The Broken Girls(95)

“You know I’m no good at these things,” CeCe said, pushing the covers back on her bed and obediently sliding into it. “When Katie cheated on that test, I nearly passed out.”

Katie leaned toward the room’s only mirror, smoothing and adjusting her hair, and watched the corner of her mouth turn up. CeCe always got cold feet, but she always did as well as the rest of them. “You were perfect,” she said to CeCe, “and you know it.”

CeCe flushed; praise from Katie always pleased her, even after all this time. Still, she had to whine a little. “This feels like lying.”

“It isn’t lying.” Roberta looked up from her book and directed her gaze at CeCe, lying in the bed. “We talked about this for months. It isn’t lying if it’s making someone happy. If it’s making all of us happy.”

CeCe bit her lip and looked back at Roberta. “Not Katie,” she argued. “She doesn’t get to be happy.”

So that was what was bothering her. Katie should have known. She laughed, touched despite herself. “I’ll be happiest of all,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, not completely; her heart was pounding in anticipation and a queer kind of excitement. She was ready. Was that the same as happy? She didn’t know, and in this moment she didn’t particularly care. She had just turned sixteen. What mattered was that she got what she wanted.

“It’ll be fine,” Roberta said, her voice flat.

“If it works,” CeCe said.

Katie leaned closer to the mirror, smoothing her eyebrows and lightly biting her lips. They weren’t allowed makeup at Idlewild—absolutely not—and part of her wished she had some, at least some dark eyeliner and mascara like she’d seen on movie stars, but she was afraid it would look too obvious. She definitely needed to look like a schoolgirl. “It’ll work,” she said.

CeCe lay back in the bed, pulling the covers up over her ample chest. Katie caught Roberta’s gaze in the mirror’s reflection, and they traded a look of understanding.

I’m going to do this.

Yes, you are, and we both know why.

It’s going to work. I’m going to make it.

Roberta’s gaze softened, the lines around her eyes easing, and she smiled at Katie in the mirror.

There was a knock on the door. “Ladies!” Lady Loon said. “It’s Family Visit Day. Cecelia, you have a visitor.”

Katie smoothed her expression into one of concern and opened the door. “Oh, no, Miss London,” she said. “Are you sure?”

Lady Loon looked frazzled, tendrils of hair escaping from the bun on top of her head. “Of course I’m sure, Katie,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s just that CeCe isn’t feeling very well.”

Katie stepped back, and Lady Loon stepped into the room, looking at CeCe on the bed. CeCe moaned a little. She looked positively green, probably from terror, which added to the effect.

“What is the matter?” Lady Loon asked her.

“Oh,” CeCe said, licking her lips as if they were dry. “It’s my stomach, Miss London. Is it my father who has come to see me?”

Lady Loon clenched her hands, her knuckles going white. “No, it’s—your brother, I believe.” She hated saying the words, Katie could see, keeping her face straight. Lady Loon did not like referring to CeCe’s bastard status, or her brother’s, which was what they wanted.

“Oh, no,” CeCe groaned, quite believably. “He came all this way. I can’t. I just can’t.”

“It’s very rude to turn him away,” Roberta commented calmly from over her textbook. “Can you talk to him, Miss London?”

Lady Loon’s eyes went wide. She looked positively horrified. “Me? Ladies, I am certainly not going to talk to that man.” An illegitimate bastard, she didn’t say.

“He came so far,” CeCe wailed again.

“Maybe one of us can go,” Roberta said.

“Maybe,” Katie said, as if this had just occurred to her. “Roberta, why don’t you go?”

Roberta frowned. “I have a Latin test tomorrow, and I need to study.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Why study?”

That made Lady Loon jump, just as it was supposed to. “Of course she needs to study, Katie Winthrop,” she said sharply. “And since you seem to be at leisure, you are to go speak to Cecelia’s brother immediately and explain the situation to him.”

“Me?” Katie put her lip out just a little, petulant. “I don’t want to go.”

“You’ll do as you’re told, young lady. Now go.”

Katie huffed a put-upon sigh and stomped out of the room. She didn’t look back.

He was sitting at a table in the dining hall, waiting. Before he noticed her, Katie took stock. He was twenty-one, according to CeCe. Dark hair slicked back. Nice suit, pressed shirt. A narrow face, gray eyes. He sat politely, no fidgeting. His hands were folded on the table in front of him, and she saw that they were elegant and masculine, the fingers long, the knuckles well formed. Nice hands, she thought, gathering her courage. I can deal with a man with nice hands.

She glanced to see that no one was looking. Then she folded the waist of her skirt with a quick twist of her wrist, making the length climb an inch above her knees, and then another. She unbuttoned the Idlewild cardigan but didn’t take it off, letting it fall open just so, so that he would be able to glimpse the stretched blouse beneath. Then she squared her shoulders and walked toward him.