Yes, Miss MacMillan, I see you there. Walk on. Walk, I said. We are gentlewomen, one and all. We do not rush, but let us not keep the good reverend waiting!”
My tablemates had nearly all left. Mittie smirked at me before moving off; Sophia paused to dab her mouth with her napkin, then offered me her shark’s smile. “A pity you arrived so late. I do hope you had enough to eat.”
“Yes, quite.” I smiled back at her.
• • •
The lovely thing about brown, and about brown twill in particular, isn’t merely that it doesn’t show dirt. It also disguises grease spots quite well.
Although I admit the pockets of my skirt did smell suspiciously like bacon until I thought to rinse them out again.
• • •
The morning sky had brightened into blue velveteen, and, surely only because a pair of teachers strolled behind us, Sophia and her minions let me tag at their heels out of the school and across the green to the chapel.
The sun felt warm on my head, a pleasing heat after the stony-cool inside air. My shadow strode long and rippling over the grass, lapping at the edges of the others, never quite cutting in.
I was deliberately lagging behind. I could not seem to stop gawking up at the castle.
I supposed us to be now on the opposite side from my tower; nothing around me looked familiar. I couldn’t see the bridge to the mainland or anything of the sea. In fact, I could no longer even hear it and wondered how large the island could be.
There was no question that Iverson itself was truly massive, enormous dun stones scrubbed pale near the top and blotted with lichen and moss along the base. It went on and on, a big squatting hulk of limestone, gripping its solitary fist of land fast against all comers.
The grounds seemed velveteen, too, perfect as a painting, with clean-cut grass angled sharply around flower beds, tidy shrubs and roses and fruit trees, all precisely arranged. Even the hedges bore the brunt of human design: I realized that they were shaped as animals, all of them, giant rabbits and lions and unicorns scattered about. Everything contained, everything pruned and clever, until the rough woods took over, real nature at last, encircling us.
I caught sight of Mr. Hastings on his knees by one of the beds, a spade in hand. Then the winds turned, fingering through my hair, and that was when I heard Jesse. His music.
I missed a step, glancing all around me. One of the girls a few paces ahead—Malinda? Caroline?—gave the girl next to her a poke with her elbow.
“Oh, my,” she said, loud enough to carry. “Look there, Mal.”
So the elbower was Caroline. Malinda slapped her back with a slim hand.
“Stop it!”
“You know you’re desperate to see him!”
The entire cluster of girls slowed, allowing me closer. Past their shoulders I glimpsed him at the distant brink of the woods, loose-shirted and fluent. He breached a hill and strode toward Mr. Hastings without glancing over at the bunching mass of us. Sunlight kissed him from head to toe; he was a figure of splendid radiance.
“Jesse’s your beau, Malinda!” crowed Lillian.
“Yes!” That was Beatrice, bright and malicious. “Come to pay a call!”
“Stop it, I say! Stop it, all of you!” Malinda’s voice had taken on an edge of panic. “He’s not deaf and mute! He’ll hear!”
“If only he could speak to you! He’d tell you about how he wants to whisk you away to his horrible little cottage!”
“And have his way with you!”
“And marry you and have lots and lots of little mute babies, just like him!”
“Jesse’s not mute,” I said, before I could stop myself.
I had put my foot in it, it seemed. All the girls paused and turned to me. Malinda’s cheeks were red as apples; Sophia arched a single plucked brow.
“What did you say?”
I decided to plunge on. “He’s not mute.” It occurred to me belatedly that mute might be their private code for something else—dirty or forbidden or so savory for a stable boy—but Lady Sophia only raised the other brow.
“And you know this because, what, in your sole night here, he’s already spoken to you?”
“Yes,” I said.
Sophia released a melodic laugh, one that everyone but Malinda immediately copied.
“Impoverished and a liar,” Sophia said to them, and shook her head. “Dear me. Not a propitious start for you, Eleanore.”
“I’m not—”
“Jesse Holms doesn’t speak,” interrupted Lillian. “Not to you or to anyone else. It’s why he can’t sign