Nettleblack, page 25
“You – seduction – what?”
Rosamond snorted. “Scandalous, disreputable, frowned upon, yes – but illegal? For me – or her – or even you – ha! Just call it a passionate friendship!”
Septimus skidded across the room, stooped before the chair until she had my sister pinioned on a ferocious glare. “You ain’t making any sense. Reckon that makes it drunk. In need of an escort home. Henry – yes?”
Home? “I – erm – well – I – ”
Another spindly giggle from Rosamond. “Excellent witness, isn’t she?”
Septimus flicked a glance up at me. “Henry – you brought her in – ’s that what you meant?”
Spat out in her voice, the words finally skewered me.
You brought her in.
Pomegranates – one spasming moment – what had I done? And if she was escorted home – and Edwina punished her – every scrap of it would be my fault – assuming Edwina didn’t glimpse me on the threshold, handing her over –
“No!” I blurted. “I – I mean – yes – I mean – not quite – erm – ”
“What?”
Utterly devoid of credible excuse, I simply toppled into further insanity. “I – I wasn’t – please – Division Sergeant – don’t hurt her!”
Septimus gaped at me. I quite can’t imagine how she’d a shred of patience left. “Henry. Why’d you bring her here?”
“I – I – ”
“To get my attention, by the look of it!”
Rosamond slung forward in her chair, grinning wildly between the two of us, her porcelain tooth startlingly white through the gloom. Edge by glinting edge, she was starting to sober up.
“Well, lychee annwyl, now you’ve got it! And you, Division Sergeant – sweet sergeant, is it? Of course! Naturally furious, twitchy about seductions, losing all ability to do her job – are you the dashing young Septimus of whom I’ve heard such titillating stories?”
My jaw quite dropped.
How – since when – what had Rosamond heard about Septimus? And why in the name of every passionfruit in existence hadn’t Rosamond ever told me any of it? Not the lurid gossip, of course – just a hint, any hint, that such a person as Septimus existed, and resided in Dallyangle, and was available to meet –
(As if I would have had sufficient nerve to approach Septimus of my own volition!)
Septimus, meanwhile, had the spine of her notebook in a veritable chokehold. “I – I don’t know what you think you – ”
Rosamond tossed back her head and laughed. “Everything! I’ve heard everything about you – and I believe it! You can’t even decide why I’m in your Division, for heaven’s sake! Such a lovely palaver you’ve put on for me tonight, you and your cariad over there – wyt ti’n hoffi’r merched â gwallt byr? Ond nid merch yw fy nghariad – ”
I got about one word in three, and it flung me off the figurative clifftops once again. The next voice cramming the poky room was mine, unaccountably shrill, pinwheeling past a horrified Septimus –
“Stop it! You – you’re doing it deliberately – and I quite won’t let you weaponise your Welsh against her!”
If I could have wrestled the words back out of the air, I would have leapt to it the instant I’d stopped yelling them. Septimus had twisted around on one knee to stare at me, her eyebrows nudging at her chignon, evidently far too unnerved by my abrupt ascent into articulate sentences to manage any of her own. Beyond her, cadaverous in the shadows of the one sputtering gaslight, Rosamond’s face had gone slack – hollow astonished eyes, slanting eyebrows, parted lips.
“Gwell a gwell,” she breathed. “Bugger me with a teapot.”
Figs. Sweet, plentiful, uncharted figs.
I opened my mouth – and it was all gone. There weren’t words. At least, there were quite none I was in any position to say.
Don’t give me away – or now does everything make sense? – or I’ll not send you back in shame to Edwina, I promise, just please make sure Septimus doesn’t find out who I am –
All of my options were equally impossible – and entirely the only sentiments I could think of!
Rosamond smirked. Her rage had simmered away, left her back in her usual ironical state, tenfold headier with ammunition and tipsiness. She flicked her gaze – so languidly! – from me to Septimus and back again, stiffened an eyebrow into a teasing arch, crossed one leg over the other on her spindly seat. In the dingy lighting, with her drenched curls and fast-disintegrating frock, she looked far more akin to an underworld goddess than anything remotely nineteenth-century, which she must have been unreasonably pleased about.
