The Forgotten Book Page 14

  I bit my lip. “Oh, in amongst all that stuff in the west wing library,” I lied, but even as I said it I wondered whether I should perhaps be telling Darcy the truth. We’d discovered one of the lord of Stolzenburg’s secret laboratories together, after all; we already shared one secret. But on the other hand, he was still Darcy de Winter, and most of the time he treated me like a stupid kid.

  I pulled my soaking wet blazer more tightly around me. My clothes felt heavy and icy cold, and the wind blowing up from the river was making my teeth chatter. But Darcy’s wet clothes couldn’t have been much more comfortable than mine, and yet here he was leaning against the broken pillar beside me, trying to apologize.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and this time I nodded.

  “Th-thanks for pulling me out of the fountain,” I muttered.

  I looked up a moment later to find Darcy giving me a rather odd look. He wasn’t looking down his nose at me as usual. There was a softness in his eyes.

  “No problem,” he said. “No problem.”

  I stared at him.

  “Emma.” The warmth with which he said my name was almost enough to make me stop shivering. “I wish I could protect you from everything and everyone—I…” He cleared his throat. “I like you, okay? Even I don’t understand how it happened, but I think I … I really like you.”

  What?

  “Er…,” I said. My mouth opened and shut again like a goldfish, and I felt a kind of warm glow in my chest that I couldn’t explain. Was Darcy de Winter saying that he … No, he couldn’t mean it. Anyway, the only person I’d ever thought about in that way was Frederick, and I …

  My mind suddenly went blank as Darcy put out a hand and tucked a lock of wet hair behind my ear. I looked up into his dark eyes, the color of hazelnut caramel.

  “This kind of thing doesn’t normally happen to me,” he murmured. “I mean, Toby and I are only here for a few weeks—I’m going back to England soon. There’s no way this could ever have a future. And you’re only sixteen, you’re still at school. Stolzenburg is your whole world. You have your little secret society, you go on dates and get so drunk you almost pass out.…”

  EXCUSE ME?!

  “We’re completely wrong for each other, and over the past few weeks I’ve been desperately trying not to think about you all the time. But it’s no good.” He leaned toward me. “I can’t get you out of my head, Emma Morgenroth,” he whispered, and I felt his breath on my lips. His right hand was resting on the pillar beside my face, his left hand was still playing with my hair, and his perfect lips were almost touching mine.…

  Quick as a flash I jerked my head aside, dodged out from under his arm and took a step backward.

  Darcy stepped back, too. “What is it?” he asked, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said, scraping my wet hair back into a ponytail.

  He looked at me in bewilderment. The fact that I wasn’t yearning to kiss him seemed to be beyond the bounds of his comprehension.

  I sighed. “I’m … well, I’m very surprised and flattered but I’m afraid … I don’t want to go out with you. But thank you, anyway,” I said formally.

  Darcy’s face instantly resumed its usual arrogant expression. He raised his eyebrows and squared his shoulders and pressed his lips tightly together. “I see,” he said. “Might I ask why?”

  I shrugged. By now I was shivering uncontrollably, and I knew I had to get out of these wet clothes as quickly as possible. “If a simple no isn’t enough,” I retorted, “firstly: We’d have no future. Secondly: I’m only sixteen and still at school and so naïve. And thirdly: Do have you any idea how you come across?”

  Darcy blinked at me uncomprehendingly and I could see I was going to have to spell it out for him. “It’s not just the fact that you swagger around here as if you own the place. You also start acting really weirdly whenever there’s any mention of Gina. You’re out of order to Frederick, who was her friend and actually tried to help her. And as if that wasn’t enough, you told Toby not to go out with Charlotte!”

  He gave a slow, jerky nod. “So that’s what you think of me?” he said quietly.

  “You’re not denying that you tried to keep Toby and Charlotte apart?”

  “I advised him to steer clear of her, yes,” said Darcy. I was speechless. Who did this guy think he was?

  “But…,” I stammered. “But why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Aha.”

