A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 35

35

Violet shook hands with Lady Albert before heading back to the first-class areas. The woman had no doubt marked Violet down as a determined eccentric, but all theatre folk knew you took the money from eccentrics when it was offered.

The Bartons had been helpful. And Violet had to start deciding what she wanted to do with her inheritance, if she wasn’t to be a dragon atop a hoard. Becoming an official patron of London’s first coloured opera company seemed like something that Lady Enid would have approved of.

Dissolute naked parties weren’t entirely off the table either.

The May morning was hazy with blue heat, as if the rain had swept everything clear for summer to step onto the stage. The Lyric was less than an hour from arrival in Southampton, and the ship was alive with packing and porters and parasols.

Violet and Maud had done their packing after breakfast. Dorian’s cage now bore a tag that marked him as part of Miss Violet Debenham’s baggage. A rude and talkative parrot, Violet reflected, was practically a required accessory when one was embarking on becoming a rich and eccentric old woman.

Maud and Hawthorn were currently in conference with the master-at-arms and the senior ship’s clerk, arranging for a message to be sent to Mrs. Navenby’s solicitors in New York. For her luggage to be stored awaiting word from her relatives. And, one assumed, for something to be done with the corpse in the ice room.

Maud had stroked a wistful hand over the rune-sewn garments but had packed them all up without a murmur, saying stoutly that they weren’t hers to take.

Violet had retrieved the heat-charmed coat and packed it between two of her own skirts when Maud was in the bathroom. She was sure Mrs. Navenby would want Maud to have something to remember her by.

She’d wait a while before giving it back to Maud, though. Perhaps until the winter.

“Took your sweet time,” said Alan Ross, when Violet knocked on Hawthorn’s cabin door. “So we are meeting. I was half expecting ship security, ready to accuse me of stealing the candlesticks.”

“Didn’t you hear? Our thief was murdered by an accomplice,” said Violet. She closed the door behind her. No point asking how Ross had made his way inside, given his facility with lockpicks. “Maud and Hawthorn will be along shortly, I’m sure.”

They were. Ross looked up from where he was shuffling a deck of cards in preparation for a game. He nodded at Maud, but his gaze rested, hostile and unsettled, on Hawthorn.

“You summoned me, your lordship? Is now the time when you put one of those magical things on my tongue, to keep me quiet?”

“If you thought that was going to happen, you wouldn’t have come.” Hawthorn dropped a small leather box in Ross’s lap on his way to sprawl in the largest armchair.

Curious, Violet sat next to Ross on the sofa. The light caught on the box’s contents as he cracked the lid.

Ross sucked in a breath. Gingerly he prodded one of the diamond cufflinks, then the other. His fingers hovered over the third object as if afraid to be burned. It was a fob watch, the case gleaming with the warmth of gold and set with an intricate spiral of tiny glittering stones.

“What’s this?” Wariness swam in his voice.

“Compensation for damages,” said Hawthorn. “You didn’t ask for enough from me. One of those brooches you stole is worth half as much as my townhouse; I don’t know why the woman didn’t have it in the ship’s safe. I didn’t realise you were an amateur jewel thief.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Ross looked almost ill.

“Ignorance like that, you would have been cheated by any fence you went to. Stick to pornography from now on.”

Ross’s head rose sharply and he glared, narrow-eyed. But he couldn’t keep his gaze off the glitter of the watch for long.

“Where’d this spring from?” he demanded. “It wasn’t here when I searched the place and found the cufflinks.”

“No. It was in the ship’s safe,” said Hawthorn, in his driest drawl.

Maud peered down and gave a low murmur of admiration. Ross closed the box. He stood in a sudden jerk and went to hold it, stiff-armed, in Hawthorn’s face.

“ No . I don’t know what this is—if you’re trying to soothe your own conscience, if it even exists. But I don’t need protecting from my mistakes. So I let you take my winnings off me for a song. More fool me. I’ll know better next time.”

“Ha!” Hawthorn sounded pleased. “ There’s that pride. What is it that keeps you swallowing it, I wonder? Family fallen on hard times? Saving up to marry your sweetheart?”

“Shut up, you patronising prick.” Ross’s hand shook.

“No. Take it.” Hawthorn pushed the box back towards Ross’s chest. “You won’t have any trouble selling it; I can even suggest some reputable places. The value of it’s negligible to me, as you so kindly pointed out, and I do have some idea of what it would mean to you.”

Ross let his arm drop, defeated. He nearly hummed with anger. “You really are a right bastard, aren’t you? Even for a lord. You’re putting effort into it.”

Hawthorn gave a small smile. “There’s still a chance Morris or Mrs. Vaughn realises you were involved in this, and you could be in real danger if so. Any doubts, anything that seems off—come to me.”

