Page 37 of Lady Like

Emily imagines Mariah Swift’s room will be an elegant boudoir—draped in velvet the same red as her hair, strands of false pearls and fringe dripping from the golden furniture. Nothing will be as expensive as it looks, all the adornments bearing the false elegance of a theater set.

Instead, the room is cluttered and cozy. There are still embers glowing in the fire, easily revived, and though there’s certainly too much furniture for a space so small, it makes the room feel pleasantly busy, like arriving at a party and finding it already full of friends.

Mariah takes off her wrap and sits in front of the dressing table to unpin her hair, while Emily runs her fingers along the curiosities laid out on the windowsill and hearth.

There is a collection of gentleman’s facial hair, as well as several wigs, displayed on stuffed head forms, and a box of false jewels.

Lifting the lid on it feels like opening a chest of pirate treasure.

There is a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, each bound in its own volume.

The spines of As You Like It and Twelfth Night are broken, but the history plays and a few of the tragedies look almost new.

A folded broadside is tucked into the corner of a mirror, along with a poem carefully copied onto a sheet of vellum and tacked on the side of the wardrobe.

“Do you like Sappho too?” Emily calls to Mariah, tapping the spot where the poem’s attribution is written.

Mariah spits out a mouthful of pins. “What?”

“Sappho. The poem.”

“Oh, that’s Harry’s.”

“Harry’s?” Emily repeats.

“It’s all Harry’s. I’ve been staying in her room while she’s at her brother’s.”

“This is all Harry’s?” Inexplicably, Emily’s skin breaks out in gooseflesh.

She turns a slow circle, looking around the room with new eyes.

Suddenly it feels more like a museum, every object a meaningful representation of some new facet of its owner.

And she wants to know it all. She wants to open every book, count the dog-eared pages and the scored lines.

She wants to put her hands into the pockets of the coats and find loose change and old handkerchiefs, half-smoked cigars and probably a wad of dog hair.

She wants to put her mouth on the chipped rims of the cups and use the cosmetics. Run the brushes through her hair.

“Not for long, now that she’s quit—it’s on loan from the theater.” Mariah stands from the dressing table and goes behind a screen to change. “Pour yourself a drink,” she calls. “Harry doesn’t believe in tea or I’d offer you some.”

Emily opens the cabinet in the corner where the dishes and cutlery are stacked and stares at the mismatched tumblers. There’s a faint smear of rouge on the rim of one, and she picks it up, holding it up to the firelight for a better look at the color.

“Aren’t you darling?”

Emily turns. Mariah stands in front of the screen, draped in a dressing gown that looks like liquid metal poured over her frame, so closely does it fit her form. She drags her hair over one shoulder, then gestures to the sofa. “Won’t you sit down, Miss Sergeant?”

Emily tumbles backward into the settee, and Mariah comes to perch beside her.

There is a patch of makeup she failed to wipe away just below her ear, and Emily thinks of Harry on stage, blood running down her face.

The way she tipped her chin so the gaslights wouldn’t hollow her cheekbones, the faint smirk playing about her lips, even in her own climactic death, like she was about to turn to the audience and say Isn’t this silly, to pretend?

The deliciousness of being in her confidence.

She thinks of Harry when she had first seen her riding, those same athletic shoulders and audacious thighs that had strutted around the stage tonight, offensively untalented but having a good time nonetheless.

How delightful it would be, Emily thinks, to see her every night.

To share a stage with her. To share anything with Harriet Lockhart.

Oh God, why hadn’t she stayed with Harry?

The champagne has started to wear off, and her momentary irritation at Harry with it.

Harry would have apologized if given the chance, and Emily would have admitted she was just looking for a reason to snap back.

They could have sat upon that balcony all night, beneath painted stars and the shadow of an imagined castle, Harry’s head resting on her knees.

Why hadn’t she rubbed the snarls out of Harry’s short hair, where the blood had clotted?

But instead, she is here, and is determined to prove to herself…though what and to whom, she isn’t sure. That she can make decisions for herself without catastrophic consequences? That she can drink liquor and let down her guard and kiss someone without the world falling down around her?

She can. She will.

Before she can think any more about it, she lurches forward and presses her mouth to Mariah’s. She has lately felt so hungry to be touched, to lean her cheek into the warm curve of another’s hand— oh that I were a glove —that she expects it to feel like waking from a deep sleep.

