The Q

by Beth Brower

So, now I’ve decided the first week of this new year will see me out.

“Is there anything wrong with it?” “No.” Crow shook his head and shifted so he was facing Quincy straight on. “But is there anything right with it, love? Now, that’s another question.”

“Other people,” Quincy could hear the disgust in her own voice, “are the most unreliable investment one could make. It’s a fool’s game. That’s how they would call it down at the exchange.” “Well, I’m friends with a smuggler chap who also has a bit of life experience, and you know what he says?” Crow lifted his glass as if he were proposing a toast. “The greatest risk can bring in the greatest haul.”

“Your mind is amazing.” Arch shook his head. “There’s your obvious brilliance, but what you just said reveals more layers. It’s one thing to understand the art of rhetoric, but to come at it the way you have, from a different discipline, yet work it into your own internal equations, it’s—well, it makes me wonder what else you can put through your lens and see clearly.”

🥰

Quincy did not intend to tell Arch that she had kept the books. She told herself he didn’t deserve the relief, when the reality was that she didn’t want him knowing he’d influenced her.

“Only that I believe”—Arch lifted his shoulders, and the look on his face was so unguarded Quincy surprised herself by listening—“that each one of us has times when what we need most is someone who is willing to sit quietly by, waiting for us. Not interfering, just being.”

But there was one moment, an aria, that made her forget she was sitting in a booth of fools.

“I’m sorry, Arch,” Quincy said as she thought it. She had not intended to, but, since it came out, Quincy owned the emotion. She looked away from the window and into the solicitor’s face. “I was rude; I embarrassed you. I am sorry.”

“Does admitting my error satisfy a requirement?” “No, but it should.” “You’re damn right it should, you filthy rat.”

🤣

Then she saw Arch’s portfolio there, the one he never came or went without, sitting abandoned on the counter. He must have forgotten it in his rush.

😁

Her hair kept falling across her eyes, refusing to conform, and Quincy knew that if she decided she cared, she wouldn’t go. So she blew it away from her face and grabbed her black hat, forcing herself into deciding not to care.

She despised having people force her in any direction, even if it was one in which she wished to go.

💯

“It’s curious,” Arch said, sounding ponderous rather than complimentary, “you and Miss St. Claire came from the same struggles, yet you—”

None of us grow up without the imperfections of life creeping into us and making us human, but we catch the errors; whether we reset them or not is up to us.

“I have to tell her I know. I respect Miss St. Claire too much to keep that knowledge from her.”

💕

“I don’t care for poetry.” “You will. Not as much as I do, but you’ll learn to appreciate that I appreciate it. That’s part of maintaining connections with people. You give yourself a little to what they give themselves to a lot. And they do the same for you.”

“Sounds boring.” “I suppose it is, if you’re not focused on the person you’re doing it for,” Arch answered.

Crow pushed aside his drink and leaned across the table, his blue eyes anchoring in hers.

“I don’t like to be teased for something about which I feel strongly, namely the erroneous convention that a man’s morals may be fluid, often leaving a woman to hold the higher standard alone.

As exhilarating as Crow’s life and firm presence had always been to Quincy—providing a strange combination of the unknown and unreached for, touched by the fading scents of her former life—she

He seemed tired, Quincy thought, like he was burning from the inside and couldn’t bank the fire.

“I’ve often wondered if our greatest strengths are, in turn, our greatest weaknesses—which is what makes them so hard to temper.”

“You care too much what people think of you.” Arch shifted his face in question. “I assume you don’t think so because your family has thrown off the conventions of your class and you are quite at ease with yourself in any setting. But, I think you feel the need to defend yourself if someone doesn’t see clearly who you are or why you do things. You explain yourself too much, as if you owe it to the world.”

I also wonder if I’m terrified of apathy.” He did not say this in his usual tone, rather something quieter, the voice one kept tucked in their vest. “I worry that if I don’t fight to give the clearest picture of myself—who I try to be and what I believe to be true—I’ll grow indifferent to what that vision is. A moral lethargy will set into my comfortable life, when all I want is to be afire with the cause.”

