21. The Hastily Return #3
Mary perched on the edge of the seat, her posture rigid but cautious. Kate studied her. This woman who had been part of the elaborate deception, who had helped maintain the illusion that had fooled an entire city, including herself.
For a long moment, Kate said nothing, simply watching Mary’s reactions, noting the tension in her shoulders, the tightness around her mouth.
Let her wonder. Let her worry. That was better even.
“I know,” she said at last.
Mary’s face went pale. Her hands, folded neatly in her lap, tightened until the knuckles went white.
“Ma’am?”
“I know the truth about my husband.” Kate’s gaze sharpened, studying any reaction from the old woman. “About Gina.”
Mary’s breath caught audibly. For a moment she seemed frozen, every muscle locked in place. Then her eyes closed and her shoulders sagged slightly, as if a burden she’d carried for years was finally being acknowledged, and the weight of that acknowledgment was crushing.
“How long have you known?” she asked quietly.
“Two days. She told me herself.” Kate kept her voice steady, though she could feel her pulse racing. “What I want to know is how long you’ve been part of this deception.”
Mary’s eyes dropped to her hands. She took a deep breath before answering, “ten years, ma’am. Since the beginning.”
“Ten years.” Kate repeated the words, letting them settle between them like stones. “Ten years of lies. Ten years of helping her deceive everyone around her. Including me.”
“It wasn’t meant to deceive you specifically,” Mary said quickly, then stopped herself, seeming to realize how inadequate the defense sounded. “That is… the deception began long before you met. It was never about you.”
“But it continued even after we married.” Kate’s voice hardened. “You continued to help her maintain this… this masquerade, even knowing she was lying to her wife. Every day, every interaction—you were part of it.”
Mary’s face flushed with emotion. Shame, defensiveness, loyalty all warring in her expression. “Mrs. Moore-Sullivan, you don’t understand—”
“Then help me understand.” Kate stood abruptly, unable to sit still any longer.
She moved to the window, putting distance between them, needing space to think.
“Tell me about her past. Tell me how this began. And more importantly—” She turned back to face Mary, her voice urgent now, “—tell me how safe we are. How many people know? How many suspect? How close are we to being discovered?”
Mary seemed taken aback by the directness of the questions. “Mrs. Moore-Sullivan—”
“I need to know, Mary.” Kate’s self-control slipped a fraction, letting the fear show through. “I need to know what we’re facing. What the risks are. Whether we’re safe or—” she paused to take a deep breath. “Or whether everything could fall apart at any moment.”
Mary’s expression shifted from caution to understanding. Now she saw, clearly, what was driving Kate’s questions. It wasn’t anger exactly, nor the weight of betrayal, though that too, but a deep terror of being discovered.
“We’re safe,” she said firmly. “As safe as we’ve ever been. No one knows. No one suspects.”
“How can you be certain?” Kate demanded, “How can you possibly know what people think, what they notice, what they might be whispering about when we’re not there to hear it?”
“Because I’ve been maintaining this secret for ten years,” Mary replied with unshakable confidence.
“Because I know every detail of the story we’ve built, every potential weak point, every possible question someone might ask.
Because I’ve watched and listened and been vigilant every single day for a decade, and I can tell you with certainty—no one knows. ”
Kate’s chest rose high up after hearing those words being spoken with such certainty, so firmly.
She wanted to believe her, but the fear wouldn’t loosen its grip. “Jane noticed things. She mentioned that he—that Jason—seems less rough than other men. If Jane noticed, others must have noticed too.”
“And they attribute it to his refinement, his education, his time abroad,” Mary said calmly.
“People see what they expect to see, ma’am.
They have no reason to question Mr. Moore-Sullivan’s masculinity because the very idea that he might be a woman is unthinkable to them.
It doesn’t enter their minds as a possibility. ”
“But it could,” Kate insisted. “Something could give us away. A careless moment, a slip of the tongue, someone asking the wrong questions—”
“Mrs. Moore-Sullivan.” Mary’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts.
“Listen to me, ma’am.” She stood up. “I understand your fear. I’ve lived with that same fear every day for ten years.
But we have been careful. Jason has been extraordinarily careful.
The story is airtight. The documentation is flawless.
