Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for the time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.

It was odd to see her stepping out of that gloomy place, like a pearl coming out of an oyster.

Underneath it all, however, she was soft and smooth as butter.

Undressing myself had no fun in it, now I had undressed her.

So then she did send soup. Maud ate it all up. ‘Why are you smiling?’ she said, in her anxious way, when she had finished. I said I wasn’t. She put down her spoon. Then she frowned, like before, over her gloves. They had got splashed.

But I’d say it, then look at her; and she was so simple and so good, the thought would vanish, I would end up combing her hair or straightening the sash on her gown.

I did not know. I had meant to turn up the Two of Hearts, for lovers; but after all, must have muddled the deck.

‘Suppose,’ she said, when Margaret had gone, ‘suppose Mr Rivers were to do what Margaret did, and mistake you for me? What would we do, then?’

FORSHADOWWWWWW

I felt her—I felt her, through the walls of the house, like some blind crooks are said to be able to feel gold. It was as if there had come between us, without my knowing, a kind of thread. It pulled me to her, wherever she was. It was like— It’s like you love her, I thought.

‘I feel it,’ she said. Her voice was as strange as mine. ‘You have made me feel it. It’s such a curious, wanting thing. I never—’

‘You pearl,’ I said. So white she was! ‘You pearl, you pearl, you pearl.’

‘No dreams,’ she said, ‘save one. But that was a sweet one. I think—I think you were in it, Sue . . .’

She kept her eyes on mine, as if waiting. I saw the blood beat in her throat. Mine beat to match it, my very heart turned in my breast; and I think, that if I had drawn her to me then, she’d have kissed me. If I had said, I love you, she would have said it back; and everything would have changed. I might have saved her. I might have found a way—I don’t know what—to keep her from her fate. We might have cheated Gentleman. I might have run with her, to Lant Street—