That Inevitable Victorian Thing

by E. K. Johnston

  He thought he had a twitch on the end of his line, but if there was, it was just a nibble. Still, when he straightened, Helena sat up. He missed her warmth immediately, and was sad that she had moved at all, especially when she resettled herself on Margaret’s shoulder instead of his.

  He didn’t know why he was hesitating with his proposal. He wanted it to be special, but not overwrought, and he was honest with himself enough to know that he wanted more of the glamour of the Toronto lights to have faded before he did it. Helena hadn’t changed that much, of course, but he had his pride. He also wanted to be sure to keep her clear of the bribe money. She was an accountant now, after all.

  But all of that was secondary. Helena had come here, expecting his offer, and he hadn’t made it. He could only stall for so long. When Margaret was comfortable enough that Helena could leave her for a few hours, he resolved, he would take Helena somewhere private, and they would talk. Their promises as children and their words from the end of last summer would be confirmed and then they could move forward at a pace that suited them both.

  It was settled. He only need wait for Margaret to feel at home. It would be rude, after all, to invite Margaret up here for the summer and then ignore her.

  August thought there was another nibble on his hook, and this time he did reel it in to check. The line didn’t fight him, but by the time he realized that, he had to finish bringing it in, anyway.

  “Tabernac,” he cursed softly, causing Helena to look over at him again.

  The worm was gone.

  MAITLAND STAR TO ANY SHIP:

  QCD QCD SOS Star Position 44.91 N 81.98 W Require Immediate Assistance. Come At Once. We Are Under Pursuit By American Pirates.

  MAITLAND STAR TO ANY SHIP:

  QCD QCD SOS Star Position 44.91 N 81.98 W Come At Once. We Are Under Fire. We Have Begun To Load The Boats.

  MAITLAND STAR TO ANY SHIP:

  QCD QCD SOS boat position 44.91 N 81.98 W Come At Once. We Have Abandoned The Star. Cargo Lost. Crew In Boats.

  MAITLAND STAR TO ANY SHIP:

  Come At Once. Come At Once.

  —from the call records of the Maitland Star,

  part of the Callaghan Ltd. commercial lumber fleet

  CHAPTER

  22

  August had no sooner got a new worm on his line and cast than a dramatic clap of thunder split the sky above the boat. Margaret flinched only slightly but she did grab Helena’s hand. Apparently, the clouds had not rained themselves out as the Doppler had predicted. Being the only member of the party unencumbered by a fishing line and rod, Helena dutifully released Margaret’s palm and scrambled over the seat to the anchor line. She took care not to scrape her shoes on the polished wood.

  “Helena! Let me, please.”

  She had the anchor half into the boat, but August had for some reason shoved his line into Margaret’s hand, and made as though to follow her to the stern.

  “I’ve got it, August,” she said. “Please help Margaret. I don’t want her to tangle your lines.”

  He had a very odd expression on his face, like he was about to say something, but he moved to help Margaret, anyway. The other girl relinquished the rods, and did her best to stay out of the way while August reeled in for her. Helena, who had turned her attention back to the anchor line, left them to it.

  She was getting close to the end of it, being careful not to drop the wet chain as it slid through her fingers, and used her foot to kick open the small hatch so that she could stow it away. It was quite dark, but not so much so that she failed to notice a bag attached to the anchor when she pulled it in. It was waterproof, and weighted beyond what the anchor provided. It was clear plastic, and when Helena held it up for a closer look, she saw that it was, of all things in the world, money.

  She glanced up to ask August the meaning of everything, and saw that he was looking at her again, this time rather desperately. As she watched him, his eyes angled sharply to where Margaret sat, getting ready for the return trip, and then he shook his head.

  There was another clap of thunder, closer than the last, and Helena hurried to finish stowing the anchor. She had many questions, of course, but a small craft in a wide lake in the middle of an impending thunderstorm was hardly the place for them. She took the seat beside Margaret as August started the engine, and before long they were headed back to the Callaghan jetty, much more quickly than they had been on their way out.

  Money, Helena thought. Or, rather: cash. She hadn’t been able to see what sort, though she imagined it would be Canadian currency, good throughout the Empire and beyond. Except so few people used currency anymore. Even the smallest roadside stand, selling sweet corn and strawberries, was equipped to accept –card payments. In fact, the only people Helena knew of who used cash on a regular basis were people who dealt with the American States, because they lacked the central—

  Her train of thought jumped rails immediately, this time heading somewhere much more sinister. She saw August’s hands, white knuckled on the wheel, and knew that it wasn’t the storm he was worried about. She had seen a bribe.

  Fury boiled in her. He had no right, no right at all, to risk his family business like this. He must know how many people depended on the Callaghan name for their livelihoods, and this was something that could put him into very, very real trouble. The rain started to spit, large drops of water falling from the sky at random, heralding a bigger wet to come. Something touched her hand, and she looked down to see Margaret’s fingers twining with hers against the seat. She fought off a wave of nausea. August had just attempted, at best, embezzlement in front of the Crown Princess of the Empire.

