The gentle sun streamed down on a beautiful warm afternoon. Rachel was in her dungeon, sitting at one of a pair of tables on either side of the bars, like she had the other day.
For the first time in a while, Alexandra had found an opening in her schedule, and she’d come to the dungeon to visit Rachel.
Rachel greeted her friend, whom she hadn’t seen since the tea party where she’d crushed George.
“How are things? Is George going to be of any use?” Rachel asked with a soft, fleeting smile, swirling her teacup to enjoy the aroma.
“Hee hee, he’ll have to, or I’m going to be in trouble,” Alexandra replied, arching her eyebrows, as the corners of her mouth turned up.
“He may turn in his reports with a smirk, but he’s always been bad at seeing things through,” Rachel noted. “Be careful if you leave anything to him, all right? You can’t just sign off on things without looking through them.”
“I know. He likes to act smug, as if he’s ever so competent, but there’s always something he’s missed. Well, it is cute, though.”
“Ah ha ha! You’re right about that!”
Once they’d finished laughing about George, Alexandra addressed the young man standing next to her.
“By the way, George, you’ve let these tea leaves steep too long. One minute less would have been fine, you realize? Are you sure that you read the instructions properly?”
“If you prepare all tea the same crude way, you’ll never make a cup fit for respected guests, you know?” Rachel added. “If you can’t even make tea properly, becoming a diplomat will never be more than a dream within a dream for you.”
“Sorry...” George mumbled.
Today’s tea party was attended by two ladies...and one servant. They did their backbiting to his face. That was their policy.
After asking George to prepare another cup, Alexandra remembered another thing she had to tell Rachel.
“Come to think of it, Rachel, I heard from George the other day...”
“What?” Rachel asked, inclining her head to the side.
Her future sister-in-law shrugged. “It seems when we were younger, he couldn’t tell the two of us apart.”
“Really...?” Rachel’s eyes widened, and she stared at her younger brother.
George shuffled about awkwardly. He’d rather his sister not know about that. He didn’t want to talk about it, so he ignored her stare and focused on preparing the tea. But even when he finished and presented the young ladies with fresh cups, Rachel still had her eyes on him.
George gave in and nodded. “That’s correct.”
“Really? Why not?” Rachel asked.
“Well, when I was little, we weren’t together that often. You two were so similar, and you did the same sort of things...”
“George, Alexandra is blonde, and I have dark brown hair.”
“Yes, but...”
“And I was with you at the dinner table every night, but Alexandra only came over once in a while.”
“When you put it that way, you’re right...”
“And Alexandra only insulted you, while I only punished you physically.”
“If you remember all of that in such detail, then you must understand why I was avoiding you both, right?!” George exclaimed.
My sister’s a nasty piece of work.
George sighed. Living like he was now, sandwiched between Rachel and her all-too-similar friend Alexandra, might have been his own fault, but it was the worst.
Earlier, when one of the male servants said he was envious of George for being surrounded by beautiful women, George had offered to trade places with him. The servant then quit his job. Anyone could easily see how bad George had it.
Oh, how I miss being around Margaret with His Highness and the others. Right. Since we’ve talked about this much, I should ask.
Since they were on the topic, George asked Rachel, “By the way, sister, in my fragmented memories...”
He wanted to know about that mysterious scene he’d detailed to Sykes just the other day, the one where Rachel had pulled down his pants, firecrackers in hand. He didn’t know what had come before or after that.
Once George explained what he remembered of the incident, even Alexandra was a little put off.
“Rachel,” she said, “even if it was a childish prank, I have to question how it came to that.”
“Knowing my sister, I assume she just wanted to try it out, half out of curiosity, and half for her own amusement.”
Rachel pursed her lips, dissatisfied with their reproving looks. “Why are you acting like I was in the wrong there? Let me tell you, there was a proper instigating event for that!”
“By which you mean...?” George asked.
“You started it, George!”
The truth was, the night before Rachel dragged George into the back of the gardens, George had pulled a prank on her that made her upset enough to hold a grudge.
“It happened as I was about to get into bed.”
Rachel pulled the covers back, and out jumped five frogs that George had collected.
“I was only four at the time, so it sent me into a panic.”
She hurriedly jumped back. Then, realizing what had just happened, she quickly snagged the frogs and threw them in the garbage bin.
“Rachel, I’m impressed you could stand to hold them in your bare hands,” Alexandra commented.
“That’s not the point here,” Rachel reminded her.
Once she rounded up all the frogs into the bin, she put a heavy plate on top of it to keep them from escaping and went to bed. Then, the next day...
