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Chapter Two

1st October 1845

Dear Puss

I hope this finds you well.

We are having some fine autumn weather here in Cambridge. I hope your weather is also fine.

Studies going well etc. and I have all my papers ready for Egypt next year. Have had some excellent rugger this season.

Uncle Jack writes to say that you are making good progress with your music studies. How is the old fellow as a music master? Better than your Miss Critchell, I hope.

I must end here, as the fellows want to take a rugby ball down to the playing field while the sun is out.

Affectionately your

Edwin.

"Eddy is the worst correspondent in the world."

I threw the letter on the breakfast table, to the consternation of the other girls present.

"Surely not!" Miss Twinkleton shook her head and paused in the spreading of marmalade. "He is an excellent young gentleman and he dotes on you."

"If he dotes on me, why does it take him three weeks to write and then, when he does, it's a few scrawled lines about rugby?"

"Ah, we are not all naturally gifted with a pen, my dear. Young Mr Drood has plentiful talents in other directions, which will keep you well provided for."

Well provided for, in a place I did not want to live. The ungracious words stayed in my thoughts only. I snatched the letter back up and made to leave the room.

"Do not forget, Rosa," Miss Twinkleton admonished my escaping form, "you have your voice lesson after lunch. If you are late again, Mr Jasper will be most displeased."

"Oh." I stopped dead and half-turned, putting a hand to my forehead as if to assess its heat. "Miss Twinkleton, my throat is awfully sore this morning. I fear I may have to postpone today's lesson."

"Sore throat? Well, why in heaven's name didn't you mention it earlier? And you seemed in fine voice just now, when you were so quick to criticise young Mr Drood."

I affected a pathetic little cough.

"I don't like to complain."

I could see my friends rolling their eyes at each other. They knew well enough that this was a ploy to avoid my music lesson.

"Well, we shall see how you feel later, when Mr Jasper calls."

"I can barely speak. Could you not send word to him that I am indisposed?"

"Later," said Miss Twinkleton, uncharacteristically firm. A plague on her and her silly infatuation. She would not admit of anything that might take her twice-weekly flutter away from her.

It seemed I had to resign myself to another hour of singing 'Ah' in various permutations, over and over again, while he…looked at me.

I had never been more conscious of my body than I was during these purgatorial sessions. He fixed his eyes on my throat, my chest, my mouth, my waist and kept them there, lips half-parted, his expression drifting off into a near-daze at times, until he seemed to recollect himself and tap on the piano top before making some nasty criticism or other.

I experienced his attention as a pressure, like whalebone, tight around me. I tried so hard to hide from it, to deflect it, but it pinned me down and held me so that my dreams at night were of imprisonment and constraint.

"Have you heard from Ned?" he said that day, opening his case and removing a pile of scores that probably wouldn't be used.

"Ned? I've heard from Eddy," I said with emphatic hostility.

Too emphatic; he looked up from his papers and raised his eyebrows at me.

"Is he well?"

"Very well. Playing lots of rugger."

Jasper smiled in this maddening way he had, of seeming to find something beyond my immediate words amusing. It was almost indulgent, proprietorial. It made me cross. How dared he feel proprietorial towards me? I did not in any way belong to him.

I didn't smile back and he turned to the piano.

"Well, shall we see if those high notes will elude us today?"

Another hour passed of this intense doppelgänger of reality, where it felt we were both denying what was actually happening. What would an observer see, I wondered? A music lesson, simply? Or something more?

The very air thickened as I squeezed out the notes to the wavering last, never able to give him what he sought.

"No," he said, putting down the piano lid and coming to stand alarmingly close. "Breathe in. One good deep breath."

I started to inhale and he put a hand on my shoulder, steadying it. I looked at him wildly, and then at the door, but the maid was nowhere in evidence.

"You don't need to lift your shoulders to take a breath," he said in explanation, removing his hand. "Now try again."

Holding my shoulders down, I filled my lungs afresh.

