Chapter 8 #2
She felt her heart begin to beat faster and an unpleasant fluttering took hold in her abdomen.
Doctor Hunter paraded the now-removed intestines around the room, inviting the students on the front row to give them a squeeze.
Thea’s gut squeezed in sympathy. She took another swig from the flask to steady herself.
For over five years of marriage, she had comforted herself by thinking of the time Martha returned.
When, even if they couldn’t pick up where they left off, they would have been able to spend time together, to understand one another and to provide physical and emotional support.
Just to see her, a few kind words, a reassuring glance, a supportive touch.
Now that hope was gone, and she had to decide what to do next.
Her stomach rolled and her tongue seemed to get thicker as her breathing became shallow.
She flipped open her pocket watch as a distraction. Twenty minutes to go.
‘The rectum,’ Doctor Hunter announced as he finished fishing around in the abdominal cavity with his scalpel. Thea looked back from her watch just as he held it up, and something green dripped out of it. Her bowel constricted and her ankles seemed to fizz. That was new, she mused.
She had learned, at the hands of her father’s pragmatic gardener Scip, that fairness wasn’t something that one could expect or demand.
So she had to move on, and to carve out some sort of joy for herself aside from the small amount of time she spent with the children.
But ideas of how she might achieve that currently eluded her.
The feeling of hopelessness grew. She took another swig of whisky to try and remedy her thick throat and tender stomach, but the burning sensation only made it worse.
While her stays were looser than usual in Lord Foxmore’s suit, they still made her breathe into her chest and now she couldn’t get enough air.
Her vision started to grey at the edges.
Not here – she couldn’t faint in here. Whoever picked her up, took her out and sat her with Martin would find out her secret. If only Speckle were here. She got the idea that he wouldn’t mind.
She got up and started to move along the row, apologising to those whose knees she knocked along the way. Better than vomiting on them, she thought, which was still a possibility.
‘And that is where the tract ends.’ The words in a Scottish lilt filtered into her brain as she stumbled out of the room.
She looked left and right, almost uncertain of the way out in her foggy state but felt the cool of the outside air filtering down the passage.
That was what she needed. She stumbled outside and took a few large gulps of air.
It didn’t help her stomach, but her vision cleared a little.
She bent over and grasped at the front of her stays, trying to give herself more room to breathe into her stomach.
Now where? Sanders wouldn’t be here to pick her up for twenty minutes yet and she couldn’t stand around looking like she was having a heart attack on the cobbles.
An alleyway, that’s what she needed. She set off towards Albermarle Street, vaguely remembering an opening a few doors down.
‘Sir?’
A hand on her arm made her whip around and another enormous breath invaded her lungs.
The man stood back and raised both hands in a gesture of assurance.
She blinked and tried to make her mind work faster against the haze of panic and whisky.
She knew this man. She blinked again and saw his brow crease.
He was the one from the back row. The ginger one who had helped Martin.
He was very short and slight, she saw now, but didn’t look like he was about to rob her.
She could probably take him down anyway. Or maybe that was the whisky thinking?
‘What do you want?’ Her voice came out harsher than she intended, because words are hard when you have both not enough and too much air at once. Their breath was visible in the dark, lit by the light of the city.
‘Just checking you was alright Du… Sir,’ he said.
Thea faltered. There was attitude in that voice. And had he just...? She peered closer and tried to think even harder. Then she looked at his forearms, still held up. She recognised those.
‘Frankie?’ That definitely came out too loud.
‘Shhhh,’ he said. Or she said. Thea wasn’t quite sure. Then the figure came towards her, gripped her arm and began to march her down the street.
‘How dare you,’ she hissed. Because although she wasn’t sure of many things at this moment, she was sure that duchesses were not supposed to be dragged across the cobbles by gardeners.
But Frankie didn’t stop, and Thea found herself complying.
They found the alleyway she had been heading for, and Frankie pulled them into it.
It was narrow and smelled of old brassicas.
Thea shook herself out of the grip and tried to regain a little of the social advantage she struggled without.
‘What on earth are you doing here dressed like this?’
