Chapter 17 #3
Prudence sat upon the bathing machine’s board and watched them, presumably ready to dive in for a rescue if they showed any signs of fatigue.
It was slightly disconcerting to be so closely watched.
Yet when Flora caught Verbena’s eye as they bobbed together in the water, she saw the same gleam there that glowed secretly in her middle: they would be alone again soon enough.
In the meantime, they knew the taste of each other, and knew they wanted each other, and that notion was so buoyant, Flora could have floated all the way to Ireland.
They swam and laughed for a blissful hour or more, splashing each other and playing silly games.
Flora, they soon found, could hold her breath underwater far longer than Verbena, a contest they repeated several times.
Flora’s anxieties faded the more time she spent in the ocean: her hair was wet, yes, but her clever pins held everything in place; her voluminous shift hid what could not yet be revealed; and anyway, soon they would be alone and Flora could tell all.
She could hardly worry what Verbena might think of her revelation when Verbena herself had been so bold as to kiss a woman the way a man did.
If that was not too scandalous for her, then surely the discovery that Flora was sometimes William and William was sometimes Flora wouldn’t be so strange.
It would even be a blessing, really, once Verbena understood that William could marry her, and wanted to. Very much.
Finally, when they had bathed as much as was expected, they called on Prudence to haul them back up the steps and into the bathing machine.
Once the door was shut, Flora took Verbena by her wet shoulders and kissed her salt-laced mouth.
Verbena melted against her, the cool dampness of their shifts sticking together between their warm bodies.
The horse, now hitched to the other end of the machine, began its plodding trek back to shore, causing the walls to shudder around them.
“I have something to tell you,” Flora said when they parted.
She pictured the myriad reactions Verbena might have to her secret once revealed, from the most horrid shock to the gentlest acceptance.
One side of the scale seemed to weigh more than the other, but it still caused Flora’s tender heart to race in her chest.
“No, I have something to tell you,” Verbena said. Her eyes held the fierce determination that characterized her so completely. “You must marry William Forsyth.”
Flora blinked. “What?” she said. Her heart raced impossibly harder. “But why?”
“Hear me out. I’ve thought about it from every angle,” Verbena said quickly.
Her hands, just as quickly, fastened on Flora’s trim waist. “As you have already guessed in your poem, I will marry étienne in name only. You will do the same with William, if he can be convinced, and our dear husbands will allow us to do as we wish. Perhaps you and William could purchase one of the homes beside étienne’s, and we can live in such proximity that we’ll be, for all purposes, together.
” She grinned, a wild stretch of her mouth that bordered on mania. “It is a flawless plan.”
Flora could not think for how badly her head was spinning. “How long have you been plotting this?” she asked in a daze.
“Since you took me for a walk and told me I deserved happiness.” Verbena smiled. Her eyes crinkled so much, they disappeared entirely. “Since the very beginning of you and me.”
Flora tried to keep her thoughts in order, but it was difficult when their entire friendship was flashing through her mind, rearranging itself in light of this confession.
“But I do not want to be married to a man,” Flora said. “Any man.” Her voice sounded small in the confines of the machine, nearly drowned out by the sound of lapping waves.
Verbena snorted, unladylike. “Who does?”
The words shot through Flora like a poison-tipped arrow. She was, she supposed, a man at certain times, and therefore Verbena’s quick disregard for the entire sex cut her to the quick. Perhaps the moment in the greenhouse really had meant nothing.
“It wouldn’t be real,” Verbena continued. “You wouldn’t actually be his wife, not in any way that matters. This is the only way we can be together. Don’t you see?”
It was on the tip of Flora’s tongue, the whole truth—I am William, and he is me, and we are something altogether strange; can you love me regardless?
—but how could she? How could she say the most dangerous of words without first being certain that Verbena could love her wholly—that she could love William?
That she might accept William as her husband instead of a false one?
She struggled to concoct an argument in the face of Verbena’s fiery conviction. “Would it not be better,” Flora asked, “if your marriage could be a loving one?”
