Page 44 of Lady Like

Harry is not usually inclined toward philosophical musings, but the chief question occupying her mind as she sorts through the contents of her room— What is the point of anything anymore? —skews distinctly esoteric.

Emily is gone. Harry hasn’t seen Alexander since she turned down his proposal, which effectively severed both their relationship and any chance of her qualifying for her father’s inheritance.

She’s been studiously avoiding Mariah—easier now that they don’t have to share a stage each night, though it’s kept her from Pearl’s as well.

Collin has been absent too, disappearing from the house for long stretches of time and returning at odd hours, lingering just long enough to change his clothes or demolish a block of cheese and bread standing up in the kitchen.

And now that Harry has quit the Palace, there is no theatrical disaster with which to distract herself each night.

The sudden loneliness overwhelms her, in the same way she is overwhelmed by the length of life.

All too big and not enough at the same time.

Not until these weeks with Emily had Harry begun to understand the difference between company and companionship.

Even Havoc has little use for her, as he’s tall enough to knock plates off the counter and finish whatever food Collin leaves behind.

She had brought the dog with her in hopes he might be excited by a new location and all the many crumbs that could be snuffled out from between the cushions of the sofa, but instead he’s fallen asleep in front of the wardrobe, his snores sounding like a teakettle full of soup.

It is difficult to separate the oddments she wants to keep from the oddments to be thrown out—the importance of every item questioned in the way it only is when being fitted for moving house.

So many of the things she has accumulated, which once felt precious, suddenly seem silly and unimportant.

Empty bottles of scent she thought she may one day find a use for.

Flowers given her by a countess she had bedded during a run of As You Like It, dried upside down in her wardrobe.

A silk handkerchief of her mother’s which, as a youth, Harry had carried in her pocket every day. Pointless sentimentality, all of it.

Harry makes quick work of the room, only pausing occasionally to massage her sore shoulder.

The doctor prescribed rest, but instead she has been wallowing, which may have made things worse due to how often she sprawled in bed with no regard for her injury.

She has fallen into a deep pit of self-pity, and upon reaching the bottom, has no inclination to do anything other than find a spade and keep tunneling.

As Harry starts plucking strands of jewelry from a tangled heap, trying to remember if any of the jewels are real, Havoc sits up suddenly and lets out one loud woof. Harry thinks he must have woken himself from a dream, but then she hears the door open.

“Harry?” Mariah’s voice calls.

Havoc leaps to his feet and dashes to greet her, tail thwacking Harry on the back of the head as he passes.

Harry turns back to the knotted necklaces, pulling two apart with more force than is necessary. “Did you come to gloat?”

“Gloat?” Mariah repeats. “About what? I heard you were hurt.”

Harry still doesn’t look up. She’s certain Mariah is reclining against the wall and wearing something cut low. “Yes, well I’m much better now. It was only a separated shoulder. Now that you’ve seen for yourself I still have both arms, do your gloating and then leave me be.”

“What am I meant to gloat over?” Mariah asks. Havoc grumbles his support, though Harry is sure it’s because Mariah is scratching his ears.

“You got Miss Sergeant to go home with you.” Harry abandons the knot of jewelry and tosses the whole thing into a pile she has mentally labeled rubbish, then turns to the door.

Havoc is standing between Mariah’s legs as she massages his head.

The movement jiggles her breasts, which are in danger of spilling out of her low neckline.

“Go on,” Harry says, climbing to her feet and squaring her shoulders like a boxer. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Oh hell, are you still jealous?” Mariah lets out a tinkling laugh.

“I assumed the two of you would have worked things out by now. I had no idea it would eat at you for this long.” Mariah slides her hands under Havoc’s ears and flips them back and forth.

Havoc lets out a contented rumble. “I didn’t know you had been thinking of us together all this time.

Did you imagine it? She and I, lying in your bed? ”

“Don’t—”

“Have you been sleepless over thoughts of where we touched each other?”

“Yes, see, this is exactly the gloating I meant.”

Mariah laughs again, disentangling herself from Havoc and picking her way across the room to stand before Harry. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you.”

“We aren’t speaking,” Harry mumbles. “She found out I had designs on the same fellow as her and thought I’d been having her on.”

“Were you?”

“At first,” Harry says. “But things changed.”

“And you just let her go?”

Harry bristles at Mariah’s derision. “I’m not going to crawl back to her with protestations of why she owes me forgiveness she does not want to give. I hurt her. She owes me nothing.”

Mariah rolls her eyes. “And here I thought you loved her.”

“I did,” Harry says. “I do. Not that it’s any of your concern. But it’s because I love her that I’m letting her go.”

Harry tries to move to the wardrobe, but Mariah leans backward against the door, pinning it shut and keeping herself between it and Harry. “God, what sentimental amatory novel did you get that tripe from?”

“If you had ever loved anyone you might understand,” Harry retorts.

“I love you .”

“You do not.”

Mariah gasps, slapping an open palm to Harry’s chest. “How dare you!”

“You do not love me, you want to possess me,” Harry says.

Mariah crosses her arms, bosom spilling over her neckline like bread rising over the lip of the pan. “What’s the difference?”

Harry throws up her hands. “And that alone is proof.”

“Of what?”

“That you do not love me. Mariah, we are so badly suited to each other. We both know it and we are neither of us happy when we are with each other. We’re just comfortable being miserable together.”

“What’s so wrong with that? God.” Mariah flops down onto the bed, sending a pile of Harry’s shirts cascading to the floor. “You’re so cruel to me.”

“I am not being cruel, I’m being honest.”

