Prince Caspian -Jung Yoonoh NCT

12. What Would Cousin Mark Think?

Next, morning, Chloe expresses a strange and sudden interest in forestry and begs her father to take her into the woods. The guys have already breakfasted and left before we are up.  

"I think you will be too distracting, my dear," her father says, his brow puckered up into a tiny frown of distress. "Our visitors are here to work."

"But I want to see what they are doing," she pouts. "Those trees sound fascinating." Her brown eyes are full of mischief. "I'm sure they'd welcome a distraction, especially if that distraction," she winks at me, "is me."

In the end she gets her way, and rattles off with her father in an old jeep.

I have opted to stay at home. I tell myself it is because I want to rest, but I know, deep down inside, that I am lying.

I have no wish to see Chloe flirt with Caspian in the forest, because I am jealous.

There, I have admitted it.

Jealousy is an unpleasant kind of feeling, quite different from sadness; for where sadness leaves you with a dull, heavy ache, jealousy is a knife that stabs and twists and cuts, a swift, sudden thrust with a rapier, unlike the slow, lingering oppression of sadness. Jealousy sat with me last night, all through dinner, and afterwards; it clawed at me when I watched Chloe practise her best siren's wiles on Caspian, and jabbed at me when he smiled into her eyes, and flirted with her.

I pretend to be Carey, and use Carey's voice in my head to tell myself It is quite absurd to be jealous. After all, Chloe has every right to snare Caspian if she wants. She is free, unlike me. But, a little voice whispers to me - and it sounds alarmingly like my voice, not Carey's - he is so very, very attractive, and he did kiss you last night, under the stairs, when no one was looking - surely, surely that counts for something? Surely it means that he likes you? But I quash it at once, leaping to my feet, my heart starting to beat a little faster at the thought of that feathery, secret kiss under the stairs, which had kept me awake for the first half of the night, and I tell myself very firmly in Carey's voice, Jung Yiseul, you are engaged to Cousin Mark, stop your silly romantic nonsense at once.

Determinedly, I head to the gardens.

An image of Chloe flinging herself into Caspian's welcoming arms surges, as I walk down the stone steps and my heart sinks like a stone, but I force it away at once.

I will not think of him.

I must not think of him.

The flowerbeds are filled with daffodils, narcissus and irises growing in ragged profusion. They seem to be neglected. I walk down the stone steps to a lawn with cypress trees on either side, cross it to yet another flight of steps, descending down to a tiny stream rippling over mossy rocks, and cascading into a tiny pond, where goldfish flit like quicksilver among the lily pads. 

A twig crunches behind me.

I turn.

Caspian is loping across the lawn in a huge chunky jumper, his hair fluttering in the wind, tall and lean and lithe.

How can someone be so breathtakingly, heartstoppingly gorgeous?

My heart skips a beat, and then it starts to pound.

He comes to a stop beside me, and looks down at me.

He is so tall that I am dwarfed by his height. The top of my head reaches the second top button of his shirt.

I would have to climb one of those wooden benches to be of the same height as him.

And an image creeps sinuously into my thoughts, of him and me kissing under the stairs, how he had to dip his head low to reach my lips. If I had stood on the stairs, and he below, our lips would have touched oh, so smoothly, without any effort at all...