“I get what I want,” Quincy said, shrugging, as if she hadn’t stumbled upon most every requirement by serendipity.

😁

“I don’t believe that anything you can gain from a person is worth the misery that follows when they are taken away,” she said at length.

Deepest fears.

“Come to my house Saturday for tea.” “Can’t,” responded Quincy. “I’m busy avoiding human connection.”

He then taught Quincy a dance called Beija Flor. “Meaning hummingbird, or to kiss a flower, in Portuguese,”

🥰

“Come here, Quincy St. Claire.” She didn’t move. He continued to motion until his persistence made her step towards him. Then Lord Arch pulled Quincy in close, wrapping Quincy in his comfort. And Quincy, as she felt her cheek press against his chest, thought that this must be what having a father felt like. She

😭

This was another thing that happened when you let people in, she reminded herself: your important places were desecrated or, perhaps, simply shown for what they were.

“Glorious hell, he’s touched a nerve.” “Yes.” “And we both know whose,” Priest stated before rolling his abandoned cigar between his fingers.

She was suspicious, defensive of anybody doing anything for Arch that she didn’t approve of.

“Quincy?” Like an arrow long held in a drawn bow, Quincy released herself towards the sound of Arch’s voice so quickly she tumbled to the floor in one clumsy movement, albeit landing on her feet.

“It wasn’t Crow,” Quincy said from atop her perch on the bureau. “He wouldn’t have settled a score like that.”

Color me relieved.

“He thinks he can do anything, with no consequences. Mary, James is resting, and we best be going before I send the boy to his permanent rest.”

🤣

Touching him felt painful. It felt like someone had opened an endless cavern they had no willingness to fill. It brought back the emotions she had felt after they had waltzed—the stupid waltz that had kept Arch late, that had led to him being beaten—it was the feeling of being at sea with no anchor.

“Quincy St. Claire,” Arch whispered, both of his hands now on her face, his forehead pressed against hers, his eyes closed. “Please give room for me.”

😭🥹

They didn’t speak of the kiss, but Quincy thought Arch moved differently around her, as if he always knew where she was without having to see her.

What happens when a set of imperfect people spend their time talking about becoming better? Chances are one or two of them might actually choose to become better. Unless we buy the hedonistic drivel of the day, what keeps us from it? Are we so scared of failing? We’re human! We fail. We fall.”

“We sin. And yet something calls us towards perfection. Do you know why? Because we’re good for it. We have the capacity to examine our lives and improve, to change. But we can’t do it just on our own.

“Don’t listen, then. Write your essays. Publish. No sense in being small because someone else doesn’t have the courage to measure up.”

There are too many other words to write for me to settle a score of one. I owe my energies to more than just myself.”

“Then you let injustice win!” “No, I will still address the problems of state and the abuses of power, but in the right way and for the right motivations,” Arch answered. “I will serve the good of more than just myself.

“Starting a new fashion, I see.” “I actually believe this was one you started,” Quincy interjected, her arms folded across her chest. Arch made a surprised sound as the golden tone of the prince’s face turned purple.

😁

Quincy balked, her voice barbed from feeling self-conscious.

“Have I even once been disparaging about Crow?” Arch asked in a light tone, but his face indicated a stronger emotion.

Ooh. Touché.

“When she asked me why I enjoyed living life pretending to be a man, I couldn’t think of anything to say but something to set her off. As if I would ever want to be a man. They are as insufferable as most women. I really did think my response a model of restraint, considering.”

💯

“I don’t know how you exist as you do. Isn’t it exhausting, to think well of so many people?”

“You preach too much.” “Preach back. I can handle it. And, if I’m wrong, I can change.”

Hm. Really reminds me of someone.

With terms like that, Quincy was not just frugal, she was a miser.