by Robert Thier
From behind me, I heard a strangled noise.
‘Certainly, certainly, dearie! Go right up, ye know the way. And as for you, my big, handsome man…’
‘Avaunt, woman! Do not soil me with your tainted touch!’
‘Oh, I won’t touch ye.’
‘You won’t?’
‘No, silly! My girls will take care of that. Sally! Rose! Elsie! Come here! I’ve got a customer for you!’
Smiling contentedly, I marched upstairs, while from behind me came the sounds of a man being overrun by superior forces. Poor Karim. But then again, he did volunteer to be my bodyguard. People who do reckless, foolhardy things like that should learn the consequences early.
Upstairs, I quickly found the door to Amy’s room and knocked.
‘Come in,’ came a sultry voice from the other side.
Putting a hand over my eyes, I stuck my head in through the door. ‘Are you only moderately indecent? How much, on a scale from one to ten?’
‘Lilly!’
The silly sultry tone vanished in an instant. A vice-tight hug engulfed me—Bloody hell, that girl had strength for someone who lay on her back all day!—and pulling me inside, she kicked the door shut behind us. Carefully, I peeked between two fingers and saw fabric. That was encouraging. I opened a few more fingers, revealing more fabric, hair and…
‘Get that hand away from your face, you silly goose! I’m dressed!’
‘Ha!’ I snorted. ‘Silly, my arse! Do you remember what you looked like last time I came in here?’
‘Hm…’ She scratched her head. ‘I don’t really know. I can’t remember anything at the moment.’
‘That was exactly it. Not anything.’
‘Oh, well…’ She shrugged. ‘It ain’t like you saw anything you didn’t know was there, right?’
‘Amy.’ Shaking my head, I grinned at her. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Me too. Me too.’
We hugged again and settled down on two chairs by the window. Keeping our voices low so as not to be overheard through the paper-thin walls, we exchanged all the latest gossip. Amy and I led lives that were about as different as they could be, and so neither of us ever grew tired of hearing about the other’s latest adventures. But we had one single, all-important thing in common: both of us were single women without inherited wealth, trying to make a living for ourselves in a world ruled by men. That had created a special bond between us. That, and the solid chocolate I brought with me on every visit.
Sadly, our discussion couldn’t last long. The madam was a suspicious old fox. If she’d gotten wind of Amy wasting time talking while she could be doing other, much more expensive things, she’d have a fit. So, after a few minutes of gossip, we got up on the bed.
‘It is time, my love,’ Amy declared dramatically, falling back, and throwing her arms wide. ‘Have your wicked way with me!’
I slugged her in the face with a pillow.
‘How dare you!’ She grinned. ‘I thought you loved me! I shall be avenged!’ And, grabbing the nearest pillow, she aimed a blow for my head. I ducked and hit back right away.
We managed three rounds of pillow fights before collapsing gasping on the bed. Amy had won two-to-one, but right now I didn’t care. I hadn’t had this much fun all week. Plus, we had done a pretty convincing performance for the madam. With all the creaking and screaming that had been going on, she’d probably charge me double. Ah, the price of friendship…
‘You wore me out!’ Amy groaned. ‘I’m gonna complain to that man of yours when ‘e’s comin’ back.’
‘By all means, tell him I’ve been visiting a brothel in his absence. I’ll write you a nice obituary.’
‘Ha! I can defend myself. If anythin’, it’s ‘is obituary you’ll have to write.’
My first instinct was to laugh—but the laugh caught in my throat. Would I be writing his obituary soon? A shiver went down my back at the thought. It was less impossible than I hoped. I had no idea where exactly he was right now or what he was doing. All I knew was it was damnably dangerous. He could be lying in some dark alleyway bleeding from a bullet wound, for all I knew.
‘Lilly? Lilly, did I say something wrong?’
Amy’s voice intruded on my silly panic. Because that’s what it was. Silly. Yes. Mr Ambrose was fine. Perfectly. Maybe if I told myself that often enough, I would even believe it.
