet? Did I miss him?"
Felicity says nothing, just sits.
"Fee? What's the matter?"
She passes me the note in her hand, on a fine white card stock.
My dearest daughter, I am sorry to tell you on such short notice but duty calls me elsewhere, and duty to the Crown is of the utmost importance, as I'm sure you would agree. Have a jolly day, and perhaps we shall see each other again at Christmastime.
Fondly,
Your father
I cannot think of anything to say.
"It's not even his handwriting," she says at last, her voice flat. "He couldn't even be bothered to pen his own goodbye."
Out on the lawn, some of the younger girls play happily in a circle, ducking under each other's arms, falling to the ground in fits of laughter while their mothers hover nearby, fretting over soiled dresses and hair shaken free of ribbons and bonnets. Two girls skip past us, arm in arm, reciting the poetry they've learned for today's occasion, something to show how much they've become small buds of ladies.
"She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot."
Overhead, the clouds are losing their fight to keep the sun. Patches of blue peek out from behind larger clumps of threatening gray, holding on to the sun with slipping fingertips.
"Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott."
The girls throw back their carefree heads and laugh riotously at their dramatic reading. The wind has shifted to the east. A storm isn't far off. I can smell the moisture in the air, a fetid, living thing. Isolated drops fall, licking at my hands, my face, my dress. The guests squawk in surprise, turn their palms up to the sky as if questioning it, and dash for cover.
"It's starting to rain."
Felicity stares straight ahead, says nothing. "You'll get wet," I say, jumping up, angling toward the shelter of the school. Felicity makes no move to come inside. So I go on, leave her there, even though I don't feel right about it. When I reach the door, I can still see her, sitting on the wet bench, getting drenched. She's opened up her father's note to the wet, watching it erase every pen mark on the soggy page, letting the rain wash them both clean as new skin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The evening is the most dismal yet. Cold, hard rain falls in sheets from the sky, letting us know that summer is over for good now. A clammy chill seeps into our bones, makes fingers, backs, and hearts ache. Thunder rumbles closer and closer, competing with the steady drum of the rain. The occasional flash of lightning streaks the sky, light spreading down and out in a smoky crackle. It bounces around the mouth of the cave.