A Lady for a Duke

by Alexis Hall

“I could never marry you, Gracewood. The world—” “Forgive my language, but”—his eyes were as steady on hers as the clasp upon her wrist, his mouth suddenly full of smiles—“fuck the world. I will change it for you if I have to.”

“I am—I have always been—a woman. I feel as a woman. I desire as a woman. I… I could not bear being thought otherwise.”

“What other reply can I give you?” Speech spilled free, as useless as sand from a shattered hourglass. “That I am sorry? That I was too afraid—too afraid for both of us—to tell you. That I did not know how I had hurt you and that I feared to hurt you further?”

“You were my closest friend. The best part of my life. The best part of me. You were… my joy, my hope, my faith in better things. All this time, I thought I’d left you. And it was you, who left me.”

“You have been the only person to see it. The only person it mattered to. And you left me. Not, as I thought, taken from me in punishment for my foolishness or the happenstance of an indifferent cosmos. But because you made it so.” “Gracewood, please.”

“And it wasn’t nothing.” The words rushed through her like the waves at their feet. “Don’t you dare believe it was nothing. I know what I did, and I know what it cost—I know what it cost us both, and I did it anyway.” And all at once, the fury was gone, leaving her shipwrecked on the shores of her choices. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she pressed her hands against his chest. “You were everything to me, Gracewood. My oldest, closest, most beloved friend. Your happiness was my happiness. Where you led, I followed with all my heart. I would have died for you—and I nearly did—but I could not live for you.”

Wanting and hope and fear. And she had tried to tell him. How many times had she tried to tell him? Except—enmeshed in his own sense of betrayal—he had not stopped to wonder how it felt to live in a world that rendered such a telling necessary. The burden she had borne, not just these past few weeks for his benefit, but all her life. Her strength abashed him, as it always had. Her valour moved him. And it was in that moment that he at last understood the truth that grief and shock had previously obscured: Viola Carroll lived. She had always lived. And it was he who had not recognised her.

“I betrayed you once, though.” “It was not a betrayal of me for you to do what you needed to save yourself.”

“I am who I am, and my body is what it is.” “You are who you are.”

“This body can fight. And ride. And sew. And play the pianoforte badly. It is mine. It deserves any carnal acts I want to indulge with it. And if you want to find it beautiful, Gracewood, I will let you. Because I don’t see why it can’t be.”

So she shed her chemise, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and went to him. Into his outstretched arms, kneeling over him so she could keep her weight from his leg, gazing down into the face of her best friend. Her lover. Her Gracewood.

“Next time,” he said, “leave the shoes. You always wear such pretty shoes.”

“That does not sound like a spontaneous thought.” “What do you want to hear? That I’ve imagined it? Countless times? You beneath me, with your legs around me, wearing nothing but your pretty shoes?”

“I need to tell you I love you, Viola. Not only that I do but how I do.”

“I love you as a man loves a woman, but we both know that love is not bound by such narrow terms. So instead let me simply tell you that I love you. I love you with the unfading flame of my friendship. With every drop of ardour in my blood. I love you with my soul, as some reserve their faith for absent gods. I love you as I believe in what is right and hope for what is good. I love you with everything I am and ever was—and if you will only let me, with every day that comes, and every self that I could ever be.”

“Can we be… one flesh?” “All love-making is becoming one flesh. Whether it’s with mouths or hands or any other parts we wish to share. But if you mean, can I take you inside me, or you me, then yes. If that’s what you desire.”

“But I would get to have you at my mercy.” “And what would I get?” “My mercy.” He gave a soft gasp, as she breached him with a finger. “Eventually.”