Page 4 of Infamous

Eddie straightened up. ‘We ought to make a solemn pact.’

‘Ought we now?’

‘Yes,’ said Eddie, taking Rose firmly by the shoulders and turning her so that they were facing each other head-on. ‘I mean it. We must swear that things will never change between us. That we will be like this always. And .?.?. and that we willnevermarry.’

‘Eddie .?.?.’

‘What? Are you so eager to be rid of me?’

Rose frowned, her eyes searching Eddie’s face. ‘No. But .?.?. be reasonable. I can hardly say I’ll never marry. It wouldn’t be fair to place that burden upon my parents. How would I take care of them? And whatever would I do with myself?’

‘Anything! Look, youcansay it. I certainlycan. I mean it. To hell with the lot of it – I am quite determined to do exactly the opposite of what the world wants from me. We should clasp our hands. We should cut them, and join our blood.’

‘I’m not having any of your blood. I’ve seen how many potatoes you eat. I shall stick to my own, thank you very much.’

‘Fine, fine, not the blood – but the pact. Come on, swear it.’

She took up both of Rose’s hands in hers and squeezed gently.

Rose wavered for a moment. Her hair was coiling loosely around her shoulders and her eyes were dark and intent in the moonlight; Eddie was desperate, suddenly, to know that she would never lose her. Rose sighed.

‘All right. I swear it.’

With the reckless, implausible optimism that belonged entirely to girls of sixteen, Eddie had believed her.

Chapter Three

To Eddie’s utter dismay, Roselovedbeing out in society.

Her parents treated her to not one butthreenew dresses. She went for tea. She accepted party invitations, and sometimes dragged Eddie along with her. She actuallyblushedwhen Sophie Newport, who was the pale, insipid cousin to some duke and therefore far outranked them both, had complimented her hair.

‘I like your hair, too,’ Eddie said fiercely when they were walking to their carriages afterwards, ‘but you don’t startblushingabout it.’

Rose had turned towards her in a flurry of muslin and dark curls and fixed her with a very penetrating look.

‘Perhaps that’s because you never say it,’ she snapped, before hurrying away, leaving Eddie speechless on the steps of the assembly rooms.

They had made up quickly, but it had been the first real rift between them that hadn’t been about who was allowed to hold the frog they found in Mr Miller’s boot, or which poem by Pope, Byron or Nicholson they should take turns reading aloud, and from that day forth there was a frisson of tension in their friendship that had never existed before. Eddie had always felt as if she could say absolutely anything to Rose, and had assumed Rose felt the same way, but now she found herself holding her tongue – or at least, attempting to, and occasionally succeeding – when it came to the subjects of parties and society andladylike behaviour.

‘You didn’t really want to stay, did you?’ she had asked one night, when she had succeeded in begging Rose to leave a particularly dismal party early. They were sitting in the treehouse with their hair half-undone and gloves off, enjoying the cool breeze after a long and stuffy day, a bottle of wine and half a lemon cake stolen from the kitchen between them. Rose had just turned eighteen, and was getting alarmingly beautiful.

‘You know I did, and you also know that I am not interested in bickering with you when there is cake to eat instead.’

‘That boy was lurking. Barker? Baker?’

‘He was hardlylurking. If you must know, I think he’s got half a mind to marry me.’

Eddie choked on quite a large mouthful of wine. ‘What?Well, I certainly hope the other half wins, poor thing.’

‘My mother is getting quite worried. She sees me putting people off. She keeps having hushed conversations with my father about it, when she thinks I’m not listening.’

‘Let them mutter.Wemade a pact.’

Rose rolled her eyes. ‘But it wasn’t .?.?. it wasn’treal, was it, Ed?’

‘Of course it was,’ Eddie said firmly.

‘But we were children when we said that. We said a lot of things. It’s like when we were fourteen, and you were convinced you were going to run off with that poet you love, Nash what’s-his-name. Or when we were twelve and we said we were going to eschew society and live in this treehouse. You changed your tune rather quickly when that big moth fell on you,’ Rose said, licking icing off her fingers. ‘Someone is actually going to get up the courage and ask me, eventually.’