‘I can guess.’
‘But we had already made the signs, and we couldn’t just not go through with it because you had the jitters.’
‘Very admirable. But Eve…’
I should have known any attempt to stop her was in vain.
‘And then we showed up there, and you appeared up on the stage, all dressed in men’s clothes, and gave a speech! A speech! And everybody listened! And cheered! Long live suffragism! Oh Lilly!’
She hugged me again, but this time, I wasn’t trying to fight her off. My attention was focused on Leadfield, who was still standing at the door. There were two red patches on his normally pallid face, and his eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.
‘Dressed in men’s clothes?’ He gasped. ‘Miss Lilly! What in the Lord’s name…!’
‘Not in public,’ I groaned, hurriedly planting a hand over Eve’s over-eager mouth to shut her up. ‘It was charades! We were playing charades.’
‘Oh! I see, Miss.’ The old chap’s eyes retreated into their sockets, his frame visibly relaxing. He shook his head with all the bewilderment a sensible servant could muster at the upper classes' strange habit of dressing up in all sorts of insane clothing for fun. ‘Well, far be it from me, Miss, to begrudge you and your young friends your amusement.’
‘Thank you, Leadfield.’
‘Do you require anything? Master’s old hats and coats? His Indian turban? The old cook’s apron?’
‘No, thank you, we’re not planning on playing charades right now, Leadfield.’
‘I see, Miss. Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.’
‘That would be nice.’
The old servant turned with geological velocity. When he was almost facing the door, he tried to look back over his shoulder and almost toppled over in the process.
‘By the way, Miss, breakfast is almost ready. I shall begin serving in a few minutes, so you won’t have long.’
‘I’ll be down directly,’ I assured him.
When Leadfield was outside and the door was closed, Eve couldn’t hold it in any longer.
‘Vlt? Rrrrmt? Yrntnng dwnn tbrkfst tst dt ths gstl tmts…’
I removed my hand from her mouth, and she grabbed me by the collar of my nightshirt.
‘Lilly! Are you mad? You’re not going down to breakfast to sit and eat those ghastly tomatoes your uncle puts on the table! You’re staying here with us to celebrate, do you hear me? If you try to leave, I’ll personally tie you up and gag you!’
‘Which would rather get in the way of my celebrating,’ I pointed out, squeezing my eyes shut and massaging my skull for a second. Ah! That felt good. My headache was much better already. Apparently, I had the right stomach for this sort of thing. I felt a tinge of pride. ‘You needn't worry, by the way. When Leadfield says he’ll serve immediately, that means he needs ten minutes down the stairs, another fifteen to reach the kitchen, and another twenty to get to the dining room table with all the plates, bowls and platters. We have plenty of time.’
‘So… we can celebrate now?’
‘Yes.’ Sighing, I let myself fall back into bed. ‘We can celebrate.’
‘Topping!’ Two hands took mine in an iron grip and more or less wrenched me out of bed. Three seconds later I was dancing around the room in my nightgown, a trilling Eve as an over-energetic dance partner.
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them! Well, technically it was you, but who cares! We showed them! We showed those chauvinist sons of bitch… sons of bachelors! Huzzah! Huzzah!’
All I saw of the room were a few whirly impressions as Eve spun me around like a top. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of Flora’s anxious, but happy, face, and Patsy’s smile from where she stood in the background, leaning against the window, watching my impromptu dancing lesson. All this twirling around wasn’t doing much good for my woozy head, though. I saw lights beginning to flicker at the edges of my vision.
‘Eve? Eve, stop!’
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them!’
‘Eve? Hello, Eve!’
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them!’
‘Eve! I said stop!’
With all the force I could muster, I dug my heels into the ground. Unfortunately, the force I could muster after a night out on a bender wasn’t all that great. Eve rammed into me and we landed on the floor in a confused heap of cotton gowns, shawls, hats and shouts of ‘We showed them!’ You had to give Eve credit for being determined.
