Fairies and Felicitations (Scholars and Sorcery) by Eleanor Beresford Read Free Book Online Page B

thought of Esther's sharp tongue making witticisms at the expense of my confusing experiences is too much for me to handle. I'm having enough difficulty reducing it in my head to a harmless incident without Esther amusing herself by making it something that it truthfully was not.  
    I suspect Esther would not blush at a boy's kisses.
    I wheel my steed down and to the ground. Ember lands happily, eager at the friendly scent of horses and unicorns.
    "Ember! Welcome back! And you too, Charley."
    I grin happily down at Miss Roberts, feeling a little better at the sight of her weather-beaten face. Miss Roberts, Esther once pointed out to me in a meaningful kind of way, is what happens when pale-skinned girls go riding for years and simply won't make the effort to shade their complexions. I don't see what's so bad, myself, in a bit of sunburn and wrinkles. Miss Roberts' face is rather nice, like reddish aged leather. She, quite frankly, is a trump. Some of the other girls dislike her and are a bit afraid of her blunt, mannish ways, but there is more real kindness in Miss Roberts' little finger than Miss Evans, our fluffy little English mistress with her trail of adoring acolytes, has in all her over-perfumed body.
    Miss Roberts is a Fernleigh Manor old girl and a friend of Miss Carroll, our headmistress, and the girls who bring their own steeds always stable them at Briar Stables. She hires out horses and unicorns to the girls who love to ride and don't have their own, poor things, and is patient teaching even the little ones. Not pegasi, though. Ember is the only pegasus who uses the special paddock that a wizard with a gift of binding enspelled to prevent flying beasts taking off without a rider. This gives me a kind of idea, a fragile and new little idea that, like a gryphon hatchling, needs to be hidden deep down in the straw of my mind before it can stand to be looked at too much.  
    We settle Ember together. Sometimes, I suspect Miss Roberts loves Ember almost as much as I do, and it makes me feel better about being separated from him.  
    We walk together back into the sunlight and I push the air out of my lungs in long, deep gust. It still tastes a little acrid in my mouth, from the soot that flies up from Ember's mane in a high wind. I love the taste.
    "All tip-top at home, Charley?" Miss Roberts' tone is as light as a voice as deep and husky as hers will ever be, but the glance she shoots me is sharp.
    I think of everything that was worrying me on the short ride over, and I wish that I could find the words to tell her. Somehow, I think she'll understand better than most. But the words are just impossible. I'm a schoolgirl, not even eighteen yet—how can I talk about kissing, and marriage, and not sound foolish? Most of all, how can I tell a grownup, of whose private inside life and any past romances I know nothing, how horrible the kissing made me feel? Won't she laugh at me? Or, if she is a spinster who has never even had a drop of romance, wouldn't it make her feel I was being wicked and ungrateful?
    I lift one shoulder slowly, then let it drop. "It's just hard coming back, after long hols." Miss Roberts understands, better than anyone, what coming back can sometimes mean to me. "I'll be fine once I shake down."
    "All right, then. But you know - if you need anything, ask Miss Carroll if you can come over for tea. Not tea, though - filthy muck. But I'm told I can make a wicked cup of black coffee." She squeezes my shoulder.
    "I'm fine," I say. "So long."
    I can feel Miss Roberts' gaze on the small of my back as she shuts the gate behind me and I set off down the road to the school. It's only a short walk. It's strictly forbidden to leave Fernleigh Manor's boundaries alone without a permission slip, but there's quite a large gap in the hedge nearby, and I'm not the only one who slips out to Briar Stables every now and then. Miss Roberts is too much of a sport to report us for popping down to see her charges.

    Somewhat