  “I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s nothing to do with…” He was visibly embarrassed. “Let’s just say I had my reasons.”

  I scoffed.

  The wind had turned even colder in the past couple of minutes, and I felt as though I was about to turn into an icicle. “Oh, I’m sure you did,” I hissed, drawing myself up to my full height. “Perfectly good, made-up reasons that you’re going to guard like state secrets because everything you do is so mysterious and important.” I had to tilt my head back a little in order to meet his eye. “Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for your mind games anymore. I’m freezing my arse off here.”

  Darcy gritted his teeth. “Me, too,” he growled. His teeth were chattering now, and his shoulders were shaking.

  For a moment we stood there looking at each other and shivering, both so furious that it wouldn’t have taken much for us to come to blows. We were like two chemical elements drawn together by the force of attraction, but bound to cause an almighty explosion if they ever did come into contact.

  At last I turned my back on Darcy and stomped off toward the castle, breaking the strange tension between us.

  October 2013

  Some mornings I wake up and wonder if I’m going mad. No, I don’t wonder, I know. For a moment I’m sure it’s all just a dream. That this book is just an old book and the stories are just old stories.

  But then, the next moment, I remember his face.

  10

  When I got back to my room I had a very long, very hot shower to clear my head (and to stop my toes falling off). By the time I emerged from the bathroom forty-five minutes later in a cloud of fragrant steam, my mind was made up—I’d had enough of this whole stupid business. I was in no mood to deal with it.

  As I dried my hair in a towel and shuffled across the room to open the window, a stream of thoughts ran through my head over and over again, as if on a loop: the things Darcy had said, the way he’d looked at me, his breathtaking arrogance—he’d obviously thought he was paying me such a compliment by telling me he liked me that I wouldn’t mind him saying, in the same breath, that I was a naïve little schoolgirl! And then there were those ridiculous legends about the faun. How could I possibly have believed they were true? I was not just a naïve little kid. I didn’t believe in mythical creatures, nor did I allow myself to be kissed, out of the blue, by stuck-up aristocrats. And I wasn’t afraid of the chronicle, either.…

  “My poor little Emma!” cried my dad.

  I spun around and saw him sitting on Hannah’s bed holding a scruffy toy rabbit. “Helena told me about your accident,” he said. “Oh, my poor little girl! It doesn’t bear thinking about! You could have drowned, or broken your neck! And in these freezing temperatures…!”

  “It wasn’t that bad. Really,” I said, trying to downplay the incident. “I didn’t even get that wet. Just a little bit.”

  My dad raised his eyebrows. “I heard you were completely submerged.”

  “You know what rumors are like. Every time someone tells the story they make it sound that little bit more dramatic.…”

  My dad wasn’t listening. He pressed the stuffed rabbit to his chest. “My poor little Emma,” he moaned. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

  I nodded, and Dad gave a sigh of relief. But he went on clutching the toy rabbit tightly. “Isn’t this the little fellow you used to carry around with you everywhere when you were small? You took him to the nursery and to the dentist and…”

  “Er—no, actually. I ha
d a teddy bear. And that’s Hannah’s bed. I sleep over here.”

  “Oh.” My dad stood up hastily, but before he could return the rabbit to the pillow where he’d found it, the door opened and in walked its rightful owner.

  “Has Mr. Fluffball been misbehaving again?” asked Hannah.

  “No, I … er … I do beg your pardon,” Dad stammered, thrusting the rabbit into her arms. Then he turned to me. “Perhaps we should drive over to the hospital and get your head X-rayed, just to be sure. Or should I call an ambulance?”

  “No,” I said. “Definitely not.”

  “All right, I’ll drive you myself. But—”

  “No!” I said more firmly, steering my dad toward the door. “I feel fine, I don’t need to go to the hospital. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. And I know how important it is for modern parents not to wrap their children in bubble wrap,” I added, reminding him of one of his favorite maxims. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Really?” he asked again, just to be sure. When I nodded, he cleared his throat and tried to banish the worried expression from his face. “Well,” he said, patting me on the shoulder, “it’s true, Emma, you do need to learn how to deal with some of the less pleasant aspects of life.” He put on his most educational voice. “Falling into a fountain is not the end of the world—it’s an experience you can learn from.” With those words he stepped out into the corridor, at last, and I hurried to close the door behind him. I flopped down onto my bed with a sigh.

