“Yes, Milady,” Sophie said. “We have caused you acute embarrassment and shock, and we are deeply sorry. There isn’t one of us who took satisfaction from it. Every one of us would have offered you the truth had it been possible.”
Maryam convulsed, trying to hold back the noise crawling in her chest, seeking release.
“If it helps you to know, Lord D’Avenant—Julianne's—disguise has its origins in events which long predate your meeting. It is not something she affected in order to trick you. But, as you can imagine, once a deception is begun there is no ready way out of it—especially not when it is the lie upon which Edgemere itself rests.”
“Julianne? That is her name?”
“Yes, Milady. She is the youngest D’Avenant, passing as her eldest brother, Julien Alexandre.”
“Julianne, Julien. More deceit, Sophie?”
“No, Milady. Improbable as it sounds, it is the truth. All three children were given the same first name. Julien Alexandre, Julien Michel, Julianne Marie. Historically, every child named Julien in the D’Avenant family has died tragically. Her father, an Englishman having married a French Catholic, was trying to prove he wasn’t superstitious.”
Maryam covered her mouth with her hand, shaking her head.
With difficulty, Sophie lowered her barrel-shaped body to the ground and sat alongside Maryam, hugging her knees. “Ten years ago, Julianne found herself more bereft than you did this Spring. She made the choice of passing as her brother because it gave her—gave us all—a chance at making a life. None of what she has achieved could have been done as a woman. She would still be living under the bridges in London, being chewed on by rats, as she once was.
Rats? Bridges? The notion shocked Maryam. Those were the squalid women she used to ride past in her carriage! Maybe she had even passed D’Avenant in London during that period, having no idea. And offering no help.
“You have ridden with her and seen how she uses her position to help improve the condition of the villagers’ lives,” Sophie continued. “She hires men but also the women and girls, to do work—like fixing up Skylark—that strictly speaking there is often no true need to do. Julianne has a knack for turning dust into gold. She has more wealth now than she could use in three lifetimes. So she uses her skill to provide for others. More than fifty of us benefit, directly or indirectly, from her generosity.”
As do I, Maryam suddenly realized. That was why the offer of 4,000 pounds for Skylark: to help her and the children. And when she wouldn’t take the offer, D’Avenant created a business ‘enterprise’ for Skylark—along with an education for her in commerce—to give her a chance to escape the chains of being female. Never once was Maryam made to feel she was a recipient of charity.
“The women inside the house—plus Estelle and Normand at the stables, and Leonard at the gate, Annie at the townhouse, and…” Sophie suddenly halted. “And one other person whose name I am not at liberty to divulge. We all date back to the flight from France and days of rough living in London before reclaiming Edgemere. We all know D’Avenant’s true identity, but we have learned to always refer to Julianne as ‘Lord D’Avenant’ so it is habitual and we don’t make mistakes outside.”
Maryam nodded, her emotions settling as she listened.
“The point is, Milady, it is not easy to be in disguise, to leave the house always as somebody else, to live in fear of being discovered. A fall from a horse, a slip on the street, with others rushing to touch her could be catastrophic to this illusion she has built. Her decision to claim her own power has led her forever away from conventional respectability.”
That, and an appetite for lovers of her own sex, Maryam thought. But that was another issue.
“Milady, I know you must feel ill-used, as if we held our secret knowledge over you. But I invite you to realize that the opposite is true. It is you who has the power to destroy all of us—all of this—should you choose to reveal D’Avenant’s secret in public.”
Later, coming upstairs and walking along the gallery hall, Lady Maryam stopped at the latest D’Avenant portrait. She had been right that first day she saw it. It was the youngest child, the little girl, who had the fire in her.
Julianne.
She stood in front of that portrait for a long time, just looking at that child. “Who would have guessed, little one, that you would save my son’s life?”
Indeed, Maryam thought, trying to read the soul that already shone through that little girl’s intelligent blue eyes, who would have guessed your life would take the course it has—of losing your family, of ending up in the gutters, and dragging yourself out of them to live in this punishing disguise?
She retraced her steps, walking down the gallery to the paintings of the earlier generations of D’Avenants. She stopped at every canvas Sarena had shown her the day she first arrived that depicted a D’Avenant who had been swallowed by the river. Her steps marked them out. One every generation.
Julianne knew that when she dove in for Edward.
The afternoon shadows grew long. Maryam returned to the portrait of Julianne as a child and stood there contemplating the nature of necessity and what she thought she knew about it.
At long last she walked on, past her own room to Julianne’s door. She knocked softly.
“Entrez,” Maman said.
Maryam turned the doorknob and pushed the door in. The fireplace was crackling and the bedside candles and lamps were already lit, casting their golden glow over the canopied sickbed.
Maman, her face slack with exhaustion, sat in a chair at the bedside. She set the unopened book on her lap onto the table. Maryam nodded to her.
Maryam walked to the bed. This was Julianne. She was propped up with pillows, nearly upright, eyes closed. Maryam’s eyes roamed over her. Her appearance was shocking. She looked frail. Feverish. Female.