“I’ll be on my way, then, bach.”
Septimus jolted from her daze. “You can’t just – ”
“Gad dy gleber, you,” Rosamond tossed at her, beaming. “Os gwelwch yn dda, chwaerlet?”
I’d throttle her. I’d quite entirely throttle her.
“So,” Rosamond continued brightly, “Let’s sort out some of this confusion, shall we? I’m not the – what are they calling it, the Head-Hider? – nor the Sweetings’ incestuous love-child, and I don’t even know what other demons are besieging you. But I am Miss Rosamond Nettleblack, and I do mean those Nettleblacks. The ones with the tincture, and the money enough to buy you out of your very building should you in any way inconvenience me further. Or wasn’t the Welsh enough of a clue?”
Septimus froze like a stopped clock.
Rosamond, insufferable to the points of her bramblebush hair, promptly tipped forward on the chair and dashed a sharp kiss to her cheek.
“I can always inform my family,” she added cheerily, over Septimus’s startled cry, “that this was all a terribly stupid mistake. Oh, my sister’d be most forgiving – that’s my eldest sister, Edwina Nettleblack, bit of a casual tyrant, you may have heard of her – as long as you let me saunter out of your lovely doors without noting down that I was ever here, and most definitely without dumping me on her doorstep like a naughty child. Otherwise, I’ll – what is it, again, that thing you Divisioners fear like the plague? – I’ll make a complaint. To my neighbour Lady Miltonwaters and the rest of the town council. They’re the ones who fund you, aren’t they?”
I dared the slightest of hasty glances to Septimus’s face. Bergamots, it was as horrendous as I’d feared. Her navy eyes had shot wide – with fear, panic, humiliation, all at once. She must have been crimson; the shadows were darkening across her cheekbones. Her sharp certainty, her glowering defensiveness – Rosamond had flayed it off, every last bit of it, and left her as horribly helpless as I’d ever seen her.
Rosamond sniggered into the silence. “Let me leave, now, there’s a merch dda. The Nettleblacks will be so very grateful.”
She kicked to her feet before either of us could argue further. The sooner she was gone, the better – but – of course that was only half of my thoughts! Of course I was also choking back a frantic urge to spring into Rosamond’s path, to inform her she – she – I don’t know – she couldn’t leave yet, not until she’d – apologised, at the very least! To Septimus – to Gertie – to the Division itself!
If she’d not prised me out of my words – if I had some guarantee she wouldn’t dash straight to Edwina and tell her everything in smug revenge – if –
“Chwaerlet?”
Sweet Jacobean blackcurrants, what more did she want?
“Cer di i’r dafarn heno – ac fe ddwa i. Mewn awr. Os nad wyt ti am i fi siarad â dy chwaer?”
It was hardly pretence just to gape at her. To hurl that much Welsh at me, brazen as anything, right across Septimus’s flabbergasted glare – and –
What had she actually said?
Septimus opened the door, stony-voiced. “There. My – well – my apologies, Miss Nettleblack.”
“Ardderchog! Which, in your furious layman terms, means excellent, and isn’t spelt a whit like it sounds!”
Cer di – go – you, and then I – going – going where? Dafarn? And the last part – something about speaking to our sister – was it a threat? Why, after years of paying not a scrap of attention to me, had she suddenly chosen this moment to bind us back together – to involve herself in the life over which she had flung up all future responsibility?
Think! Think, and don’t look thoughtful! Dafarn didn’t mean home, and she’d just used Division to describe us here, so it could hardly be this building. If she was asking me to go there, it had to be somewhere I knew my way to – it had to be somewhere she knew I knew the way to –
Dafarn. Of course. Not twenty minutes since I’d narrowly escaped, and already she wanted to drive me back into that tavern.
“What the hell was that about?”
