Chapter 9 #2
William thought of Verbena. Of her fiery wit in the cloistered room of the club, firelight painting her radiant. “Not a man, no,” he said, soft and low. “But someone.”
“You refer to Miss Montrose?” Miles asked, surprised. “After only meeting her for the first time today? Not that I have a leg to stand on there.”
William shaped a few words with his mouth before deciding on something that was not quite a lie. “It seems we’ve known each other much longer.”
“Yes, but I thought we both might—that is, sometimes a man says one thing for the sake of—” Miles’s face took on a brick hue. “But you’re not like me at all. I’m a fool. I’ve scandalized you.”
“Do I look scandalized?” William pointed at his own face.
If he was flushed it was only a little, and only with drink.
“Mr. McDonald, you said it yourself: we writers are a different breed. Why, half the Calliope Club is composed of men of your leanings. If I were to faint every time I heard a man sigh longingly for want of another man, I would never get anything done.”
Miles did not seem convinced. His eyes darted from William to the door. “I’ve been a fool. Getting drunk, speaking much too freely. You could have me hanged. Do they still hang us here in London? I can never keep up with all your absurd laws.”
“I think it’s more often the stocks.” It was a thoughtless thing to say. Miles’s pitiful moan made William wince. “But that is reserved almost entirely for the lower classes,” he rushed to add. “And anyway, I won’t tell a soul what you’ve told me. I’ll swear on anything you like.”
“It’s not a question of your discretion, Mr. Forsyth,” Miles said with a shaky smile. “It’s the fact that I have no friends in this place, and I fear I have ruined the one I found in you with my foolish mouth. I would understand if you snub me outright the next time we cross paths.”
“Snub you! I would never—” William bolted to his feet, swaying a bit. A thought occurred to him. In the glow of good drink, it seemed like the best thought he’d had in a while. “I have secrets as well,” he said.
Miles’s eyes widened in vague distress. “Well, for god’s sake, don’t tell me. We needn’t barter confidences back and forth just because I can’t hold my tongue.”
“I can’t tell you,” William said. He was warming to his idea. “I must show you. Will you stay there a moment?” He put his drink down on a side table and held both palms up toward Miles as if he might keep him in place.
“Really, William—”
“I’ll return shortly,” he said, then bustled into his bedroom, shutting the door securely out of habit.
Was it merely liquor that emboldened him so? Or was it the rare amity he felt being in the presence of a somewhat kindred spirit? It was impossible to parse, so intertwined as they were, so William did not attempt it.
Changing from one persona was, after all this time, a task that could be accomplished with alacrity, but that night, Flora was quick, even for her.
What had been second nature to her was now simply nature.
Her hair and paint fell into place, as did her muslin walking dress, high-waisted to flatter her slim figure.
One final primp before her small mirror, and she left the bedroom, her silken slippers a quiet shush on the bare floorboards.
Miles, still sitting on the divan, turned to mark her entrance. He froze when he caught sight of her, his mouth hanging open. A miasma of discomfort settled over the room, making Flora tremble with nerves.
Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea after all.
Miles popped to his feet. He seemed not to know what to do with his hands.
They dangled at his sides, then clasped his opposite elbows.
“Is Forsyth—?” His gaze drifted over her shoulder into the small bedroom.
“Apologies. I thought we were alone.” He squinted at her in abject confusion.
“We haven’t been introduced. Miles McDonald. ” He stuck out a hand for her to shake.
Flora felt a thrill trace up her spine. Miles was the first person to whom she had revealed her secret in the flesh. And here he was, not even recognizing her! It filled her with a sense of great accomplishment for some reason.
“We have,” she managed to say with a calm that was fast becoming real as opposed to forced. “Though you know me by another name.”
He came around the divan and took a few steps toward her, almost crouching as he moved, his head swaying side to side on his long neck. He was trying to examine her face from another angle, she realized. She obliged him by standing still, hands clasped demurely in front of her.
“William?” Miles asked.
She smiled, a tentative thing. “Only some of the time.”
Miles’s face took on a cast of awe and wonder. “And now?”
“Now I am Flora Witcombe.”
“Not—! The poetess?”
“The very same.”
“But you’re famous!”