Spitting out the end of a silk shawl with purple peonies printed on it, I sat up.
‘What the dickens did you do that for?’ I challenged Eve. Sitting on her derrière, her crinoline flattened underneath her, she grinned up at me broadly.
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them!’
Apparently, she wasn’t quite ready for sensible conversation yet.
Scrambling to my feet, I turned to the other two. Flora gave me a shy smile, and Patsy… Patsy just stood there, leaning against the wall beside the window, in the background, where she was normally least likely to be found. The smile on her face was small, but unmistakably there.
Our eyes met.
She came forward. I came forward. The rest of the room didn’t exist anymore. We met in the middle, and she caught me up in hug so fierce it could have squashed an elephant into mincemeat.
‘Lilly!’ She said.
‘Pfft!’ I said.
‘I never should have doubted you.’
‘Plss let ggg!’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ Relaxing her grip, she stepped back, but I held on to her arms.
‘Don’t be,’ I gasped. ‘I needed that.’
‘Oh Lilly, Lilly.’ If I hadn’t known better, I would have said there were tears twinkling in the corners of Patsy’s eyes. But I did know better. She was much too tough to cry, right? ‘Lilly! You mad, ingenious, wonderful girl! Why didn’t you tell us what you were planning to do?’
Planned? Planned what? Why were they all so pleased with me? And then it struck me. She was convinced I had deliberately called off my participation in the demonstration, to go up on that stage and hold that speech for women’s suffrage.
Actually, I hadn’t planned a single little thing in the last week the way it had turned out, but I couldn’t tell her that. I could see in her fiery eyes that she had gotten it into her head that all had been part of my master plan. And to be honest, it would have been an ingenious plan - definitely worthy of me!
‘It was risky,’ I said, with an apologetic shrug. ‘I… well, if I’d told you, you all would have felt obliged to take part, and there was a much greater chance of success if only one of us tried to get up there on the podium. In any case, as soon as one of us started her speech, all would be discovered and the others forced to leave along with her. So, a solo operation just made more sense.’
‘Eve’s right.’ Patsy hugged me again, softer this time, but with undeniable warmth. ‘You are a genius.’
I looked up into her broad face with wide, searching eyes. ‘So, I’m forgiven?’ I asked, and wasn’t able to keep the quiver totally out of my voice. This very question had been torturing my mind ever since my quarrel with my biggest, bestest friend. Not to have Patsy watching my back would be like not having a hat on my head - a cold and unprotected life.
‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ she told me. ‘You’re my best friend, and always will be. Nothing will ever change that.’
‘Hey! And what about me?’ Eve protested from floor level.
‘You,’ Patsy told her, ‘are my most annoying friend, and will always be. Nothing will ever change that, not even an excellent governess hired to educate and restrain you.’
Eve beamed at the compliment and clambered to her feet. Then she suddenly slapped her hand with her forehead. ‘Oh, where did I leave my head this morning? We brought you something!’
‘A present?’ My face lit up, and it only hurt a little bit. The day was getting better already. ‘I lo
ve presents! What is it?’
Maybe a piece of solid chocolate…
‘No, not a present as such…’ Patsy waved at Flora, who retrieved something from behind her back, where she had stashed it along with her hands for the last few minutes. ‘More a memento of sorts. A trophy of a victorious battle.’
Taking the object from Flora, she handed it to me. I stared down at the blank piece of cardboard in my hand, and confusion must have been evident on my face. Patsy smirked.
‘Turn it over.’
I did. And there, in large, bold letters were the words:
VOTES FOR WOMEN, FELLOWS… OR ELSE!
I didn’t know what to say.
But I didn’t need to, really, because Eve did all the talking that was humanly possible.
‘You didn’t answer me before,’ she accused me, tapping on my cardboard. ‘Where were you? We waited ages and ages and ages for you to return, and you never did? Where did you go? What did you do? We wanted to celebrate with you so badly, and to knock you on the head for doing something like that without telling us, but we couldn’t! Where did you go? Were you abducted? Held prisoner?’
