Page 24 of Lady Like

Mariah waits until she’s astride Harry to announce she’s been evicted from her boardinghouse.

“The old bitch who owns the place says my language is too crude!” Mariah readjusts herself on the dildo strapped to Harry’s waist. “Can you believe that?”

“And you’re certain,” Harry asks between panted breaths, “this isn’t because you’ve been tupping her daughter since the New Year?”

“She didn’t mention that. Now come on!” Mariah seizes Harry’s hand and slaps it against her ass. “Like you mean it.”

Harry grits her teeth. The only reason she let Mariah in tonight was because Macbeth had gone poorly, and Harry was brooding.

She had to return to her room to pack her things for Collin’s and found herself caught in an eddy of mourning the last days of life as she knows it, to say nothing of the fact that those last days are being wasted on dramatics that are more mishaps than actual haps.

When Mariah had knocked upon her door, Harry had been gasping for a reprieve from being alone with herself.

But now, Mariah is scheming. Harry can sense it.

“Go to Pearl’s,” she says. “She’ll put you up.”

“Can’t I stay with you?”

“You can stay in the room while I’m away,” Harry says, adjusting her position on the bed. Mariah’s weight is heavy on her hips.

“Away?” Mariah sounds nowhere near as grateful as she should upon being offered shelter from the proverbial storm. “Away where?”

“I’m staying with my brother.”

Mariah perfectly arches an eyebrow. Harry can remember her practicing the expression in the mirror when they were young, holding one side of her forehead in place until her brows had learned to operate independently. “But you hate Collin.”

“I do not hate Collin, he hates me. ”

Mariah pushes herself up on her knees, and the dildo slides out of her, flopping in its harness against Harry’s belly. “You’re going to quit the company, aren’t you?”

“Now why would you think that?”

“You’d only let me stay here if you weren’t planning to come back. And why else would you go live with horrible Collin?” Mariah slaps her hard on the breast. Harry flinches with a yelp. “Admit it!”

“Can we discuss this later?” Harry asks through clenched teeth. She reaches between her legs but Mariah grabs her wrist and pins it to the mattress. Her curtain of loose red hair falls in a tent around them.

“You think you’re too good for the Palace company.”

“I think we are all too good for that rot,” Harry replies. “You cannot tell me you enjoy wearing wigs made of dry noodles.”

“If you’re leaving, I’ll come with you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Why not? I’ll quit too. Wherever you sign on next, so shall I.”

Harry sighs. Another company? She might as well lie down and die.

She had once entertained grand designs to become a serious actress celebrated for playing men’s roles.

She’d be Lear and Prospero and Hamlet, strutting around the stage in a fur-trimmed cloak and a scabbard at her waist. She would buy a house in Leicester Square where roses would be left upon the stairs by her many fanatical admirers.

She’d have to hire guards to keep them at bay.

She’d be known for walking her pet tigers on jeweled leashes and the runs of her plays would sell out within the day of their announcement.

But she could never muster the courage to pursue those dreams with any real enthusiasm. She always feared what might happen to her hard-won confidence if she stood face to face with the possibility of real rejection.

“I may not join another company,” she says.

She’s loath to tell Mariah the truth about why she’s quitting.

She can only imagine how Mariah might abuse the knowledge that she is consort to a royal bastard, to say nothing of Harry’s certainty that any secret Mariah possesses would not stay secret for long.

“Then I’ll do that too.” Mariah sits back on Harry’s thighs, rolling the dildo between her hands like it’s flesh.

“Or,” Harry says carefully. “We might spend some time apart.”

Mariah stops her kneading. “Why would you say that?”

“Because we fight all the time and drive each other mad.”

Mariah’s lower lip juts out theatrically. Her cosmetics leave a faint red shadow on her upper lip. “Yes, but then we have incredible sex.”

“Believe me, it’s not not a consideration.”

Mariah crosses her arms in what might be an attempt to look petulant, though it only serves to push her breasts up.

“Is there someone else? I don’t give a fig if you tup other people.

But you can’t leave me for someone else!

” Her voice pitches in a way Harry is sure is all artifice.

Harry sighs, pressing a hand to her eyes.

