Chapter 11
“Margo?” her sister said again. “How are you here?”
Margo attempted to answer, but her bodice threatened to flap open. Henry at her side managed his falls in record time. Curse women’s fashions! She had five minuscule hooks to fasten, and she was fairly certain Henry had broken at least one of them.
“Matilda!” she said brightly. “Fancy meeting you here in Derbyshire! What a coincidence.”
Two hooks—two hooks remained of the original five. She briefly considered murdering Henry. This was her only dress!
“Margo,” her twin said threateningly, “stop playing with your frock and answer me.” Her scowl turned on Henry. “And don’t even try to look innocent, Henry Mortimer, when I just saw Margo’s entire fundament exposed to all of Derbyshire.”
“My what?”
“Your bum,” said Henry helpfully, and then blushed a delightful carnation pink.
Matilda seemed considerably less charmed than Margo felt. “What are you two doing here?”
Margo gave up on her gaping bodice. “For heaven’s sake, Matilda. We were looking for you. We’ve been chasing you ever since you left. Did you think you could run off without a backward glance and I wouldn’t come after you?”
Matilda’s jaw was clenched, and her eyes were bright with rage. “Yes, in fact, I did think that, Margo, because I told you not to come after me.”
Margo felt an answering fury rise inside her. “You do not know what you are about.”
“Of course I know what I’m about. It’s my life, for Christ’s sake. It’s no one’s business but my own.”
“And Ashford? Where in God’s name is he? Or has he left you by yourself out here?”
Matilda’s face was white and set. “When we came upon you two rolling around in the dirt, I asked him to let me speak to you alone. And do you know what, Margo? He listened to me. He respected my wishes. Unlike you.”
Margo felt the impact of her sister’s words, a direct hit in the center of her chest. But it was easy for Ashford—his heart wasn’t tangled up in fear and love and worry and anguish as hers was.
“I don’t trust him,” she said. The words came out flat.
“You don’t know him!”
“Neither do you,” Margo said incredulously. “You’ve known him for what—a month? Six weeks?”
“I’ve known him long enough.” Matilda’s lips pressed together. “I love him. And it’s my choice, Margo. It’s not up to you.”
Panic had settled somewhere above her breastbone. She didn’t know how to get through to Matilda, and she was afraid, so afraid—
She didn’t want to lose her.
“Just because you and Ashford have—certain—desires—in common, that does not mean—”
“Stop it,” Matilda hissed. “I know you think I am unnatural—”
“I don’t, damn it!” Merciful heavens, whatever it was that tangled pleasure up in submission, Margo supposed they shared it. She gritted her teeth so hard she felt a muscle in her jaw creak. “I do not—I am trying not—blast it, Tillie! You can let Ashford whack you with a crop all day if you like—”
“How generous of you,” Matilda ground out, “when I just found you arse up in the woods with Henry Mortimer!”
“That’s different—”
“How is it different?” Matilda demanded. “Tell me!”
“I am not marrying Henry!”
The words rang out, clear over the distant sound of the waterfall. There was an awful finality to them, a leaden certainty that she had not intended.
She glanced over at Henry. His gaze was fixed on the trees ahead of him, and he did not look at her. But his mouth—his mouth was a grim flat line, and there was no sweet pink flush on his cheekbones.
“I am—” She didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Henry, I—” She gave her head a little shake, trying to clear her mind. She couldn’t think about Henry right now. She had to focus on Matilda.
She attempted to choose her words carefully for once. “Could you not simply have an affair with Ashford? Does tying yourself to him for life not seem a trifle precipitate? I am not saying he is not the right person for you, Matilda, but if you would only take the time to be certain—”
“I am already certain.”
Margo drew a breath to try to argue her point, but Matilda gave a short sharp sigh and kept going.
“I am tired of being a Halifax Hellion.”
It shouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t who they were, not really. It was just a stupid name, a role they adopted because it was easier to play the part than to try to be something else and to fail.
And yet Matilda’s words felt scored into her skin. It felt like a rejection not of the silly nickname but of her, of them, of the life they’d shared since before they were born.
“I want to get married,” Matilda said. “I want to be—not respectable, bollocks to that. But I want to be steady. I want to be me, not some version of me that we invented seven years ago, that the scandal sheets embroidered into something I barely recognized.”
Margo’s mouth felt dry. She tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“Aren’t you sick of it too?” Matilda asked. “I don’t—I don’t even remember why we started—”
“Because fuck their rules,” Margo whispered, and the far-off thunder of the waterfall nearly swept her words away.
She tried again. “Because it’s all a farce—our reputation, our virtue—they’re nonsense terms made up by men who want to control the women around them.
There’s no power to the words if we ignore them.
Do you not recall? None of it really matters. None of it is who we really are.”
Matilda threw up her hands. Her blue-and-white striped traveling dress brushed the leaves at their feet, and unlike Margo, she looked clean and put-together. “And what did we accomplish? All that talk of power and scandal, and for what? For a few years of sybaritic pleasure?”
Every word felt like a brand, searing into her.
She had felt the same creeping dissatisfaction with their notoriety, with the way they’d built their lives these last few years.
It had occurred to her that if she ever did find someone with whom she wanted to spend her life, she had so deeply blackened her reputation that it would be all but impossible for anyone to seriously consider her.