My mind flashed back to the events to the previous night. A shiver shot down my spine, and I had to restrain myself from touching my lips again.
‘Um… no. Neither of those.’
‘Well, what happened, then?’
Rikkard Ambrose. That’s what happened.
‘Nothing, really. It just took me a frightfully long time to get away from those men. They had a lot of questions, none of which I answered. Then I went away.’
I shrugged.
Eve gave me a disapproving look. ‘Is that all? I expected, at least, that you were held captive in some dark dungeon miles under the city, where a group of conspirators determined to prevent the suffragist movement from rising up against the corrupt world of men tortured you into swearing off all unladylike behaviour forevermore!’
‘Err… no. Sorry to disappoint.’
Not that I thought she would be disappointed if she knew the truth. I had something a lot better in store than an anti-suffragist conspiracy: a mystery surrounding stolen documents, drunken revels, a street fight in the East End and a mind-blowing, toe-curling encounter with Rikk-
No! Don’t think about it! That part was a hallucination. It was all completely imaginary. And even if it wasn’t, under no circumstances are you ever going to reveal that to Eve!
‘Thank you. Thank you so very much for this.’ Holding up the sign, I gave them all my most sincere smile, already edging towards the door. It was time to get away. ‘Now, if that’s all… I think it’s about time for me to go down to breakfast.’ I started towards the stairs in earnest, but Eve was quicker. She blocked my way before I could make my escape.
‘Oh no, it most certainly isn’t all. You aren’t getting away as easily as that. Do you know how many unanswered questions we still have?’
She indicated the other two, who surrounded me like a pack of jackals.
‘One? Or maybe two?’ I suggested hopefully. Crap! I had to get out of here before I started stumbling over my own lies.
‘At least a thousand! For starters, who was that man?’
‘What man?’ I asked, hoping to hell they wouldn’t notice my guilty ears burning.
‘That man.’ Using both her hands, Eve grabbed her face and pulled a threateningly stony grimace. If there had been any doubt in my mind as to whom she meant before, it was gone now. ‘The one everybody treated as if he were the emperor of China, France and India put together. The one who gave that monstrous speech. He had a face like this!’ With her fingers, she pulled her mouth even farther, until it was almost nothing but a straight line. ‘And he stared at you like he had icebergs for eyes, and would headbutt you if you didn’t agree to every single little thing he said!’
‘Oh. Him.’ I coughed. ‘Um… yes, now that you mention it, I seem to remember a man like that.’
‘I don't think he looked like that, though,’ Flora dared to point out, doubtfully regarding Eve’s facial contortions. ‘I think he looked much more handsome. In fact,’ she added with a slight blush, ‘I found him quite ravishing.’
A second later, she quailed under the punishing glare Patsy gave her.
‘Shame on you, Flora Milton,’ she proclaimed sternly. ‘That man is an enemy of the cause! No true suffragist would think him anything but an ugly monster!’
Flora’s cheeks reddened - though not half as much as mine did. Blast! Why was I blushing? I had nothing to be guilty about, did I? Well, did I? He was misogynistic, and arrogant, and cold…
…except when he’s kissing you.
Luckily, Eve was still too firmly on the trail to notice anything wrong with my face.
‘You still haven’t told us who he is,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘And up on the platform, he introduced you as his secretary. How on earth did you pull that off?’
I opened my mouth - and no convenient lie came to mind.
Of all the times my creative talents of creative truthbending could have forsaken me, they chose now? When I most needed them? Bugger! Nothing was reliable anymore, nowadays.
‘Well?’ Patsy eyed me curiously. ‘How did you manage it?’
I was standing with my back against the door, the three of them surrounding me, with no escape in sight. Not just Eve and Patsy were burning with curiosity. Even Flora had stopped blushing and was staring at me. She never stared at anyone. She thought it was rude, and that this was enough reason not to do it. But now she was staring at me.