"Put a finger to your lips," he said, his voice so low. "Breathe out as slowly as you can. If you let too much go at once, you will feel it on this finger. Control it. That's it. Slower, as slowly as you can. Put your hand here."

He put his hand on his stomach. Surely he did not mean for me…? My breath began to jolt.

"No, not mine – yours!" he said, reading my thoughts.

I put my palm flat against my corseted stomach and felt it relax, as far as it could behind those rods of bone.

"Good. Now try it again."

We stood there like that, close as lovers yet far distant, while he watched me breathe.

"I want you to practise this," he said. "Whenever you have an idle moment. Take a breath and release it, and repeat until you have absolute mastery of it. Will you do that for me?"

"I will do it. I will try."

His hand twitched, as if he meant to reach out to me, to touch my face, then it fell back by his side.

The maid's head appeared around the door.

"The hour's up, Miss Twinkleton says."

"Remember me to Ned," Jasper said, packing his case, the thread of tension between us broken again. If it had existed. Had it?

I excused myself and ran upstairs to the dormitory. Now I needed to breathe, big gasps of air, putting my neck back and shutting my eyes until my lungs fell back into the natural pattern and I could be calm.

I picked up my notepad and pen and wrote to Eddy.

Dearest Eddy

I was so happy to hear from you, but I do wish you would say more. Other girls get billets doux and I get a lot of flannel about rugby. It isn't fair!

Your Uncle Jack has just been for our voice lesson. There never was such a music master."

I paused, fidgeting with my pen, aching to say something about the strangeness of everything between me and Jasper. But what could I say, without implying that his beloved Uncle Jack plotted to betray him? I had no evidence of any such thing. It could be no more than my imagination, though with each lesson I became more convinced that this was not the case.

But he had made no declaration, nor anything akin to one. Was I going mad?

I pictured a court of law in the case of Drood vs Jasper. What solid proof could the plaintiff produce? None. The defendant was innocent of the charge. Surely. Surely he was. No jury could convict him.

In my bed that night I lay listening to Edith and Kitty and the others snuffling and sighing. I envied them their innocent dreams. All I could think of was Jasper's eyes on me, and how they corrupted me. He made me think of my flesh. How did he do this? Sleep was distant and I was restless. What would happen if I lifted my nightdress to my waist and put my hand upon that place…that place…womanhood?

I put the nightdress down, panting slightly. Eddy, think of Eddy, think of…of…flowers. Wholesome things, sweet things.

I clenched my fists by my sides and looked straight up, at the dark ceiling, trying my hardest to forget Jasper had ever looked at me with his corrupting eyes.

But he followed me into my dreams, winding himself around me, insinuating himself under my skin. There was no escape from him, even in sleep.

At the piano, he demonstrated fingering techniques so that our hands sometimes crossed over on the keyboard, our forearms glancing together then apart. Once, he lost patience with my fumbling and seized my hand, positioning the fingers as he required. He noticed how I started back, almost off the stool, but he held them firm.

"What are you afraid of?" he said, with a self-conscious little smile. He knew it was him I feared, he knew it. "Look. Little delicate fingers like yours barely span the octave, but if you place them so, you can stretch to it."

"I…can't."

He released them. He must have noticed how they trembled, but he didn't remark upon it.

"If you neglect your practice, as I sense you have been doing, then, no, you can't. I shall speak to Miss Twinkleton and ask her to add a rehearsal hour to your daily timetable."

"Oh, must you?"

"Yes. Try it again. You need merely to build some strength in your fingers. Nobody is born a pianist, even Mr Liszt."

My reply was a glower.

"Perhaps instead I should add an extra lesson to the week. Saturday mornings…"

"I will practise, I promise I will! There is no need to speak to Miss Twinkleton, though."

"Good. Then we shall soon find that we are able to move on from these exercises you find so uncongenial."

"I cannot tell you how ardently I look forward to that day. If ever I have occasion to be introduced to Mr Carl Czerny, I am sure I shall cut him dead."

