I spend the next few hours berating myself for not fighting back, for not telling Blair and Poppy that nothing in this world would keep me from seeing Poppy triumph at her show. I hate that I let Blair win so easily. I’m in the library, unsuccessfully trying to concentrate on a book, when I hear someone approaching. Charlie is standing in the doorway.
“How did she do?” I ask him before he even has a chance to close the door behind him.
“She placed first, of course. Looked wonderful out there.”
Hopping off the windowsill, I let out a sigh of relief and smile, but he doesn’t.
“Where were you?” he asks, stepping forward. “Blair said you wanted the night off. But you were even more excited about that show than Poppy was.”
“I know.” I try to keep my mouth shut, but I can’t help but admit at least a little bit of the truth. “Blair wanted time to bond with Poppy.”
He nods, though the confusion doesn’t leave his eyes. He picks up the book I’d been reading and examines the cover. “A history of the Black Death?” he asks softly. “So, light reading, then.”
“Blair told me she wanted to bond with her future sister-in-law.”
Charlie freezes, though his gaze is still intent on the book in his hand. I don’t think he’s even breathing. I know I’m not.
“Are you going to marry her?” I whisper before I can stop myself.
He turns toward me, setting the book down. The torture is plain in his green eyes, and suddenly his hands are on my shoulders, drawing me to him. For one dizzying moment, I let my eyes fall to his lips, and a strange buzzing sensation fills my entire body.
I pull my eyes back up to his to find that torture still twisting through them. He moves one hand from my shoulder to my cheekbone, brushing a finger along the line of it, then dipping that finger below my chin and lifting it up further.
My lips are a breath away from his, and I can’t breathe.
All of a sudden, I feel myself stepping back, pulling away from his touch. Someone gasps, and I’m pretty sure it’s me. I spin and run out of the room, and he says nothing to stop me.
I nearly kissed him. He nearly kissed me. He wants me, I think as I hurtle myself up the stairs toward my room. The thought makes me glow.
But he’s still going to marry her. I knew it when I saw the apology and torment in his eyes. I couldn’t let him kiss me, not when I know how much more it would hurt when he still chooses her.
• • •
Charlie and I start to play the avoidance game with each other once again. I begin to grab breakfast from the kitchen in the morning, making excuses to Poppy so I can evade the dining room. I keep to my room during the day, reading books in bed instead of on the library windowsill. When Poppy and I study in her room, I scamper down the hall past the closed door of his bedroom, where he seems to be hiding away with his computers.
In a few days he heads back to Glasgow again, and I try to feel glad about that. I can’t think clearly when we’re in the same house, so maybe when he’s gone I’ll finally get my feelings under control. I haven’t been able to sleep at night, knowing that he’s only a floor below, in bed with her. The whispers continue, and some nights the voices are so vivid, as if they’re speaking right into my ear. But even if they were to disappear, the whispers in my head would be loud enough to keep me awake. I’m so exhausted that my eyelids feel permanently heavy, and I’ve started falling asleep in the library during the day, dozing in the winter sun on the window seat.
A week after Charlie leaves for Glasgow, I’m reading on that window seat when Blair strides in. We haven’t spoken a word to each other in about two weeks, but today it seems as if she’s seeking me out. The curtain is open, so I know she sees me.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but have you seen Poppy?” she says. “I wanted to invite her out on another shopping trip.”
“She’s riding Copperfield.”
“Oh, of course,” she says, pausing and looking at me before continuing, “You should have seen her at the show. I can’t stop thinking about it! It was as if she was born on a horse.”
“I wish I could have seen her,” I say quietly, trying to tamp down the anger boiling under the surface.
A shadow of a smile crosses her lips, though she does her best to hide it. “Well, if you see her before I do—”
I can’t help it. “I won’t let you do that to me again, you know,” I say. My voice is deadly cool, and I can’t believe I just said that. But now that the words are out there, now that she’s heard them, I can’t take them back.
“Do what?” she asks. The polished veneer has been rubbed right out of her voice, revealing only bitterness underneath.
I stand and turn around to face her. “I won’t let you shove me out of the way so you can be closer to Poppy. So that you can be closer to Charlie.”
“Who says you’re in my way?” she asks, tossing her hair behind her shoulder and crossing her arms. “Do you actually think that Charles would ever choose you over me? The shabby governess over the mother of his child? Do you think he even notices you?”
It’s been so obvious that Blair hates me, but I still can’t believe it’s out in the open. As mad as I am, at her and about this whole situation, I’m also relieved.
“I know he notices me.” My voice sounds even, confident, but inside I’m shaking.
“You’re delusional,” she scoffs.
Her words hit me like a slap, but I try not to flinch. “And you won’t win,” I snarl. “Whatever game you’re playing, you’re going to lose.”
“We’ll see about that,” she says with a growing smirk. She turns to leave, but just before she’s out the door, she says, “The truth is in the lily pads.”
“What?” I say, but she’s already gone. What the hell is that supposed to mean?
My hands are shaking. I grab a pillow from the window seat and squeeze until my knuckles turn white. I want to run through the hallways, yelling that I was right about Blair—that she’s a manipulative, psychotic bitch, just like I thought. But still no one would believe me. No one else seems to see past her facade, and I would be the one looking like a madwoman.
So what can I do? How can I fight, now that I know who the enemy is?
She’s clearly trying to do whatever she can to get rid of me. Maybe she’s even the one whispering at night, trying to annoy me, drive me out.
I’ll have to return the favor.