“I was well rested and refreshed, but I still couldn’t accept that he’d put frogs in my bed in an attempt to intimidate me. I deemed it a terrorist plot to separate me from my bed and prevent me from getting restful sleep.”
George looked at her and said, “I know that I shouldn’t be saying this when I’m the one who provoked you, but your boiling point is way too low, sister.”
“Rachel hated having her sleep disturbed from a young age, I see,” Alexandra remarked.
The court of Rachel’s brain allowed only one trial, no closing arguments. Once the verdict was issued, she moved at once to apprehend the perpetrator and, with a search party of one—herself—discovered George poking a snail he’d found in the garden.
“When I located the heinous criminal enjoying himself despite his attempts to obstruct my beauty sleep, any lingering hesitation flew clear out of my head.”
“Seriously,” George huffed. “It takes too little to set you off, sister! You’ve got a hair-trigger temper!”
“He was only three years old, Rachel. You realize that, right?” Alexandra added.
“Yes, and I, the victim, was only four. Not so grown up I could just laugh it off.”
Rachel caught the lead terrorist, and before stripping off his underwear, she declared that—as everyone knows—the punishment for a frog was a firecracker, so he should prepare to atone for his frogs’ crimes.
“And so, following the traditional method, I inserted a firecracker that I had bought in advance up the criminal’s butt, and—”
“Your thought process is horrific!” Georgie cried. “It’s terrifying that a four-year-old was thinking that way!”
“Rachel, what do you mean you bought firecrackers in advance?” Alexandra asked.
“And here I tried so hard to explain it cutely,” Rachel replied.
George hollered, “How?! How was that cute?!”
Rachel downed the rest of her tea. “So, that being the case, I have no regrets about what I did.”
“You might not feel guilty, but the rest of us who were listening were totally put off by this story,” George grumbled.
Ignoring George, Rachel looked up to the blue sky through the barred window. “Well, if I were to name one regret, it’s that a mere firecracker wasn’t enough to blow little George apart. I hear that frogs blow up marvelously, but at George’s size, all it did was make some noise.”
“Noise? What kind of noise?!” George howled.
Rachel looked like she was basking in the memory. No explanation would be forthcoming.
Exasperated, Alexandra rested her cheeks on the palms of her hands. “I don’t know what you expected. You can send frogs flying with firecrackers, but it doesn’t work with humans.”
“I was still young. There are limits to what a four-year-old can do.” Rachel rose from her seat and went to dig through one of the wooden boxes in the back. When she returned, she was holding something cylindrical. “Now, I can even get my hands on dynamite.”
“Wait, hold on... Is that real?!” George squeaked.
“I wonder. What do you think?”
The cowardly little brother’s screams echoed through the dungeon.
As Rachel and Alexandra watched George—who looked both mentally and physically exhausted for some reason—climb the stairs out of the dungeon, Rachel leaned in and whispered, “Alexandra. It seems George still hasn’t realized. Is that okay?”
Alexandra smiled with a mixture of loneliness and trepidation, casting her eyes toward where her beloved fiancé had been standing.
“It’s fine. Someday, he’ll realize that the cynical way I treat him is just my way of shyly hiding my affection. But I don’t think he’s ready to laugh and accept it just yet.”
Rachel looked in the direction her little brother had left.
“In other words, George is still a child.”
“Hmm... I think I feel a little bad for him when you act like that’s all it is.”
“Should I make a man of him for you?”
“Could you not? If his ‘big sis’ messed him up any more, I think he might turn into a shut-in.”
“Being a shut-in is fun, you know?”
“For you, sure.”
Once he reached the surface, George took a deep breath of momentary freedom. Just then, the prison guard walked by carrying a ring of keys.
“Huh? I haven’t seen you around lately,” he said. “What’s going on? Is His Highness visiting too?”
“Huh? No, I was accompanying someone else. My sister’s friend is visiting.”
“Ohh, I see! Bye!”
The guard tried to make a quick escape, but George managed to catch him by the scruff of the neck.
“Hey, you were here on patrol, weren’t you? What are you running for?!” George asked.
“Let go of me!” the guard demanded. “When the young lady is with her friend, nothing good can come of it!”
“I agree entirely, but you have a job to do! Go earn your wages!”
“No amount of payment is worth catching the young lady’s attention!”
“I understand that too, but it’s not fair that I do all the suffering! You go let her play with you too!”
“Nooo!”
Their scuffle continued until Alexandra came up the stairs.