Work Text:
It feels strange to be Gondalling without the others. Patrick doesn’t even know if it will work outside the Shippen, that crucible of their shared imagination. Maybe the props will help. He crouches in the priest hole, inside the panelling, breathing in the stale air, counting them; the candle in a pewter candlestick nicked from the sacristy in the Mariot Chase chapel, the black veil usually kept on the shelf outside it that he’d lent to Gin to cover her head, and had inspired the creation of Rosina, and the old book and dagger he had borrowed from the library, to add colour. This last he stuck in his belt, enjoying the feeling of it, and immediately, like a sort of alchemy, he felt more Rupert, more Gondal, and better.
Satisfied, he sat back on his haunches and looked round the inside of the priest hole. He bet the Brontes hadn’t had anything like this; the Shippen was fun, but there was definitely something to be said about living in a place like Mariot Chase. He wondered, briefly, about the quality of the air, especially if they were going to burn the candle and thus use the air faster; perhaps they had better leave the door a little bit ajar, and just hope that his pa and ma wouldn’t decide to investigate while passing by. The thought of trying to explain to his parents what he could possibly be doing with Ginty Marlow in her party dress and the chapel veil in the priest hole with an assortment of props made him go hot and cold all over; thankfully, his father was out for the day and his mother didn’t come by this part of the house much…
He took the dagger out of his belt, laid it down, and climbed out of the priest hole to shut it, and go to the mews. Gin was riding over on Catkin; she would be here soon. In the hallway he met his mother, on the phone; she waved at him and mouthed something which he couldn’t catch.
“What?”
His mother rolled her eyes. “Oh, honestly! No, not you, Jane – Pat. Never listens to a word I say…Pat, I said, I’m going out directly after lunch. I won’t be back till late.”
He nodded, but apparently this was wrong too; she rolled her eyes and said into the receiver: “Honestly, Jane, it’s like talking to the wall sometimes…” and he hunched his shoulders crossly and went out to the mews, taking pleasure in shutting the door loudly on her continuing voice.
“What are you reading?” said a voice and he looked up from where he lay on the lush grass to see Gin in her riding clothes, the sun gleaming gold in her hair. He sat up – goodness, her slim legs in jodhs just went up and up. He averted his eyes, starting to feel uncomfortable.
“Just the end of The Prisoner of Zenda,” he says, putting the book down. “Again.”
She nods. “Is it the bit where Rupert of Hentzau rides off? Thus he vanished, vile, debonair..”
He knows he shouldn’t correct her, but he can’t help himself. “Thus he vanished – reckless and wary, graceful and graceless, handsome, debonair, vile and unconquered.”
She nods. “I loved him for a year after I read that.”
He laughs, in a friendly way, but inside, he prefers not to examine too closely his feelings about that. He wouldn’t say he loved Rupert, but it was true that he’d taken up residence in his head for quite some time after that… “And now, onto another Rupert,” he says, getting up. “Are you getting changed or doing it like this?”
“Oh, changed,” Ginty says happily, pulling a rucksack off her back. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Of course.” He leads the way through the back door into the scullery, registering as he does so that he can no longer hear his mother’s voice; she must have gone out, thank goodness.
He shows Gin the bathroom, and waits politely in the hallway until she emerges, wearing the frock she wore at the Twelfth Night bash and stuffing her jodhs back in her rucksack. Even in the daylight, the dress is spectacular; a sort of peacock colour that brings out Ginty’s turquoise eyes, that he’d always thought were plain old blue, until he looked at them at the Twelfth Night party and found that they weren’t.
“It’s quite a dress,” he said, keeping his voice level with an effort.
“Isn’t it,” Ginty said, stroking the skirt against her legs with deep delight. “Very Rosina. Where are we -?” She left off without finishing the sentence.
“Just along here.” He leads the way to the room with the priest hole in it.
“In here?”
“There’s a priest hole.” He shows her where, and is satisfied by the look on her face when the panelling swings open.
“Oh, Patrick!”
She climbs in first and he follows; hesitating over whether to leave the panelling ajar, he thinks of his mother and shuts it a little too firmly.
In the dark, Ginty’s peacock eyes gleam. “Oh, Rupert…”
“Crispian,” he says without thinking and then the look on her face brings him abruptly back to the moment. “I mean, Rosina. What shall we do?”
