The Sweet Far Thing

Page 137

Felicity makes a face. “To what?”
I sigh. “I don’t know. But one of them seemed as if it might have been the East Wing tower. And in the very front of the book was a room that I keep seeing in my visions.”
“Do you think that room was once part of the East Wing, then?” Fee asks.
“Oh,” I say, deflating. “I’d not thought of that. If so, it’s long gone.”
“Well, let’s have a look,” Felicity says.
“We can’t. Miss McCleethy threw it in the oven,” I explain.
Felicity’s mouth opens in outrage. “That cost us four shillings.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And tonight’s meal shall taste strangely of book.” She sticks the tip of her foil into the floor and scrapes a small F there.
“There’s something not right about it,” I say, pacing the room and nibbling my fingernails, a habit I should stop, and will. Tomorrow. “I don’t trust McCleethy. She’s hiding something for certain. Do you know what she said to me? She referred to Wilhelmina Wyatt in the past tense. What if McCleethy knows Wilhelmina is dead? And if she does, how does she know it?”
“Dr. Van Ripple said Wilhelmina was betrayed by a friend,” Felicity adds. “Could it have been McCleethy?”
I chew my nail, shredding it to ribbons. It hurts, and I am instantly sorry I’ve done it. “We must speak with Dr. Van Ripple again. He may know something more. He may know where the dagger is hidden. Are you for it?”
A wicked grin spreads across Felicity’s mouth. She touches her foil to my shoulders as if knighting me. “All for one and one for all.” Her expression changes suddenly. “Why do you think she did it?”
“McCleethy or Miss Wyatt?” I ask.
“Ann.” She leans on the hilt of her foil. “Freedom was within her grasp. Why turn away from it?”
“Perhaps it was one thing to yearn for it and another to hold it.”
“That’s ridiculous.” With a scoff, she sprawls across the chair again, one foot on the floor, the other leg hanging over the arm.
“I don’t know, then,” I say with no small irritation.
“I’ll not turn my back on happiness. I can promise you that.” She jabs at the air with her foil. “Gemma?”
“Yes?” I say with a heavy sigh.
“What will happen to Pip? When I was one with the tree, I saw…”
“Saw what?”
“I saw her alive and happy. I saw the two of us in Paris, the Seine glittering like a dream. And she was laughing, as she did before. How could I see that if…Do you think it could be true? That she could come back?”
She rolls her head toward me, and I can see the hope in her eyes. I want to tell her yes, but something deep inside me says no. I don’t think it could ever be this way.
“I think there are some laws that cannot be broken,” I say as gently as I can, “no matter how much we wish they could be.”
Felicity draws in the air with her blade. “You think, or you know?”
“I know if it were possible, I should bring my mother back tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
“Because,” I say, searching for the right words. “I know she’s gone. Just as I know that time when we were all together in India is gone, and I shan’t get it back.”
“But if the magic is changing—if everything is changing, then perhaps…” She trails off, and I don’t try to correct her. Sometimes the power in a perhaps is enough to sustain us, and I shan’t be the one to take it from her.
I can hear Brigid’s off-key warbling in the hall, and it gives me an idea. “Fee, if one wanted to know about a certain inhabitant of a house, a former schoolgirl perhaps, where would one turn for the most trustworthy account?”
Smiling, Fee bends the foil in her hands. “Why, I should think the servants would have that sort of knowledge.”
I throw open the door and peek my head out. “Brigid, might we have a word?”
She scowls. “Wot you doin’ in there? Emily’s cleaned it just yesterday. I won’t ’ave it set to ruin.”
“Of course not,” I say, biting my lip in a fashion I hope passes for wistful. “It’s only that Felicity and I are heartbroken now that Ann’s gone. We know you loved her, too. Will you sit with us for a moment?”
I’m a bit ashamed of twisting Brigid’s sympathies this way—even more so when it works. “Oh, luv. I miss ’er, too. She’ll be fine, though. Just like ’er old Brigid.” She barrels past, giving me a warm pat on the shoulder, and I couldn’t possibly feel more deplorable.