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“Unbelievers.” Bessie spits and it lands as an ugly spot on Fee’s cheek.

They pull us outside, holding us tightly, and Pip unleashes her fury in a new ring of fire. It makes my eyes burn and sting.Advertisement

If Pippa has crowned herself queen, Bessie has surely made herself second-in-command. “Mistress Pippa, we’ll do wha’ever you ask of us. Just a word and it’s done.”

“My whole life I’ve been ordered about. Now I shall give the orders.”

I’ve never seen Felicity so wounded. “Not me,” she says. “I never ordered you about.”

“Oh, Fee.” The old Pippa surfaces for just a moment, hopeful and childlike. She pulls Felicity to her. Something I cannot name passes between them, and then Pip’s lips are on Fee’s in a deep kiss, as if they feed on one another, their fingers entwined in each other’s hair. And suddenly, I understand what I must have always known about them—the private talks, the close embraces, the tenderness of their friendship. A blush spreads up my neck at the thought. How could I not have seen it before?

Felicity breaks away, her cheeks inflamed, but the fierce passion of that kiss lingers. Pip grabs her arm. “Why do you always go? You are always leaving me.”

“I’m not,” Felicity says. Her voice is raw with smoke.

“Don’t you see? Here we can be free to do as we wish.”

Felicity’s lips tremble. “But I cannot stay.”

“Yes, you can. You know how.”

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Felicity shakes her head. “I can’t. Not that way.”

Pippa speaks in low, measured tones. “You said you loved me. Why will you not eat the berries and stay with me?”

“I do,” Felicity whispers. “But—”

“You do what?” Pippa demands. “Why will you not say it?”

“I…do,” Felicity says with terrible difficulty.

Pip lets go Felicity’s arm. Her eyes fill with angry tears. “The time has come to make a choice, Fee. Either you are with me or against me.”

Pippa opens her hand. The berries sit waiting, fat and ripe. I can scarcely breathe. Felicity’s face shows her torment—her affection and her pride locked in fierce battle. She stares at the berries for a long moment, neither accepting nor declining them, and I come to realize that the silence is her answer. She will not trade one trap for another.

Pippa’s eyes brim with tears. She closes her hand over the berries, squeezing so tightly that the blue-black juice runs over her knuckles and onto the ground, and I fear what she will do to us now.

“Let them go. We do not need unbelievers in our midst,” she says at last. She parts the flames for us. “Go on, then. Leave.”

The only way out is through the fire, and there is no promise that she will not burn us to cinders as we pass. Swallowing hard, I lead Ann and Felicity through the passage in the flames.

Pippa sings loudly, ferociously. “Oh, I’ve a love, a true, true love, and my true love lies waiting…”

It was a simple, merry tune once, but now it chills me. It is a desperate song. One by one, the girls join in, their voices gaining power until Fee’s sobs have been completely drowned by them. I do not dare to glance back until we are through the bramble wall on the path to the garden, and Pippa and her followers, set against the flames, seem like white-hot coals going to ash.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

FELICITY WILL NOT SPEAK TO EITHER OF US. THE MOMENT we return to Spence, she stumbles up the stairs, holding the banister as if it were the only thing tying her to the earth. Ann and I do not speak of what has happened. The night feels heavy and hard and no words can lighten it. Only when Ann has joined Cecily for needlework do I make my way to Felicity’s room. I find her lying on her bed, so still I fear she is dead.

“Why did you come?” Her voice is a shadow of itself. “Did you come to see the degenerate?” She turns to me, her face slick with tears. In her hand she clutches Pippa’s glove. “I can see it in your eyes, Gemma. Go on—say it. I’m a degenerate, then. My affections are unnatural.”

My mouth opens, but I can find no words.

“Say it! Tell me what you long to say, what everyone suspects!”

“I never suspected it. Truly.”

Her breathing is labored. Her nose runs. Strands of hair are caught in the moisture and stick to her cheeks. She will not look at me again. “But now you know, and you despise me.”

Do I? No. What I feel is confused. I have questions I do not yet know how to ask: Has she always been this way? Does she feel this same affection for me? I have undressed before her. She has seen me. And I have seen her, have noted her beauty. Do I harbor these secret feelings for Felicity? Am I just as she is? How would I know if I were? pqdm.com