Her Lady's Fortune

by Renée Dahlia

  “I stayed the night?” She knew the answer, the ache in her thigh muscles reminded her of the energetic, amazing night with Rosalie, whose fingers had touched her deep inside, right where she’d needed to be touched.

  “Yes. And it was incredible.”

  Priya opened her mouth then shut it again. It had been utterly incredible; every sensual promise that lingered in the air between them for so many years had been discovered, every question answered. She should want more. So why did it feel like she’d made a giant mistake? Or was that just her general uncertainty about life and the age old chestnut of whether she deserved...positive attention.

  “Priya?”

  “Are you sure about this?” Priya cleared her throat when the words came out all sticky and weird.

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my entire life. The first time we, ah, met, I froze because being with you was so spectacular. All I wanted was someone to come home to after a long day at the bank. I’d gone from kissing you to imagining us sitting in front of the fire drinking scotch and talking about the world. Forever. And it seemed so sudden and... necessary.” Rosalie stopped, her eyes wide. “I’m scaring you, aren’t I? This is why I couldn’t. Before.”

  “Ahh...” Priya wasn’t awake enough for this discussion. “I’m sorry. Can I get a drink of water?” She bit back a curse at the blurted question because it was a lie. She was awake enough and she’d deflected Rosalie’s confession. Now she sounded like an uncaring soul with the added kicker of having lied to herself about why she didn’t want to have this conversation right now. If she were to state one truth, it was that she liked Rosalie very much indeed. She definitely wanted more of last night. Clarity came too late. She couldn’t take her request for water back and instead say what she should have said; that Rosalie wasn’t scaring her with her intense need. It was Priya’s matching need to submit to Rosalie’s desires that scared her. She wanted exactly the same thing Rosalie wanted with a yearning that intensified the more she thought about it.

  “Of course. I’ll be right back.” The flash of hurt on Rosalie’s face made Priya want to curl up under the blanket and squeeze her eyes shut. Why was this so difficult?

  “No, it’s fine. It really is...” The door closed with a snick and Priya sighed. She’d messed this up. She breathed in deep and ran back over what Rosalie had said and cringed even more. It was sweet and lovely and honestly, the image of the two of them sitting in Rosalie’s lounge debating the ways of the world for the rest of their days sounded appealing. More than appealing; Rosalie described an equitable relationship where Priya could be herself without worry. Or at least, that’s what Priya truly wanted and she hoped that Rosalie’s description could be expanded to give Priya everything she desired. A lifelong love on equal ground. Someone who wouldn’t judge her unless she needed an occasional dose of reality. She needed more than a judgement free lover; she needed a partner she could trust to tell her when she was wrong. Being part of the Carlingford family came with many advantages, but the disadvantage was that people were far too inclined to agree with whatever harebrained schemes she concocted. She needed someone who could tell her no, even when she didn’t want to hear it. Someone who wouldn’t be hurt when she lashed out against being told no, and who understood that she often needed time to figure out that it was okay to be wrong sometimes.

  “Here is some water.” Rosalie handed her a glass of water and Priya nodded a thanks. She released her grip on the blanket; when had she started clinging to the fabric so tightly? With a lick of her lips, she took the glass from Rosalie and sipped.

  “Thank you so much. I feel like I spend all my time apologising to you, and here we are again. I’m sorry, Rosalie.”

  “It’s fine. I didn’t ask for permanency. Don’t apologise for my feelings.”

  Priya sipped the water again in a vain effort to get rid of the damned burr in her throat. “I like your feelings. I’m sorry for not answering right away. Honestly...”

  “Hmm?” Rosalie crossed her arms and the silk fabric of her dressing gown rustled louder than it ought to. A discussion about feelings didn’t bother Priya, she liked listening to other people’s emotions and the way they saw the world and their place in it. She loved giving people hope for the future and sharing their burdens. Just not so early in the morning. And she was being completely honest with herself when she knew she loved talking about other people’s feelings a lot more than she liked discussing her own. With a few blinks and another sip of water, she dragged herself into a fully awake state.