Harry knows she will never have to explain herself to Mariah—she never has, not since she and Mariah met as children at Pearl’s, both of them daughters of Cyprians.

Harry had been reminded just how exhausting emotional intimacy was when she had taken Miss Sergeant to Pearl’s a week past—it is so much easier to be glib and unavailable, which is all Mariah ever asked.

But Mariah is too comfortable, like a pair of old shoes walked full of holes she can’t throw out for fear that the next ones won’t fit the same.

Better, Harry’s always thought, to sleep with the shoes you know.

At the end of the day, Mariah will keep her warm and sated and will never ask her to be kind or sincere or emotionally intimate.

In return, all Mariah asks is to be the only person to whom Harry ever pays attention.

Which was fine for their youth—even thrilling. Harry had never wanted anything more, and the highs and lows of their turbulent relationship had made her feel desirable.

But it isn’t just the shadow of the prince’s offer that has dulled the shine.

“Who will take care of me if you leave me?” Mariah asks.

“You’ll find someone.”

“They won’t be good to me like you are.”

“I don’t—” Harry stops, the protest dying in her throat. She remembers when Mariah worked for Pearl, the bruises Harry would find on her collarbone when she undressed her, the scratches on her back, and the way she would sometimes wake in the night and find Mariah crying quietly beside her.

She reaches out, but Mariah slaps her hand away, snuffing Harry’s sympathy like a candle. “Ouch!”

“There is someone else, isn’t there?” Mariah demands, pounding her fist against the mattress. “You fancy someone!”

“I do not,” Harry says, though Emily Sergeant’s face rises unbidden to her mind and she cringes.

She does not fancy Emily Sergeant—or rather, she only fancies her in the way anyone with eyes would.

Emily is beautiful. And confusing and strange and surprising, which feels like a different thing entirely.

It is more that an unexpected admiration for Emily Sergeant had snuck up upon her.

Harry had not expected Emily to show up to Regent’s Park at all, let alone on a morning Harry was riding, but arrive Emily had, in a mood as foul as the storm.

She had been flushed and fussy and desperate for Alexander’s attention in a way that made Harry certain that her own pursuit of Alexander was not threatened.

Nothing drives a man away faster than the scent of desperation.

But then, Emily had stayed out in the rain with Harry, frozen and wet and failing to pretend she wasn’t livid. And Harry had made the sort of enormous lapse in judgment that she only ever makes when faced with a beautiful woman in distress and had taken her to Pearl’s.

But Emily hadn’t laughed at Harry for her upbringing, nor made cutting remarks once she knew the nature of her relationship to the teahouse, and that unexpected decency had knocked Harry off course.

That, and Emily’s single-minded determination.

The way she had stood in the rain, defiantly drowning.

And Harry has always loved spirit. It’s why she’s agreed to meet Emily again that week, for an appointment with Harry’s favorite modiste and an evening of debauchery at Ranelagh Gardens.

Harry is going to buy Emily a glass of dark liquor and bribe one of the dancers to come sit in her lap.

And then Collin will be sated by Harry’s efforts and the prince will be impressed by her proximity to gentility and Harry will continue her courtship of Alexander.

Emily is no threat. Just a mild distraction.

Mariah leans over Harry, fuzzy curls tumbling over her shoulder and tickling Harry’s breasts. “Promise me you won’t quit the company.”

“I can’t.”

“Then promise me you’ll tell me before you do.” With her small mouth stained with Harry’s wine and eyes as large as the saucers they had drunk it from, Mariah looks like a puckish imp, wandered out of the forest searching for humans to enchant into giving her their hearts.

And that, Harry thinks, is why she must be rid of Mariah Swift. For though it is so much easier to walk through life, enchanted and oblivious, half asleep under some spell, it’s time to wake up.

She grabs Mariah around the waist and pulls her back down on top of her. Mariah shrieks in delight and surprise, toppling over in what Harry is sure is feigned weakness that allows her to fall directly back onto the dildo.

“Don’t break my dishes,” Harry says, voice cracking as Mariah grips Harry’s hips between her thighs. She grabs Mariah by the ass and presses up into her, and Mariah throws her head back. “And if you find any of my good hairpins, put them on the tray by the washing basin.”

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