She approached the main doors, and a bellboy held them open for her. The tea salon was located on the ground floor, which was the gourmet floor, and the scent of sugar wafted around her as she walked past honey and jam jar pyramids and shelves stacked with colorful tea and biscuit tin boxes. Hundreds of chocolates were on display on the confectionery counter. When the salon’s seating area came into view, she slowed after all. She thought she had seen Alexandra’s blond head. Just then, the woman in question turned toward her. When familiar gray eyes met hers, Catriona did feel something, a zing, an echo. A ghost rattling its chain.
Back at the boarding school, Alexandra’s arrival had worked like an electric current on her broken heart. The young princess had entered the Common Room slinky like a silverpoint cat; small body, wide-set eyes, heart-shaped face. When their gazes had crossed, something inside Catriona had said Hello. Their beds had been next to each other in the dorm, but they hadn’t really conversed until Alexandra had walked into Catriona’s secret nook in the roped-off turret for a smoke one afternoon.
“Why are you playing alone?” She had nodded at the chessboard where Catriona was practicing her gambits.
“I don’t have an opponent here,” Catriona muttered.
Alexandra sat on the table, one foot on the floor, the pert curve of her bottom threatening to topple Catriona’s right flank on the board.
“Teach me,” she said from above. “You scoff? Why?”
Catriona leaned back in her chair, her hands stuffed into her skirt pockets. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t think I can learn it?”
Catriona considered it. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I should like to learn it well enough so that I might impress a gentleman, but not so well that I would beat him.”
Catriona frowned. “The point of this game is to win it.”
“That may be so,” Alexandra allowed, “but the point of the greater game is winning the best possible husband.”
“What greater game is that?”
“The game of life, Dummerchen.” Silly one.
“Ah.”
“You are lucky to have met me. You teach me chess, and I teach you how to charm a husband.”
“I don’t want a husband,” she said reflexively, because Charlie would marry someone else.
Alexandra’s canine teeth flashed. “You’re funny. I like you.”
This made no sense as they barely knew each other, but confronted with the girl’s cheeky smile, Catriona was tongue-tied. That night, she watched from her bed as Alexandra pulled the pins from her hair, and how the smooth honey-blond locks unfurled down her back. She looked away, quickly, as though she hadn’t been supposed to be looking at all. Books knew about such things; schools knew about such things; rigorous daily exercise programs were in place in single-sex institutions to prevent such things. In this case, the matutinal jumping jacks prevented nothing—all the familiar symptoms soon ailed Catriona: the dry mouth, the dreams, the pounding pulse, the impossibility of looking at her new friend while wanting to look at her all the time. She did teach Alex chess, as it involved little talking beyond giving instructions. Meanwhile, especially after the chimpanzee debacle, she had dreamt of moving to Applecross with her friend, to live unencumbered by convention and yet with a romantic companion. Well, that hadn’t worked out at all.
Alexandra stood when she approached, her eyes bright with Wiedersehensfreude—the pleasure of seeing someone again.
“Catriona,” she said. Cheeks were kissed, the smell of sweet powder and Alex briefly went to Catriona’s head. Alexandra took both her hands and looked her up and down. “My goodness. You haven’t changed.”
“Neither have you.”
“Oh please,” Alex said, amused. She gestured toward her figure, dressed modestly in dark green taffeta silk. “I’m twice the woman I used to be.”
“It suits you.”
“Do you truly think so?”
Her eyes roamed carefully. “Aye.”
They sat. The tables were spread out and busy with ladies taking afternoon tea. As long as one spoke softly, one had some privacy.
Alexandra lifted the gold medallion she wore around her neck. “I have two boys now, can you believe it.”
She showed them to Catriona, handsome children with severe side partings.
“Friedrich, and Johannes.”
“Lovely.”
The elder boy looked at least six years old. They hadn’t waited long to marry Alexandra off after she had been caught doing something “unspeakable” with Georgina Rowbotham in the roped-off turret. Mean, uninspiring Georgina, of all people. The betrayal, oh, it could make a girl feel feral. Mrs. Keller had sent the pair home after a night in solitary confinement; their belongings were collected by staff. No one had seemed to know about the stocking with two hundred Goldmark under Alexandra’s mattress. They vanished with Catriona a few days later.