“I wouldn’t come to you if I were on fire. I’ll go to her.” Ross nodded at Maud. “Knock me up if you need someone to go snooping for a fee, Miss B. Ask for me at the Morning Post .”

Hawthorn’s eyebrows rose. “A conservative rag, Robespierre?”

“As you say, my lord.” Ross gave a deep bow, nearly from the waist. “It’s amazing how much the lower orders can swallow, for a wage.”

Ross let himself out. Hawthorn gave Maud and Violet his London addresses: townhouse and clubs.

“ You won’t be stubborn enough not to come to me for help. In fact, I am resigned to the inevitability that you’ll come banging on the door in the middle of the night, Maud, requesting the loan of my valet and two hundred pounds.”

“Our deal was for assistance during the voyage only, my lord. Is this compensation for damages as well?” Maud’s dimples danced.

“Leave before I regret it,” Hawthorn told her, and Maud laughed and pulled Violet towards the door.

From there they went up to the sun deck. It was already crowded with passengers eager to catch sight of friends or family as the Lyric pulled in. Or simply hungry for the sight of dry land, Violet supposed. She found them an empty stretch of railing angled away from the harbour, where it was quieter. Violet leaned her arms on the railing. Maud—gripped it, but stood half a foot farther back.

Of course. Maud wouldn’t exactly be feeling friendly towards the edge of a deck at the moment. A chill echo of panic squeezed Violet with the memory.

“Shall we go back down?” Violet asked.

“No.” Maud, who clutched her fear and did things anyway, took a firm step forward to stand beside her. “I’m going to miss this view. I want to enjoy it while I can.”

The sky was unclouded and the high sun warmed their backs. Gulls called and swooped excitedly. Their arms were only just touching. They’d stood in a silence like this just before Maud asked Violet what she’d meant by fucking other women . This one had a similar feel, of things crowding unsaid, building and building like a cup held beneath an endlessly pouring jug.

It brimmed, unbearably. Violet turned the ring on her thumb. Violet opened her mouth to speak.

“It’s hard for me,” said Maud, low, “to know there are parts of someone that I can’t see.”

“I—”

“Because in my experience, the face you can’t see is mocking you.”

Violet had realised that much. Just because Maud had defied her upbringing to be a naked blade of good, it didn’t mean the damage wasn’t there, slipped in between all the stories about governesses and the strange, bleak, hostile fog that was the way she talked about her mother.

Violet said, “Most people aren’t mocking you.”

“I know that.” Frustrated. “You can’t let me trample on you while I’m learning it. And I—I trust the parts of you that you’ve let me see. So whatever it is that you’re not telling me, don’t . Not until you actually want to.”

Violet turned to her. Maud kept looking out at the horizon. Her eyes today were an indeterminate sea green that paled beneath the vividness of the sky.

“You really do have a sense for people’s weaknesses,” Violet said, shaken.

Maud looked uncomfortable. “I know there’s something—large, and fresh. It’s lodged in you like a haunting.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Yet. It was too much of a promise to say aloud.

“Perhaps,” said Maud carefully, “you could think of it as taking time to rehearse it properly first.”

If Violet’s immediate past was a monologue, what would it be? Defiant; ironic. Acknowledging the audience but not aiming at them. Delivered not from the centre of the stage—too bare, too exposed—but perhaps a stool or a dressing-chair set off to one side. Turning from the mirror, body only half-committed to the motion at first.

The character says, You want to know why I’m scared to be myself.

Shall we start with my marriage?

I fell in love with a man who could charm the world into knots. He talked me into investing all the money I had—he used my trust to get money from my friends, and they forgave me for it, and that was worse.

He might have loved me. I don’t know.

I do know he gave me rings of wood, for illusion, and I didn’t take the hint.

I ran away from the expectation that I would marry, and I got married anyway, because I mistook the person he expected me to be for a person I wanted to be. I am still married. The only reason my husband is still alive is because he disappeared, taking everything I had, before I could realise that he’s a far better actor than I am.

I’m not ashamed at all of killing one man, or two.

I’m ashamed of the Violet who let a man dupe her and humiliate her, so that she fled the city where she’d clawed a place for herself as soon as the prospect of comfort was dangled. I’m so furious with her it makes me sick. I needed not to be her for a while. And so I ran onto this ship and found you, and you want me to be—myself.

The person I could be with you is a person I still barely recognise. There are no layers to her, and that scares me.

Even though I trust you—even though it feels like coming home, like setting down a weight—it scares me.

It was like having an audience after all, standing at the railing with the vast stretch of the sea like rows of seats invisible beyond the footlights. Saying nothing, but imagining it all exhaled and heading away on the wind.

