Once in dry clothes, I meet Greer downstairs for a late luncheon, both of us having missed the rest of the regatta party.
I know she didn’t hop into that carriage for my sake, but I still thank her, only to break the silence.
She plucks a sugar cube out of a porcelain bowl with delicate silver tongs, and an expression that might be shame comes over her. But I can’t be sure. I don’t know this new face of hers. I’m struck with the feeling that I haven’t known Greer in a very long time.
“Remember when we used to hide in the wardrobe during cotillion class?” she asks softly.
We’d tuck ourselves behind piles of fabric and whisper about a made-up land where girls didn’t have to learn to sew and we could explore glaciers and volcanoes and forests on horseback. Her horse was snow-white, and she told me that mine was smaller, with brown spots, but in my head it was always golden. They had names, but I can’t remember them now.
If it was her governess who found us, we’d be scolded. If it was her mother, we’d be slapped.
“I do remember,” I whisper back.
I remember everything. I remember everything so much I am being crushed under the weight of it all. If I weren’t so horribly defined by everything I’ve ever loved and lost, maybe I could be the kind of person who moved through life easily. I’m only eighteen, but I’m beginning to understand what my mother meant when she said,Remembering is heavy. It lasts so long.
I think, now, of Greer’s mother dragging her up to the dais and taking the knife to her hand the day of the Pact Parade.
I look at Greer and feel all that ugly resentment and love tangling together into a mess I can’t unknot.
I hate myself for how much I hate her. Why is it always like that with me? Why is it I can only hate people if I love them first?
“Do you want to win?” I ask her.
“He seems kind.”
“He does,” I agree. “But do you want to win?”
Her teeth worry her full bottom lip. She winces when she bites too hard and draws blood. “I have to win.”
It’s such a Greer answer. “You could say that’s true for any of us.”
She shakes her head sadly. “If you lose, at least your mother will look you in the eye again. Mine has promised I will be disowned.”
Knowing Greer’s mother, I doubt it’s a figure of speech.
We eat the rest of the meal in the silence of two people who no longer know how to talk to each other.
I’m dipping a dessert spoon into a carafe of cold pudding when she clears her throat.
“Do you remember Joseph?” she asks.
I dig through my memories. “The cook’s son? The one we used to chase around the walled garden?”
She’s got a far-off look in her eyes, one I can’t read. “He was kind.”
“I suppose so. Do you still see him?”
“He works in the stables now.”
“Greer,” I say more forcefully, and she blinks a few times, coming back to herself. “Greer, do you still see him?” We both know I’m asking more than that.
She takes another sip of tea, and her eyes go remote. “Of course I don’t.”
Sneaking out is easier than I thought it would be. Faith snores the moment her head hits the pillow, and Viscountess Bolingbroke takes to bed promptly at ten p.m.
Starlight is reflected in the long, rectangular pond runningdown the length of the garden, and I’m shivering as I wait. It’s been an unseasonably cool spring, and even my thickest cloak isn’t helping much.
I jump at every long shadow, every rustle of leaves in the dark, terrified I’ll find a snake, or a swan with razor teeth, or Queen Mor herself.