  “You’re not really fine, are you?” asked Hannah.

  But I didn’t answer. I pulled the duvet up over my head and wrapped myself up in it like a cocoon. My thoughts whirled faster and faster, melting into a jumble of images and dragonfly wings and eventually into dreams.

  When I woke up, it was the middle of the night.

  Hannah was snoring softly and, as I so often had in the past few weeks, I reached for the book. (I’d found I couldn’t bring myself to return it to the secret compartment in the library.) By the light of my bedside lamp, I leafed through the delicate pages. I didn’t feel like reading any of Eleanor Morland’s entries today, or her fairy tales—today I wanted to write in the chronicle myself. My urge to take control, to change the course of events, was suddenly stronger than it had been for a long time. I was still Emma Magdalena Morgenroth, sixteen years old and practically an adult. I wasn’t going to let life pass me by—I was going to take control of my destiny. And I certainly wasn’t going to let Darcy or Frederick or some stupid legend or fairy tale make me think I was going crazy. Pah!

  I pulled out my pen and launched into what was to become my most detailed entry in the chronicle so far.

  First of all, I decided to restore order to the castle: I got the ex-students to abandon their usual drinking binge in favor of a games night, and I got my dad to stop worrying about my dip in the fountain. Then I decided it was time to think a little bigger. I still felt a certain awed respect for the chronicle’s powers, but somehow my previous strategy of cautious experimentation just didn’t appeal to me anymore. I had a magical object in my possession, and I was going to use it.

  What if, for example, a couple of our outrageously wealthy alumni were to announce at the ball tomorrow night that they were donating some money to the school, to be used for the long-awaited riding stables? That would be brilliant. And my dad would be over the moon if he were to receive a special award for his work as headmaster of Stolzenburg. And wasn’t it about time dear Marie came to visit her aunt and great-aunt in person, instead of bombarding them with email after boring email?

  Oh, yes, and the faun … If the faun really did exist, then I wanted him to show himself. I wanted to meet him face-to-face, damn it! And I wanted him to tell me what had happened to Gina. If he didn’t exist and I was simply suffering from an overactive imagination, that was fine. I just needed to know one way or another. I needed some clarity, or I was going to go mad. That was all.

  Although …

  As I finished the final paragraph, I started to have misgivings about what I’d just written. Hmm—those last few lines were the opposite of cautious! Had I gone too far? After a few seconds I decided to cross out what I’d written about the faun, just to be on the safe side.

  I tried to put a line through the words.

  But the nib of my fountain pen slid across the paper without leaving a mark. It wasn’t that the ink cartridge was empty: When I drew a squiggle in the margin to test it, it worked fine. But the moment I tried to change or cross out one of the words I’d already written, the paper seemed to reject the ink.

  Interesting.

  Also a little creepy.

  For a while I doodled randomly all over the page, drawing dots and dashes, wavy lines and zigzags. The words I’d already written were not obscured in the slightest. In fact, by the end they seemed to stand out even more clearly than before against the sea of scribbles. It didn’t matter how many times I drew over them. Not even ink eraser or correction fluid could get rid of them, and my attempts to rip out the whole page also failed miserably. Damn it! Eventually I gave up, closed the book, hid it (under my mattress this time), and hoped for the best. Then I switched off the light and sank back into the maelstrom of my dreams.

  * * *

  I was woken the next day by the chaos that always descended on Stolzenburg on the morning of the Autumn Ball. The atmosphere was as feverish as you would expect in a castle full of teenagers getting ready for a prom. Some of the students had been dreaming about the perfect outfit for months, and had spent the summer holidays trawling the most exclusive boutiques in Paris, London, and Berlin, armed with Daddy’s credit card. Others were less keen on the idea of a formal dance and grew more and more irritable as the event approached.