I hadn’t time even to gasp. Rosamond had vanished – Septimus had snapped – and now there was nothing in the known and gloam-lit world but the latter’s face, puce and snarling and terrifyingly close to my own.
“She ain’t anything to do with our cases! Her family’s the richest in Dallyangle – she could’ve had Miltonwaters and the council and the whole of Catfish Crescent on us! Are you trying to humiliate me now?”
“No! I – I just – ”
“Why didn’t you say anything once you’d brought her in? Why wouldn’t you tell me what she’d done?”
For quite the same reason I can’t tell you now! “I – erm – ”
“And of course I wasn’t going to hurt her! If that’s what you think of us – ”
“It’s not – it was just – I – ”
She stared at me, trembling with rage, but my words quite wouldn’t form. Her eyes narrowed, waiting – then skidded down away from my face –
“Where’s your uniform?”
She had the eyes of an owl, of course, and now that the dim lights had failed me I had absolutely no line of defence.
“I – I’m sorry – I didn’t – it was supposed to not – erm – look like a uniform – because – erm – ”
“’Cause you were sneaking into Checkley’s, is that it?”
She sounded so unabashedly – well, hurt – that I’d half a mind to cry no!, in flat defiance of the fact that I’d just been doing precisely that. “I – I – ”
“You can’t just swan off to Musgrove’s pub! You do realise the Director’s a teetotaller? That she’s banned drinking on Div time?”
Pomegranates.
“I – ” – and my voice was rising, twisting, skeining to a yell – “I didn’t – I wasn’t – and I thought I – I thought I could – ”
“Did the Director even give you time off tonight?”
I gasped for breath, and my feet keeled away from me, sent me stumbling back against the freezing wall. “I – erm – I don’t know – I don’t think – ”
“God’s sake, Henry!” she snarled. “How’m I supposed to help you? You say you’re ill, and then you run off – and – and then you – I thought you cared about the job! I thought you cared a lot more than this!”
“I – I do!”
Her gaze skewered me to the wall. “It don’t look like it.”
The truth. As much of the truth as you can give her. Now.
I flattened my hands against the plaster, pressed into the cold until my fingers smarted. “I – well – look – earlier – I was upset – and – erm – some of the others – they thought going out would – would cheer me – ” (but don’t get Gertie and her contingent dismissed whilst you’re at it!) “ – and they had the time off – erm – and I assumed I did too – ”
“What? Why were you upset?”
It was through my teeth before I could stop it. “Because I quite heard Mr. Adelstein telling you to spy on me!”
Now she paled, flayed to blank shock.
“He – erm – he said it was your duty! He thinks that I – I – I wrote those letters – the letters I’ve barely even seen!”
In two stabbing strides, she’d closed our distance again. You could have balanced a pencil between our collarbones, though both of us were gasping far too much to hold anything steady. I was still clinging to the wall. She peered at me, the same narrow-eyed stare I’d woken up to in reception – slack-jawed, and mystified, and slipping in and out of a scowl.
“Did you write the letters?” she blurted suddenly. Then she flushed, as if it hadn’t in the least been what she’d meant to say.
“No!” – and it was rather louder than I’d intended.
She blinked. It eased her eyes loose from their squinting scrutiny, left them wide and wrong-footed, half out of exasperation and not entirely sure where they were headed next. Her mouth was still open, her lips bitten red. Her chignon had, amazingly, stayed put, eerily perfect above the ruddy disorder of her face.
She must have been agonising, all the while, whether or not to believe me.
“You ain’t dismissed,” she muttered abruptly, her dark navy gaze veering up into my hairline. “Obviously it was all a mistake. Yes. I should tell the Director – you might get fined – she’s taken a shilling off Gertie for sneaking out before – but then we’ll hear no more about it.”
A shilling. I’d never thought in shillings – halfway out of my house, I’d crammed fifty pounds into my pocket without registering it an especially hefty sum – but now, even this slighter fraction seemed an impossible demand. A shilling – when my clothes were falling apart – and I hadn’t washed properly for days – and I’d barely eaten – and I’d not a soul to blame but myself –
“I – I – I don’t have anything,” I spluttered, and my legs quite gave out.
