“Well…” Alice would not meet her eyes. “I thought we had. Two days ago he said he loved me more than ever, but he hasn’t been acting that way. I swear he’s been going out of his way to avoid me.”
“Oh, but surely you’re—you’re imagining things. He was here today with you, wasn’t he? And the only reason he left was to get help—for you.”
“Yes, but—” Alice began, then closed her mouth.
Grace could guess what she’d been about to say—if he’d really cared about her, he would have insisted they come here alone together…or have stayed with her and sent Grace for help instead. Which was wrong-headed, but how could she explain that to Alice?
“Well, why don’t you ask him? I’m sure he’ll tell you you’re imagining things,” she said.
Alice shook her head sadly. “I know he will. But it won’t be true,” she said. “He’s changed.”
Yes, he had…and she was as confused about it as Alice. The way he’d said, ‘Will you be all right?’ before he left—as if it mattered to him—had taken her aback.
Alice didn’t say anything more until the clop-clop of an approaching horse sent Grace to see who was coming. It was Kit and Mrs. Roosevelt in a buggy. Kit hopped out and ran to them while Alice’s stepmother turned the buggy at a wide place in the road. “Your chariot awaits, ma’am,” he said cheerfully to Alice, who looked anything but cheerful.
“Mother’s going to kill me,” she muttered as Grace helped her stand.
“No, she won’t. Why should she? And Ethel loves playing nurse—you’ve said so yourself. She’ll take care of you.”
“Hmph.” Alice was in no mood to be comforted.
Grace and Kit between them helped her to the road and into the buggy. Mrs. Roosevelt watched their progress silently and, as they boosted Alice into the seat, only asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Alice replied shortly. She looked down at Kit and opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“We’ll see you back at the club,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, loosening the brake and giving the reins a shake. Alice looked back at them once before the buggy was lost to view around a curve in the road.
“Well.” Grace sighed. “I guess we ought to get going as well.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Kit said. “Except that we’ve got a lunch waiting for us down by the creek that it would be a shame to waste. Why don’t we eat it and then go back?”
Grace hesitated. “Alice wouldn’t like it.”
“Alice will be busy getting her ankle bathed in ice water and wrapped and fussed over for the next two hours. She’ll be fine.” He paused, then added, “I promise I won’t bite.”
The words were spoken gently, but Grace caught the unmistakable hint of challenge in them. She drew in her breath. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“I know. You never were.” He smiled then, a lopsided half grin. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Of saying the wrong thing. I’ve had plenty of practice at that.”
To her surprise, Grace laughed. She felt almost giddy—reaction to Alice’s accident, probably, and the strangeness of not having to be rigidly on her guard with Kit anymore.
“So will you eat lunch with me?” he asked.
She nodded, and they picked their way down the slope to the creek, where he’d left the lunch basket. She resolved to find a tree to sit against, in case she needed reinforcements—not that a tree could help her if Kit turned unpleasant, but its presence would be comforting.
But Kit led her to a large, flat rock that jutted out over the creek. He spread a blanket over it and gestured for her to sit. “Will this do?”
“Er, yes. Sandwich?” She peered into the basket. “I think they’re all chicken—no, there’s a ham as well. Which would you like? There’s hard-boiled eggs, too, and some grapes and cookies. Mrs. Hunter must like Alice. She didn’t pack such a nice lunch for us yesterday.”
“Ham, please.” He somehow looked younger, but that might be because he was more informally dressed than she’d ever seen him in Newport. He wore a collarless white shirt with a sweater draped over his shoulders and brown corduroy trousers with boots—a far cry from the tennis flannels and evening jackets that suited him so well. Not that he didn’t look as handsome as he always did. Before she could stop and make herself tongue-tied, she asked, “Do you like it here? Or would you rather be back in Newport?”
