Obsidian Eyes (10 page)

Eventually Marshall was satisfied for the morning. “Enough,” he called. “Well done, we’ll concentrate on hand to hand for the next few weeks. I suspect Allie needs more experience without a blade in her hand.”

“Ha!” Duncan exclaimed. “I’m bigger than you, I’m so taking you down.” His good humour and grin were infectious.

Allie smiled and punched him in the arm. “We’ll see. I reckon you’ll still fall like a tree. You’re awfully fond of that mat.”

Allie enjoyed the verbal banter with Duncan just as much as expending the physical energy. He was far more open than his guarded cousin. Her muscles ached, but she couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. Under Marshall’s watchful eye, she had found a place where she could be herself.

Perhaps I’ll survive this year after all.

Late that afternoon Allie trailed the other students from History, the last class for the day. They gathered in the hall, gossiping and blocking the path, in no hurry to go anywhere. The matrons ensured the girls did not linger too long in their snatched conversations with the boys.

Sidestepping a group, she saw Eloise slip from the door of her class. Her friend raised her hand and gave a cheery wave, threading her way through the assembled bodies.

Passing behind Madeline, she stopped to greet Allie. “All done for the day?”

“Not if you count the assignments that have to be completed by tomorrow.” She let out a sigh; she’d rather go ride. Who cared if she made it through this year anyway?

On hearing Allie’s voice, Madeline flicked her gaze around.

“I don’t like the stench in the corridor, let’s go outside.” She took a step forward and stopped, her forward momentum halted by the weight standing on the fashionable short train of her skirt. Turning, she hissed at Eloise.

Eloise looked at the source of the noise and then looked down. She stepped off the skirt and flashed a smile at Madeline. “Oh, I am so terribly sorry! I’ve been quite tired lately, silly old me.”

“You’re a bumbling imbecile.” Madeline shook out her train, trying to dislodge the footprint crushed in the velvet.

“Allie coming and going at all hours keeps interrupting my sleep,” Eloise continued as the other girl’s insult sailed over her head and thudded against the wall. “She and Jared are scampering all over the place. I imagine Jared likes having a girl around who shares his more
active
interests.”

Madeline froze and her eyes narrowed. Fixing Eloise under her gaze, she ground her jaw loud enough for Allie to hear the crunch of enamel. A cold gaze swept over Allie.

“Keep away from me. Both of you.” Grabbing the long skirts in one hand, she spun and headed down the corridor so fast, her friends were forced to skip to keep apace.

Allie waited until the girls rounded the corner. “You did that on purpose.”

“Oh yes.” Eloise beamed at her. “I have discovered I don’t need my electrodes to give someone a brain twitch. I am testing a hypothesis that the more I needle Madeline, the more irate she will get at you.”

Allie stared at her friend. “Thanks. Why exactly am I your friend again?”

Eloise tossed her strawberry blonde curls; her hazel eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Because your alternative was being on the wrong side of my hidden, but so very evil, intellect.”

Allie swung her books onto her hip and grabbed Eloise’s hand. “Yip, that was it.”

Friday, 29
^th
July.

ays fell into a rhythm. Allie stuck to the back of the classroom and avoided the other students. As her second week ended, she gave a deep sigh at surviving thanks in no small part to her friendship with Eloise. Academic classes finished early and she headed to the library, where her grandfather dropped an unpleasant announcement upon her.

“No, Poppa. I will not.” Allie planted her feet. Blindsided, she chose to root herself to the spot in front of his desk. She imagined herself a mighty oak, immovable and unyielding. Weasel rose up on its hind legs, reacting to her tone and giving a low hiss.

Alfred looked up from his papers at the stubbornness in her tone and stance. He regarded her from over the top of his glasses. His bushy grey eyebrows left little room for his field of sight, edging his vision as though he permanently stared through foliage.

“I assure you, Allie, I am deadly serious about this.”

“You cannot force me to go. It would be inhumane.” She kept her voice neutral, while she raged at him internally.
There’s no way I’m serving myself up for their entertainment. You just try budging me from this spot.

The older Donovan flicked his papers down to the desk. “Well such is the brutality of my regime, you shall be going.”

Allie leaned forward and placed both her hands on the desk. She stared down her grandfather, while her eyes pleaded for him to understand her fragile position. “You don’t know what it’s like for me. I will go to the academic classes, I will sit up the back and do my best, just… please… do not make me do this. Not in front of them all. They will be watching, waiting for me to fail.”