But it’s cold and impersonal. Closer kin to a stamp on a document than a tender caress. Mariah’s skin is slick, and smells of grapeseed and tea tree, and the sensation moves Emily not at all.

Mariah’s lips flutter beneath hers, and she realizes Mariah is laughing. She puts her hands on Emily’s shoulders and pushes her away. “Oh good lord, please, don’t.”

Emily’s courage evaporates, and she slides to the opposite end of the sofa. “Forgive me,” she says quietly. “But I thought…is that not why you’ve invited me here?”

Mariah laughs. Not unkindly, but not not either. “Of course not.”

“Then why?”

“Because I’m cross with Harry for quitting the company,” Mariah replies. “Though I admit, I didn’t think it would be quite so easy to steal her girl.”

Emily blushes, so suddenly and deeply she feels as though her skin is vibrating like the surface of a pond after a stone is tossed in. “I’m…she’s…what do you mean?”

“She’s quit the Palace company,” Mariah says.

“That’s not what…Harry and I are not…we have no…”

“Ah yes, those coherent protestations are certainly believable.” Mariah unearths a pipe from a heap on the side table and lights it with one of the candles.

The spicy smell of tobacco perfumes the air.

“However platonic you may consider your relationship, it’s obvious that Harry is smitten with you.

And from the way you’ve been looking around this place like it’s a temple to her, I suspect it’s mutual. ”

Is it? She certainly likes Harry. She likes the things they do together—though primarily, she likes them because they are done with Harry.

She likes the sound of Harry’s voice. The shape of her mouth.

Those absurd biceps and muscled thighs. She likes the way Harry needles her.

The way she gets under Emily’s skin. The way she listens to the things Emily has to say, and remembers them.

The way that, when they had heard a band play in the music hall, Harry had thrust her fist in the air in delight when the cymbal was struck.

The quickness with which she reaches for a joke and shares her life and books and food and ideas, the confidence with which she carries herself, the way the whole world reforms around her when they are together and…

Oh hell. Surely not.

“So she’ll spend the night sweating about you being here with me,” Mariah continues.

“And since she’s Harry, she won’t ask you about it, and you’ll be too shy to clarify, because that’s presumptuous.

” Mariah pulls her feet onto the sofa and rests them on Emily’s lap.

The slit of her robe falls open, exposing her pale calf.

“Would you like me to tell you every embarrassing story from her youth? She went through a period where she asked everyone to call her Byron and tried to run away to Switzerland.”

“I can’t be in love with Harry,” Emily says quietly.

“Why not?”

“Because I am supposed to marry a wealthy man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”

Mariah raises a drawn-on eyebrow. “It is?”

Emily stares at her.

What does she want? Truly? It had been so long since her own desires factored into her plans for the future.

She wants a second chance. She wants to go back in time and stop worrying what everyone else wants of her and start listening to her own heart.

She wants to stop punishing herself because the rest of the world is.

She wants not to fear her own heart so desperately, certain it will only lead to her ruin.

She wants to be entirely herself, not a shadow version hidden behind the girl she thought would be most appealing to men, and be loved for it.

Loved and desired for who she is. She wants to know herself and trust herself well enough to think of loving Harry and not have it frighten her.

She wants to come home to someone who makes her feel like a bottle of champagne.

Suddenly her eyes flood with tears.

Mariah sighs. “Come now. Don’t cry. It’s not so terrible, is it? You could do far worse in love than Harriet Lockhart.”

“But I cannot love—” How to finish? A woman? An actress? A reprobate? Someone I cannot bring home to my parents? Anyone less suitable than Robert Tweed? Her entire future is lost if her heart’s compass spins its needle to Harry.

But then again.

What had ever appealed to her about a life as some man’s docile wife other than it would satisfy her compulsive need to please everyone else before herself?

Life is an ocean, but love does not have to be an anchor weighing her down.

It can be salt enough to float. She can drift through easily on the current, floating on her back, face turned to the sky.

She can let the light flood her skin once again.

“If I am in love with Harry,” she says quietly, pushing a tear off her cheek, “what am I to do?”

“Oh, you sweet thing,” Mariah says, and blows a ring of smoke into the air between them. “You really are thick as shit.”