“Ah,” he replied, his smile sliding into sincerity. “Because it is true or because it isn’t?”
“A question without an answer,” she said with a shrug and a sigh. “What did you need to speak to me about? Oh, is it about thepicnic? Matthew said you were to be told to attend, but he said it to Mr. Beck, not to me.”
“Yes, I know,” Roland replied with a dry chuckle and a roll of his eyes. “No, not about that. I wanted to inquire after that thimble I saw you toying with a day or two ago. You do not, by chance, still have it? I was hoping I could convince you to give it to me next.”
“Oh, Mr. Reed,” said Rosalind, with the tone of a schoolmistress who’s just had to inform a small child that his father is not, in fact, the king of England. “The rule is that it must never go to you.”
He narrowed his eyes, images of Vix flashing in his mind. “Oh, is it?” he replied. “That is a new rule.”
“Yes, I gathered it was something that was created specifically for this little pocket of time. In any event, I do not have it anymore.”
“Because Vix does,” he guessed, frowning. “Again.”
“No, not Vix,” said Rosalind, blinking those big hazel eyes. “Mae has it now. Oh, but you must excuse me. My class is starting.”
For a moment, he just stood there on the landing, his blood gone muddy and glopping in his veins as the impact of what she’d just said settled over him. It took a moment, a moment Roland thought was more than reasonable, to properly understand it.
Then he tightened his mouth and turned to the stairs in search of Mae Casper.
He found her stitching up a cut on a young girl’s inner arm, just inside the crook of her elbow, with that blasted handsome bastard Dr. Ravi looming over her shoulder, basically resting his chin on it as she did so.
“You see?” said Ravi. “It isn’t so bad. It’s like Miss Casper is turning you into a beautiful tapestry like they have at the palace.”
The little girl giggled and so did her mother.
Roland frowned.
He would never admit it, but the odd exclamation in a female voice of“Cor! Look at’im!”was now ambiguously directed, and he didn’t love that change.
It wasn’t that he was vain. Of course not.
It was that he was specifically threatened by Ravi Govindacharya.
He was man enough to admit that much.
She glanced over her shoulder at the doctor and flashed him her dimples, setting flame to the already simmering heat in Roland’s chest. She snipped the end of the thread and touched his arm as she passed him to put her supplies back into the closet, seemingly volleying the medical care to the man as he stepped forward to explain care and healing time to the mother and daughter.
She dropped the needles in her basin of discarded sharps and snapped the roll of black thread back into place before bending forward to stow it in the cupboard.
When she closed the cupboard door, she found Roland standing behind it.
Sadly, she did not startle.
She didn’t even look surprised. “Mr. Reed,” she said.
He frowned again. “Do not call me Mr. Reed.”
She blinked, a flicker of those dimples appearing for him. Or at him, in any event. “Roland,” she corrected.
He nodded in approval and dropped his shoulder against the closed wooden door of the cupboard. He crossed his arms over his chest, barring her visual line to Ravi. “You have the thimble,” he accused, as casually as he could manage.
“I do,” she replied. “How did you know that?”
“I know everything,” he replied, examining his fingernails to give himself something else to look at. “What are you planning to do with it, Mae?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” she told him, dimples deepening enough that he dropped his hand in annoyance and put his focus back on her face. “I just wanted a turn with it.”
“And I wonder what the cost was,” he murmured, leaning closer. “You understand, don’t you, that you’ve gone and crossed another line? I think this time you’ve done it on purpose.”