Ginty thinks. “I could be visiting you in the Catiff’s Tower?”
“No good. I can’t be Rupert and Alcona, and we’d have to have him too. What about when I’ve been tortured? You don’t know I’ve told everything, don’t forget.”
She agrees, seeing it would be a gorgeous thing to do. “OK. You start.”
She picks up the candle and holds it in her clasped hands, expectant. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, to find the beginning place, and when he opens them again, he’s Rupert.
He opens his mouth to begin, but she forestalls him. “My lord, you were lucky to escape with your life.”
“Was I?” he counters. And it goes on smoothly from there, much more smoothly than he would have thought, until Ginty-as-Rosina leans forward. “You have my heart, my lord,” and sweeps her long, perfect lashes down smoothly over her creamy cheek, and he is still drawing in his breath when suddenly her lips are on his, soft, and warm, and he is kissing her back.
When they draw apart, she is looking at him, lit up, like the whole world has changed.
“Was that your first –“
He shook his head. “My love. I only care for you, but an officer of the Palladian Guard cannot be expected to live as a monk.”
“No,” she says, urgently. “As Patrick, not Rupert.”
He freezes for a moment, feeling Rupert drain away, leaving him scriptless. What is he supposed to say? “No,” he says, finally, looking down at his knees, the better to cast aside the memory of those cautious experiments at school, and even worse from Gin’s point of view, in the holidays with her brother.
She seems to expect this; at any rate, doesn’t seem upset, and instead leans back to kiss him again. “Rosina…” he breathes as her lips touch his; his hands seek and find her waist, slim and athletic and firm, and he remembers that like Peter she excels at diving, she must move through the water like a mermaid, and the thought of it spurs him to deepen the kiss, to move closer in. She pushes up against him as they kiss. Then the feel of her hands wandering downwards acts on him like a cold shower and he pulls abruptly away.
“Rosina wouldn’t do that,” he says.
Ginty pushes that aside. “She might. Anyway, we can,” and she’s about to reach for him again when he moves back, out of her reach.
“She wouldn’t.” He is absolutely certain about this.
“How do you know? She’s my person.”
How childish she sounds when she says that. The Marlows are like that sometimes, he’s noticed; all that four-against-one and don’t-play-if-you-feel-like-that stuff. It must be part and parcel of being a big family…
“She’s not, you know,” he points out with an aggravating reasonableness. “We both came up with the idea.” Looking at her face, scored through with anger, he can’t remember exactly why they did.
“Well, she’s more mine than yours.”
Childish! The thought strikes him to silence. He can’t imagine now why he even suggested they try Gondalling on their own. He glances round the priest hole, with her in her party dress, and the various candles, books and props. Suddenly, it’s all lost its magic; it looks silly, he thinks violently. And the way she’s glaring at him…He leans sideways suddenly and shoves the panelling hard, so that it swings open, letting in the light and the air.
“I’ve got to go and see to the hawks,” he says, and out of the corner of his eye sees her face explode with rage.
He slides out of the priest hole, leaving all the litter of their game behind, even her, but she follows him, red with anger. “That’s so typical of you. You’re just like Nicola. I don’t know why you didn’t invite her over to Gondal –“
He leans back, grabs her disregarded rucksack and tosses it to her. “Because she doesn’t even like Gondalling, or hadn’t you noticed? I thought you did, but you only wanted to –“
“And what’s wrong with that?” she demands breathlessly, following him as he strides down the corridor.
“Nothing. I don’t want to, that’s all.” They’ve reached the bathroom now and he stops. “Go and get changed, unless you want to ride home in that ridiculous dress.”
She gives that one long look down at the dress and gasps before disappearing through the door with a slam. He waits outside, torn between his desire to flee and his desire to make sure she’s left. He doesn’t even want to see her any more.
When she emerges, she is paler, but still angry, back in her riding clothes and clutching her rucksack. She glares at him. “Don’t worry, I’m going. It’s not like I would have come if you hadn’t invited me.”
“Gin –“
“Oh, get lost. It’s all very well saying you didn’t want to kiss me, but it didn’t feel like that back then. If you’re embarrassed –“
“I’m not –“ he starts to say, but he can’t lie, and seeing it, she gives a sudden hacking sob, and runs down the corridor towards the back door. And he watches her go, feeling, somewhere in some small truthful part of himself, that he is running away too, though from what, he cannot possibly imagine.