He took the paper-wrapped sandwich and bottle of lemonade she handed him. “Yes, I do like it. Newport is a lot of work—as you probably noticed—even though I’m used to it by now since we’ve summered there since I was small. It’s different here. The people who come here are as wealthy and powerful as the people in Newport, but they don’t have to show the entire world that they are.”
“Which makes them more so,” she said. “The strongest lion is the one who’s so sure of himself that he can lie in the sun and nap most of the day. It’s the weaker lions who have to fight and show off to each other.”
“So this is where the strongest lions come to nap. Speaking of lions, when does Colonel Roosevelt arrive?”
“I don’t know. I believe he’s on a speaking tour in Vermont, but I think he’s expected in a week or so.”
Kit nodded. “I like them,” he said. “The Roosevelts, I mean. They’re like…well, they’re like that lion’s cubs we were talking about—all pouncing and growling and having a grand time of it. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“One of each.” If anyone had told her it would be so easy to talk to Kit Rookwood even half an hour ago, she would never have believed it. “An older brother—he’s just finished his freshman year at Harvard—and a younger sister. She’s horse crazy.”
“Lucky,” he said softly. “I don’t have any. I don’t think I’ve understood what I missed until recently.”
Grace tried to think of what it would have been like to be an only child, and couldn’t. Grand-mère would probably have fussed her to death. “What makes you miss them now, when you didn’t before? I would have thought it would be lonely, growing up alone.”
“I never knew that it was lonely. If you’ve never had something, you can’t miss it. But now…” He shrugged. “I’m expected to join my father’s business and take it over someday, and I’m not sure that I want to. If I’d had brothers, there wouldn’t be so much pressure.”
Pressure? Mr. Rookwood seemed like such a gentle person that it was hard to imagine him trying to force Kit to do anything. “Maybe in time it will become more attractive—or you’ll change your mind.”
“Maybe.” He looked at her. “We’re doing well, aren’t we? I haven’t said anything to make you want to run away yet—at least, I don’t think I have.”
For some reason, Grace felt herself blush. “No, you haven’t. But we should finish up soon.” The last thing she needed was Alice thinking she’d taken a liking to Kit. Well, not that she might not start to like him, maybe a little, if he continued to be as agreeable as this.
As they repacked the remains of lunch in the basket and made their way back up to the road, the crow perched on the blast furnace let out a solemn croak.
“Are you still there?” Grace called up to him. Was it the Changer that had watched her the other day?
“Friend of yours?” Kit’s smile had a humorous quirk.
“A recent acquaintance, unless it’s one of his cousins,” she replied lightly.
Kit squinted up at the bird. “Hello, cousin,” he said softly. The crow peered down at him, made a low, whickering sound, then hopped into the air and flapped away.
They walked back to the club in silence. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable one, Grace realized when they were nearly there. As they drew abreast of the bridge across the brook that led to the Rookwoods’ camp, Kit halted. “Well,” he said.
“Well,” Grace echoed. What was she supposed to say now? Her gaze fell on the lunch basket he still held. “Here, I’ll take
that back to the clubhouse. It’s across the way from us.” She reached for it. As he handed it to her, their fingers brushed. She pretended not to notice. “See you this evening,” she said.
He nodded and then smiled at her with his beautiful, sun-coming-out-from-behind-clouds smile. “Thank you for eating lunch with me and not hating it,” he said and turned quickly away, hands in pockets as he strode across the bridge.
“You’re welcome,” Grace said quietly to his back, then continued up the road. She hadn’t hated it. She’d been nervous, yes…but so had he. It had put them both on their best behavior, but that was all right. Who knew, maybe they could actually become friends. Maybe sometime, if they did, she’d ask him again about Alice and Newport.
The rockers lining the porch of the clubhouse were full at this hour of the afternoon, occupied by a cadre of older female guests, maiden aunts and grandmothers, most of them, engaged in reading the newspapers that had arrived from the Lower Clubhouse. The “Porch Ladies,” Archie had christened them. They reminded Grace of a row of justices with their black dresses and white hair and air of passing judgment on all that passed before them.
