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Returning Maggie's stare levelly, she closed her book. Maggie barely caught a glimpse of what looked like gold leaf.
"Sight-seeing?" the redhead asked. From her coloring, she had to be the much-vaunted Ruby Rose. "Or maybe you'd like to claim you've got the wrong room? I know Mother told you you're not supposed to see us."
"I--" Maggie began, faltering, while she tried to think of a
likely tale. Then it occurred to her that she was not the one who was up to no good and she might as well ask what she had to ask outright. "I saw a light in the forest and another one just above this room, in the battlements. And--"
"And you think I'm sending secret signals to my highwayman iover, is that it?" Ruby Rose asked. Maggie could see now that her eyes had adjusted to the light that the girl was barely old enough to qualify her for a lover of any sort-she couldn't be more than fourteen.
"You see these visions often, do you?" the girl inquired, goading.
"No, my aunt's the one who sees visions in our family," Maggie replied evenly. "But I DID see a light. And you know something about it, don't you?"
"Maybe I do," Ruby Rose admitted. "What day is this?"
"Saturday, I think. Why?"
"Not that, you ninny. I mean, what DATE?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. Sometime in late summer is all I know."
"Is it indeed?" the girl's voice sparked with interest, and she looked outside as if to verify the information-which she of course failed to do, since night had already fallen. "I really must make it a point to go out of doors from time to time. We scholars have little time for outings, and I find I quite lose track of whole seasons sometimes, and miss collecting valuable elements for my work. You're quite sure it's summer?"
"Well, yes. We held the christening at the solstice, as usual and--" she counted, as well as she could, the days and weeks since the christening, her incarceration in the tower, the time spent hiding in the forest, the day and night at Aunt Sybil's, the journey to Raspberry's and the trip to Everclear-then the night spent among the zombies, and the subsequent journey to Little DarHngham. She ran out of fingers to count on once, and had to start over, but since she did her counting aloud, Ruby Rose's sharp mind was way ahead of hers.
"About late August, then, isn't it?" the foxy girl asked.
"Yes, I should say so, from the nip in the air. Do you really never go out at all?"
"No more than I can help," the other answered. "It only makes my freckles worse." She pointed to her nose, on which the freckles swarmed, overflowing onto her cheeks and chin. "Mother says freckles are a blight. Besides, it's too rainy out most of the time. Rain would ruin my book."
"I see," Maggie answered, fidgeting. This young girl was every bit as weird as her mother.
"Oh, sit down, won't you? I have to think and you're making me nervous."
Maggie gingerly obeyed, pulling a footstool near Ruby Rose's uncomfortable looking chair and sitting down on the edge of it.
"You make me nervous too," she told the girl. "You're Ruby Rose, aren't you? Dame Belburga's middle daughter?"
The redhead grimaced. "Please! Ruby Rose is my mother's affected nomenclature, inflicted on me when I was yet too young to object. When I become a master alchemist, I shall change my name to Rusty. That's what my father calls me. How far away would you say he is, anyway?"
"Who?" Maggie looked around the room, but they were still alone.
"My father, of course. It must have been his signal you saw. He visits me about this time every year, and usually tries to send me some signal-a bird to my window, or something, so I'll come out and meet him and he doesn't have to face mother. I wonder how that old scold could have known he was coming in time to intercept his signal?"
Maggie shook her head. "Hold on. You're going too fast for me. I thought your father was dead."
"Then you shouldn't try to think at all." Ruby Rose Rusty said curtly. "Because he's not; he's alive. He just wears so many disguises when he travels-he always travels incognito- that nobody recognizes him when they see him, so everyone who doesn't know otherwise assumes he's dead, and mother lets them think it, so people will think her a widow instead of knowing the truth, which is that he just can't stand to live with her, so he doesn't. I don't blame him. I wouldn't either, if I had any choice."
Maggie tried to think of something sympathetic to say to comfort the fatherless waif, but the fatherless waif flashed a sudden voracious grin full of pearly pointed teeth.
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