Page 23 of Lady Like

Harry lets out a small breath—almost like a sigh of relief, though she quickly holds her hands to her mouth, and Emily wonders if perhaps she was simply blowing upon them for warmth.

“I couldn’t say. People used to ask me the same thing about having a twin—is it strange, what’s it like?

The answer being that, as it’s the only thing I’ve ever known, I have no comparison.

It was my home. I can look back now and see it was unstable and volatile and it will muck you up if you and your brother have to hide under the bed as your mother takes clients.

But we were sheltered and protected and the women here were my family.

I probably would find whatever ordinary place you grew up in as strange as you’d find this place. ”

“Sussex,” Emily says. “I grew up on a farm in the South Downs.”

“And what was that like?”

“Suffocating,” Emily says before she can stop herself.

It is the word she had always felt best described the confines of her town, but never dared voice, and she corrects herself out of habit, lest she be scolded as ungrateful.

“Beautiful and peaceful and idyllic and…” She struggles for another word, but Harry finishes for her.

“And suffocating. You can be honest.” Her mouth quirks. “I won’t tell Alexander.”

“It was a small community,” Emily says, “with many opinions on the business of others.”

“Ah, you were raised among gossips! Say no more, I understand. There are no bodies busier than the denizens of a brothel.”

Emily curls herself over her glass of warm wine, letting the steam dampen her face. Let Harry think she understands—it saves Emily having to explain how one choice ruined her life. “Do people really mock you for your parentage?”

“They used to, when I was in school,” Harry says. “Now if they do, they’re wise enough to only speak behind my back. And I’ve learned not to let it bother me.”

God. If only it were that simple.

Emily takes another sip of wine. “May I ask you one more question? It’s quite sensitive.”

Harry leans forward. “Go on.”

She looks so earnest Emily almost feels bad for replying, with as much gravity as she can muster, “What’s it like, having a twin?”

Harry laughs, and Emily feels the warmth hit deep in her belly as she swallows, like she’s taken a gulp of whiskey.

Harry leans over the stove, holding her hands just above the steaming tray.

Emily remembers how, at the ball, she had thought Harry’s features severe against her red dress and elaborate hairstyle.

The idea seems foolish now. In the glancing gold light, the hard corner of Harry’s jaw and divot in her chin look perfectly matched to the rest of her.

A frame so strong and well fashioned could not be done service by features any softer.

Her lips, now thawed from the cold, are poppy red.

Harry, Emily realizes, has managed the peculiar alchemy of transforming the things that might make her strange into things that instead make her exceptional.

The daughter of a whore, raised in a brothel, that ridiculous haircut—all of it carried off with such nonchalant confidence that makes her seem like a character in an adventure story, and these details merely the sort of rare origins that are required in any self-respecting heroine.

She is opposite Emily—opposite what any of the etiquette books teach—but on Harry, it feels right.

Like some peculiar garment that suits her frame and figure, but would swallow Emily.

This, she realizes, is what she needs Harry to teach her—not how to be a more interesting sort of woman. But how to carry the woman she is without apology.

Perhaps Collin Lockhart was right in thinking they should know each other.

Emily takes a deep breath. Swallows her pride—and the rest of her wine—then asks, “May I propose a hypothetical scenario?”

Harry peels one of her socks from the tray and tests its dampness against the back of her hand. “You may propose anything you like.”

“I have been considering your brother’s suggestion that you might help me become a more appealing marital prosect for the Duke of Rochester. This is not an admission that I need your help,” she adds quickly.

“Spare me the reminder that you still don’t trust me.”

“Less than I trust a horse,” Emily replies. “But, hypothetically, if I were to enlist your tutelage…what would that entail?”

Harry studies her for a moment, head cocked, then asks, “What did Rochester say to you, exactly?”

“That I’m beautiful and well mannered—”

“Yes, you mentioned.”

Emily blushes. They were the only compliments he had given her, and she has been clinging to them like a lifeline. “And that he and I could make a fine couple.”

Harry raises an eyebrow.