‘I…it’s nothing, Amy. I just…’ I swallowed. ‘I…he…’
And the dam broke. The whole story just burst out of me—how Mr Ambrose had left me behind, and how I had no idea whether he still loved me or not, how annoyed I was at how much I bloody cared, and, and…
‘…and I don’t know what to do, Amy.’ I looked at her and knew that if I were to look in the mirror instead, I’d see something in my eyes that I was not used to seeing there: fear. ‘I just don’t know what to do. We’ve been in danger before, yes—but back then, we were together. I could watch his back. Now…now it all just feels wrong. What should I do?’
Amy looked at me with eyes far too wise for her tender age. ‘Ye already know what ye should do, don’t ye?’
*~*~**~*~*
When, ten minutes later, I descended from the upper floor, Karim was waiting for me in the foyer beside a smiling madam. His turban sat askew and his beard stood on end. There was a rouge stain on the tip of his nose.
‘I shall have my vengeance on you one day,’ he said with a face as grim as a grimoire. ‘When you least expect it, I shall strike!’
‘How lovely. I had a very nice time, too, thanks for asking. Shall we go?’
In reply, Karim muttered something incomprehensible (and probably life-threatening) and followed me out the door. After finding a place to change back into my lady attire once again, I returned, full of thoughts and plans. But I had no time to execute any of them.
‘Lill! Thank God you’re home!’ Ella rushed towards me before the front door had even closed and grasped my hands. ‘Aunt has gone completely mad! She’s dead set on finding husbands for us at the Duchess’s ball! “A last ditch effort” she called it! If we don’t find suitable men to marry, she’s threatened to give us to the next best man she can get her hands on!’
‘So what?’ I demanded. ‘No matter what she says, she’ll still need us to say yes at the altar.’
Ella shuddered. ‘Yes, but if your guardians demand it of you, who would be brave enough to say no?’
I refrained from giving the obvious answer—‘Me!’—because it wouldn’t be of much use to my dear little sister. She wasn’t like me. And I didn’t even want her to be. She might have the backbone of a sickly little daisy, but she was the sweetest, kindest girl on earth—especially to me. The times in my early days when she had bandaged me up after one of my shenanigans had gone awry were too many to count, and never had she told on me to my aunt or uncle. True, half of the time she had still accidentally given me away, because she blushed like a tomato and was the worst liar in the world, but it was the thought that counted. I wouldn’t judge her for being who she was. Well, not much.
‘And anyway,’ Ella continued, ‘if we don’t agree, she could turn us out of the house.’
She had me there. If Aunt and Uncle threw us out, we’d be homeless.
Or we would have been, said a little voice in the back of my mind, until recently.
‘So what?’ I demanded impulsively. ‘Let her go the devil! We don’t need her. We can rent a flat.’
Ella’s eyes went as wide as extremely scared, forkophobic dinner plates.
‘Rent a flat? You’re mad! How? With whose money?’
Mine. I’ve been saving for over a year now. I could do it.
The realization that I was no longer in my aunt’s power was almost scary.
‘I’d find a way,’ I said aloud. One day I would tell her the truth. One day. But not today. Today, after my talk with Amy, I had too much on my mind. Too much to do to waste my time with my aunt’s stupid schemes.
‘You are mad,’
Ella concluded. ‘Or sick. Let me feel your forehead. Do you have a fever? Do you feel hot?’
‘I am perfectly fine. And I’m telling you the truth, Ella. I would be able to support the two of us somehow.’
She didn’t look as if she believed me. And I didn’t dare tell her the truth. If my aunt squeezed it out of her, she would lock me up in my room and not let me out for a year. I might be moderately independent, from a financial point of view, but I was still a minor. Only on my twenty-first birthday would that old vulture lose all control over me, and that was still far in the future. Ella’s even farther. I couldn’t leave her alone to fend for herself. I had to help her somehow.
She gave me a sad little smile.
‘Thanks for trying to cheer me up, Lill. But I can’t run away. It’s not me. I just can’t!’