He picked up his papers again and merely glanced at her. “It’s part of the curriculum and you will attend. Plus it will stand you in good stead in the future.”

“I will not go.” She folded her arms across her chest in defiance, the ancient oak firm against the force of the storm.

“Allie,” he sighed. “I am on the faculty, you have to attend, otherwise it will reflect badly on me.”

That’s a dirty card to play.

Eloise bowled up the library’s central aisle but faltered and rocked back on her heels when she saw the standoff between Allie and her grandfather.

Weasel remained unsure where the threat was coming from, so it pressed its body against Allie, the sliver thin tail waving back and forth.

Allie turned to her friend, like a drowning person bobbing in the ocean, expecting the rescue boat to throw a life preserver. “Eloise, kindly explain to my grandfather that he cannot inflict this torture upon me.”

Eloise looked unsure of what she had walked into. “Torture?” Her eyebrows shot up. “What on earth are you being forced to do?” She glanced from Allie to Alfred and back again, waiting with baited breath to hear of the impending horror.

Allie threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “Poppa expects me to attend dance classes—”

Eloise burst into laughter of relief. “Is that all?”

Allie shot daggers at Eloise. Rather than throwing a lifeline, she seemed content to watch her drown. “Some friend you turned out to be.”

“Yes,” Allie’s grandfather said. “I am insisting she attends dance class, like every other student does on a Friday afternoon. Such is the horror of my dictatorship.”

Eloise looped her arm through Allie’s. “Don’t worry, sir, I’ll make sure she gets there.” She gave Donovan senior her sweetest smile as she spun Allie back around toward the doorway. The oak felled and hauled away to be chopped into firewood.

“See Allie, your friend will happily waltz you to your impending doom,” he called. With the matter resolved, he turned his attention back to the papers scattered over his desk, leaving Eloise to drag a reluctant Allie from the library.

Weasel trotted to the doors before seating itself, unwilling to venture beyond the confines of the library. It gave a lone cry, before scampering under the stacks.

“Why are you so keen on dance class anyway?” Allie resigned herself to the oncoming humiliation but she was suspicious of Eloise’s motives.

“Because I get to dance with Zeb,” Eloise sighed. As they walked, Eloise kept her arm firmly locked through Allie’s, in case her friend decided to turn tail and run.

“Is he a good dancer?” Allie asked.

“Oh no, terrible actually.” A slight worried tone crept into Eloise’s voice. “He always ends up treading on my feet.”

She gave Eloise a bemused look. “Then I’m lost, what is the attraction of dancing with him?”

“Because he has to hold me,” Eloise breathed with a wistful air.

“Oh.” Allie comprehended the entire situation in those six little words. “Does Zeb feel the same way?”

Eloise turned a troubled brow to Allie. “No, if he thinks of me at all, he thinks of me as a chum and occasional Alchemy partner. But, just like you, he is forced to endure dance class. So for one hour once a week for the last three years, he holds me and talks to me. And maybe one day, he will realise I have always been his constant partner.”

Not from what I’ve seen of Zeb he won’t. Not without a schematic diagram and half a bottle of brandy to loosen him up.

Allie smiled at her friend’s optimism and single-mindedness in the face of overwhelming odds. “You’re such a dreamer but I think you two will make a gorgeous couple one day.”

Eloise flushed a becoming shade of red, the same pale strawberry as her hair. “One day,” she said.

They reached the doors to the ballroom and Allie planted her feet like a mule refusing to shoulder its load.

“What is your problem?” Eloise finally had to ask. “You can dance, can’t you?”

“Well, yes, but not for a number of years. Things were done a little… different in Egypt.” Standing on the threshold she admitted the horrible truth to herself. She was terrified of being humiliated in front of all the senior students.

What if I’ve forgotten the steps and they laugh at me? I don’t need to add more fuel to the gossip fire.

Eloise’s eyes widened and Allie saw a glint of mischief creep in. “Well if you danced like I hear they do in the Harem I’m sure none of the boys would object.”

Allie gave a laugh of mischief as they pushed through the double doors into the ballroom. She slowed her pace as they crossed the threshold.

“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured.

They crossed the intricate geometric parquet floor laid out in three different types of wood. The walls were clad in lush red and gold swirling wallpaper, the red made of velvet and so invitingly tactile Allie wanted to go up to the wall and stroke it.

Enormous, intricate chandeliers hung from the ceiling. They threw spectrals of light in every direction. The late afternoon sunlight came in low through the windows at exactly the right height to strike the suspended prisms.