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For everyone, everywhere, who’s been stuck at home and dreaming of adventure
She felt a ludicrous pang of disappointment. Firstly, that she had squeaked. Secondly, that she hadn’t seized the opportunity to say Fuck. She’d never been game enough on any lesser occasion, and surely this was the most obscenity-deserving situation she would ever find herself in.
The opera singer had a voice like running one’s hand first the wrong way and then the right across an expanse of velvet.
“Though at least,” he’d added, “he’s the kind of bastard who wears it on his sleeve.” The Blyth siblings had exchanged a look of perfect understanding. Honest unpleasantness was to be chosen, every time, over hypocrites and liars.
An ocean liner was nothing except hiding places. This wasn’t a haystack—it was a small floating town. But the hook of interest was lodged fatally within Violet. She loved secrets, loved being in on the trick, loved moving in a crowd working to a purpose that they didn’t know. She loved the backstage of things.
The steward hesitated, but Maud had gathered around herself the impervious confidence of someone who wasn’t used to being refused and was going to be obstinately unable to comprehend anything that sounded like refusal.
Like the warding charm, it settled a feeling of safety in Maud, even though she knew it was illusion. The eyes clamoured to be believed. The heart clamoured to believe them.
“The rules are different inside a theatre,” said Violet. “Fewer questions. More trust.”
“You see?” she said. “That’s what happens when you show your soft parts to people you barely know. Now—don’t you want the sparkling, amusing Violet back?” “No,” bit out Maud. “Not if she’s nothing but an act.”
“Do you know who I think keeps saying that they’re fine? Over and over?” Maud’s shoulders set. Some instinct in Violet pricked its ears and said: You’ve miscalculated again. Maud said, “People who are desperately scared, and awfully sad, and too small to admit it.”
“You have a real trick for beating people around the head with the truth like it’s an umbrella, did you know that?”
But everyone Maud had loved, she’d loved at once, on instinct. Greedily.
“Mrs. Sinclair says you look at the world and decide you can live with it or decide you can’t. And if you can’t, you decide what you’re prepared to do about it.”
“You’re right to worry about silence,” said Mrs. Navenby. “It’s when you don’t hear a peep out of children for an hour that you discover they’ve dug a moat in your rhododendron patch or decided to render the Bayeux Tapestry in wax crayon on the wall.”
“Luck’s in the same basket as time and death, girl,” said Mrs. Navenby. “Many magicians have tried, but none have ever mastered it.”
Violet might wear her sparkling recklessness well, but beneath it she was careful, careful, careful. Maud was not; but she would learn to be. She would choose to be, as she chose every day to be generous and kind and all the other things that defied the coiled snake of her inherited nature.
“You have no idea how angry these men are that they’ve been forced to look at old women and take them seriously.
Nothing is wasted that’s beautiful.
But if I have to create myself every day, with every choice I make, then I want to make the choices I won’t regret when I look back on my life at its end.”
I’ve never met anyone so deliberate about being good. I want to follow you forever, to see what you do to the world.
Violet surrendered all in a rush. She leaned in and kissed Maud’s reddened cheek. There were more people around now, even on this side of the ship, but they were women. Companions. There was nothing scandalous about it at all.