Jasper laughed. Our hands lay side by side on the keys. He had such long fingers; it was easy enough for him to span an octave. They were gentleman's hands, pale and unblemished, but with such strength in them that I barely dared imagine how tightly they could grip, around my wrist, around my waist. And yet imagine it I did. Why did my mind play such horrid games with me?

The girls chattered constantly about what it would be like to be married, but I seldom joined in their highly-coloured imaginings. I did not want to think about it.

I wanted to bring time up short, then to reverse it, back through the years until I was the smaller Rosa, flat of chest and without that disgusting hair, able to wear a bodice instead of a corset. And then I wanted to go further back, back to the time before my parents died and to stop their deaths, so that my future might be different. No Nuns' House, no Edwin, no Jasper.

Oh, why could it not be so?

One darkening afternoon in late October I walked with Edith and Kitty towards the High Street, the dead leaves skittering around our skirts in the playful wind.

"If you did not marry Edwin," opened Kitty, to my considerable irritation, "do you think both your fathers would come to haunt you?"

"Kitty, don't be such a beast," remonstrated Edith. "You can be heartless sometimes."

"Captain Drood would have a long journey to make for the haunting," I observed flatly. "For his bones rest in Egypt."

"Truly?" Kitty was fascinated. "I thought he lay in the Drood vault."

"No. Eddy says his body was never recovered from the mining accident."

"How ghastly!" exclaimed Edith.

"Could we take a different route?" I asked, eyeing Mr Jasper's gatehouse nervously. "I do not like to pass under that archway."

"Kitty has filled your head so full of her ghostly imaginings?" An annoyingly sympathetic Edith took my arm and hugged me close to her. "Poor Rosy-Posy. You must take no note of her."

But there the conversation ended, for Kitty had halted and was pointing her arm wildly at the gatehouse arch.

"O, a vision!" she intoned.

Following her line of sight, my heart sank when the beaming face of Edwin turned towards us and he commenced waving vigorously.

"Hie! Pusskins!" he bellowed.

I cringed, hating his stupid pet name for me even more than usual.

"What on earth are you doing here?" I hissed once he had run over to us.

"I got an Exeat. Don't look so flabbergasted, Puss! Anyone would think you had seen Spring-Heeled Jack instead of your own dear Eddy."

"We will go to the High Street by ourselves," said Edith helpfully, though Kitty seemed none too pleased by this tactful withdrawal, looking back at us several times before disappearing through the arch.

"You fwightened me," I said, reverting to the lisping prattle I affected in his company.

He laughed fondly, drawing my stiff body into an embrace.

"Poor Pusskins. Cheer up and I'll buy you some jujubes. Come to the sweetshop."

It transpired that it was Jasper's birthday and Edwin had come to celebrate it with him.

"I hope you're attending to your music studies, Puss," said Edwin on our return from the sweetshop. Miraculously, we had not quarrelled yet – perhaps an effect of our dedication to sucking the jujubes instead of talking. "Or Uncle Jack will hold me to account for it."

"Why would he? You aren't the one he terrorises with his eternal finger exercises."

"No, but you are my promised bride, so the ultimate responsibility for you falls to me."

"How stupid. You are all so stupid. I will do as I please, and bear the blame for it myself."

I tossed my head and kicked a pebble out of the archway, beneath which we now stood.

"That is not how society functions, Rosa, and you know it."

"Oh, you are scolding me! You only ever call me Rosa when you are scolding me. It isn't fair, Eddy, truly it isn't. You are mean and cruel and I hope you are kinder to me when Christmas comes." I stamped my foot, deriving a sharp and vicious satisfaction from the echo my heel made.

Edwin stepped back from me, his arms flung wide in surrender.

"There is no use in talking with you when you are in this humour. I shall go and call on Mrs Crisparkle – she at least may have a good word for me. If your temper improves later, I shall come and call on you at the Nuns' House."