“Well then be a little less honest!” Mariah picks up a pillow and flings it at Harry, who bats it out of the air. “If I’m so horrid—”

“I did not say that—”

“Why invite me in your home and your bed and your life?”

“Because we’re friends—”

“Don’t patronize me.” Mariah flings another pillow, then a third, which Harry manages to catch. “If I didn’t let you use me for your pleasure, you’d have cut me loose long ago.”

“And you’re only with me because of some bizarre desire to own me so no one else can.”

“Yes, well that’s because everyone likes you, but you’re the only person who likes me.” Having no more cushions, Mariah throws herself across the mattress, rolling over with her face to the wall.

Harry considers throwing the pillow at her in retaliation, but as this is the closest she and Mariah have ever come to a true conversation about their relationship, she doesn’t want to risk undermining it. “Well, if you were a bit nicer.”

“And let everyone use me as they please?” Mariah sits up and glares at Harry.

Her long, loose hair flops over her face, and she swats it away.

“I was at Pearl’s too long to fall for that.

I must protect myself from the people who would misuse me if given a chance, and love and sentiment and that tripe are not compatible with that.

” Her hair falls in her face again, and this time she does not touch it.

Her shoulders sink, and she drops her head to her chest. “I thought you of all people understood that.”

“I do,” Harry says.

But Mariah shakes her head. “No you don’t. It’s never been the same for you. You always had your mother to shield you.”

“My mother never shielded me.”

“She kept you from the work,” Mariah says. “You never had to do what I did to survive.”

Silence falls between them. Havoc slinks across the room and rests his melon-sized head on Mariah’s knee.

“Have I?” Harry asks quietly.

Mariah sniffs, though her eyes are dry. “Have you what?”

“Have I taken advantage of you?”

“Yes.” Mariah rests her hand on Havoc’s back. “But only because I let you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Go on.” Mariah laughs. “Neither of us have used the other well.”

“I am though,” Harry says. “Truly sorry.”

“Oh shut it.” Mariah swipes a hand under Havoc’s chin, then wipes the collected drool on Harry’s bedclothes. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“About what happened between myself and your Miss Sergeant.” Mariah tips her face up to Harry, batting her eyelids. “Aren’t you gasping to know?”

“No, please, don’t.” Harry presses her face to the door of the wardrobe. “If you have any compassion for me—”

“Oh for God’s sake, you milksop! Miss Sergeant and I never slept together.”

Harry turns sharply. “What?”

Mariah leans back on the bed, kicking her legs like a delighted child. “Did you really think she was my sort of girl? I invited her home because I was cross with you for quitting the company. I never intended to bed her.”

Harry doesn’t trust her own relief—nor, more important, does she truly trust Mariah. Besides, what does it matter to her anymore whom Emily goes home with? She was never Harry’s to lose. But still she must know. “You never did anything—”

“She tried to kiss me.” Mariah laughs. “It was as romantic as snogging a wall.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“Why would I lie about that ?”

“I don’t know, you like to lie.”

“It’s your choice if you believe me, but it’s the truth.

” Mariah lies back on the bed again, with less theatrics this time, though she does spread her hair over the mattress in a corona, then stares up at the hangings.

“She’s a fool for letting you go. She of all people should know that wanting to marry someone and being in love with them are two different things. ”

Harry frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

“Have you been in bed so long you haven’t heard?” Mariah presses her hands together over her breasts, like a heroine died tragically lying in a coffin. “Your little Miss Sergeant is a murderess.”

It takes Harry a moment to realize what Mariah has said. The word feels so divorced from the Emily she knows it is hard to match them. Then she realizes, and the room seems to tilt around her, like a ship in a swell. She almost sits down. “How do you know about that?”

“So you have heard.”

“Mariah.” Harry drops to her knees beside the bed and seizes Mariah by the hand. “Tell me.”

“I was at an assembly dance last week and someone told me there was a woman who had come to London to find a husband after she killed her fiancé. Only to then discover it’s our own Miss Emily Sergeant.

” When Harry doesn’t reply right away, Mariah pokes her in the stomach.

“Are you listening? I said she’s disgraced. ”

“I have to see her.”

“I thought you were finished.”

“We are, but I have to tell her it wasn’t me. I don’t want her to think I had some vengeful intention to ruin her because of what happened between us.”

“No, don’t—”

But Harry is already on her feet, batting her way through the detritus of her worldly possessions in search of what she needs. “Will you take the dog back to Collin’s for me?”

“Why can’t you?”

“I have to go to her. Have you seen my dinner jacket? The one with no cigar burns.”

“Wait!” Mariah sits up quickly. “I didn’t tell you that so you’d go running back to her!

What happened to loving her and letting her be?

” When Harry doesn’t reply, Mariah grabs her arm, pulling her back to the bed.

“Harry please.” Mariah spreads her legs over the edge pulling Harry in between them and wrapping her arms around Harry’s waist. She presses her head to Harry’s stomach and looks up at her, eyes wide. “Please don’t leave me.”

“Do you really think there is anything left here?” Harry asks. “For either of us.”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t think you will be for long. But this isn’t love, Mariah. This isn’t company or friendship or happiness or anything. It makes us both so terribly unhappy.”

“Oh God.” Mariah drops her head. “Am I the one you’re loving and letting go?”

“Let’s say that.”

Mariah lets out a sigh, so long and heavy that her breasts leaven again. “Fine,” she says at last. “I will take your dog to your brother’s, but I will make him tip me.”

“As you should.” Harry kisses her quickly on the cheek, then returns to the wardrobe. “Now, have you seen any of my trousers?”