Lie With Me

by Patricia Spencer

  But if Maryam impressed ‘she’ on her mind, she could err in public. Conflicted as her emotions were, she would not destroy everything Julianne had worked for. Neither would she undermine Edgemere’s function as a refuge for women. Even if she left Edgemere tomorrow she would not do that, because ten years ago in London, Maryam likely rode past in her husband’s carriage while Julianne slept on the cobblestones. Maryam had done nothing to help her. In fact, she had looked away, dismissing her and the women with her as undesirable because of their poverty.

  And then who had turned up poor herself with not half the wit—or courage—to pull herself out of it as D’Avenant and the women in Edgemere had done? And who had helped her? The very ones she scorned. Maryam was not proud of her blindness. Her life was trying to teach her something. It was time she paid attention.

  She.

  Whatever the public risks of that pronoun, the private fact of it remained: D’Avenant was a woman. And Maryam had fallen in love with her, thinking her a man.

  “You have breathing exercises to do and you must start walking,” Romelle said.

  Maman, and Sophie were standing around Julianne’s bed. She was sitting up bare-bosomed in the bed with her sheets across her lap while Romelle listened at her back with a cylindre.

  “You cannot stay in bed any longer,” Romelle said.

  “I’ll get up when I’m ready,” Julianne retorted.

  “You are in a black mood,” Maman said, “and you must shake it off.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in!” Sophie said.

  “Sophie!” Julianne objected. “It could be the chil—”

  “The children are down at the stables for their pony riding lessons.”

  Lady Maryam entered the room. “Minnie said you called for me, Maman?”

  Maman nodded, and stepped aside.

  Maryam saw Julianne and froze.

  Julianne set her jaw, resisting the urge to pull the sheet up to cover herself.

  “Oui. Thank you for coming. We have a situation,” Maman said.

  Maryam stepped forward, into the circle of women around Julianne. Her eyes flicked to her bare breasts.

  “Lord D’Avenant,” Sophie said with some irony, “is behaving in a petulant manner, refusing to get out of bed to do the required exercises.”

  “Damn it, you three.”

  “He is out of sorts because of his relationship with you, Milady,” Romelle said. “I cannot fix his body if he does not attend to the needs of his heart first.”

  “We have not come this far,” Maman told Julianne, “to have you give up. You and Lady Maryam have matters to discuss. Stop circling each other.”

  Maryam’s brows rose. She looked as surprised as Julianne felt. No. ‘Surprised’ was not the correct word. Ambushed.

  Romelle tucked her cylindre into her skirt pocket, rounded the bed and joined Sophie and Maman in their retreat from the room. The door closed with a firm click, leaving them alone.

  Julianne straightened, jostling her breasts intentionally, staring brazenly at Maryam. “Shocked by the reality of this?”

  “Don’t you dare use your body as a weapon against me.”

  A wave of shame spread through Julianne.

  “You have no idea how your breasts make me feel. And you have no idea how your so-called man’s body made me feel either,” Maryam said.

  Julianne pulled the sheet up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m floundering. Bravado was a stupid choice.”

  “Next time, try honesty first. Bravado is theatre, and I’m tired to death of your—and everyone else’s—theatre. You trifle with my heart.”

  Julianne felt her face burn.

  Maryam pulled the bedside chair up and sat in it, facing her, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. “Sophie told me how you have come to live in disguise. I… I’m coming to understand the forces that pushed you into that corner. And I realize now the danger I represented to Edgemere. But the fact remains that you wished an intimate relationship with me and you lied about a fundamental fact of who you are.”

  “If I had told you before that night in the library that I was a woman, would you still have been my lover?”

  Maryam placed her fingertips on her temple and flicked them outward. “Julianne. We are both women.”

  “It’s one of the possible combinations.”

  “Poss— It’s unnatural!”

  “Why? By whose decree? Who placed limits on love?”

  “The combination is male and female. That’s the ‘combination’ that produces children.”

  Julianne leaned forward, tipping her head to read Maryam’s face. “Do you want more children?” she asked gently.

  Maryam stared at her hands. “No,” she said softly. “Carrying another child could cost my life.”

  Julianne sat back. “And yet if you married a man it would be expected of you, would it not? Produce an heir or die trying? Do you not think it ‘unnatural’ to be forced into relations that could kill you?”

  “D’Avenant.”

  “Julianne,” she corrected, with a small flair of her hand. “At your service.”

  Maryam closed her eyes. “You confuse me.”

  “And if I had stopped you that night when we were so heartsore for each other, when you said you’d lost self-control—how rejected would you have felt then?”

  Maryam lifted her beautiful green eyes. “That was for me to choose, wasn't it?”

  “You did choose, Maryam. You chose with your heart. You wanted me, and you kissed me, and you let me bring you to ecstasy.”

  “You let me think you are a man! I never would have—”

  Julianne cocked her head. “Maybe the problem isn’t the deception, Maryam. Maybe the problem is the truth. Because as long as you could see me as a man, it was alright. to let yourself feel what you feel for me. But now that I am revealed as a woman, you forbid yourself those feelings.”

  “Oh, Julianne.”