“Only some of the time,” she repeated, laughing.
“My maiden aunt adores your work,” Miles said.
“I confess I have not read any myself, but I have been meaning to.” He reached out and took her hands in his, marveling at her dress, her hair, her dainty shoes.
“Come, sit, sit! I have—oh, but will you have a glass of sherry? That’s what a lady drinks, is it not? ”
“This lady should probably drink no more tonight,” Flora said, allowing him to lead her gallantly back to her chair. She regarded him as they sat, his face a strange mixture of confusion and cheerfulness. “But please, help yourself to more if you wish. I know this is all a bit…unusual.”
“We are all of us a bit unusual,” Miles said, “or else what would be the point of living?”
Flora felt the warmth of true friendship flow through her. “Thank you. For your understanding.”
“Of course.” Miles glanced at her dress, then seemed to force himself to look back at her face.
“May I ask how…?” He trailed off, using his hand to indicate the whole of her person.
His hand fell back into his lap. “No, curiosity should not outweigh good manners, should it? I would not ask a bird how she flies or the moon how she glows.”
Flora smiled sweetly. “I do not mind telling you. It is a novelty to me, too. Having someone to tell, that is.”
“Really?” Miles leaned in, all eagerness. “Then I will endeavor to be the best possible audience.”
It was difficult to know where to begin. Flora picked at the fine stitching of her gown. “Do you recall the year without a summer?” she asked.
“Yes, three—no, four years ago, now, wasn’t it?
” Miles stared at the ceiling in thought.
“Lord, has it really been that long? It feels both eons ago and yesterday. In Edinburgh, they rioted when the food ran out—at least, those who were not struck down by that awful fever did. I can only imagine what it was like here in London.”
“It was awful,” Flora said. She shuddered to recall that wretched time, when the freezing winter refused to give way to spring, lingering unnaturally.
Crops had shriveled; people had starved; everywhere one looked was suffused with misery.
Even the ton could not escape the ramifications of that summerless year, much as they tried to pretend all was well in their corner of the world.
Flora recalled picnics with the guests wrapped in their fur stoles, eating the small selection of whatever frigid morsels had been hunted down.
It was a fruitless exercise, but one good thing had come of it—at least for Flora.
“No one knew when the warmth would return, or if it ever could. When the world seems to be at an end,” she explained, “one can hardly worry about little things like consequences. I thought, why not go to the dressmaker and make a few purchases? Why not wear what I like and live as I wish? Why not write new poetry in a voice that was also wholly new? It seemed as if all was lost, anyway.”
“So it is only in the last four years that you have—” Miles gestured once more to her person, grimacing apologetically. “Done so?” he finally finished.
“Four years in the act itself,” Flora said, “though I suppose in spirit, it began earlier.”
She explained while Miles listened with rapt attention: in a family as large as the Forsyths, and with so many brothers, William—for Flora referred to him thusly—was able to cultivate his interests with very little oversight.
Their beleaguered nursemaid could not be in two places at once, after all.
Art and writing were havens, providing him with his only comforts: myths and legends; stories of the strange and wonderful; and later, poems that opened doors to worlds previously unimaginable.
As a young man, thinking he might participate in the opening of such doors in his own small way, William had carved out the most modest of livings writing gothic novels.
His middling poetry found no audience in that crowded arena, Flora related quite frankly.
The work underwent a bewildering transformation when she herself wrote in William’s stead. Of course, Flora could not be confined to the page. She described it to Miles almost like a trance.
“I would find myself moving through the world, thinking, this is not my body, these are not my thoughts. This is certainly not my clothing. I thought I might be going mad, but eventually I realized the only real madness would be to bury such a thing and feign complete ignorance of it. If the mind is desperate to convey a thought, that thought will not be ignored. So I experimented in private. The clothing I felt I needed, the posture. I felt myself becoming someone else.” She licked her lips, pausing to collect her words.
“Not that I wasn’t William, but I was also myself, and perhaps more besides.
There was no William without me, and vice versa. Do you follow?”
Miles inclined his head. “I cannot say a woman dwells within me, if that’s what you’re asking, but surely I can understand containing a hidden facet within oneself. To me, it seems perfectly natural.”