“But that I seemed duller and more conventional than the type of woman he finds himself drawn to,” Emily finishes.

Harry studies her, one thumb pressed to her chin. Emily feels inventoried, and tries to hide her face behind another drink of wine, only to remember she’s finished her glass.

She is about to withdraw the question, or claim she had only been joking, of course she doesn’t need Harry’s help. But then Harry says, “To start, your appearance must be altered.”

“What’s the matter with my appearance?”

Harry holds up her hands, like she’s framing Emily to hang her in a gallery. “The virginal white classical draping nonsense has to go.”

“It’s fashionable!”

“It’s common. I can take you to my modiste—she’ll make you a gown that will turn heads. Second, when you seek out Alexander again, you need a topic of conversation with which to engage him. Perhaps one relating to an enigmatic hobby of yours.”

“I have no enigmatic hobbies,” Emily says.

“Yes, well, I can help you with that. What else?” Harry presses the tips of her fingers together and studies Emily over top of them.

“You need an anecdote about a sordid outing that you tell with great nonchalance, as though you frequently rob erotic bookstores while dressed as Don Quixote. Not that exactly, but we’ll think of something. ”

“And when will I have occasion to meet the duke in this unusual dress and tell him about my sordid hobbies and enigmatic anecdotes?” Emily asks.

“Reverse those.” Harry snaps her fingers. “At the Milton Derby. Now that he knows we’re acquainted, we can tell him you’re there to see me ride in the steeplechase. A tenuous connection, but plausible. And it makes you seem a bit indifferent to him, which will make him keener to give chase.”

“Will you truly help me?” Emily asks. She hates the note of supplication that pitches her voice, but she is not above begging.

She’s a spinster of almost five and twenty about to be forced into marriage with a fiend, for God’s sake, she will beg.

“So that next time Alexander and I cross paths, he finds me more pleasing?”

Harry flicks a sock off the stove and hangs it over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t you rather marry a man who likes you for who you are? You’re simply trading one artifice for another.”

“And what artifice is that?”

“That you’re a demure, shy little daisy who is desperate to please a man.”

“You hardly know me. How can you be so sure that isn’t who I am?” Emily’s eyes again drift to the two ladies in the painting, snuggled up just over Harry’s shoulder. “You’re not in love with him, are you?”

“Who, Alexander?” Harry snorts. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’m not bothered if you’ve been intimate,” Emily says, trying to sound as though she casually discusses such matters on the regular. “I assume he’s been with a lot of women.”

“I wouldn’t put money on that,” Harry says. “He hasn’t always been so handsome.”

“If we are to be in partnership,” Emily says, then pauses, for this, she is sure, is the last stile they must clear, “I want you to swear to me you are not harboring any romantic feelings for him that might conflict with our arrangement.”

“Why does it matter so much?”

“Because if this is to work,” Emily says, “I must trust you.”

Harry stares at her for a moment, then takes up her wine from where she set it upon the stove.

Her hands flex around the glass, and Emily cannot help but notice the way the small movement ripples her biceps.

Her shirt has dried enough as to be restored to opacity, but Emily can still see the shape of them, like a fish below the surface of a pond.

A strapping, toned fish that Emily cannot tear her eyes from.

“At the ball, I was jealous of the attention he paid you, but not because of some unresolved infatuation. I’m simply unaccustomed to sharing him. ”

“And that’s all it was?” Emily asks.

Harry puts a hand to her heart and, gaze fixed on Emily’s, says, “I am not in love with the Duke of Rochester. That I will swear to.”

And Emily believes her. Perhaps unwisely, but Harry does not strike Emily as the type to lose her head over a man, nor does she seem a woman for whom marriage is a great priority.

She has already aged seemingly unrepentantly into spinsterhood, and chosen a haircut that likely deters men both in style and the confidence required to carry it off.

And, she assures herself, even if Harry is harboring some unresolved feelings for the duke, what should Emily care? She only wants to marry Alexander. It’s not as though she plans to love him too.

“Very well,” Emily says. “Then let us make me interesting.”