  “Didn’t you notice, when you touched my face, that it isn’t a man’s face? Didn’t you notice when I whispered in your ear that I don’t have a man’s voice?” Julianne said. “Didn’t you realize that no man touches you like I did? I cherished you. I was not seeking simple physical release.”

  Maryam jumped to her feet.

  “How many other times did you see through my disguise and convince yourself of what you wanted to believe?”

  Maryam turned.

  Julianne caught her hand. “Did your husband make you feel like that?” she asked. “Because Lord knows he had more opportunities than I, to get it right.”

  Maryam pulled away. Julianne dropped her sheet to gently capture her with both hands. “Maryam! Is it me you fear, or what others will think of you? At least make that distinction in your mind. I am not the enemy.”

  Maryam turned back to her. “Do your exercises, D’Avenant. Stop moping about.”

  “My eyes are up here, My Lady.”

  16. Revelation

  Julianne rallied and started doing the breathing and movement exercises prescribed by Romelle. Lady Maryam started joining her in the late evenings to steady her as she moved from chair to chair down the long corridor outside her rooms. At the end of the breathless walks, which lengthened a bit each night, they returned to Julianne’s room and sat before the fireplace for a few minutes while she recovered from the exertion.

  Though Julianne did not complain, Maryam knew she was confined to her rooms or the hallway at night because she could not wear the corset. It restricted her breath too much and respiration was already marginal. As long as the children—too innocent to be anything but public informants—lived at Edgemere, they had to believe the fiction of ‘Lord’ D’Avenant.

  It did not sit well with Maryam that her children caused Julianne such a cramped life in her own home. She had no place outside of her bedroom where she could be at ease.

  Going out for a canter
one morning before returning to her day’s work in the library Maryam had noticed that Estelle crafted beautiful horse rugs from a stiff quilted material.

  And that gave her an idea. Rather than have Julianne corset her chest to flatten her profile, why not build up a kind of fabric chest plate that filled in the space beneath her breasts instead? It built up the torso, but if D’Avenant was ‘a man,’ then a larger chest was not remarkable. A fill-in such as she had in mind also allowed the torso to be shaped along more masculine lines. Julianne had lost weight and a new profile, gradually introduced, could go largely unnoticed in public.

  Estelle agreed, visited Julianne to take measurements, and went to work. While she was at it, Maryam told her, create a vest that closes at the front so D’Avenant can get in and out of his clothes independently.

  Now, tonight, Maryam had the garment with her. She was eager to see if it worked. She rapped softly at Julianne’s door.

  “Come in.”

  Maryam smiled. A week ago, Julianne’s voice would not have been strong enough to carry across the room. She turned the knob and entered, the vest in hand. She walked in and stopped. Her breath caught.

  Julianne was sitting on the edge of the bed in a glow of warm candlelight. She looked striking. No one could claim her conventionally beautiful. The D’Avenant nose and her scar precluded that. But she was charismatic, alchemical, a combination of elements come together to create something wildly more attractive than the constituent parts would ever suggest. There was none other like her.

  She was wearing a shift, a thin silken sheath that draped over her breasts and clung to her hips. Her gown was on the bed beside her, ready to don to walk in the hallway.

  “You’re looking at me oddly, My Lady.”

  Maryam shook herself. She knew she was staring but she couldn’t take her eyes off Julianne. Something is different. What was it? She took her time. Ah! Julianne, forced into long solitude, safeguarded from having to go out in public using a fictitious identity, had finally settled into herself.

  “Is that the vest from Estelle?”

  Maryam threw it on the chair. “No. Not now.” No costumes now. No disguises. Not when she was so close to the surface.

  Julianne’s eyebrows rose.

  Maryam kicked off her shoes and got up on the bed, into the centre of it, and sat cross-legged. She patted the bed opposite her so Julianne would do the same, facing her.

  Julianne, bemused, did as Maryam bade.

  Maryam sat across from Julianne, eyes intently scanning her face. “Who are you?” she asked softly. “From the heart. Who are you?”

  Julianne dropped her gaze for such a long time, Maryam thought she was not going to reply. But at length, she shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten. Or chosen to forget. Or maybe, felt my true self to be forbidden.”

  “How old were you when you went into disguise?”

  “Just turned twenty.”

  “Oh, my,” Maryam murmured. The D’Avenant who pulled herself out of the gutters did so at a very young age. “Who were you before twenty?”

  “It isn’t a pretty picture.”

  “I want to know.”

  “I was arrogant, Maryam. Full of my own prowess. Men wanted me. Women, too. Me, then? I wanted everything. I did stupid, stupid things that were careless of myself and others. I had sex with anyone. But also with a dreadful man who lured me into practices that pleased him but not me.”

  “Did he rape you?”

  “No. He was clever. He manipulated me. Finally, Maman took after him with a broom.” She laughed, remembering. “She brought her two burly cousins from the village to back her up.”

  “Yet with this man—and others?—you never got pregnant?”

  Julianne shook her head. “Maman gave me teas.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get a disease,” Maryam said, shifting. “Where was your mother in all this?”

  “Trying to stop the French Revolution. Hah. I was all for it. Not realizing, of course, that I had been born, a wealthy English-French aristocrat, into my destiny of being hated by all sides, and that no amount of intellectual discourse changed that.”