I wet my lips.
‘I… um…’
Suddenly, there came a knock from the door behind me.
‘Lill? Lill, are you in there?’
Ella! My angel, my darling sister, my life-saver! I love you!
‘Yes! Yes, I’m in here.’
Something pushed against my back.
‘Why won’t the door open?’
‘Because I’m standing against it.’
‘And why are you standing against the door?’
‘Good question. Have been asking myself the same thing.’ Like a fox between a regiment of red coats, I slipped between Eve and Flora. Turning, I saw the door open. Ella stood in the doorway, looking from me to Patsy to Flora to Eve and then to me again. When her eyes fell on me, an expression of quiet gravity appeared on her face which I had seen only once before: when our neighbours’ cat had gotten squashed by a coach and she had gone to deliver the news to the bereaved family.
‘Patsy, Ella, Eve,’ she said without removing her gaze from me, ‘would you mind leaving me and my sister alone for a few minutes? There is something we have to discuss in private.’
‘Sorry, Ella, not right now. We were here first, so we get to talk first.’ Patsy waved Ella off. ‘Go off and play, we’ve got serious things to talk about.’
At this, Ella did not quail and shrink back, or hurry off with an apologetic ‘I’m sorry to disturb you’ as I expected - she raised her chin and met Patsy’s eyes.
‘So have I, and what I have to say cannot wait. I have to discuss something of the gravest importance with my sister. You will please leave now. You can talk to her after I’m finished.’
Patsy’s mouth dropped open. She was so surprised that she did something which she had never, ever done before: what she was told. Her feet started moving towards the door, while her eyes were fixed with utter disbelief on the little wisp of a blonde girl ordering her around.
‘Err… I see. All right, Ella. We'll see you outside, Lilly.’ And with a last look at Ella, like a bulldog would look back at the chicken that has just chased him off his yard, she left the room, Eve and Flora in tow.
Closing the door behind them, Ella advanced towards me. She was smaller than me, but still she made me feel like a naughty child as she looked at me with those wide, blue, sincere eyes of hers. Her gaze could have made an archangel confess his secret sins.
‘Lill,’ she said, shaking her head.
I waited for more, but nothing was forthcoming. It seemed she expected me to know what she meant without actually saying it. Clairvoyance, however, was not yet among my many talents.
‘Ella,’ I said, hoping to encourage some further explanation through reciprocal brevity.
‘Lill,’ she said again, with another very graceful and sad shake of the head.
‘Ella.’
This was getting a bit tedious. I wondered if I should broach a different subject or, for that matter, any subject. But then, it was taken out of my hands.
‘Lill, please tell me nothing happened.’
Ah! Finally, a variation.
Not that I understood what she meant, but still, it was progress.
‘Fine. If you really want me to: Nothing happened. Nothing at all.’ I rubbed my head, which was still throbbing a bit. ‘Now, can you please tell me when and where nothing was supposed to have happened?’
‘Lill!’
‘And while you’re at it, tell me what kind of nothing happened that was supposed to have actually happened. I am a bit fogged, to be honest.’
‘Lill, don’t joke about this! This is serious!’
‘Are you sure? I’m not, because I still don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re going on about.’
At last some life flooded into Ella’s face. She stepped forward, grasped me by the arm and shook it.
‘Lill, pull yourself together! You were with a man last night, weren’t you? That man!’
Actually, I had been with several dozen men, about half of whom had been trying to kill me at one time or another. I didn’t think it prudent to share this with my little sister, though. For some strange reason my aching head couldn’t figure out, she seemed to think that the company of one man was already inexcusable. So I just said: ‘Yes, I was. What about it?’
Ella sucked in a breath.
‘Oh God, Lill! Do you know what could have happened last night? Or… dear merciful Lord, what if it actually did?’
‘Certainly I know,’ I mumbled. The pain wasn’t getting better from the shaking. ‘I could have caught my death in that powder room. Showers without boilers for hot water should be prohibited by law.’