  “Six years ago, the idea of sitting together every evening would have made me bolt like a horse with a wasp caught in its tail. But a lot has happened since then. I’ve matured—well, the war has forced me to mature—and I think I’d really like to spend my evenings with you.”

  “You would? I’m not going too fast?” To see and hear such uncertainty from Rosalie was unusual, and Priya’s heart gave a little clutch of joy. This obviously mattered to Rosalie, which meant it mattered to Priya. Over the past week, she’d come to realise that she couldn’t fight her attraction to Rosalie. After all, it’d been there for six years, quietly humming in the background, like the timpani carefully keeping the time in the theatre’s orchestra pit.

  “Yes, you are going a little fast—”

  “Oh.”

  “Only because it’s so early in the morning. Do you always wake up so quickly?”

  Rosalie’s face relaxed and she smiled. “Yes. The early bird catches the worm and all that. I like to be at my desk promptly. I like to spend the morning reading the local financial news, and it gives me five hours to prepare for when the New York Stock Exchange opens. We always get plenty of telegraphs with updates from there, and they can affect the London Stock Exchange, and our market affects theirs in return.”

  “Of course. You must think that I’m rather sluggish then.” Priya tended to work late into the evening, rather than get up early, although during the war, she’d burnt her candles at both ends, so to speak. Grandfather Carlingford had always liked to have the latest technology and Carlingford Enterprises had been one of the first office buildings in London with an electrics supply. Everywhere she looked, there were reminders of the war, of the blood on her hands. Would she ever escape all the connections to war? They lingered like the distant blood splatter created from being in the proximity of so much destruction. Knowing she wasn’t immediately responsible and that there was some distance involved didn’t absolve her of the outcomes.

  “A shadow crossed your face. What is the matter?”

  Priya sighed and placed the glass of water on the bedside table. “Do you really want to know?” She wasn’t sure Rosalie wanted to know the intricate way her thoughts worked.

  “Yes. If the idea of being with me makes you frown like that...”

  “It wasn’t about you. I was thinking about getting up early and how grateful I was that Carlingford had electric lights in our offices...” Priya paused for a short breath. When Rosalie nodded encouragingly, she continued. “...and that led me to thinking about working too hard during the war.” She didn’t need to go on and on about what that meant. Rosalie must understand her issues by now.

  “Oh. So not about me or us at all.”

  “No.”

  Rosalie sat on the edge of the bed and held Priya’s hand. “You are not responsible for other people’s actions.”

  “But I am responsible for my own. I played a part in this war.”

  “And we won it because you helped. It’s complex. I understand, but you can’t only own the negative outcome without also owning the positive.”

  “Everything you say is logical. Why can’t I shake this hurt?” Priya could go around in circles worrying about this for days, but she’d never have an answer.

  “We’ve just been through a war. One that you and your family had an important role in.” Rosalie confirmed it; Priya had profited from war and she didn’t deserve happiness. A sob rose up in the ba
ck of her throat and she tried to swallow it down.

  “Of course your feelings are going to be complex around anything even vaguely related to the whole sorry mess.”

  Priya closed her eyes and hung her head. “I’ll never be rid of this weight, will I?”

  Rosalie’s hands gently held Priya’s face and she opened her eyes. Rosalie leaned in and brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “Caring so deeply is what makes you the wonderful fascinating person that you are. To deny that depth of care would be to deny your true self and that’s a type of self-inflicted torture that you really don’t want to endure.”

  Priya reached out for Rosalie and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you.” She tucked away the question about how Rosalie knew about how denying yourself impacted negatively on her. That was a question for another day, although it would incredibly easy to let her curious brain run with the query and create a distraction from her own mess.

  “Let me hold you. Let me care for you while you care for everyone else.”

  Priya wanted to relax into Rosalie’s hug and yet she couldn’t. Her spine stiffened and she squinted at Rosalie. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Tell me. I want to understand.”