‘Ella, I—’
‘I know what you’ll say! That I’m being a bad, disobedient child, and that I should be grateful to her for all the good she’s done for me.’
No, that was actually not what was I was going to say. That sounded more like the kind of nonsense she would spout on occasion.
‘And I suppose I am being ungrateful, Lill, but I just can’t help it! I…there’s something you don’t know, and…’ She was squirming like an eel on trial for being too slippery. ‘I cannot say. I’ve sworn to keep it secret, but there’s something…Oh, this is torture! If only I could tell you! But…no, I can’t! I just can’t! I…I don’t know what to do, I—’
‘Oh, put a sock in it already, will you?’ I interrupted. ‘I know all about you and Edmund.’
Ella blinked.
‘You…know?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can’t know!’
‘Edmund. Piano tuner’s son. About this high, brown hair, brown eyes. Lives next door. Occupation: piano tuner. Hobbies: classical music, the occasional flutter, and smooching my little sister in the moonlight.’
‘You do know!’
‘Yes.’
‘Everything?’
‘Well, let me put it this way—there was this one time when you went to his house in the middle of the night, and he fell down while trying to climb out of the window, and you grabbed him, and pulled him in for a great, big—’
Ella’s face flushed beet-red. I hadn’t seen her looking so guilty since she was five and I had caught her with her hand in the cookie jar. She hadn’t actually taken any cookies, of course, but to make up for the sin of contemplation, she baked us fresh cookies three times in a row.
‘So you do know! But…how?’
I patted her on the back. ‘Sisterly intuition.’
Also, I had been listening in on her secret garden rendezvous from behind the nearest bush for, oh…how long had it been? One year?
Ella gazed up at me with tear-filled eyes. ‘What should I do, Lill? Aunt has her heart set on me making a good match, and yet…I can’t. I just can’t marry anybody else. I love him.’
A year or two ago I would have scoffed. I would have told her that without men, the world would be a much simpler place. Now, however…
The world would be a much simpler place without solid chocolate, too. Did that mean I wanted it to disappear to keep my butt from getting bigger?
Hell no!
Hugging my little sister to me, I murmured meaningless, comforting words.
‘What should I do?’ she repeated, gazing up at her big sister as if I had all the answers in the universe. ‘What can I do?’
What could she do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Against Aunt Brank’s greed and social aspirations, Ella was helpless.
What I could do, on the other hand – well, that was a totally different matter. There wasn’t a second to waste. It was time to get down to business.
The Great Reveal
‘Lill? Lill, what are you doing? You can’t just march over there and—’
‘Of course I can. The pavement is perfectly even and good to walk on. Try it.’
‘That’s not what I meant, Lill! I—’
Ignoring my dear little sister with the consummate skill of an experienced older sibling, I marched up to the door of the neighbour’s house and hammered on the door.
‘Hey, you there! Assorted strummers, jinglers and tinklers! Out with you!’
‘Lill!’
‘What?’
‘Where are your manners?’
‘I left them in my purse at home. The damn things are too heavy to carry around all the time.’
Hurried footsteps approached from the other side of the door. It opened a crack, revealing the anxious, familiar face of a certain young man.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ I smiled, pushing the door open the rest of the way. He stood there in the doorway like a lost puppy, blinking at me and Ella standing on his doorstep. ‘Good. That simplifies things. You’re in love with my little sister, aren’t you?’
‘Um,’ said Edmund, the piano-tuner’s son.
‘Bravo! How very eloquent. Just the kind of intelligent reply I was hoping to get from a future brother-in-law. Are you sure you love her? Really sure? Because if you break her heart, I’ll cut off your bollocks and…well, you don’t really want to know what I’ll do with them afterwards. Are we clear?’
‘Err,’ said Edmund.
‘Spiffing! I’m so glad we’re getting along. I can feel the beginning of a wonderful friendship here. Now, as to this whole marriage thing, I don’t have a lot of time—I have to leave on a little trip soon—so I was hoping we could get it wrapped up in a day or two? I know the two of you like to languish in lovelorn agony for months on end, but I’m afraid I haven’t got time for that anymore. I’ve got other engagements that cannot wait, so you’ll just have to postpone the lovelorn agony until after you’re married. Do you think you can manage that?’
