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“Fee!” I squeal in embarrassment. But it is too late. We have their full attention now, and there is nowhere to run. The race forgotten, their boat floats on the river as they call out and wave to us young ladies under the bluff.
“You, sir,” she says, pointing to the unfortunate fellow. “My dear friend here is far too modest to make a confession of her admiration for you. Therefore, I’ve no choice but to make a case on her behalf.”
“Felicity!” I choke out. I dart behind the rock.
The poor fellow stands in the boat and I see, sadly, that he is as wide as his face—less a man, more a barrel in trousers. “I should like to make the lady’s acquaintance, if she would be so kind as to show herself.”
“Do you hear that, Gemma? The gentleman wishes to make your acquaintance.” Felicity tugs on my arm in an attempt to get me to my feet.
“No!” I whisper, pulling back. This foolishness has gone far enough.
“I’m afraid she’s rather shy, sir. Perhaps if you were to woo her.”
He recites a sonnet that compares me to a summer day. “Thou art more lovely and more temperate,” he intones. On that score, he is sadly misguided. “Tell me your name, fair lady!”
It is out of my mouth before I can stop myself: “Miss Felicity Worthington of Mayfair.”
“Admiral Worthington’s daughter?”
“The same!” I shout.
Now it is Felicity who pulls on my arm, begging me to stop. In their zeal to speak to us, two other fellows leap up, upsetting the boat’s delicate balance. With a shout, they topple into the cold river, to the amusement of everyone.
Laughing like lunatics, we race away down the side of the bluff and take cover behind tall hedges. Our laughter is contagious: Each time the giggles subside, one of us begins anew, and it starts all over again. At last we lie on the grass, feeling the late-March breeze sweep over us as it carries along the merry shouts of the party in the distance.
“That was horrid of us, wasn’t it?” Ann says, still giggling.
“But merry,” I answer. Overhead the clouds are full and promising.
A note of worry creeps into Ann’s voice. “Do you think God shall punish us for such wickedness?”
Felicity makes a diamond of her thumbs and forefingers. She holds them up to the sun as if she can catch it. “If God has nothing better to do than punish schoolgirls for a bit of tomfoolery, then I’ve no use for God.”
“Felicity…” Ann starts to scold but stops. “And do you really think we can change the course of our lives with magic, Gemma?”
“We’re going to try. Already I feel more alive. Awake. Don’t you?”
Ann smiles. “When it’s inside me, it’s as if I can do anything.”
“Anything,” Felicity murmurs. She props herself up on her side, a beautiful S of a girl. “And what about Pip? What might we do for her?”
I think of Pippa in the water, thrashing about, unable to cross. “I don’t know. I don’t know if the magic can change her course. They say—”
“They say,” Felicity snorts in derision. “We say. You hold all the magic now, Gemma. Surely we can make changes in the realms, as well. For Pippa, too.”
I hear Gorgon’s words in my head: She need not fall. A ladybug struggles on her back. I right her with a finger, and she toddles through the grass before getting stuck again.
“There’s so little I know about the realms and the magic and the Order—only what people tell me. It is time we found out for ourselves what is possible and what is not,” I say.
Felicity nods. “Well done.”
We lie back in the grass and let the sun warm our winter-weary faces, which is a form of magic in itself.
“I wish it could be like this always,” Ann says, sighing.
“Perhaps it can,” I say.
We lie close together, holding hands, and watch the clouds, those happy ladies in their billowing skirts, as they dance and curtsy and become something else entirely.
