Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Two: Kiss Number Two

Ellini used her experience of moving undetected through the tunnels of the fire-mines to sneak back into the Faculty. The creaking stairs gave her some trouble, but she was light-footed, and a very experienced climber, so she was able to get up to her room without putting her feet down in many of the usual places.

It was a lot of trouble to go to, but she knew she couldn't have faced a talk with Jack just yet.

She was so successful in avoiding attention that she had been back in her mysteriously wrecked room, with her mysteriously fixed doll, for over an hour before Jack rattled the handle of the door, expecting to breeze right in, and found it locked.

He tried the handle again, as though he couldn't quite believe it, and then called out, "Mouse, let me in."

"I'm changing," said Ellini, in the steady voice she had been practising all afternoon.

This was technically true. She had struggled out of her mint-green dress and unpinned her hair as soon as she'd come back. They were the second and third things she had done – after locking the door.

But she couldn't bring herself to put on her beautiful white gown yet. It was too intimately associated with hope. So she was pottering about the bedroom in her corset and petticoat, trying to avoid the smashed ornaments as best she could. She didn't want to let Sarah in to sweep up, but, at the same time, she didn't much feel like doing it herself. The ruined bedroom seemed to be an ideal metaphor for her ruined life, so she wore it like a dressing gown.

On the other side of the door, she heard Jack give an impatient sigh. "I've seen you naked before," he pointed out.

Ellini fixed the doll with a withering glance and said, "That is such a male objection."

"Look, I need to talk to you."

"Honestly, I'm not decent," she protested. "I'll meet you at the River Club later."

This seemed to pacify him. He had obviously not expected her to keep their appointment to go dancing tonight. There was a moment's silence on the other side of the door, and then he said, in a voice that was half-sulky and half-sheepish, "Mouse, I only kissed her."

Ellini shut her eyes.

"And if it helps," he went on, "she's even angrier with me than you are."

"I'm not angry with you," said Ellini, in her clearest, calmest voice.

"Oh." There was another pause, while he turned this over in his mind. "That's much worse."

He rattled the door-handle again – apparently just for something to do while he thought about what to say next.

"I'm sorry about your room," he ventured at last. "Danvers tried to attack me."

Ellini looked up in alarm. "Is he all right?"

There was an irritable silence on the other side of the door. "Yes, he's all right. Your concern for him is very touching."

"Well, I know you can take care of yourself," said Ellini. She hadn't meant it to sound reproachful, but it probably had.

Jack didn't linger on this subject anyway. Perhaps it was his short attention span, or perhaps he was casting about for a subject that would cause her manner towards him to thaw.

"Did you see I fixed your doll?"

"Yes," said Ellini. "Thank you very much."

This cool civility seemed to be the last straw. "Could you try being angry with me? I really think it would help."