With the room silent, Ms Rowhook doesn’t take long to set up, and I quickly guess what she’s going to say. “Today will be a practical lesson.”

I don’t groan, but I’m sure now that Ladies Challock and Ashford may well find some questions to ask me, and that isn’t a reassuring thought. Talking with Violet and the others is comfortable enough because I’m hardly asked questions outright and, when it does happen, is usually something easily answered. Like, the mark for my homework, or how my sewing is coming along.

My lack of socialising is catching up with me, I should say. Awkward and with a poor grasp of how to answer unclear questions in front of strangers.

Well, I have some moments to prepare myself, the three of us shuffling about as the class rearranges into those groups she picked out long ago. My only hope is that Ladies Yalding and Walmer being here keeps the conversation polite and not focused on me. They’ve never cared for me much before, leaving me to sit quietly or otherwise ask for help if having trouble with the magic.

By the time we group up and say our polite greetings, chairs shuffled and turned around to make a squarish circle around a small table, Ms Rowhook is here. As always, she prioritises going over it with me.

Last term, she taught us the basics of water magic: moving water. Faeries aren’t all the same and she has a rather thorough understanding of their minor differences in this area and Anglia in general, so we’ve learned a few different chants. Some work best in coastal areas and others inland, and one is better at lifting water and another at moving it across, and there’s also one for holding water (rather than moving it).

I was hoping she might start teaching us compound magics—like the one I use to dry my hair, which combines wind and fire magic. Or drying clothes, rain commonplace and my “hair dryer” magic not well-suited. However, today’s lesson unfortunately carries on from her recent lectures, which is to say that we’re practising an old ritual.

Rather than a chant, she has me memorise a series of movements for an ancient tea ceremony. It has a shamanistic (or otherwise old and mystical) feel to it, very out of place in these prim and proper times. First, the cups are arranged in a pentagon (as there’s five of us in the group), and these cups are whittled from wood without handles. The tea itself is in a metal pot with a lid and still steaming, a kind of nettle tea but a modern nettle that’s been “bred” for a better taste. Wild nettle apparently tastes what you’d expect a plant soaked in water to taste like. I could rattle off health benefits and such, but, as far as I know, it’s basically as good for you as half the other wild plants are.

After all, the problem with nutrition has never been a lack of good plants to choose from.

With tea and cups prepared, I then have to move the water out in a steady and smooth stream, half-filling the cup for the oldest one present. (You can tell it’s an ancient custom because no lady over eighteen would out herself as the oldest these days.) Next, I move the tea from the first cup to the second one (going clockwise) and so on, until it comes back to the first one. Then, I top up that cup before filling up the rest.

When Ms Rowhook spoke about it last week, she said something about showing none of the cups were poisoned. Given how often I doubt her interpretation of the past, it’s probably to cool the tea down or something else like that. Maybe it tastes better aerated?

Anyway, satisfied I’ve done it correctly, Ms Rowhook moves on to the next group. I take a deep breath, looking around at the others with me: Ladies Challock, Ashford, Yalding and Walmer. They quickly lost interest and were talking for most of the time, and I’m happy for them to keep doing that, so I don’t interrupt. The way it normally goes, they chat for a bit and then have me explain what Ms Rowhook taught me.

True enough, a minute or so passes and a silence lingers. Lady Yalding looks over to me at that time, her gaze then dropping to the cups, almost a sneer coming to her as she tries to hide her disgust at the “tea”.

“So today, we are…” she says, trailing off meaningfully.

I put on a smile and start explaining, trying to be concise. Their disinterest is painfully obvious. That’s always the case, though, and Lady Yalding is good enough to say, “I shall have an attempt at it—so long as I don’t have to drink anything.”

Letting out a forced giggle, I gently shake my head. “Ms Rowhook said that we may help ourselves only if we so wish.”

“Wonderful,” Lady Yalding says, lightly clapping her hands together.

Her talent for water magic isn’t half-bad, usually the problem coming from her poor memory. I’ve kept up my practice enough to burn the chants into my head, if only because they’re useful for cleaning minor spills. (As elegant as I try to be, I sometimes splash when adding milk or sweetener to tea, or make something of a puddle coming out of the bath.)

Since today isn’t memorising words in a completely foreign language, they each understand quickly, everyone getting it right before a quarter of an hour has passed. Of us, no one is willing to try the tea either, so I pour it all back into the pot after Lady Challock finishes.

The only thing that might happen is Ms Rowhook coming to check on us, but she doesn’t care much if we don’t spend the whole time practising. In other words, this is free time to chat.

That looks good for me, the other four happy with the discussion they’re having. However, it soon happens that Ladies Yalding and Walmer become engrossed in a topic, leaving Ladies Challock and Ashford idle. Such idleness is quickly turned my way.

