Page 5 of Infamous

‘Well, they can’t have you!’ Eddie said, outraged. ‘You’re not free for the taking!’

‘Well,you’rehardly going to marry me, are you, Ed?’ Rose said lightly, dabbing ineffectually at a smear of cake on her skirts.

‘Obviously not. Just .?.?. stay here with me, and things will be as they’ve always been. I hardly care what your parents think. I hardly care whatanyonethinks. You promised – you cannot back down now. It would be cowardice.’

Rose wrinkled her nose and picked up the bottle of wine, taking a deep swig from it as she stared straight ahead at the house, where the lamps were starting to go out in the upper rooms as the Miller family took themselves to bed.

‘That’s not fair,’ she said eventually, so quietly and with such a noble air of suffering that Eddie had been quite lost for words.

From that evening on, she spent a lot more time actuallylookingat Rose than she had ever done before. Rose had become as familiar as the coat-hooks in the hallway or Lucy-Anne’s cat perpetually slumbering by the fire: the sort of things you never spared a second glance simply because they were always there. Eddie had always assumed that their friendship was permanent, their pact not to be wed as strong and everlasting as any marriage, but now things felt precarious. She wanted to get a good look at Rose, just in case. Eddie noticed the little things about her that had become invisible: the fact that her hair was simply too soft and too straight to keep a curl, and always ended up halfway down her back by midnight; the lopsidedness of her smile, one corner of her mouth always crooked up and inviting a dimple; the fact that she had many different laughs on hand for every possible occasion, but that Eddie’s favourite was the undignified, goose-like honking that occurred when she had truly lost her head.

She watched as Rose became a woman, taking to it far more easily than Eddie did. It suited her.

Rose still called for Eddie on her way to parties, and sometimes managed to convince Eddie to come with her, but when they arrived she hadotherfriends. High society ladies who had been thoroughly charmed and had accepted Rose into the fold; who squealed with delight at the sight of her and handed her drinks and enveloped her in a whirlwind of gossip and jokes about events and people that seemed, to Eddie, about as scintillating as twisted ankles and taxes. Mostly, Eddie stayed at home, and tried not to sulk when Rose sent a note or dropped by to say she wouldn’t be joining the Millers for dinner that evening as she had another engagement. She usually failed very miserably at not being miserable, and spent the evening arguing with Lucy-Anne, who was only four years her junior and therefore her natural sparring partner.

The time they spent together after the dinners Rosedidattend – crashing from the house with pilfered libations in hand, Rose never hesitating for a second when it came time to climb the wizened oak tree even if she was wearing her finest dress – became sacred.

A week after Eddie had recited her story about Anne Bonny and Mary Read as strangely violent female academics, Rose committed a cardinal sin: she willingly invited a maninto their treehouse.

Not literally, of course. If she had done, Eddie would have kicked him right back out, and wished him luck on his way down.

‘I met him at Ava Forester’s house,’ Rose said, shivering as autumn threatened. ‘Do you know William Rednock?’

‘William Rednock?’ Eddie said disparagingly. ‘Is he not about sixteen? Is he not the one completely obsessed with model ships? He’s only got half a moustache, Rose, and it’s not even the good half.’

‘Yes. But it’s not him,’ Rose said, dropping her chin on to her hands. ‘It’s his uncle Albert.’

The only appropriate reaction to this was extensive swearing, and Eddie did not waver in her duty to deliver. Rose raised an eyebrow and waited patiently for her to finish.

‘He’s only eight-and-thirty. He’s still got full use of all his parts. He’s very kind. And besides – you’ve never even met him.’

‘Yes Ihave,’ Eddie said indignantly. ‘I met him when I was ten, which means he was already .?.?.’ She had to pause to do the mathematics, and Rose waited politely. ‘Six and twenty, ugh. It was at a picnic, and he gave me his hat to get me to stop fighting with Lucy-Anne.’

‘Well, there you go, then. I told you he was kind.’

‘He’s a goodbabysitter. So that’ll certainly come in handy.’

‘Oh, stop it. Sixteen years is nothing. My mother is twelve years younger than my father, and you don’t heckle them every time you see them.’

She was, of course, entirely correct – but Eddie felt very strongly that there was a world of difference betweenother peoplemarrying men over a decade their senior andRoseconsidering doing the same.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said unnecessarily.

‘Well, you don’t like anything,’ Rose said, which was unfair. Eddie liked lots of things. Rose. Writing. She was sure there were others, she just couldn’t recall them at the moment. ‘I saw him at the Foresters’, and Ava’s father introduced us. We ended up spending a very pleasant evening together.’

‘What?’ Eddie said scathingly. ‘Dancing?’ She managed to make ‘dancing’ sound as horrifying as ‘frolicking in your own excrement’, as she had intended.

‘No, actually, even worse –talking,’ Rose said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. ‘He breeds rabbits in his spare time. He was telling me all about it. Apparently, they’re actually very complicated creatures.’

‘Just because he’s good at animal husbandry,’ Eddie said, already smirking as she worked her way to her punchline, ‘doesn’t mean—’

‘No,’ said Rose. ‘Sorry, but you are not permitted to make that joke. It’s low-hanging fruit. I did all the set-up for you.’

‘Oh, fine,’ said Eddie crossly. ‘But if you’re allowed to tell me that you might be considering signing your entire life away to a man because he thinks rabbits arethrilling and complex creatures, I have to be allowed to make jokes, too.’

‘I’m not joking,’ said Rose.

Eddie’s brain came to a grinding halt. ‘You’re serious? This is real?’