It happened in pieces. My hands skidded off the wall. The floor, too dark to be anything other than a vague shadow, lunged up at me. It wasn’t like my last faint, where the world had snapped shut like a book – this time I saw it all. She flung out a panicky arm and snagged me in it. My limp legs twirled on their ankles. We were skidding about, my weight hooked in her elbow, and then I was slung down in the chair, gasping great nauseous breaths into my knees. Her hands darted along my shoulders, eased me upright, wrenched at the stud of my penny-collar until it sprang open. My cravat was loose from where Rosamond had toyed with it – just as well, for my chest was already tightening, my panic bunching under my ribs.
“Henry?” – and she was panicking herself, albeit not quite to my visceral extent, her voice taut and low. “What is it? What – ?”
“I quite can’t breathe,” I rasped, which must have sounded a consummate lie, given the rate at which I was trying to swallow down all the air in the room. I knew what this was. I’d had such episodes before, shuttered in my bedroom – trembling in Edwina’s study – sprinting out of supervisions in Girton’s red-brick offices. I knew further panicking only made the physical sensations worse – but – but if I didn’t pay this wretched impossible fine – which I couldn’t – what other option did that leave her but to dismiss me? – and what other option did that leave me? – and if she threw me out, I’d quite never see her again –
And then I was crying out, sickled over the chair, clutching at my shirt to steady my heartbeat –
“I can’t!”
She scrabbled at me until she had my face in her hands, her eyes wide and her voice shaking. “Look – I shouldn’t’ve snapped – you don’t have to have the ready money – the fine’ll just come out of your wages – and that’s if you even get one – you might not! – ”
There – that ought to calm you – that ought to be enough –
“Is there someone I can get for you?” she demanded desperately. “Family – sibling – or – your sweetheart?”
I gulped an enormous shuddering breath. “I – I don’t – don’t have – there’s no sweetheart – I’ve never – ”
She frowned. “I thought you’d a chap – or – I don’t know! – that you and Nick’d – ”
Nick? “But – but he’s – Nick and you – aren’t you – ?”
“Me?” Her jaw quite dropped, her fingers trembling on my cheekbones. “What? No, I – I ain’t got anyone!”
And I’ve written it now, so it must be true.
Septimus does not have a sweetheart.
Passionfruit, but I could write it over – and over – and over!
But, so as not to abandon me amidst my gasping struggles, I’ll content myself with just the single iteration on this occasion. Back in her office, the sheer giddy astonishment had shocked the worst of the tightness out of my chest, left me slumping into Septimus’s hands as my nerves untangled themselves. My breaths stretched, relaxed, until the air was positively rattling down my gullet. It was – and I could have wept for pure gratitude – it was easing off.
Then I could dare to breathe through my nose again, and register what my stare had been scalding into. Septimus, swallowing with relief as my gasps burned themselves away, navy gaze flicking from my eyes to my mouth and back again.
“Are you alright?” she murmured faintly.
I’d not colour enough to blush, but the sentiment was much the same. “I – I – erm – sorry – I – I didn’t mean for – this happens sometimes – I – ”
“You don’t have to apologise! It ain’t – I mean – ’long as you’re fine!”
I twitched at my features – I had to, she looked so wretched – until they shivered into something vaguely akin to a smile. She bit her lip, too dazed to nod. Her hands – her fingers –
They were still at my face, and they were still trembling. Her thumb brushed down my cheek, light as a lock of hair, the tip of her nail notching gently to the edge of my lips.
Would you mind it awfully if I took it upon myself to kiss you?
And that was it, and it truly was quite that simple. I didn’t want her to have a sweetheart. I wanted to be her sweetheart. I wanted – and, figs, it was fierce enough almost to lift my own hands – to slip my fingers into her chignon, and ease the pins out, and kiss her bitten lips as her hair tumbled over our shoulders.