Lady Ashford, her gaze falls somewhere behind me, and a knowing smile comes to her. Our chairs not overly close nor far, spaced around a table no bigger than a classroom desk, she leans in to cut the distance between us to a gossiping length, a conspirational tone to her voice when she speaks.

“Oh Lady Kent, I do apologise if I am asking out of turn, but it wouldn’t be the case that you have been burned by Lord Basildon, would it?”

By the flicker of emotion running over Lady Challock’s face, she also seems rather interested in the answer. As for me, I try not to show any reaction, carefully take on a mildly confused look. “Why would you think that?” I ask, neither a confirmation nor denial.

Lady Ashford giggles, one hand covering her mouth as the other pats the air in a gesture that I hear as, “Now, now.” After a moment, she says, “You would hardly be the first. From what others say, he has sweet-talked the ladies in his class to the point they’ve turned sour.”

Those words land a bit awkwardly, me being someone who doesn’t like gossip and yet interested to hear more. But I won’t pry, and I won’t add fuel to the fire. “No, I simply thought it would be nice to be on better terms with my ladies,” I say, bowing my head and hoping I sound sincere.

Sighing, Lady Challock takes on a bit of an arrogant look. “So you say, yet you spoke with him so warmly last week,” she says.

It would be easy to take offense at that, but it sounded more like her stating a fact than accusing me. Violet’s problem of sounding harsh and haughty isn’t exactly one unique to her. I mean, Lady Ashford doesn’t gasp or anything, merely gives her a pointed look.

“I try to speak warmly with whoever wishes to talk,” I say, already feeling my sense of control slipping. I didn’t expect to be so frankly confronted, the sorts of replies I imagined up earlier of no use.

Not done, Lady Challock continues. “Such as Lord Sussex?” she asks.

Even if her tone is no different from usual, those words cut through my muddled head and touch upon something they shouldn’t. An aimless anger stirs in my chest, begging me to say, “I wouldn’t have to speak with him if any lady in the entire school would so much as return my greeting.”

But I don’t, an inherent cowardliness to me that keeps those thoughts from spilling out. Think of me as timid, as a pushover, someone not even worth bullying.

“He merely indulges me; I wouldn’t want others to think poorly of my lord for his good nature,” I say, weakly trying to shift the topic.

Whether she picks it up from me or it came to her another way, Lady Ashford nods and says, “Yes, I only hear good things of Lord Sussex.”

That might be true, but only because I doubt you hear anything about him. Despite his “status” as a prince in the books, there’s no adoring fans for him here—at least, not yet. Maybe I should bully him into reading aloud the letter Ellen sent him?

Wait. In the book, he still wrote a letter to her, didn’t he? Earlier in the year too. I guess he might not have felt so lonely with me here instead of Eleanor? She was pretty wary of him until that incident….

Whatever. Not the time to be thinking about that.

A silence forming, I worry what they will say next, but am saved by Ms Rowhook. She asks us to show her our efforts—strictly voluntarily—and so I go through the tea ceremony again to waste some time. It’s quite tricky, I guess overestimating my talent since I haven’t used it for something like this before, but I take it slow and it all works out.

After me, none of the others offer. My sense of time a bit off, I can’t say how long until the end of the lesson, only that we’re over halfway. How long did getting into groups take? How long did they talk? I try and tally those things up, getting to forty minutes or so. The period is an hour long, but we don’t rush over here and Ms Rowhook does arrive after us.

My worry for the time comes from worrying about what the ladies will talk about, so all my worrying fades away once the seniors settle into one conversation and the juniors another, neither involving me.

Small blessings.

Near the end of the hour, Ms Rowhook has us pour out the tea. (I guess she doesn’t want us to knock the pots over on the way out?) Then, a little before the bell, she dismisses us. Ladies Challock and Ashford don’t invite me, but they don’t say anything when I follow behind them nor when I walk beside them on the broad path. In that time, I keep my eyes forward and definitely don’t look around for Leo.

The walk back only takes a minute, and it only takes that long because of the ambling pace. Once inside our dormitory, we walk into the lounge, and just past the doorway is where I bid good day to them and they to me. (Lady Challock goes to meet up with Ladies Lenham, Tudeley and Capel; Lady Ashford with others.)

Violet, Helena, Jemima nor Mabel ask me why I was with Ladies Challock and Ashford. Well, they loosely know we all attend water magic class and that we’ve been grouped together before. I sit down, smile, and they greet me before returning to what they were talking about before.

All things considered, that was a bittersweet hour for me. Happy to make myself more of an acquaintance to other ladies, frustrated with how awkward I was in handling the conversation, hopeful I might have the chance to speak with them again (preferably about something else).

Small steps.