A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(58)

Do not fret about us. I’m sure my shortness of breath is nothing at all. We shall see you in two weeks’ time along with Tom, who sends his love and wishes to know if you’ve found him a suitable wife yet, though I feel certain he said this in jest.

Fondly,

Grandmama

I close my eyes and try to erase it all. “Yes, they’re coming.”

“You don’t sound terribly excited about it.”

I shrug. “I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Our mysterious Gemma,” Felicity says, appraising me a bit too closely for comfort. “We’ll find out what you’re hiding from us yet.”

Pippa joins in. “A crazy aunt in the attic, perhaps.”

“Or a sexually depraved fiend who preys on young girls.” Felicity waggles her eyebrows. Pippa screeches in mock horror but she’s titillated by the very idea.

“You forgot the hunchback,” I add with a false laugh. I’m widening the distance between us, sending them off to another shore.

“A sexually depraved hunchback!” Pippa squeals. She is most definitely recovered. We all laugh. The woods swallow our sounds in echoing gulps, but we’ve startled the younger girls across the lake. In their crisp white pinafores, they seem like misplaced loons dotting the landscape. They blink at us, then turn their heads and resume their chatter.

The September sky is uncertain. Gray and threatening one moment. A patchy, promising blue the next. Felicity lays her head back against the grassy bank. Her hair splays out and around the center of her pale face like a mandala. “Do you suppose we’ll have any fun at Lady Wellstone’s Spiritualist meeting tonight?”

“My father says Spiritualism is nothing but quackery,” Pippa says. She’s rocking the rowboat slightly with her bare foot. “What is it exactly again?”

“It’s the belief that the spirits can speak to us from beyond through the use of a medium like Madame Romanoff,” Felicity says.

We both sit straight up, thinking the same thing.

“Do you think . . . ,” she starts.

“. . . that she could contact Sarah or Mary for us?” I finish. Why hasn’t this thought occurred to me before?

“Brilliant!” Pippa’s face clouds over. “But how will you get to her?”

She’s right, of course. Madame Romanoff would never call on a pack of schoolgirls. We’ve got about as much chance of communing with the dead as we do of sitting in Parliament.

“I’ll do the asking, if you’ll help me get to Madame Romanoff,” I say.

“Leave it all to me,” Felicity says, grinning.

“If we leave it to you, we’ll end up in the soup, I fear,” Pippa giggles.

Felicity is up, quick as a hare. With nimble fingers she unties Pippa’s rowboat and sends it out onto the lake with a shove. Pippa scrambles to grab the rope but it’s too late. She’s moving out, ripping open the surface of the water.

“Pull me back!”

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” I say.

“She needs to remember her place,” Felicity says by way of an answer. But she tosses an oar after her anyway. It falls short, bobs on the surface.

“Help me pull her back,” I say. The loon girls are standing now, watching us in amusement. They enjoy seeing us behaving badly.

Felicity plops down onto the grass and laces a boot.

With a sigh, I call out to Pippa. “Can you reach it?”

She stretches her arm around the side of the boat for the oar just out of reach. She’s not going to make it, but she stretches further to try. The boat tips precariously. Pippa falls in with a yelp and a splash. Felicity and the younger girls erupt in laughter. But I’m remembering the brief vision I had just before Pippa’s seizure, remembering the chilling sounds of splashing and Pippa’s strangled cry from somewhere under murky water.

“Pippa!” I scream, rushing into the heart-stopping cold of the lake. My hand finds a leg. I’ve got her, and I pull up with all my strength.

“Grab hold!” I sputter, kicking for shore with my arm around her waist.

She fights me. “Gemma, what are you doing? Let me go!” She breaks free. The water rises only to her shoulders. “I can walk from here, thank you,” she says, with indignation, trying to ignore the giggles and finger-pointing on the other side of the lake.

I feel ridiculous. I distinctly remember an impression of Pippa struggling under the water during my vision. I suppose I could have been so panicked, I don’t remember things clearly. At any rate, here we are, both safe and sound except for the dripping. And that’s all that matters.

“I’m going to strangle you, Felicity,” Pippa mutters as she balances unsteadily in the water. I throw my arms around her, relieved that she’s all right, and nearly pull her under again.

“What are you doing?” she shrieks, slapping at me as if I were a spider.

“Sorry,” I say. “Sorry.”

“I’m surrounded by lunatics,” she growls, crawling onto the grass. “Now, where’s Felicity got to?”

The bank is empty. It’s as if she’s vanished. But then I see her disappearing into the woods, daisy crown perched on her head. She walks casually and easily away without so much as a backward glance to see if we’re all right.