Aftermath
Shirley puts out a hand to hold Margaret back when she would follow. They are quite alone, the sailors having smelt the same inviting odours as Shirley. “What a carnival freak I am making of myself, to be sure,” he says to her, warm with frank esteem and wry with regret. “If I were any sort of man, Margaret, I should be hopelessly enamoured of you, and if I were any sort of woman, I should call you my beloved sister forever. Yet here I am, neither the one nor the other; and how I am to proceed, caring for you as I do, I have not the faintest idea.”
Margaret’s answering laugh is rather shaky. “Well, then, we are in rather a like predicament, although surely you are no freak—no, I won’t hear you call yourself names! If you were as you present yourself to the world, I should be telling you frankly that your suit would not be rebuffed, and if you were outwardly a woman, I should have offered a sister’s embrace long since. I suspect you have shown more of your heart in these past days than you have since your brother died.”
He nods, looking downward almost guiltily.
“I am honoured and touched and humbled by your faith in me, and to speak quite frankly, I care very much for you as well.” She looks down, lips pressed together a little, for once at a loss as to how to proceed. She has lived a life entirely of the mind for so long, she would have no idea what to do if the situation were not complicated by the facts. As it is…!
Finally she looks up. “Man or woman, you have a sister if you want one,” she says simply. “It is yourself for which I care; the outward seeming does not matter to me.”
“Truthfully, I don’t quite know if I can have what I want,” he says, face clouded. “No other eyes in the world see as yours do.”
He turns away from her with an effort, and steps to the rail to look over, letting his words fall into the choppy sea below. “I want to stay with you, always, the way we are now—I love you, Margaret! there, I have said it—but I cannot for the life of me see how.
“The wildest schemes, the most bizarre fancies, pass through my head—and at the back of it all, the knowledge that I must not plan, dare not even hope, because a movement of Addison’s finger on a trigger may cost me my secret as well as my life. The latter I can lose, I hope, without too much repining—but I cannot see you made a laughingstock because of me; you must be able to deny you knew, much less that you were close to me.
“I don’t know. I find myself in a perfectly horrid state of perplexity.” He turns back toward her, though he comes no closer. The setting sun lights the candid, forthright brown eyes under the worried forehead. “I only know how very devoted I am to you, Margaret dear, and how I should despair if we should have to separate.”
She listens to him without a single interruption, mostly because she can’t find her voice for a minute or so. When he is done, she takes a step closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm lightly. Her voice is almost inaudible. “I scarcely know what to say,” she tells him “but that I love you, as well. Yourself, whether that is Shirley, or Elizabeth, or Rumplestiltskin. It is a conundrum, isn’t it?” The hard part over, her voice strengthens. “You need not fear that we will separate by any decision of mine, though! I thought I had made that perfectly clear.”
A laugh catches on a sob in Shirley’s throat. “Rather.”
“As for the rest… I am very glad to know that I am not alone in trying to find a reason to remain together once the immediate need is past; I should have thought that was clear by the enthusiasm with which I took up your proposal of a joint medical and legal clinic.” Her grin is obviously self-directed. “Otherwise I should feel very much the fool.”
“No need for that. My department.”
“You do not have a monopoly, then. I am not concerned with gossip, should you be unmasked. I have found that the best answer to it is a profound silence. If the victim does not respond, it becomes boring. It would be a nine-days’ wonder, and then something else would catch the public eye and I should fade out of it entirely.
“But my dear, I do not intend to permit you to be unmasked, neither in life nor—much as I do not want to think about it!—in death. That is not for my sake; it is for yours. You should be known for your accomplishments, and not merely as the woman who managed to fool the Bar in York for a decade. I can and will care for you myself if you are injured, and as to the worst… any physician can certify a death.”
Shirley draws her to the rail and puts his arm round her waist. His voice is shaking. “That is a greater relief than I can explain to you, Margaret. Thank you. It is not just you and I—there is Lady Hester, too. And they would exhume my poor brother, I don’t doubt, and—” The words trail off.
Her voice is none too steady either. “But I should miss you every day for the rest of my life. That is the only separation I truly fear. I am quite certain any other would be temporary, since it would be against both your will and mine. Only please,” with a flash of sharpness “now that you know precisely my feelings on the matter, do not try to send me away for my own good again!”
He tightens his arm. “I know, I know. I will be good, as long as you try to understand what it costs me.” The last phrase comes out in a voiceless gasp; Shirley is very near to tears, for only the second time in ten long years.
Margaret cannot put her arm around him in turn—his clasp is too tight—but she leans her head into his shoulder for a moment. She takes a deep breath, but her voice, though quiet, is quite steady. “But I do understand. The price is fear, of a kind you have never known as an adult… fear for another far greater than any fear for yourself, all the worse because it seems so totally beyond your control. You can walk into the lion’s den with your eyes open, but to watch someone you love do so is quite another thing. I think the only thing worse would be to go back to being entirely alone… but I may be speaking only for myself there.”
“You know better.” He loosens his hold then, speaks clinically and dryly. “There is a matter of responsibility also; but we have fought on this point before, and I should not like to do so again. Of course you understand, since you have Esperanza to consider.”
Her tone is acerbic in its turn. “I believe I understood the concept before Esperanza joined me. You should know, I have not told Esperanza you are anything but what you seem. I trust her absolutely, but that is too great a confidence to expect a girl of 16 to carry. My secrets I will share with her, but not yours.”
She feels his shrug through his arm. “I expected nothing less of you. If we get past Addison, I’ll tell her myself.”
“No, don’t. There is no need, and at this point in her life it will only confuse her. How can I be so easy with you when your outward appearance is so at odds with the facts? She has not yet learned to treasure the spirit regardless of its housing. Someday we may tell her, but not till she has a little more experience of people.”
“You know best.” A silent laugh stirs him. “Look what you have done to me, Margaret. Because I trust you, I want to trust the entire world. I do know better.”
She faces him squarely, not half a pace away. “Addison may want you, but he shall not have you. As you so rightly pointed out, Scotland Yard is watching your back. And you have an advantage Addison knows nothing about. One set of eyes cannot watch everywhere, but we have three, and we are all alert and aware, and now I have all the more reason to be careful. I will not lose you, when I have only just found you!”
“Oh, my dear. My very dear.” He dares not embrace her—a sailor or Esperanza could appear at any moment—but she can see his self-control under strain.
She does not quite dare either—although she is less concerned about being seen than whether Shirley would be appalled at himself in retrospect—but she can, and does, take both his hands very firmly in hers. Shirley hadn’t known a handclasp could convey quite so much pure affection. And then she laughs a little, more as a release of tension than in true humour. “I doubt your fancies are any stranger than mine! I have, among other things, been trying to figure out how to reconstruct adjoining townhouses so that they connected in a way that was unexceptional, but would give you access to my parlour.”
He cannot manage a laugh, but he does smile. “We will find a better way than that. Somehow.”
“Well, we shall certainly have time to think about it. But I think we had better go down to dinner, before the sailors start placing wagers on our behaviour.”
Shirley rubs his face vigourously with both hands. ““Right. I ought to go get into some decent clothes. Go and make excuses for the fop, will you please?”
“And Shirley? Thank you.”
“Me? For pity’s sake, Margaret! What have I done but—” But she is gone, so Shirley must needs choke back his amazement and go below himself.
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