Chapter 10 #2
It looked like some twice-cursed cell in the Tower of bloody London in here, where prisoners had spent years scratching away the days in trembling, chalky lines.
“So how did you teach it?” Rosalind asked, licking her thumb and adjusting the straightness of one of the endless tallies on the chalkboard. “When you were a governess? Did you just use rote?”
Vix stared at her until she stood back up, bouncing in her flouncy peach dress and turning back around.
“You know,” she said, a little dazed by the impact of her realization, “I was feeling utterly disgusted by a woman who still wore ruffles last night, but somehow you make it completely charming. How do you do that, Rosalind?”
“What?” she said, her lips pursing together. “Are you teasing me?”
Vix shook her head, taking a step forward. “God, no! No, I’m really not!”
Rosalind frowned, pushing her hands down the lines of her dress. “I am trying,” she said. “I know I am terribly provincial. I’ve only been in London for a few months. Your dresses are so very elegant.”
“You don’t need to change a thing,” Vix insisted. “I really was being sincere. I … drat, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. You look nice in the morning light, is all. Rosalind, you know I struggle with … with softness.”
Rosalind blinked again, her big green eyes damn near wobbling in their sockets.
Vix groaned. “I didn’t use rote,” she said briskly, turning and marching toward the chalkboard and taking up a piece of yellow chalk.
“Oh,” said Rosalind softly.
“There was a girl a few years behind me at school who had a problem with writing. She would see things backward, so we used tallies to do mathematics,” Vix said, carving out a small square in the bottom corner of the board and kneeling.
“We started with our hands. So when you do four ticks and the one across for five, it matches a hand.”
“Five fingers,” Rosalind said, kneeling down next to her and nodding.
Vix nodded. “So a fist on one hand for zeros and a flat hand on the other for fives. And each pair goes up one number on the left, you see? It is easier than starting with five. Instead start with zero. Zero and five. Ten and fifteen. Twenty and twenty-five. They will remember the image of their hands next to the groups of ticks and slashes.”
“Oh! Oh, yes, I see!” Rosalind said, making a fist and a flat hand herself as Vix wrote the examples under the grouped marks in her corner of yellow chalk. “That is brilliant!”
Vix sat back on her heels, giving half a smile to the other girl. “You could go try it with the pox children first if you want to test it out. Some of them are old enough.”
Rosalind was muttering numbers under her breath, bouncing her fist and her flat hand on her knees rather than listening, and nodded absently at Vix’s suggestion.
She watched her for a moment, guilt still gnawing at her for the misunderstanding a moment ago, for making this sweet creature feel mocked.
“Ambrose kissed me,” she said, so suddenly that she startled even herself. “Last night.”
Rosalind’s head came up with a squeak of surprise, her curls quivering. “He did?” she gasped, thoroughly distracted from her sets of five. “At the palace?”
“No, at my home,” Vix said, scooting closer. “He stole into my carriage and followed me home, Rosalind.”
She gasped again, covering her mouth with both chalky hands, smearing little crescents of pink from her fingernails on her cheeks. “Did anyone see?”
“Not until Teddy found him asleep on the sofa this morning,” Vix replied, and then started to giggle, dropping her face in her hands.
“Oh! Oh!” Rosalind cried, also giggling, leaning forward to grip at Vix’s wrists. “Oh, and was it glorious? Did you feel butterflies?”
Vix shook her head, blinking up at the other girl. “Yes, I think I did. Isn’t that stupid?”
“Stupid? No!” Rosalind cried. “He is a knight and you are going to marry him and he followed you home and kissed you! Vix, I would just die. I would die straightaway!”
“But you have kissed a man, haven’t you?” Vix said, looking at her through her fingers. “You had a beau. Back in Scotland?”
“Oh, yes, but he doesn’t count,” Rosalind said, sniffing and shaking her head. “No, tell me about Sir Ambrose.”
“Rosalind, he is the most absurd man,” Vix said, lowering her voice like she feared the tallies might judge her. “He is petulant and dramatic and vain. I do not know why I enjoy him so, but I cannot seem to help myself.”
“I suppose love can be like that,” Rosalind whispered back, honoring the fear of the nosy tally marks. “A bit nonsensical.”
“Love? Infatuation, perhaps. Attraction, certainly,” Vix said, shaking her head and sighing. “I do not know.”
“Would it be so terrible?” Rosalind pressed. “To fall in love with your own husband?”
Vix opened her mouth and then closed it again, frowning. “I do not know,” she said. “Perhaps.”
Rosalind nodded and did not argue, only squeezing Vix’s wrist in sympathy before dropping her hands back into her own lap.
“Was it a good kiss?” she asked, after they had sat in silence for a moment, contemplating the question.
“Oh,” Vix said with a sly little smile. “Yes. Good enough to ruin a life.”
“Well, then,” said Rosalind with a shrug, “why bother worrying about anything else at all?”