A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(83)

“Gemma, wake up.” Ann gives me a little shake. My room comes into focus by degrees—the ceiling, the gray light at the window, the worn wooden floor. Vague recollections of last night come to me—the realms, the runes, the huntress’s strange expression, the four of us stumbling home from the caves afterward—but it’s mostly a fog in my head. I’ve lost all sense of time and direction.

“What time is it?” I mumble.

“Time for breakfast.”

It can’t be, I think, rubbing my head.

“Well, it is,” she answers.

That’s odd. “How did you know what I was thinking?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says, wide-eyed. “I heard it in my head.”

“The magic . . . ,” I say, sitting straight up.

Felicity and Pippa burst into the room.

“Look at my dress,” Pippa says, beaming. There’s a large grass stain on the hem.

“Bad luck, Pip,” I say.

She’s still smiling like an idiot. She closes her eyes and in seconds the stain is gone.

“You made it disappear,” Ann says in wonder.

Pippa’s smile shines. She twirls her skirt this way and that, letting it catch the light.

“So we’ve done it,” I say. “We’ve taken the magic out of the realms.” And everything is fine.



I am dressed in record-setting time. We trip down the hall and the stairs like a breeze, whispering to each other in half-spoken sentences that somehow are finished inside our heads. We’re so alive with our discovery that we can’t stop giggling.

A figurine of a little cupid sits inside an alcove under the stairs.

“I want to have a bit of fun,” Pippa says, pulling us to a stop. She closes her eyes, waves her hands over the cherubic plaster boy, and then he’s sporting rather large breasts.

“Oh, that’s awful, Pip!” Felicity says. We dissolve in laughter.

“Think of the redecorating possibilities!” Pippa says, in hysterics.

Brigid is bustling down the hall toward us.

“Great heavens, fix it quick!” I whisper.

We’re falling all over ourselves trying to hide the thing.

“I can’t do it under pressure!” Pippa says in a panic.

“Here now, wot’s all this fuss about?” Brigid puts her hands on her hips. “Wot you got there? Move aside and lemme see.”

Reluctantly, we obey.

“Wot on earth is this?” Brigid holds up a statuette of the world’s ugliest cancan dancer, formerly a cupid with breasts.

“It’s the latest from Paris,” Felicity says coolly.

Brigid puts it back in the alcove. “Belongs on the rubbish heap, if you ask me.”

She moves on and we’re all giggles again.

“It was the best I could manage,” Pippa says. “Under the circumstances.”



Every head turns when we arrive for breakfast and take our places at the long table. Cecily can’t stop staring at Ann.

“Ann, is that a new dress?” she asks between bites of her bacon. We’ve come late so there’s only porridge.

“No,” Ann answers.

“Did you change your hair, then?”

Ann shakes her head.

“Well, it’s an improvement, whatever it is.” This makes the rest of the girls titter. Cecily goes right back to her bacon.

Felicity puts her spoon down hard. “You’re very rude, Cecily. Did you know that? I think it would be best if you just didn’t say anything else today.”

Cecily opens her mouth to reprimand Felicity, but no words come. She can barely speak above a whisper. Her hands fly to her throat.

“Cecily, what’s the matter?” Elizabeth hands her some water.

“Cat’s got her tongue,” Felicity says, smirking.

“Fee, you have to give Cecily her voice back at some point,” Pippa chides as we make our way to French.

Felicity nods. “I know. But you must admit—it is an improvement.”



Mademoiselle LeFarge has a particularly sadistic smile on her face when we arrive. It doesn’t bode well.

“Bonjour, mes filles. Today we will have a conversation to test your French.”

A conversation class. I am the absolute worst at this, and I wonder how long I can make myself unnoticeable.

Elizabeth raises a hand. “Mademoiselle, our Cecily has lost her voice.”

“Has she? That was very sudden, Mademoiselle Temple.”

Cecily tries again to speak but it’s useless. Ann gives her a small smile and Cecily looks positively terrified. She buries her nose in her book.

“Very well,” Mademoiselle LeFarge says. “Mademoiselle Doyle, you shall go first.”

I’m in for it now. Please, please, please let me keep up. My stomach is aflutter. This may be the day that Mademoiselle LeFarge gives me the boot down to the lower classes. She bats a question about the Seine into my court, waits for my response. When I open my mouth, we are all astonished. I’m speaking French like a Parisian, and I find I know a great deal about the Seine. And France’s geography. Its monarchy. The Revolution. I’m feeling so clever that I want to go on for the whole of the period, but finally Mademoiselle LeFarge recovers from her shock, breaking her own rules in the process.