“Oh,” Maryam whispered, her heart overcome with tenderness. This is what Edward’s life had cost. She picked up Julianne’s hand. It was scratched, bruised, and so lifeless. How could these same hands that had once seemed so strong now feel so soft? How could this person who once seemed indomitable look so vulnerable? Julianne's manliness had vanished, leaving Maryam in a room with someone completely different.
Julianne was labouring to breathe. Hollows opened around the base of her neck every time she inhaled. The muscles on the column of her neck strained with every inspiration of air. She was out of the water and still drowning.
Maryam sat beside her on the bed and put her hand on Julianne’s cheek. “Julianne?” she whispered, stroking her face.
Julianne leaned her head slightly in the direction of Maryam’s voice.
“Thank you,” Maryam said, tears streaming down her face. “Thank you for my Edward.” The enormity of it all, of the terror and the fear and the long days of not knowing and the dreadful evidence before her of what it had cost Julianne to save Edward overtook her and she cried from a raw and unguarded place deep within herself. “I’m so sorry you’re hurt,” she whispered, her voice rising out of control. “So sorry.”
Julianne moved her face against Maryam’s hand.
Maryam leaned forward and pressed her cheek against Julianne’s, only briefly, in case it impeded her effort to breathe. Then she sat back, trying to compose herself. She held Julianne’s hand between her own. “Edward woke up today. He spoke to me normally. His eyes were so sparkly and alert. He doesn’t remember what happened, but he is going to be alright.”
Julianne’s fingers moved. The corner of her mouth twitched.
Maryam sat on the bed with Julianne’s hand between her own on her lap. She didn’t know how much to say, how much Julianne could stand of her unintentionally-emotional visit. She just watched her, noticing the gradual reduction in the rate of her breathing as she calmed and fell back asleep.
“Maman?” Maryam whispered.
“Oui, ma chère?”
“Why is she so much worse-off than Edward?”
>
Maman leaned forward so she could speak softly and not wake Julianne. “Youth recovers faster, ehn? Edward was unconscious when he went into the river. He would not have fought so hard for air when he was drowning. But Julianne was carrying his weight, fighting the current, needing more oxygen to swim. Also—panicking.”
Maryam’s breath caught. She felt run-through, as she imagined it might feel to have a sword slice into one’s gut. She had not thought about what must have gone on under the surface of the water as Julianne fetched Edward from the depths, of how she must have felt to be drowning.
“A terrible day, non? Full of horrors.”
Maryam wiped a tear from her cheek.“What does Romelle say?”
“She has been applying poultices but the lungs may still be permanently damaged.”
Maryam closed her eyes, praying. Help her God. Help her recover. Help her be alright. “Maman,” she said. “You rest. I’ll sit with her overnight from now on.”
15. Intervention
It was night time. Julianne was in her room, sitting up in bed. She’d been in it—or in the chair by the fireplace—for two weeks, and was tired of it. The children would be asleep now. She had a plan that Maman, Minnie, and Mo were helping her with.
For days she’d been taking short ‘walks’ around her room because going out into the hallway when the children were up would require her to dress as D’Avenant, and she could not wear the restrictive corset. She was still too weak to get very far, but she was trying to regain some strength. Today, she’d asked to borrow a walking stick from Maman, and she’d asked the twins to place chairs at intervals along the corridor, so she could walk, then rest, walk then rest after she left her room. The trickiest part would be the stairs, especially on the way back when she would be tired and she had to go up, not down, them.
But her objective was to make it to the library and surprise Maryam.
The Christmas quarter collections and disbursements and year-end bonuses were fast approaching and once again the administration of Edgemere had fallen to her. Though Maryam had sat with her many nights when she was teetering between the light and the darkness and she still visited her regularly, Maryam was back to spending long hours at Julianne’s desk calculating the payroll and balancing the books.
Maryam had ridden out to Skylark with Normand that week and reported that work on Skylark had moved indoors now that the roof was on and the space closed in. The carpenters were rebuilding the floors for the upper level. Since last quarter, of course, the crops had also ripened and been harvested and had to be accounted for. The farmers had balked, at first, at reporting to Maryam when she met with them on D’Avenant’s behalf, but she had prevailed and gotten their reports on variety yields, which Julianne would analyze for next season’s cropping plan.
Julianne’s mind drifted to what had happened last quarter, after she’d beaten the bottle and went in to the library to sign bank drafts. They had ended up making love. She thought about that a lot, sometimes just remembering the sound of Maryam’s voice at her ear and the sensuous curves in her hands and the pulse of her rising passion. How Julianne wished Maryam would lose all control with her again!
She smiled ruefully. She could scarcely cross the room—much less stir her blood to passion and not faint from lack of air. Oh, the disgrace of it: a D’Avenant, fainting during love-making! She gave a soft self-deprecating snort. Hah. Julianne didn’t only need breath—she needed a willing woman.