‘Um,’ said Edmund.
‘Wonderful, wonderful. Now, I think my aunt has a dressmaker scheduled to come tomorrow morning, so this whole marriage thing will have to wait to the afternoon. Could you perhaps look in on us at, say, two pm? I’m sure we could get the whole matter wrapped up then. What do you say?’
‘Err…’ said Edmund, ‘Who are you?’
‘Dear me, right, we haven’t been officially introduced yet. Ella?’ I waved at my little sister, who stood beside me, her face for some reason covered by her hands. ‘Explain, will you?’
‘This is my sister, Lilly,’ Ella said in the tone you’d use to say, ‘This is my darling pet dog, Fluffy. He doesn’t bite, trust me, and I’m so sorry he just peed on your carpet.’
‘Oh.’ His eyes went big. ‘So this is…’
‘Yes.’
‘And she really…?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the time you told me about, when she…in public?’
‘Yes, that, too.’
‘Hello?’ I waved a hand in the air. ‘Anyone remember I’m standing right here?’
Shaking himself, Edmund came out of his daze. ‘Of course. Forgive me, Miss Linton, where are my manners?’
‘I don’t know. They’re yours.’
‘Um. Yes. So…you know about the two of us?’
‘Yes.’
He straightened. ‘Well, let me assure you that my intentions are nothing but honourable. I mean to marry your sister.’
‘And how’s that working out so far?’
‘Lilly!’ Ella hissed.
‘What?’ I hissed back. ‘He’s been at it for nearly two years. It’s a legitimate question.’
Edmund, who by now was as red in the face as a virgin tomato on its wedding night, cleared his throat. ‘There have been some difficulties in gaining the consent of her guardians for Ella’s marriage, Miss Linton.’
‘Such as the fact that you haven’t actually asked yet.’
‘Lill!’
‘True, Miss Linton. However, the doorstep is hardly the right place to discuss this. Would you like to come in to have a cup of tea? My parents will be back in half an hour, so I’m afraid you cannot stay long, bu
t—’
‘Oh, half an hour will be plenty of time to wrap this little matter up. I have lots of other things to do today, anyway.’
He stared at me for a moment—then nodded and stepped aside.
‘Very well, Miss Linton. After you.’
I entered the modest home. The brick house was almost an exact replica of Uncle Bufford’s. Whoever had built these things had not possessed a great deal of creativity. Edmund led us to a small sitting room, where we sank into two plush armchairs while he busied himself with the tea kettle in the kitchen. Ella turned her head from left to right, gazing at everything as if this were the Palace of Versailles and we were two poor peasants taken on a tour as a last treat before our execution.
‘What’s the matter?’ I demanded.
‘I…well…it’s just so overwhelming, seeing it for the first time.’
‘Wait a minute…for the first time? You’ve never been here before?’
She looked shocked. ‘Of course not!’
‘You’ve been sneaking around with this fellow for nearly two years, and you’ve never seen the inside of his house? What if he had a collection of previous wives stacked in the cellar?’
‘Lill!’
‘Should I check? Just in case?’
Edmund returned, with two tea cups in his hand and a helpless little smile on his face. ‘Um…one lump of sugar, Miss Linton? Two?’
I took a look at his honest smile on his honest face, stuck between his honest ears.
‘Forget what I said,’ I sighed in Ella’s direction. ‘We don’t need to check.’
We all settled down around the little table in the centre of the sitting room.
‘So, Miss Linton.’ Edmund cleared his throat. ‘Am I to gather from your appearance here that you approve of my interest in your sister?’
‘Not really,’ I told him. ‘I think you’re a bit of a wimp, and she could do much better.’
‘Oh.’
Under the table, Ella gave me a kick.
‘But it’s not really my opinion that matters,’ I continued, kicking back and making her yelp. Ha! Take that. No one bests me in a kicking contest! ‘It’s hers.’