  Before she could get entirely lost in her own thoughts, they reached the boathouse. The lights came on automatically as the door opened to admit them. It was a familiar place, cluttered with old lumber equipment and spare boat parts, with life jackets and paddles hanging on the walls. It was entirely functional, but comforting in its functionality, except for the new information Helena possessed, which would not loosen its grip on her imagination. Moving mechanically, she looped the rope at the stern to the dock, securing it while August did the same at the front. She removed her life jacket, and watched Margaret do the same, before she climbed out and turned to offer her hand. August moved to the back, and she determinedly did not watch him retrieve the anchor, and cut the bag free. She didn’t want to see where he stowed it. Looking away, she noticed the canoe was still tied to the jetty, and with it, an opportunity.

  “Margaret, you may as well go up to the house,” Helena said. “August and I will get the canoe in and join you, but there’s no point in all of us waiting around in the rain.” She smiled, and Margaret didn’t appear to hear the strain in her voice.

  “Thank you so much, August,” Margaret said. She could already tell her hair was frizzing, and would soon be more than she could manage. “Even if it rained again, I had a lovely time.”

  Helena waited until she left, and then counted to ten in her head to avoid exploding in August’s direction. He went and got the canoe alone. It wasn’t a two-person job.

  Even as Helena’s fury towards August grew, she did have flashes of insight into her own naïveté. Because they had not been military rivals in living memory, most Canadians viewed the American States with a kind of embarrassed pity rather than true malice, and Helena’s parents were no exception. They had raised their daughter to be as compassionate as they were towards the defectors and refugees who sought sanctuary to the north. Beyond that, though, Helena suddenly found her understanding of the failed states to the south appallingly shallow. If this was the kind of challenge August faced so soon in his career, Helena was going to need more than a degree in accounting if she wanted to help him. Still, by the time August returned with the canoe, the bulk of her anger remained focused on him. “Of all the idiocy,” Helena began once he came back. “August, what were you thinking?�
��

  “I have to do something, Helena,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. Even in the rain, sound carried surprisingly well across the lake. “We were losing one ship in ten, sometimes as high as one in eight, and the Navy does nothing. Would you rather I let it happen?”

  “I would rather that you not commit serious breaches of imperial law in my presence,” Helena said. “Much less in company with the niece of Admiral Highcastle!”

  The truth was, of course, much worse than that, but hopefully this would be enough to shake some sense into August. Indeed, he looked horrified, but also determined in a way Helena didn’t care for at all.

  “You know the Admiral now,” Helena continued. “He would listen to you, if you spoke to him.”

  “And in the meanwhile?” August asked. “Should I just stop paying for protection? What do you suppose will happen if I do?”

  “Stop paying?” Helena asked. “August, how long has this been going on?”

  She held up a hand when he would have answered her.

  “How are you paying them?” she asked, and then, because she knew he would tell her the whole and absolute truth, she said, “No, don’t tell me any more. I don’t want to know.”

  But she was fairly certain she already did. He must be using his own money, drawn as a wage, to avoid any accounting discrepancies. So not embezzlement then, only investment, which was actually worse, as it could be construed as treason. Technically, he was buying pirate ships.

  “Is this why you haven’t proposed yet?” she asked, quieter again. “You were afraid I’d notice?”

  “No,” he said. “I haven’t proposed yet because I didn’t want to overcrowd the summer before it truly began. I suppose at least this way there is no engagement to break off.”

  “Oh, August,” she said. Her own secret burned in her, and she was selfishly glad to have a good reason beyond her own to put off any announcement they might make.

  “What should I do, Helena?” This time, she saw, he asked for real. She knew he trusted her, her calm and her practicality. Her head for a business and her loyalty to a family, neither of which she was even officially a part of yet. She poured imaginary steel into her voice. This was not the time to think about her genetics.

  “You must write to Admiral Highcastle,” she said. “You should probably go back to Toronto, even though he is still in the Bahamas, in case he gives you someone to contact there. Don’t tell them what you’ve done, of course, but leave the solving of the problem to them.”

  His shoulders rounded as he slumped forward. A thought occurred to her.

  “August, do the pirates know who they are dealing with?” she asked. “Could they give up your name?”

  “They know it’s Callaghan lumber,” he said. “But no, I don’t think they know it’s me exactly. When I met my contact, we took precautions not to learn too much about each other.”

  “Then I think you should also tell your father,” Helena said. “I know it will be hard, but I hope you can, August, for so many reasons.”

  He nodded and took her hands in his. She let him draw her close. It was a little cold after all, and he was warm, even though his clothing was wet from when he got the canoe in. “I’m sorry I put you in this situation, and I’m sorry I started it in the first place. I was desperate, but I suppose that is no excuse.”

  She stood in the circle of his arms and thought about how, once, it had been everything she’d ever wanted. When she turned her face up to his, he kissed her without hesitation. She had to stretch to meet him, which pressed her body more firmly against his, and he held her tightly. She wanted very much to be closer to him, though she was not sure how that was physically possible. It was, she thought, both exactly like when Margaret kissed her, and also somehow entirely unlike it as well. It was remarkable that two people could feel so different, yet evoke the same sort of reaction in her.