"Do not trouble yourself on my account!" I called after him as he strode off towards the Cathedral Close.

I huffed and folded my arms, trying to collect myself before returning home, but when my eyes slid sideways, they alighted on the mortifying sight of John Jasper, standing in his little doorway, watching me. How much of that scene had he observed?

I did not stay to find out, taking to my heels and running from him as fast as my feet would carry me.

At our next lesson, I blushed as soon as I entered the room, dreading that he might bring up the subject of my silly row with Eddy.

I went to stand by the piano, composing myself for yet more breathing and singing of arpeggios.

"Edwin returned to Cambridge much subdued," he said.

I rolled my eyes and held my tongue. I did not want to speak of this.

"But I was able to reassure him that you were by no means the first lovers to quarrel, and that anger and passion are closely bound."

I turned and stared at him. Anger and passion are closely bound. He made reference to my…passions. How did he dare?

"I don't wish to speak of it."

He held my eyes boldly but I maintained an icy glare that eventually fended him off.

"The Miss Bud I saw with him is not the Miss Bud I have come to know," he said.

I flushed to the roots of my hair, infinitely mortified.

"Please, if you are a gentleman, do not speak of it."

"I wonder which is the real Miss Bud," he mused softly, as if to himself. "Shall we ever know?" He reached into his case. "Let's try this song, shall we? Who is Silvia, what is she, that all our swains adore her?"

I was in a worse confusion than ever once he left the house.

He made claim to know me better than Eddy did. Was he accurate in his surmise? Did I deceive Eddy and show my true self to Jasper? And, if so, why was this?

And if he 'knew' me, as he said, who was the Rosa Bud he knew? How did she differ from Eddy's promised bride?

He was under my skin, in my head, stealing my deepest thoughts and using them against me. I felt so acutely endangered that, before the next piano lesson, I cornered Kitty Mason in the dormitory and held out my hand to her.

"Kitty, twist my wrist. Twist it right round."

She frowned, as if she had not understood my words.

"I need at least a sprain. Come on. I will pay you."

"Rosy, what is this?"

"You are always giving girls Chinese burns – you are the school expert. Twist it round. I don't want a piano lesson today."

"You really do detest that Mr Jasper, don't you?" Her eyes were saucers.

"Yes. So? Will you do it? Please?"

She sighed. "I am not sure I can. Let me try."

She wrenched my wrist in a sudden, sharp contortion that made me cry out.

"Oh, oh," I gasped, tears coming to my eyes. "I think that has done it. Oh, it does hurt so. Kitty, you are a marvel. You shall have all my cake this week."

Ten minutes later, when Jasper arrived in the hallway, my wrist was bandaged and resting in a sling made of a pillowslip.

He regarded it with dismay as I made a pained descent of the staircase.

"I am such a clumsy goose," I explained to his and Miss Twinkleton's horrified faces. "I'm afraid I shall not be able to play for at least a week."

Jasper's eyes narrowed, sending a quiver through me. He was furious, it was plain.

"I am so sorry that you have been put out," gushed Twinkleton, putting a hand on his arm.

He stepped back, returning his hat to his head and seizing his scarf from the coathooks.

"There is nothing to be done," he growled, then he swept fiercely from the house.

Later that day, when Kitty and I took a walk around the Close, we saw a light shining golden from his gatehouse window. Kitty drew me closer, against my will, until we could hear music. He was playing his piano.

"Goodness, what Sturm und Drang!" said Kitty admiringly.

The last movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata crashed about our ears, as stormy and intense as I had ever heard it.

"You have made him awfully angry," she added unnecessarily. "My goodness, he makes one shiver, doesn't he?"

She turned to me, her face bright with ghoulish delight. "I wonder if he would give me lessons. I think him rather handsome."

"Don't be a goose. Come on, it's cold. Let's go home."

But it wasn't just the cold that made me want to hug myself tight and hide by the fire. Oh no.