She did not doubt that Maryam held her in high affection. Her care was genuine. But the breadth of an ocean lay between loving a person at arm’s length and committing oneself to the intimate mess of being their mate. Were Maryam to accept Julianne, she would be entering the same world of deceit that held Julianne in its jaws. Asking Maryam to love her was an invitation into a life of lies and constant fear of exposure. Were they to be unmasked, Maryam would become the object of public contempt.
Julianne, pressured by life in the gutters, hadn’t had much choice but to take the risk. Respectability had neither fed nor sheltered her. But Maryam—ironically because of Julianne’s help—was independent. She had quit herself of Grenville, earned wages of her own, and owned Skylark, which would yield lifetime income. She was free to leave Edgemere as soon as Skylark was ready for occupancy—as early as this Spring. Maryam no longer needed to worry about being able to provide for Elizabeth, Edward, and Megan. Her good name and social standing were more valuable assets than an association with Julianne.
Also, a love match between them required that Maryam make a profound shift in her own idea of who she was. Women who loved other women were considered profane. Maryam would have been brought up with this notion. If she couldn’t re-envision that a woman who loves another woman is deserving of as much respect as one who loves a man, she could eat herself up with self-hatred.
Julianne understood all too clearly what stood between them—the so-called cloak of respectability. That cloak was embroidered with everything they had been brought up to believe, including every hateful thing their society had said about them for centuries. That cloak, unchallenged, blinded them to seeing the reality of who they themselves truly were. It denied love and goodness in exchange for labels and suppositions and restrictions that always, always gave someone else control over the lives that were rightfully their own to live.
None of this boded well for Julianne. She knew that. Love, in her case, was probably too much to hope for. That realization knocked the air out of her.
She heard a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
It was Maman, holding up the walking stick Julianne had asked to borrow. The twins were behind her. They were all excited about Julianne’s first excursion outside her room since she had nearly drowned.
Julianne looked at it, her brows furrowing.
“Prête?” Maman asked. Ready?
Julianne lifted a shoulder. What was the point, really? Maryam was neck-deep in work. She didn’t need surprises. And what was the big ‘surprise,’ anyway? Just to have her, Julianne, show up? Much ado about nothing.
“Chère?”
“No. I’ve changed my mind.”
Maman’s brows rose in surprise. She tipped her head to get a better look at Julianne. She turned to the twins. “Another time, we’ll do it.”
Minnie and Mo nodded and left, closing the door behind them.
Maman walked into the room and took the chair beside Julianne’s bed. “What is wrong?”
“I didn’t tell you, Maman,” Julianne whispered. Her breath was still too shallow to support normal speech. “When I drowned… I saw Mother and Father… and the Boys... They wanted me... to go with them.”
“Bon dieu! I have heard of this. You died, ma chère.”
She nodded. “But I wanted… to love… Maryam... and the children... I wanted my own life,” she said, taking breaths between phrases. Tears started trickling down her cheeks. “I was set free, Maman… but I asked for this life… and I was squeezed back… into my body.”
Maman placed her hand on Julianne’s arm. “You were with Spirit!”
“I was. But I didn’t... make the right choice.” Like so much else of what she had done in this life, her error had been grievous. She had said ‘No’ to heaven. She gasped, a woman drowning in her own folly. “I didn’t make... the right choice.”
I asked for more of this.
So I could love a woman who would be a fool to love me back.
The library was silent except for the rustling of papers and the occasional soft thud of a ledger as Lady Maryam transcribed figures from one book to another and set one volume aside to bring another nearer. The lamp and candles cast a golden glow around her as she followed the path of money, a step at a time, from account to account, moving from details to summaries. The wages paid to individual workers, she had learned, were all added up to become the collective amount due for all workers, and this total in turn became an entry on the list of e
xpenditures associated with running the enterprise.
There were numerous categories needing evaluation, from the purchase of seed and livestock to the cost of legal services and bank fees. Some were purely seasonal, such as seeding or harvesting, some were quarterly returns on financial investments. But in the end, all the expenditures and all the revenues combined revealed the economic health of Edgemere. The report she was preparing for this quarter also required an end of year analysis that would not only reveal Edgemere’s profitability, but its worth.
The genius, she was coming to understand, lay in analyzing the information to figure out what to do or not do, when to do or not do, and in what combination to do or not do things, in order to both achieve profitability and to protect the investment against unforeseen setbacks.
Glancing back through some early ledgers, she had seen that ‘genius’ was what D’Avenant did. Year after year, he patiently built value in Edgemere and reinvested his profits so he had more and more to work with. The day he stood before the ruins at Edgemere, he responded very differently than she did the day she saw Skylark. He envisioned a way to make it profitable. She saw a dead end.
She chuckled at how she had once demanded that D’Avenant tell her where he would get the money to buy Skylark from her, not realizing that posing such a question was akin to asking an opposing pharo player to show her the all cards in his hand before she played her own. And yet, D’Avenant had done that. He’d not only opened his hand but was teaching her how to play it.
Phoo, she muttered, putting down her quill. She kept thinking he. It was she. D’Avenant, she.
Julianne.
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