Why had she done this? Why on earth had she agreed to this? Closing her green eyes in shame Gemma glared down at the ground, at the packed dirt, covered with leftover seed and straw, dried out to the point of turning into dust at any contact. Why had she even agreed to come here? A lady should most defiantly not be prowling around at night, let alone with a man and no proper escort. Another lock of her red hair fell down across her shoulder.
"You're not doing it right, Kartik," Gemma stated in a flat voice, still staring at the ground. She heard a sigh from behind her back, from the Indian boy doing – well at least trying to do – her hair.
"Well, as you can imagine, Miss Doyle, the Rakshana did not include 'hairdressing' in my studies." Kartik smirked and stabbed another pain painfully into the English girl's tender scalp. He gave a small grimace at his terrible work; the pin had failed to hold anything down, only make his work with three other pins in vain. He pulled all four of the little metal creations out and set them on the little table beside him. Gemma sighed and knew that another half-hour had just been added to the end of this hair styling session.
"Calm down, Miss Doyle. Anyways, if you hadn't insisted on putting my hair into the latest fashion last week, you wouldn't be in this position," Kartik explained thoughtfully at Gemma's sigh, hiding his own smile of revenge. If that girl had thought that he wouldn't take his vengeance for stealing his pride by making him impersonate some stuck-up English dog, then she was wrong. She was terribly wrong.
Gemma accepted the explanation for her current situation with another sigh of indignation, a sigh very inappropriate for a woman of her status. Maybe she shouldn't have put Kartik's hair into that ridiculous style last week and then maybe she could have been sleeping right now … Wait!
Gemma stopped her line of thought for the moment. How could she be so vain as to wish for sleep over the look on Kartik's face when he saw his hair in the mirror, twisted up into an intricate design? Kartik's expression was worth so much more than a night of peaceful sleep, or even having Kartik himself style her own hair. At least her hair was meant to be styled.
"Are you almost done yet?" Gemma asked. Her legs twitched with the urge to walk around.
Kartik shrugged and tilted his head to side the judge the appearance of Gemma's hair, his own black curls falling across his face. He gave a little sigh, as if his work was the best he could get it to be, but that it still lacked in major areas, like actually resembling some sort of style. As he looked at the red hair, it just looked like a piled mass of hair, delicate strings twisted harshly in a junkyard heap.
"Just a few more adjustments, Miss Doyle," Kartik muttered.
"Pourriez-vous être plus lent?" Gemma murmured in French with a roll of her eyes.
"What did you say, Miss Doyle?" asked Kartik with a happy note in his voice, as though her was greatly pleased by irritating Gemma. He pulled a lock of Gemma's hair and curled it around his hand, then pinned it down with success.
"I said 'Could you be slower?' I just felt that if I said it in French, then maybe it would have been more lady-like," Gemma told Kartik with an air of impatience glued to her every word. She winced as a chunk of hair was nearly ripped from her head.
"Sorry," Kartik murmured softly.
Gemma didn't respond, instead she studied her nails, noting sadly that her left index finger had gained a fracture from her journey to the barn. Grandmama would not be pleased. Of course, Grandmama would not be pleased with her sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, traversing across London, meeting up with an Indian boy in an abandoned barn, and letting him touch her hair, either.
"I'm done, Miss Doyle," Kartik proclaimed proudly. He grabbed a mirror from the small table next to him, handing it over Gemma's shoulder so she could take it.
Gemma took hold of the mirror reluctantly; she knew that she was going to feel humiliated. Taking a deep breath, she raised the mirror to her face.
Her first expression upon her face was of sheer shook at what she looked like. Her normally red hair appeared more to be some sort of chopped meat held together by pins. Small pieces of her hair stood out at odd angles, the frizz of her red locks was more apparent than ever. Not even the worst hair stylist in the world was capable of creating the disaster zone that Kartik had on her head.
Kartik smiled widely, showing all of his teeth, and a portion of Gemma's anger left her at seeing Kartik display such genuine feeling. Then, she remembered her hair and anger returned. "Do you like your hair, Miss Doyle?" Kartik inquired before he began to laugh at Gemma's expense. "I worked … so hard … on that … style," said Kartik between laughs.
Gemma glared at Kartik over the top of the mirror though she doubted her harsh stare really made much of an impact with the way her hair looked. Sighing, Gemma ran a hand through her hair, but her hand hit something. She cocked her eyebrows and pulled something with a metal chain out of her hair, grimacing every time a piece of hair was pulled in the process.
"What is this?" She asked quietly. Pulling it in front of her face, Gemma saw it was a choker necklace, the same choker necklace she had put around Kartik's neck last week, when his hair had been conformed into the latest ladies' fashion.
Kartik smiled, "Well put it on, Miss Doyle. It is intended for a lady, and I daresay that you qualify far better than me."
"Really?" Gemma asked, "Well, when I was leaving here last week, an old woman on the street asked why an adorable young lady was wearing pants."