Verbena sighed impatiently. “I can count the number of ‘loving marriages’ in England on one hand,” she said.
“What good does it do to aspire to such impossibilities? No, I have bent my mind to the problem and this is the solution.” Verbena stabbed a finger toward the shifting floor of the machine beneath their feet.
Flora could hear the combined sound of their heavy breathing in the silence that followed.
It drowned out even the ocean. “And would you be happy?” she asked.
“Married to another, seeking me out in stolen moments? An illicit affair would have us both looking over our shoulders and fearing every shadow.”
Verbena sat heavily upon the bench, her hands bunched in the wet linen of her shift, clutching great heaps of it in her lap.
“I would be happier than I am now, surely. What is your obsession with perfect happiness, anyway?” She scoffed, her gaze darting to the corner of the swaying room. “You may as well seek out the faeries.”
Flora bristled. “The faeries might actually listen to me,” she snapped. “You are not hearing what I’m saying. If you could be with me and only me, would you?”
“Of course I would!” The violence with which these words exploded from Verbena seemed to propel her back to her feet.
She stood, dripping saltwater, trembling in white-knuckled rage.
“I would be riotously happy to be at your side always! If it were possible, I would wake beside you every morning in a little cottage with a funny thatched roof, with your lacework on the mantel and a large, sleepy cat dozing upon the windowsill, and there would be breakfasts and books and long strolls with no destination and no one would ever bother us.” Her lips shook as she paused to breathe.
Her gaze fastened to her skirts, which she plucked away from where they stuck like plaster to her legs.
“But that is a child’s dream. There is no sense in even thinking about it. ”
“Yes,” Flora said slowly. “Clearly, you have not thought about it at all.” It was not like her to speak so bitterly, but she couldn’t help herself.
It was the sort of conversation that had the power to change the world as she knew it, and for the worse.
After this, she knew with creeping dread, nothing would be the same.
“I know you must marry for financial reasons,” she said, gathering her shreds of courage, “but any husband would do, would he not? As long as he possessed some means.”
“No, it must be étienne,” Verbena said. Her hands slipped around Flora’s waist once more. “I’ve made a promise. You understand, don’t you, the circumstances that might force a man in his position to marry as speedily as possible without arousing further suspicion?”
“I can understand your meaning, but not your logic,” said Flora.
Even if the rumors about étienne were true, surely things were not so dire.
It was not as if mobs of Londoners had stationed themselves outside his new home with flaming torches, demanding he be placed in the stocks.
And besides—“étienne could marry anyone. It does not have to be you.” Flora took a step away, causing Verbena’s hands to slide off her hips.
Verbena huffed, making fists at her sides. “It is too late in the race to change horses! For weeks we have cultivated this lie. Where are we supposed to find a new girl, willing and discreet, to take my place?”
“It could be done, if we tried,” Flora said, though even to her own ears the protest was a weak one. Not a single name came to mind. “Surely we could at least try.”
“Yes, of course we might. But where would I find a new false husband?” She gave Flora a wry look. “Do not forget, I am also ruined if I do not marry. And London is experiencing a dearth of suitable men. I should know; I’ve been searching for one long enough.”
“Could you not marry William?” Flora blurted out.
Verbena boggled at her. “No! Because you’re marrying William!” she said.
Flora shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why? What’s wrong with William?” Verbena placed her hands now on her own hips. “He’s an excellent prospect.”
“Then why not marry him yourself?” Flora retorted.
That brought Verbena up short for reasons Flora could not fathom. She watched the color drain from Verbena’s pretty face and thought—hoped—she had hit upon a truth that Verbena had tried to keep hidden. That moment in the greenhouse, or when they walked through the woods—had it been real?
“Verbena—” she tried to say, but Verbena interrupted her.
“Truthfully, I do not find William to be pleasing company,” said Verbena. Her gaze shot to the solitary window, giving Flora a view of her sharp profile.