  This year, like every other year, pandemonium broke out in the corridors as preparations for the ball began. Hair straighteners and huge makeup cases were carried from room to room, dresses were tried on with different hairstyles and different shoes, eyebrows were plucked to within an inch of their lives, and in the common rooms, those who had no interest in the ball sat around looking grumpy and greeting any mention of ball gowns and curling tongs with rolled eyes and sarcastic remarks.

  Charlotte and I were somewhere in between. We liked getting dressed up occasionally and doing our hair and makeup. But we certainly didn’t treat the ball as a matter of national importance like Helena, who bought her outfit at Berlin Fashion Week every year. Our dresses were at least three seasons old: I’d bought mine (a backless dark-red gown with a high neck) in a department store, and I’d already worn it to last year’s ball. Charlotte was wearing a midnight-blue dress that had once belonged to her mom. And half an hour before the ball Hannah had rifled through the pile of clothes in her wardrobe and produced an extremely crumpled, strapless, black-and-white polka-dot garment that she insisted was a ball gown. It didn’t actually look that bad once she had it on, apart from a few creases in the skirt.

  I thought the three of us looked gorgeous, anyway, as we joined the throng of students making their way to the west wing shortly before seven o’ clock. We certainly looked better than Helena, who swept past us in a sort of feathery sack full of holes. (Haute couture or no haute couture, the thing was hideous.)

  The ballroom on the first floor was already filling up when we arrived. Every student in the school would be at the ball that night, as well as all the teachers, the rest of the school staff, and over a hundred alumni. Everyone was standing around looking very smart in the light of myriads of candles. The candlelight was reflected back into the room by the mirrored walls, casting a warm glow over the faces of the guests, and the crystal chandeliers sparkled with rainbow-colored light.

  I spent a few minutes, as I did every year, just marveling at the splendor of this room—its gleaming parquet floor, its high windows, the ornate furniture around the edges of the dance floor. For the rest of the year, the ballroom lay in the same deep slumber as all the other rooms in the west wing, and when y
ou hadn’t set foot in it for twelve months it was easy to forget how beautiful it was.

  “Wow!” Hannah exclaimed as we edged through the crowd toward the Berkenbecks, who were waving at me with great excitement.

  “Emma, love!” called Miss Berkenbeck, beaming at me. I didn’t think I’d ever seen the two of them looking so happy. “Guess who’s coming to see us next week? Marie! We got an email from her today.…” Berkenbeck the elder waggled a piece of paper under my nose. They’d obviously printed off Marie’s email and planned to spend the evening reading it out to as many people as possible.

  “Wow,” I cried. “That’s great news! I can’t wait to meet her! But I can’t stop, I’m afraid—I was just going to go and wish my dad good luck.”

  “Of course, pet, of course! But you two have a minute, don’t you? Charlotte? Hannah?”

  They both nodded obediently, while I turned away with an apologetic smile and carried on across the room. My dad, armed with a microphone, was just stepping up onto the little podium, but when he saw me he climbed down again and gave me a quick hug. “You look lovely,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I replied, trying to straighten his tie without anyone noticing—the knot was so askew that he looked as though he’d been in some sort of accident. “So do you.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and stepped back into the expectant crowd. The string orchestra at the other end of the ballroom struck up a little overture, drowning out the noise the caterers were making in the next room as they put the finishing touches to the finger buffet.

  I let my eyes wander for a moment until I spotted Frederick standing nearby. He appeared to be trying to compliment Helena on her dress (no mean feat, in my opinion). He was gesturing toward the holes and the feathers, at any rate, and whatever he’d said had clearly put a smile on her face. He also scrubbed up pretty well in a suit.

  After a while the orchestra fell silent, and my dad began his welcome speech. “Dear Stolzenburgers—students, colleagues, and alumni,” he announced, “it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our annual Autumn Ball, which is now in its 164th year. Tonight we come together once more to celebrate the outstanding education with which this school has been providing its students for the past 192 years.”