“How is Miss Roosevelt?” one of them asked as Grace climbed the stairs.
Goodness, news traveled fast…but they would have had a ringside seat, watching Alice being helped down from the buggy right across the road from them. “Resting comfortably, I trust,” she said brightly, passing through their ranks on the way back to the kitchens.
“It’s not safe, poking about those old ruins,” she heard one of them say.
“And you would have been there like a shot when you were seventeen, Elvira, especially if there were a young man involved,” a second voice answered, followed by a chorus of creaky chortles.
Grace left the basket with a girl peeling a large pile of potatoes and took a deep breath, preparing herself to run the gauntlet of Porch Ladies again. But they were once again engaged with their newspapers and let her go without comment.
Alice was not so forbearing. Grace found her on the parlor sofa with a hot-water bottle filled with ice on her ankle and Ethel hovering nearby.
“About time,” Alice snapped at her. “I though you’d be right behind us.”
“You were being driven, remember?” Grace pulled up a chair. “How is your foot?”
“Sadly wrenched,” Ethel piped up. “But we’re keeping it well iced and wrapped so that it doesn’t swell too badly.”
“And it will be a wonder if my toes don’t fall off from lack of blood,” Alice growled.
“She’s a rotten patient,” Ethel told Grace. “Worse than any of my brothers. They usually at least show a little gratitude.” She left the room with her nose in the air, then stuck her head back in the door. “Would you like some lemonade, Grace? Youngie and I made it a little while ago.”
“I’d love some, thank you.” Grace waited till she’d disappeared again, then looked at Alice sternly. “You don’t have to be such a bear, you know. She’s only trying to help.”
Alice looked sulky. “What do you expect? Of all the stupid things to have done… I’m going to be stuck here on the sofa for a good two days, you know.”
“And then you’ll be fine,” Grace said. “And you needn’t be stuck on the sofa. You can go sit on the porch or even hobble down to the brook. Or go sit with the Porch Ladies,” she added mischievously.
Alice snickered. “In a black dress and a pince-nez? I’ll bet I could tell them a thing or two that would turn their hair white, except it already is.” She sighed. “Does Kit think I’m a complete idiot?”
“No, not at all. He didn’t even mention y—” Grace stopped abruptly, but Alice finished for her.
“He didn’t even mention me?” she said, and let her head fall back against the sofa cushions. “That’s even worse.”
“What was there to say? You hurt yourself, and your mother brought you home.”
“It’s clear you’ve never been in love. So what took you so long to get back?”
She wouldn’t let go of that, would she? “We ate lunch. It seemed a shame to waste it.”
“You ate lunch?” Alice sat up and grabbed Grace’s wrist. “Oh my God, I’d forgotten… You mean, the sandwiches? You ate them?”
Had she gone mad? “Some of the sandwiches, and the grapes and the—”
“Which sandwich did Kit eat?” Alice asked urgently.
Grace frowned. “Um—it was ham, I think. I had a chicken.”
“And did you give it to him, or did he take it out of the basket himself?”
“I gave it to him. Why?”
Alice sank back into the cushions. “No. Oh, no.” She threw her arm across her eyes.
“Alice, what is the matter with you?” Grace demanded.
“That sandwich—it was special.”
“Special how? Did you put rat poison in it?”
“I—I made magics on it,” Alice whispered. “I’d asked him what kind of sandwich he wanted and he said ham, so I made a magic on the ham sandwich that he would remain eternally devoted to the person who handed it to him. It was supposed to be me.” She moved her arm and stared bleakly at Grace.
Grace sighed. “Do you really believe that…that your magics actually do anything?”
Alice’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve always worked before.”