  Priya scoffed. “So do I.” If she had a better understanding of this whole sorry mess in her head, then she’d be freer. Surely. Her stomach rumbled lightly and she used it as a convenient excuse not to continue examining her reactions to the world. “Shall we break our fast?”

  “Mrs Walsh will make us something. I’ll just call her. I have a spare robe if you want one.” Rosalie gestured towards a chair, then rushed from the room and Priya relaxed for a moment before she gasped. Blast. Everyone would be worried about her. She leaped out of bed, grabbed the silk robe that Rosalie had pointed to, and paced down the hallway as she tied it around her. At some point last night, she’d ended up completely naked and a warm flush flooded her body as she remembered how they’d kissed and tangled under the sheets after removing their stockings. No wonder she’d found it harder than usual to wake this morning, she’d been busy last night.

  “May I use your telephone?” It was a little presumptuous to assume Rosalie had one in her house, they were still rather rare.

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you.” She followed Rosalie’s pointing finger towards the hallway and went through the motions of calling her butler.

  “Carlingford and Howick residence.”

  “Mr Sharma. It’s Priya. I’m just calling to let you know that I’m fine and am staying with a friend.” Priya knew he would pass the message on to her family.

  “Yes. Ashwin mentioned it last night.”

  She leaned back against the wall as relief mixed with the guilt of not informing her family of her whereabouts. “Oh good. I hope you weren’t too worried.”

  “No. Miss Priya, we are accustomed to your unusual hours of work.”

  “Right. Thank you.” She listened to Mr Sharma wish her a good day and waited until he ended the call before wondering what it all meant. This was the first time she’d stayed overnight with a friend. He’d mentioned work, and she had put in long hours at the office during the war and had slept there many a time. War didn’t stop at the end of office hours, and their factories had operated without pause for the whole six years as they tried to build ships as fast as they were sunk. But this was different. This time, she’d stayed away all night for pleasure, not work.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, or coffee?” Rosalie poked her head into the hallway and Priya pulled herself upright and nodded.

  “Yes, coffee would be great.”

  “Brilliant. Mr Walsh has laid out the morning papers and Mrs Walsh is making breakfast now.”

  “Excellent.” Somewhere this morning, even after their intense discussion earlier, they’d defaulted to distant politeness. It shouldn’t irritate Priya, like a scratchy seam on a gown, and yet, she rubbed her arm because she was unsure how to break the odd tension that hovered between them. A snippet of an old poem fluttered by; something about the bright light of day making the choices of the night before seem ... something. She sighed, unable to capture the sentiment or the fragment of poetry.

  It only took a few strides to move from the hallway to the dining room as Rosalie’s house was the cosy type in the city with a shared mews behind it; a much humbler place than the home she’d grown up. She rather liked the intimacy of it. The table was set for two with several newspapers piled in the middle of the table. Priya sat down and scanned the headlines of a few of the tabloid style papers, then picked up one of the older style papers and opened it to get past the myriad of advertisements on the front page. There wasn’t much news, just more of the same discussions around how the economy was going to recover now the war and the Flu were over. A footnote on the article mentioned how the Spanish Flu still ravaged the southern hemispheres; an odd lag given the time taken to get to Australia by ship from London was less than seventy days now. The Carlingford steamers made record time on the long trip and the newest design looked like it would be even faster. She turned the page and had the read the headline twice. No. Priya rubbed her eyes, but the words didn’t change when she looked again.

  Carlingford Charity A Front for Tax Evasion

  An indepth investigation by Fraud Finder has uncovered a possible connection between the extensive Carlingford philanthropic works and the wealthy ship builder...

  She sighed, then read the rest of the article, which was entirely made up from the cloth. Only one thing was positive in the whole story; there was no mention of Sanderson and Sons. The bank, and Rosalie, hadn’t been drawn into Fraud Finder’s grudge against her family’s business. Rosalie entered the room carrying a tea tray and Priya quickly folded up the paper, tucking the story out of the way. Now wasn’t the time to burden Rosalie with her family problems.

  “I brought both coffee and tea as you didn’t say which you preferred.”