There are no loose threads for anyone to pull. ”
Kate closed her eyes, trying to let the reassurance sink in, but her mind kept finding new worries, new dangers. “What about in Yorkshire? The servants there—”
“They saw exactly what they expected to see,” Mary said. “A gentleman and his wife visiting an estate. Nothing unusual. Nothing suspicious.”
“And here in London? The business associates, the society matrons, all the people we interact with—”
“They see Mr. Moore-Sullivan, a successful merchant, and his wife. That’s all.”
Kate turned back to the window, staring out at the London streets below. People moved about their daily business, unaware of the deception in their midst, unaware of the fear consuming her.
“Tell me about her past,” Kate said after a long moment, her voice quieter now. “Tell me how she learned to do this. How she became so convincing.”
Mary was silent for a moment, clearly weighing how much to reveal.
After a long, slow sigh, she began.
“She was very young when it started. Barely seventeen years old.”
“Seventeen?” Kate interrupted, turning from the window for a second time. “So she is even younger than I am?”
Mary hesitated. “A year younger, I believe. Yes.”
Kate was momentarily lost after knowing this new detail about her… husband . She had never had reason to question Jason’s age. He certainly looked young, but younger even than her?
Mary had her eyes fixed on her. “Does it matter, ma’am?”
Kate looked at her for a moment without saying a word.
Seventeen. She thought of herself at seventeen—already fighting her father about her own independence, already demanding to be taught about the business, already pushing through society’s expectation. She had had her father behind her. His name, his protection, his willingness to let her try.
Hadn’t Gina had all of that as well?
“I suppose that is the least important thing right now,” Kate said finally. “Please. Go on.”
Mary settled back into her chair. “Her father died when she was seventeen.”
“?At seventeen? Not just five years ago, as he told my father and me,” Kate interrupted a second time.
Mary cleared her throat. “It was necessary to embellish the story, ma’am. I am sorry.”
Kate inhaled deeply. “Go on.”
“Very well. Her father left nothing behind but creditors at the door. Gina had no other family, no other prospects. No way to earn an honest living as a woman alone. I’ve always worked in her household. I watched her grow and become a young woman—capable, astute, with an iron will.”
Kate turned back to the window, listening.
“She tried,” Mary continued. “She tried to find work as a governess, as a companion. But without connections, without references—”
“What about her mother?”
Mary fell silent after the question.
Kate heard her draw a slow breath and glanced at her from the corner of her eye. Something shifted in the older woman’s expression.
“She died right after giving birth to Gina. I took care of her the whole time.”
The words landed somewhere Kate hadn’t prepared to be hit.
She closed her eyes. This was so unexpected, and so similar.
Her own mother had died the same way, before Kate was old enough to hold a single memory of her. She had grown up with her father’s stories, with a portrait on the upstairs hall she had studied until she knew every brushstroke.
She opened her eyes again.
This was not about her, so she set the thought aside for the moment. Whatever Gina had suffered, whatever they happened to share, it changed nothing about what had been done. About the deception.
She needed to see this clearly. She intended to.
“Then… why did she not simply marry?” Kate asked, her voice matter of fact, steering the conversation in a different direction. “A woman in that position, young, with nothing—marriage would have been the obvious solution. A man with means, even a modest one, would have—”
She stopped abruptly.
The answer arrived before she finished the sentence. She had married. She had married her .
The silence stretched for a moment.
“I mean to say—” Kate began again, more carefully now, still facing the window. “Was it that she could not bring herself to—that is to say, was the disguise not only about survival? Was it also about—” She stopped again, unable to finish the thought cleanly. Her cheeks were burning hot by now.
Mary watched her with quiet steadiness. She understood exactly what Kate was asking. Not the practical question about marriage. The other one.
“Gina has never wanted a man,” she said simply. “Not in that way. Not ever.”
Kate said nothing for a long moment, looking outside, watching nothing in particular.
The silence that followed belonged entirely to her. Because… indeed… this was another thing Gina and her had in common, a confirmation of something she has always known about herself. She had never wanted a man either. Not truly. Not in the way the world had always insisted she should.
“I see,” she said at last, taking another deep breath. “So she became a man. And then married a woman.”