Frankie raised an eyebrow. ‘I could ask the same of you.’ Not even a ‘your ladyness,’ this time. But she had a point.
‘I am interested,’ she tried.
‘So am I,’ said Frankie. ‘They don’t do many lectures on botany, and I learn better by somebody telling me things.’ Fair enough. But a gardener’s wage surely didn’t pay for…
‘You sneak in, don’t you?’ said Thea, still put out at the lack of respect. ‘And whose is that suit?’
Frankie crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. ‘I do not sneak in,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Kit pays for me, and this is his old suit.’
‘Oh.’ Thea immediately regretted the accusation.
‘Not every poor person is a charlatan,’ said Frankie, defiance in her eyes.
‘I only came out to see if you was alright ‘cos I thought you was going the way of Martin, but I wish I hadn’t, now.’ She pushed off the wall and began to walk out of the alley, but Thea caught her arm, somehow unwilling to lose the company.
‘Wait,’ she said. Frankie turned back, looked down at the hand on her arm and back at Thea.
She said nothing. Thea knew she should apologise, but it was hard.
She wasn’t supposed to defer to those lower than her.
But then, if they were all just meat with thoughts and she simply managed to clothe hers in more elaborate outfits purely through the ability to marry well, what was stopping her?
Frankie’s arm still strained away from hers. She gripped tighter.
‘I have had an extremely challenging day and thought that this–’ she gestured to herself, ‘–and this–’ she held up the hip flask, ‘–would help. But they did not.’ Frankie’s eyes flicked between her own, and then her grip eased as Frankie returned to lean against the wall.
But she said nothing. Thea breathed in through her nose, her heart still hammering but feeling less like she was about to pass out.
‘I suppose,’ she licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry.
‘I suppose all of us who are curious find ways to learn that might not be… conventional.’ The ghost of a smile from Frankie.
‘I hear curiosity can get a lady into trouble,’ she said, a little humour mixed with the challenge in her eyes. Thea blinked at her. If she didn’t know better, she would be sure Frankie was flirting with her.
‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked, trying to return to firmer ground.
A one-shouldered shrug. ‘The pocketwatch.’ A gesture at Thea’s pocket. ‘You have a particular way of opening it. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before the first time you came to the garden. Then I clocked you – no pun intended – at the next lecture.’
Thea felt the corner of her mouth turn up at the awful joke. It made a rush of something pleasant happen in her head. ‘And you figured I couldn’t handle myself on the street?’
‘I figured someone would rob you blind and probably do worse if they found a rich lady dressed as a man passed out down an alleyway. You looked like you were on your way down’ Thea felt a sudden wave of gratitude.
Just that someone had been looking out for her.
That Frankie had cared. It didn’t make her head any clearer as they stood bathed in moonlight from the alley’s entrance.
‘Do you often notice things about ladies?’ she heard herself asking. Or more probably it was the whisky asking. Then there was silence. Frankie’s expression had become serious. She knew what Thea was really asking.
‘Whenever I have the chance.’ Not quiet. Not apologetic. Just Frankie.
Thea’s blood rushed in her ears at the admission.
The utter confidence of her. Like she wasn’t ashamed of it at all.
She couldn’t believe what she was tempted to do, but she was.
Just knowing that they both shared this queerness was intoxicating.
But she couldn’t, could she? Although she did need to take some control back into her life.
But surely not with a gardener. But then, she knew they were both the same on the inside, and that she shared more in common with Frankie than she did with the people who dressed like her.
Meat with thoughts. Everyone was the same, on the inside, green gunk and all.
She became aware she had been staring. At Frankie’s lips. And she had moved so close she could feel her breath. Oh god. She didn’t dare look up and at her eyes, so she looked down. That was no better. Frankie’s chest rose and fell almost as fast as her own.
Before she knew it her eyes were back to Frankie’s lips and then her mouth was on them, kissing her, pressing her back against the wall. Her mind raced with both horror and exhilaration, but she’d done it now, she might as well make the most of it.
She felt Frankie’s hands move up to her back and pull her closer, deepening the kiss. Then they parted, breathing hard. They looked at one another.
Interesting.