It had been a long pause. Violet smiled sidelong at Maud. “It’s awfully rough yet. It’ll need to be in rehearsals for a long time.”

“I don’t mind. As long as it takes.”

“I’ll tell you this, without the price of a ticket: I don’t know how Lady Enid put up with it all. I want to see my family, but I don’t know how much of them I want to see. Especially now there’s a good chance they’ll only care about my inheritance.”

“Nonsense. I’m sure your sisters love you for yourself,” said Maud.

“You haven’t met them. They could all be monsters.”

A quirk of Maud’s mouth. She seemed to have picked it up from Hawthorn. “Are they?”

“Maud,” said Violet thoughtfully, “how would you react if I tried to give you some of my inheritance?”

“What?”

“There’s no chance of Mrs. Navenby declaring you her heir in front of witnesses now. And I am going to have more wealth than I know what to do with.”

To her surprise, Maud burst out laughing. “Violet. We’ve spent three nights in the same bed. If you now hand me an enormous sum of money, I’ll be an even more successful trollop than if I really had become Hawthorn’s mistress.”

Violet caught the dimples and realised she was being teased. She smiled.

“I’m the one who gave away the locket. It would be—compensation for damages.”

Maud sobered. Violet waited, arching a brow to let Maud know she hadn’t actually been joking.

“For your brother?” she suggested.

“Oh, damn you,” said Maud. “I should tell Mr. Ross I know exactly how he feels.”

“This is what happens when you show people your weaknesses,” said Violet. “They take advantage.”

“Yes, how dastardly of you.” Maud leaned her shoulder against Violet’s. “I—I don’t know. Let me talk to Robin.”

“Of course.”

“Violet…” It seemed like even Maud’s courage was having trouble with the next part. She started again, then stopped. Finally—“We’ve had six days in very odd circumstances. Liminal space.” A smile. “I’ll understand if you say that this”—waving her hand between them—“is something that can’t follow us onto dry land.”

It was an easy escape, if Violet wanted one. But Maud had sidestepped another piece of the truth.

“What do you want, Maud?”

Maud’s expression wavered and went luminous. It only occurred to Violet after several heartbeats to wonder if anyone but her brother had ever asked Maud that question before.

“I want us to keep on… um.”

“Fucking,” said Violet. It won her a scandalised look from an elderly couple who’d been ambling closer. She beamed at them and they hurried away again.

“I—yes. Though—I’d still want to spend time with you, even if you never touched me again.”

I couldn’t, Violet wanted to say . One of us would have to move across an ocean.

She breathed. She considered. She forced herself to think unselfishly, instead of grabbing at what she was being offered.

“Maud, you said it yourself. It’s only been six days. You shouldn’t leap into anything. And besides—you deserve someone like your brother’s Edwin. Someone calm and clever and certain.”

“But I’m not my brother,” said Maud, “and that’s not what I want.” She met Violet’s eyes. Waiting to be told no, and asking anyway. “I want someone who delights me. Nobody has ever taken me seriously the way you have, or made me feel so alive. I want to touch every part of you until I know you inside out.”

“Christ,” said Violet. “I almost want to let you.”

She wanted to cradle a spell larger than anything she’d ever done before: a magic that could stop the ship so she could stand there for hours, warmed by the sun and by the breathtakingly honest force of Maud’s affection. She wanted to say more. I’ve never met anyone so deliberate about being good. I want to follow you forever, to see what you do to the world.

She said, “Though I’m sure when your brother meets me, he’ll agree that I’m a terrible influence.”

“Not at all. He’ll draw you aside and warn you not to let me use you as a chimney sweep.”

“I haven’t heard it called that before.”

“No—oh. You’re joking.”

Violet surrendered all in a rush. She leaned in and kissed Maud’s reddened cheek. There were more people around now, even on this side of the ship, but they were women. Companions. There was nothing scandalous about it at all.

Not that you’d have known it, by the way Maud’s gaze dropped for a longing moment to Violet’s mouth.

“Robin wants me to be happy,” Maud said. “And being with you—when you’re not enraging —makes me happy.”

Violet was rescued from responding aloud when they were jostled by two young boys, both attempting to climb onto the railing and squabble for space as their parents scolded. They were coming into harbour; the horizon was cut up with buildings now, and the noise of civilisation filled the voyage’s last minutes. Liminal space was where the magic was done, but you couldn’t hide in it forever. Sooner or later you set foot on dry land.

The smile growing helplessly on Violet’s face was one that she didn’t recognise from her repertoire. It might have been lopsided. She couldn’t tell. It felt young, and it felt true.