Rose by Holly Webb Page B

bedroom is tiny .”
    â€œYou get out of it, and it’ll be just right!” Rose snapped.
    â€œOh, let him sit, girl. He’ll just whine otherwise.” Gustavus yawned, showing rows of white toothlike needles. “He’s come to apologize, you know,” he added persuasively.
    â€œHave you?” Rose asked, forgetting to be cross. She was too surprised.
    â€œOnly because Gus said he’d tell if I didn’t,” Freddie muttered, tucking himself onto the end of the bed.
    Rose nodded. She would have been suspicious of any other answer. “What’re you apologizing for? Calling me a thief? Or for making me sweep that floor over when it was spotless first time around?”
    There was an uncomfortable silence.
    â€œTell her,” the cat insisted.
    â€œAll right!” Freddie glared at Rose and Gustavus.
    â€œI lied to you. You did save us. There, happy now?” he asked the cat.
    â€œNo,” Rose and the cat said it together, and the cat added, “You should grovel. Make him grovel, girl, you saved his skin.”
    Rose shook her head. “No, I just interrupted that—thing. That’s all. You said so.”
    â€œAnd I was lying, like I said.” Freddie looked up at her, the candlelight making great shadows around his eyes. He clearly hated to admit it. “You did save us by magic. I don’t know how,” he added grudgingly.
    â€œI didn’t!” Rose protested. “How could I? I don’t know anything about magic. And you were so sure. You said I was the least magical person you’d ever met.”
    â€œWell, you are.” Freddie shrugged. “But you still did it. We were trapped, and you rescued us.”
    â€œIt must have been a coincidence, like you said,” Rose said hopefully. “I didn’t actually do anything. I can’t.”
    Freddie sighed irritably. “Look, I know I lied, and I suppose I did do a little bit of a persuading spell on you back in the workroom, but now I promise I’m telling the truth. It was you, and you used proper magic. Lots of it. More than I’ve ever managed to find. Oh, come on, how can you not know ?”
    Rose just stared at him silently. She couldn’t think of anything to say, apart from no, and he didn’t seem to be hearing that.
    Freddie huffed a long, grumpy breath. “Why are you so stubborn? I’ll prove it, look.” He kneeled up on the bed and reached over to the little shelf where Rose’s candle sat in its china holder. Then he hurled it against the far wall of her room.
    Rose gasped and tried desperately to catch it, but she had no chance. She was all tangled up in the bedclothes, and she was still half asleep, and there was no time anyway.
    She waited miserably for the smash, and Susan’s angry scream from next door. But it didn’t come, and there were no pretty flowered fragments on the floor.
    She was holding the candlestick.
    Rose looked up at Freddie, and he smiled triumphantly.
    â€œSee?”

Nine
    Rose gaped at the candlestick. She was very glad it wasn’t broken—she would have hated to explain to Miss Bridges that she’d smashed it in only her second week in the house, and breakages had to come out of her wages. But it should have smashed. There was no way she’d caught it. So what was it doing in her hand?
    Suddenly she smiled at Freddie. “That was a spell, wasn’t it?” she asked, in a relieved voice. “You went and mucked about with my mind again. You made me think you’d thrown it, but actually you just handed it to me.”
    â€œNo! Look, why would I want to make you think you can do magic when you can’t? I just want you back in the kitchens where you belong,” he muttered resentfully.
    He sounded very honest. Much more honest than he had earlier on, Rose had to admit. Now she thought about it, it was obvious that he had put some sort of deceiving spell on her