  “Coffee, please.” Priya needed to get her head together quickly; not just to be awake enough to listen to Rosalie if she continued their earlier discussion about being together, but also to figure out how to deal with Fraud Finder’s continual attacks on Carlingford and her charity work. She needed to meet with Ashwin about this latest article and figure out how to respond. The War Widows Charity was about to begin demolition this week and she wanted the project to progress smoothly. One of the local government staff had a bee in his bonnet about some of the plans—misogyny, most likely—and the last thing the project needed was to give him an excuse to slow down the approval process because the project placed a preference on women over men. She pinched her lips together as a niggle became a realisation.

  Fraud Finder hadn’t started writing about Carlingford until the War Widows Charity project plans had been submitted for local government approval. Carlingford Enterprises had acquired the land from the War Department as part of a debt owed to them and the change of ownership from public to private land was the reason Priya had wanted to use it for this charity, as eventually, the land would end up back in the ownership of many people once the houses were built. Fraud Finder might be connected to one of the many families who were having their old homes demolished. Not all of them were pleased with having to move on, even if the homes they were moving into were of much better quality than those being left behind. Every single decision she was involved in had a negative effect on someone; and this charity was no different. In order to help war widows, she had to move long term residents out of their rented homes into new locations. Was the disruption of their community worth it?

  “We have a problem. Technically, I have a problem, but it concerns you.” Priya needed to get out of her head. Her issues weren’t going to get solved anytime soon, and Fraud Finder’s persistence needed immediate attention.

  “You need to stop blaming yourself for all the choices other people make.”

  Priya blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve realised your core problem is that take the bl
ame for all the bad things in the world.”

  “No. I take responsibility for actions that cause people hurt. I don’t blame myself. Blame and responsibility are different things. Anyway, can we leave this for another time? Here. Look at this.” Priya gulped down some coffee, scalding her tongue, and shoved the newspaper article towards Rosalie. She jumped out of her chair and rushed off to get dressed.

  “But what about breakfast? You have to eat. Someone needs to care for you.”

  Priya stamped down the fresh wave of irritation burning at the back of her throat as if she’d inhaled acrid smoke. She wasn’t a child who needed to be told to eat; Rosalie might be older but surely she wouldn’t dare. “I don’t need someone to care for me. I would like an equal partnership. Read that. I need to meet with my brother and work out what is going on.” She raced down the hallway to where her evening gown hung in Rosalie’s wardrobe. If she rushed, she could be back at her house for an appropriate outfit in less than an hour, and that would give Ashwin time to read the article and begin to think about a solution.

  Chapter 15

  Rosalie’s stomach sank. She’d moved too fast, pushed too hard for a relationship with Priya and now she was quite literally running out of her house. This was becoming a pattern; Rosalie asked for more—often for too much—and Priya left, then Priya would apologise and they’d move slower before Rosalie wanted too much again. She was old enough to know what she wanted, and she didn’t want to apologise for chasing after it. That’s how it worked at the bank. Why couldn’t relationships be as easy to understand as financial statements? As business? What was it Priya had said? She had a problem and it concerned Rosalie. Rosalie shifted in her chair. Puzzles could be solved with enough information. Surely this was the same. She stood up and walked down the hallway towards her bedroom with heavy heartbeats. Was it simply their age gap that made this too difficult? Priya was so much younger, only twenty-eight to her forty-two. She’d said the war had made her more mature, and yet, she continued to act like a flighty youth. Rosalie knew the sting of rejection probably meant she was being unfair; knowing it didn’t take away the desire to be wanted, to be put first in someone’s life. No one had ever done that. Even Gloria, who adored her, had her own family now, someone to love her every day, while Rosalie had staff. The emotional tug between her and Priya was real and Rosalie yearned to settle down with someone who would care for her. She truly believed—despite all the evidence—that she deserved to find love, to be loved by someone. Her parents hadn’t loved her. But her sister did, and her grandfather had. In his own way. Why couldn’t she find companionship and love, just as Gloria had?