  Maryam shook her head, trying to digest all this terrible honesty, trying to assemble a picture of Julianne’s coming of age. She saw a girl with fire being thwarted in her intellectual promise on the one hand and exploited for her body on the other. She had been dealt brilliance, locked into a woman’s body. And she had been dealt sexual allure. She had understood it as a form of power, but not discerned the complexity of that particular currency or how quickly it could be turned against her.

  Then, living in disguise, the dynamic had been flipped. As a man she could employ her mind but at the cost of expressing her body. “Do you miss being a woman?”

  “I wanted children, Maryam.”

  Of course. It explained so much. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

  She shrugged. “You’re used to thinking of me as a man.”

  She was right. There was so many preconceptions to become aware of. “How about Emma? May I ask you about her?”

  Julianne shifted uncomfortably. “We were childhood friends. We spent summers together, including that last one in France. She was younger than I and she had an infatuation for me. But I was in a fever. I wanted to bed everyone, try everything. It was France. Revolution was in the air. Independence. I cared for Emma but I didn’t want her holding me back. By God, I possessed seductive power and I wanted to wield it, not be tied to one person who didn’t even know how to kiss.” Julianne wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with the heel of her palm.

  Maryam’s mind spun with images of Julianne’s deeply conflicted coming of age. How different Julianne’s maturation had been compared to her own! Maryam herself had also had an infatuation—with Lady Sarah. She had felt that urge for touch, for whispers in the dark, for breathless consummation. But she and Lady Sarah had never gone beyond ‘practice kisses,’ presumably to prepare for the day they had husbands. Then, frightened by the power of those kisses, they disavowed each other and parted shame-faced to conventional lives.

  Julianne had advanced toward what she wanted.

  Maryam had taken the safe path and married. She betrothed herself to a husband who gave her kisses that were affectionate but held no heat, who touched her but did not leave her breathless. She’d allowed herself to be staked and claimed and planted with children without being cherished. She’d lain with a man who took her for his own delight. And when she asked for delight of her own, he’d called her wanton. The worst thing was that until now none of that seemed remarkable.

  Julianne rubbed Maryam’s knee with her fingertips. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Fear,” she said, refocusing. “How you didn’t have it, but I did. I do. Most of us are so afraid, Julianne. We live so contracted.”

  “Because fear is enforced. We are penalized for claiming our own lives. We are told what to wear, how to speak, and what to believe, by those who benefit from our obedience. Or maybe just because everybody is afraid and we think if only we make enough rules we can save ourselves from chaos.”

  “The penalties scare me.”

  “They scared me, too. Even when I was in the gutter I was terrified of doing what I had to do to get out.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes. In the end, it was the rats that made me take the irreversible step. I was tired of being bitten,” Julianne said. “And they were coming for my face, which as you know—”

  Maryam rested two fingers on Julianne’s lips. “Shh. Not even in jest.”

  Julianne captured her hand, enfolded it in her own, and pressed a kiss into her skin. “The keys that free us are in our own minds, Maryam.”

  “But what if we, or our children, are punished?”

  “My dearest, you are being punished already by not living the life you desire.”

  “You only answer half the question. What ab
out the children being punished for my actions?”

  “You are free, My Lady. Able to take care of them without my help. You must make the choices you see fit.”

  “You, D’Avenant” —she said the name softly— “gave me the means to walk away from you.”

  “I never wished to imprison you.”

  She sat pensively across from Julianne in the golden light, the flicker of the fireplace dancing across the floor. She let her eyes roam down Julianne’s neck to the hollows at her collarbones, the rise of her breasts beneath the shift, the swell of her hips.

  Julianne smiled mischievously. “Your hands are welcome to roam, too. Your mouth.”

  Maryam tipped her head, considering the easy confidence behind that flirtatious comment—indeed, the prowess of it. The French-ness. “So how have you dealt with all your sensual energy, all these years as Lord D’Avenant?”

  “I—” Julianne halted abruptly. Her eyes widened, suddenly alarmed.

  Maryam watched a series of tiny shifts in expression cross Julianne’s face. “You—” she prompted.

  “I haven’t. Since you and I met, I haven’t...”

  “But you normally do?”

  “Yes,” Julianne finally said. “Yes. I have a friend. We have an arrangement.”

  A shock ran through Maryam. She felt her face burning. “Somebody here? Somebody everyone else knows about behind my back, and makes me the fool, D’Avenant?”

  “Maryam, no! No. Nobody here.”

  “Where, then?”

  “London.”

  “In London,” she said, her voice icy. “A woman?”

  “Yes, a woman.”

  “You have a mistress in London but court me at Edgemere.”

  “She is not a mistress. Neither of us is married and she is not ‘kept.’ She is a friend. A friend from the hard days. We comfort each other, that’s all. I’m safe for her, and she for me. We see no others, so there’s no risk of disease. We’ve made no promises to each other, and have no expectations of marriage or anything like it.”

  “Why not?” Maryam blurted. Julianne was gorgeous, distinctive—rich, even. Who wouldn’t want to marry her?