“Could that be because it was going to happen anyway? Come on, Alice. We’re supposed to be young ladies now, not little girls playing make-believe. Just because I gave Kit a ham sandwich doesn’t mean he will love me or even like me. Yes, we’ve called a truce because he apologized to me for Newport—”
“He did? When? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“It was only yesterday—at the lake, for heaven’s sake—”
“On your fishing trip? So what else haven’t you told me about?”
Grace stared at her. “What is wrong with you? There is nothing—nothing—going on between us. We’re barely learning how to speak politely to each other. And nothing’s going to happen because of a sandwich.”
“What if it does?”
The last threads of her patience snapped, and Grace stood up. “If Kit decides he likes someone else because of an imaginary magic spell, then whatever he felt for you couldn’t have been very strong, could it?”
“How dare you?” Alice cried, rising as well—or trying to. With a pained squeal, she collapsed back onto the sofa. “Now see what you did?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Grace said coldly. “When you can talk about things rationally, I’ll come back and sit with you.” She stalked to the door and nearly collided with Ethel, backing out of the kitchen with a tray of glasses and a plate of cookies.
“Here we are—” She stopped short. “Grace?”
“I’ll be down shortly,” Grace said and climbed the stairs to their room to give her temper a moment to cool.
Chapter Thirteen
After breakfast the following morning, Grace paused on the porch of the clubhouse and surveyed the day.
With her sore ankle, Alice had remained in bed that morning. She’d been subdued all evening and had gone to bed early, ignoring Grace as well as she could considering they shared a bedroom. They did not discuss the angry words they’d exchanged that afternoon. Grace hoped that a good night’s rest and being served breakfast in bed would help shake her from her mood. Whether it would shake her from her conviction that her magics would now force Kit to fall in love with Grace was another question.
Oh, why had the Rookwoods had to come to Tahawus? Everything would have been so much simpler if they hadn’t. Alice would have pined for a while, but she would have gotten over Kit eventually. It would be sorely tempting to write home and ask Mum to fabricate a reason for her to leave early if matters became too unpleasant…except that she couldn’t abandon Alice when she was so unhappy. That wasn’t what a friend did.
However, this morning she was not going to think about Alice or Kit. Wrapped against the chill morning mis
t in one of Ted’s heavy sweaters that he’d been incoherently delighted to lend her and armed with her sketchbook, she was bound for a good long walk in the woods and the company of the trees.
“Are you an artist, Miss Boisvert?” Mr. Rookwood had come to stand next to her on the porch.
Grace glanced behind her, but it was too early for the Porch Ladies to have taken up residence. “Not much of one,” she confessed. “But I thought bringing a sketchbook would make my wandering around in the woods appear a bit less frivolous.”
“Excessive frivolity does not appear to be one of your faults, at least as far as I have seen.” He gazed up at the hills. “I had planned a walk myself up to the lake. Would it trouble you if our paths coincided for a little while?”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Thank you.” He held up a fly rod and willow creel. “Here is my sketchbook if you won’t tell anyone. I have no intention of actually catching anything, but they permit me to stand on the shores of beautiful lakes and contemplate the scenery while appearing industrious.”
Grace laughed. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“How is Miss Roosevelt this morning?” he asked as they started up the road.
“Asleep, actually, which is why I’m taking my walk now. She’ll need entertaining later,” Grace said, then wished she hadn’t. That made Alice sounded like a spoiled child.
“It’s difficult for a healthy young person to be forced into inaction,” Mr. Rookwood said. “But I expect she’ll be back on both feet in a day or so, yes? The injury isn’t severe?”
“She’ll be fine.” At least, her ankle would.
Mr. Rookwood was silent after that, which allowed her to listen to the morning. The trees had enjoyed the rain the night before and were humming happily, and the forest felt peaceful and free of that watchful sensation she’d noticed the other day.
“When you’re out walking, you do tell someone where you’re planning to go, don’t you?” Mr. Rookwood asked suddenly. “I was thinking of Miss Roosevelt and what a terrible thing it would have been if she’d been alone when she fell.”
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