Even in the last few days, it had been simmering in the back of her mind—that Henry could not be seen to attach himself to her without his career suffering for it.
“It wasn’t all useless,” she said. Her voice was thin.
“There were other girls who saw us—who saw that some made-up notion of virtue is no true measure of their worth.” There had been young ladies whose minor scandals might have been much larger ones had they not been overshadowed by the antics of the Halifax Hellions.
And then for the first time, Henry’s voice cut in, deep and serious and reassuring. “You sell yourselves short.”
Matilda turned toward him, her lips pinched, but he held up a hand, and she didn’t say anything.
“I know,” he said, “it’s not my place to say. But I’ve been there for seven years watching you—not only you, Margo, just mostly you—and you do not give yourselves the credit you deserve. Either of you.”
Margo’s chest hurt. She didn’t know how to interpret his words, the shades of meaning that lay beneath them.
“You are good, both of you. Kind. When a debutante makes some silly social faux pas, you two rush in like Spartans ready to defend her to the death. The servants brighten up when you enter a room because you ignore the aristocratic precept that says you’re supposed to demand their service but never deign to thank them. ”
“That’s an idiotic rule,” muttered Matilda.
Henry laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it. Margo could tell.
“Matilda, I don’t begin to know what is between you and Ashford, but don’t you think it possible that he was willing to approach you because he was aware of how open-minded the two of you are known to be?
It’s your reputations, such as they are, that have brought you to this point.
And it’s for the better, not for the worse.
The people who would judge you, either of you, for doing things that hurt no one, that bring nothing but pleasure, are fools. ”
Margo wanted suddenly to press her face into her hands and hide. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run away and never have to face him again.
Because it wasn’t true. She had hurt people. She had hurt Matilda with this godforsaken chase, with her foolhardy decision to confront Ashford in the guise of her twin.
She had hurt Henry. Here in this little clearing.
And before now. A horrible suspicion had crept into her head, and she could not shake it—that she had been hurting Henry, silently, heedlessly, for a long time now.
“For all there are people who’d look at you two and think you’ve done wrong,” Henry continued, “there are ten times more who look at you from the corners of the ballroom, and admire you. Who think you’re brave and—splendid—”
His voice trailed off, and when Margo looked at him, he was staring down ferociously at his shoes.
“Thank you, Henry,” Matilda said, and her voice was very gentle, as if she thought he might shatter.
Margo couldn’t say anything.
Matilda pinned her with a hard blue stare. “I am going to go back to Ashford now. We are going on to Scotland. And then we’re going to stop at his country estate for a time after we marry.”
Margo swallowed hard.
“I need you to trust me,” Matilda said. “I need you to believe that I know what’s best for my own life. Don’t follow me, Margo, not again.”
“I love you,” Margo managed to say. “I want—I just want you to be safe and happy, Tillie.”
“Oh Christ,” Matilda said, “don’t call me that.” But then she took a step forward, and then another, and then she caught Margo in an embrace.
“I love you too,” she said into Margo’s ear. “You ninny.”
“You promise me you’ll be safe?”
“I promise.”
They were of a height, their bodies the same shape. She knew the curve of Matilda’s shoulders better than her own. She was crying, she realized, hot tears that splashed down onto Matilda’s striped carriage dress.
“You smell like you just got tupped in the woods,” Matilda murmured. “Repeatedly. For several days. Without bathing.”
Margo sniffed loudly and considered rubbing her nose on her sister’s dress. “Did you not hear the part in Henry’s speech where we are good and kind?”
Matilda drew back. “I heard him.” Her expression was unreadable. “I hope you did.”
Margo didn’t know what to say.
Matilda pulled her into one more hug. “I’ll write to you when we’re settled. I’ll miss you.” To Margo’s surprise, her sister’s voice caught on the words. “I’m going to miss you so much.”
“Miss you already,” she whispered back.
And with a brief word to Henry and no backward glances, Matilda was gone, darting through the trees and finding her way back to the waterfall, where she’d left her blanket and pelisse and, presumably, her future husband.
Margo tried very hard not to panic at the sight of her sister’s retreating back.
And then she was alone with Henry once again.
Be brave, she told herself, and she made herself look at him.
He wasn’t looking back. He was staring down at the leaf-littered soil, his hands shoved in his pockets, his body a line of tension. His mouth was a grim slash.
“Margo,” he said. He didn’t look up. He appeared to be addressing the ground. “We need to talk about things. About what’s—about what’s happened.”
And her courage broke. “I can’t,” she whispered.
At that, he looked up. His serious dark eyes caught on her face. “Margo?”
She couldn’t hear him over the sound of her pulse beating in her ears. She was alone. She’d lost Matilda. Matilda didn’t want to be one of the Halifax twins any longer, and though she knew it was irrational, her heart twisted in her chest.
Had she ruined that, too? Her twin, her other half? Had she driven Matilda away?
They had been equal partners in everything they’d done, Margo had always thought, but perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps she’d led her sister into scandal and infamy just as she’d led Henry into recklessness these last two days.
Perhaps the finishing school had been right. She was an appalling influence on others. She was not fit to be around anyone who was good.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so damned sorry, Henry.”
And then she turned on her heel and ran blindly toward the sound of the waterfall.