“What?” Flora’s voice quaked. “In what way does he displease you?”
“Several,” said Verbena to the window. “He is, despite his good qualities, a novelist. As I told you before, I find such work laughable at best.”
Flora sat heavily upon the seat, her wet clothes smacking against the wood.
If a duelist’s bullet had found its way into her heart, the damage would be minimal compared to hearing this pronouncement.
Either Verbena was lying now, or she had been lying then, and why would she lie about this to the woman she claimed to love?
Oh, it was awful. Flora buried her face in her hands.
Verbena’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the end of a long, dark tunnel: “I cannot conceive of a more uncomfortable life than to feign interest in his scribblings at every dinner party from now until my death. You have no such compunctions; therefore, you would make a fine match for him.” She moved about the small machine, shaking out her dry clothes.
“At least with étienne, I find myself able to—to pretend at romance. I could not do the same with William. No, it would be impossible.”
Flora lifted her head to stare at Verbena. “Impossible?”
“Yes.” Verbena still did not meet her eyes, but picked at some loose thread along her dress’s skirt. “Quite impossible. I am able to speak to him with courtesy, but only just.”
Was Flora’s dual nature so sundered that a woman could love one half of her yet loathe the other?
William had always been, to her mind, the same set of stanzas, merely translated into a different language.
If Verbena found him so abhorrent—if she could not even imagine pretending to love him—then she and Flora could find no happiness together.
To do so would be to murder William Forsyth, who was innocent of all crimes save loving a woman who could not return his affections.
While these notions roiled inside Flora, her distress seemed to go completely unnoticed by Verbena. “So you see why I propose we follow the plan I have laid out. What do you say? Shall we attempt to secure a false husband for you as well?”
“No,” Flora said dully.
“No?” Verbena reached for her, but Flora shrugged her arm out of reach. A tinge of admonishment colored Verbena’s stare. “If William does not appeal, perhaps there is another? Not Miles, do not name him. He has told me he has no interest in marriage.”
“He has?” Flora frowned. She knew this, too, to be a lie. The whole reason Miles had come to London in the first place was to find a wife, though he had admittedly not made much progress on that front.
“He has.” Verbena’s lips thinned to a tight line and she looked away.
Curious. Flora could not imagine such a conversation taking place without Miles informing her, but then again, a lot had happened since they’d arrived at Plas Tan. And why should Flora wish to marry Miles? He was hopelessly captivated by étienne.
“It is not the candidate that causes concern,” Flora said. Her cheeks heated with her growing rage. “Your entire scheme is anathema to me. I cannot imagine why you would ask me to follow you in this.”
Verbena looked at her for a long moment, her head bent forward as if she was waiting for a flourish at the end of a jest. When none came, she reared back, her dry dress forgotten in her grip. It sagged to the floor of the machine, a dark, wet line soaking into its hem.
“I ask because we want each other,” she said, “and this is how we can be together.”
“Together! When you find it convenient, I suppose, and for brief moments, until such time—” Flora pressed her lips shut. She rose to her feet, wanting her full height for what she was about to say. “I do not think I could perform such acrobatics.”
Verbena blinked once, her eyebrows rising to hide beneath her sweep of damp red hair. “You…are refusing?”
“I would always refuse such an accomplished liar.”
A flash of hurt passed across Verbena’s eyes, but it was swiftly dispatched. She nodded to herself a few times, then turned her back on Flora.
“I assume,” she said, “that you wish to dress as we disrobed.” She lifted the sodden fabric of her shift, not waiting for a reply.
Flora turned before she could see more than a glimpse of Verbena’s bare calf.
She bit back her habitual thank you for the consideration; a heavy silence had settled between them that could not be pierced, even by rote pleasantries.
She dried herself with a bath sheet and dressed quickly, shoving her bonnet over the ruin of her hair and wishing for a piece of looking glass to check her pins.
Though, given how wan and tired she felt, perhaps it was best not to see herself.
The machine rolled to a stop. They had returned to the land, leaving the sea behind.