  But there was something else, too. She sensed in August an easing of long-held tension. A secret revealed. Of course, she’d felt something similar only hours earlier—only to have it snatched away, however unintentionally, by August himself.

  When she pulled away, he let her go, and stood looking out at the lake while she hung the life jackets on their hooks.

  “Come on,” she said. “We should go back to the house before Hiram gets it into his head that you need help down here. There’s no point in him coming out in the rain.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to say. Absolutely no one was going to interrupt them. They had more leniency and freedom with each other than they had had in years. It was a pity she couldn’t bring herself to take full advantage of it.

  “You’re right,” August said, though whether he was agreeing with her out of belief or something else she couldn’t have said. “Let’s make a dash for it, then.”

  They raced up the path to the house. Unlike the Marcus cottage, the Callaghan property had a smooth, well-maintained path from its docks. Before long, they had joined Margaret in front of the fire in the family room, each of them wrapped in blankets and holding a steaming cup of hot chocolate, while the storm began in earnest outside. Helena had done her best not to notice how everyone had glanced down at her hands, and then back at her face, trying not to look disappointed when they did it.

  “You’ll stay here tonight, of course,” said Charlotte Callaghan. “I don’t like you heading off in the dark in the thunderstorm, even if August went with you.”

  “Then you’d have to worry about him coming back, too,” Murray Callaghan said rather fondly. Evie made an indelicate sound.

  “Thank you,” Helena said. “But is Fanny still here? I didn’t see her when we came through the kitchen, and I’d hate to leave her alone.”

  “She’s still here,” Evie said. “She stayed on to help with the bread after she and Hiram finished their walk. She’s in the dormitory with Sally and the others, plotting goodness knows what.”

  At least someone would have a summer wedding, it seemed. Helena tried not to be uncharitable about it, because Fanny really did deserve every happiness, but it was suddenly difficult not to be resentful.

  “Good,” she said aloud. “Then we will stay.”

  Margaret, who had been admiring the bearskin rug, sneezed loudly, and was immediately bundled out of the room and off to bed by Charlotte. Helena didn’t want to be too far behind her, and thus contrived to lose spectacularly at crib to Murray before pleading weariness and going up to bed herself. Margaret was already asleep, pretty and perfect, and a princess, but when Helena crawled in beside her, she opened her eyes.

  “Tomorrow,” said Helena, “when we’re home, I’d like if we could write to your godfather.”

  Margaret smiled.

  INTERLUDE

  Helena managed to get through breakfast at a table full of rowdy Callaghans only thanks to long practice. The middle sister, Harriet, had returned home after the party due to having a newborn, but Molly’s family more than made up for it. After being kept housebound by the rain the day before, Addie and Matthew were all eager to be out and about again, enjoying the Muskoka summer they had all come up to experience. Helena fended off invitations to go boating, picnicking, swimming, cliff-diving, and shopping. On any other day, the warm weather would have tempted her outside. But she had a letter to send.

  It helped, she decided, to think of the recipient as Margaret’s godfather. That was the sort of person one could write letters to, the godfather of a dear friend, if he was an expert and one was in need of advice. Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury was something else altogether, and Helena did her best not to think about it at all.

  Under the table, Margaret squeezed her hand reassuringly. They hadn’t spoken much last night, nor had they slept curled together as they might have wished. There were simply too many people in the house, and also August’s niece and nephew were given to waking sleepers by jumping on them, wit
hout knocking first.

  Helena finished her toast, and let August pour her another cup of tea. She was going to need all the fortification she could get.

  MARGARET HAD no idea what had gone on between Helena and August last night. She only knew that they had quarrelled, and that he had not proposed. Margaret was selfishly glad of that, as much as it galled her to admit it. She was realizing, more and more, that she wanted Helena for herself.

  She nearly choked on the thought, and took a sip of orange juice to cover it. Want Helena for what, exactly? A Lady-in-waiting that she kept about, but could never touch? That would be torture for them both. No, she must leave Helena to make her own choice, for that reason, and for countless others. Despite being more than a decade younger than Edmund Claremont, Margaret’s mother had held incredible power over her father in the early days of their marriage, and the idea of being in a similar position made Margaret’s skin crawl. She would not do that to another person, especially not one she loved.

  And she did love Helena. It was strange, nothing like it had been described to her, or that she had read. It wasn’t a consuming fire—well, not always. Rather she felt a quiet certainty that, yes, this was what was meant to be. But perhaps it was only like that for her. Helena obviously had feelings for August, and Margaret would not come between them if she could possibly help it, no matter how much she wanted to.

  She would do what she had promised, and write to her godfather. His replies were always quick, his information entirely reliable, and his discretion was unimpeachable. He would know what to do, how to help Helena the way her own mother had helped countless others, and he would do it in secret, because she had asked it of him.

  She took Helena’s hand under the table, and tried not to think about how she had looked in the rain: passionate and full of life, entirely out of reach.