Page 52 of A Rare Find

“Don’t be absurd,” she said, stopped, and burst into tears. Georgie folded her into a tight embrace. She muffled her wet face on their shoulder, clinging to them, the release of pent-up fear and misery and shame so ferocious she didn’t care that she was making a fool of herself.

The storm of violent weeping passed quickly.

She stepped back, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She meant for dripping all over them, and also for Sir Graham bringing up their mother’s tragic death, for their mother’s tragic death itself, for Papa and the Anglo-Saxons, for everything, and most of all, for allowing them to believe that she thought friendship with them impossible because she couldn’t like them, when really, she was frightened that she could. Too much. Ever since they’d kissed her, she’d been possessed by the urge to feel their mouth on hers. She felt it now, standing before them, wrung out, with the taste of salt on her lips.

“No need.” They shook their head.

She set off, the wind cooling her cheeks, drying them. The moor kept rising, rucked up here and there by strangely shaped boulders. She climbed, and climbed, and when the ground leveled, she turned, scanning the hills.

The village lay below, in the tree-scattered valley.

She looked over as Georgie approached, then away.

“Can we still try?” she asked. “Being friends.”

“Friends who like each other?” They were suddenly beside her.

“You said it wasn’t impossible.” Bilberry bushes grew at her feet, flowering pink. A bird’s warble was the only reply.

She lifted her gaze. They were looking back at her, narrowly, the black of their lashes startling against those crystalline irises.

“No,” they said. “It’s not impossible.”

She drew in a breath, some strange force thrumming through her. It took all her strength to turn from them, to turn north.

The North Pole. Hilda and Matilda. Her sisters were disappearing more irrevocably every moment.

She came around a boulder, and there, like magic, in the near distance, gray heaps of stone resolved into ruins. Ragged bailey. Square tower.

It was a castle. Norman, but it might as well have been timeless, a fairy-tale figment.

She went weak with relief. Was there a more tempting destination on earth for wayward children?

She hurried forward, Georgie falling into step with her.

“We’re friends, then,” they said, with evident satisfaction. “Should we apologize for past offenses? So we can start afresh? I’m sorry I pestered you. It was because I wanted you to play, and thought I could badger you into it. And then it was comeuppance for your unbearable haughtiness.”

“That’s your apology?” She hit upon a wide footpath, perhaps a coffin road, which meant fewer spiny plants tearing at her skirts, and sped up, putting distance between them.

They closed it quickly. “There’s more.”

“Spare me the rest, please.”

They didn’t. “You aren’t unbearably haughty. I misjudged you. You’re a bit uppish, it’s true—”

She glared.

“But you’re also a bit impish,” they went on, undeterred, “and that makes up for it. Impish, or maybe Elf-ish. Either way, I’m incredibly glad your father hasn’t succeeded in stamping it out. I’ve mocked your devotion to old books and old bones. But you’re just as devoted to your sisters—admirably so. If I get the French to their Latin, I’ll feel lucky indeed.”

Gratification unfurled inside her. She had to fight a very silly smile.

“Oui,” she managed. The sudden brightness of her mood was two parts twins—she was certain they were at that castle—and one part Georgie.

Her friend, Georgie Redmayne.

“And I like the way you howl,” they added. “You’re magnificent at a picnic. And—”

She grabbed their arm, shocking them into silence.