Page 53 of Lady Like

The cost of bailing Collin out of the Marshalsea is too great for Harry’s limited means, but she manages to scrounge together enough to bribe the turnkey into letting her enter the debtor’s prison to visit her brother.

She has heard stories about the strangeness of the place—that it’s a city more than a prison, with the look of an Oxbridge college from hell, and businesses and gangs and a social infrastructure all its own.

But seeing it and knowing that her brother is here among all these shrunken, huddled figures, resigned to their fate more often than fighting it, makes her feel ill.

As she stands outside the prison’s taproom, sweating in the heat, waiting for her brother to be brought to her, all she can think of is how much she wishes Emily were with her.

When Collin is brought out, he is not in chains, though Harry realizes as soon as she sees him that prison trappings would have been less alarming than seeing her brother look so himself, but undone.

The dark shadow of a beard creeps across his jaw, and Harry can see a crust of dirt around his ears and the collar of his shirt.

His clothes are stained, and one arm of his coat has been ripped nearly off.

Harry goes to him, though neither of them reach to embrace, which means they end up walking across the dining room in awkward proximity.

They sit on opposite sides of the scarred pub table.

It wobbles on uneven legs when Collin folds his hands upon the top.

Harry can’t think of a thing to say. All this way, all that money, and now she’s here and she has no words.

Around them, residents of the Marshalsea play cards, drink, chat, and laugh like it is any barroom rather than a place they are forced to stay, subjected to thumbscrews and starvation and rats eating through their flesh at night.

“Are you hurt?” she finally asks, and Collin shakes his head. “Or hungry? Can I buy you a drink?”

“I didn’t want you to come here.” Collin’s hands flex into fists. Dark crescents of dirt ring his nails.

“Why? Because you’re guilty?”

Collin dips his chin. “In so many words.”

“I’m going to get you out of here.”

“With what money? Rochester owes money to half the men in London after the Derby, which means I owe half the men in London. And the amount compounds every day. Debt is not a hole one easily digs oneself out of.”

“They do if their father is the sodding prince regent.”

A vein in Collin’s forehead throbs. “Please don’t involve him. I cannot imagine I would fall under his definition of respectable if I must ask for an advance on my inheritance to be bailed out of debtors prison. It would negate the inheritance from which I’d have to borrow against.”

“Then he’ll lend it to me, ” Harry says. “He needn’t know it’s for your bail.” Collin raises his head, but before he can get too drunk on hope, she adds, “But you have to do something for me in return.”

Collin nods. “That’s fair.”

“It’s not small.”

“Neither is getting me out of prison.”

Harry takes a breath. “I need you to marry Emily Sergeant.”

Collin looks momentarily confused—he likely thought she was going to ask him for his house or pocket watch or to stand on a box at Speakers’ Corner and declare Harry had and always would be right about everything.

Then comprehension dawns across his face, and his eyebrows lift. “Are you two speaking again?”

“Bit more than that.”

“Good.” Collin nods. “You’ve been mooning over her for weeks.”

“I’m not marrying Alexander Bolton,” Harry says.

“Thank God.”

“And neither is Miss Sergeant. But she needs to marry someone, and I think that should be you.”

“Harry, I’m not marrying your lover so you can keep sleeping with her.”

“Then you can stay in prison and lose your inheritance.” She leans forward, elbows on the table, which nearly collapses on its shaky legs.

“It’s not just for me—you’d be saving her from a dangerous marriage to a dangerous man.

If it also means she has a husband who is tolerant of her particular proclivities and allows me to remain in her life, well that’s good too. ”

“And who will you marry?” Collin asks. “In order to collect the inheritance you’re borrowing against.”

“I’ll ask His Majesty to pair me off with someone. Maybe he can find a nice sodomite among the nobility and we can disguise each other.”

“And you’d be happy with that?” Collin asks. “As would Miss Sergeant?”

What she would be happy with is a summer with Emily.

Another year to court her in every season, with snow in her hair and her face splashed with autumnal colors.

She wants to hold Emily’s hand in a public square and kiss her after performances and wear her ring and introduce her to the prince.

What she wants is a different world. But she says to Collin, “It’s the best I can hope for. ”

“What does she want?”

“She wants out of her marriage contract with a villain.” Harry presses her palms into her knees. Then, since they’re airing grievances, decides to ask as well, “Why didn’t you tell me about your business?”

“Because this”—he raises his hands to indicate the Marshalsea, but also seemingly his existence as a whole—“is not how I hoped my life might turn out. I wanted to be better than where I came from. I wanted to do better than…”

He trails off, but Harry picks up for him. “Better than Mother, you mean? Better than me? She wasn’t ashamed of who she was or the life she lived. Neither am I. You’re the only one who finds where you come from disgraceful.”

“I know,” Collin replies. “Maybe this is my punishment for that. I tried to make a legitimate business for myself, but it’s just so bloody hard to outrun where you came from.

It’s hard to get a job without references and apprenticeships or a father to buy you a post. I could do the bookkeeping without a license or an exam, just had to be good at figures and pay out on time.

” He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“It’s just in our blood, isn’t it? People like us aren’t meant to succeed. ”

“No,” Harry says firmly. “You can blame many things on our mother, but not your own bad decisions. Those are yours, Collin. You cannot live your whole life defined by the way we grew up, even if it’s just comparing yourself against her.

She’s not a point of reference for your self-worth. And neither am I.”

Collin hangs his head, and Harry prepares for a retort. But all he says in return is, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Two sentiments Harry has never heard Collin express, let alone sound so sincerely like he means them. His fists are pressed together on the table, so rather than take his hands, she stacks her own fists on top of his. He smiles, eyes still down.

“I’m going to talk to our father,” Harry says. “I’ll ask him for the money without revealing why.”

“Please, don’t,” Collin says. “You have no idea the sums Alexander is holding over my head.”

“And then you’ll propose to Miss Sergeant,” Harry continues like he hadn’t spoken. “And she will say yes. Then she’ll be rid of her undesirable fiancé back in Sussex and you’ll be free and I’ll be married off to someone to be determined.”

Collin sighs heavily. “And that’s the best we can hope for?”

“Yes,” Harry says, for she can see no other way forward, no matter how many times she turns the situation over in her head. “It’s all that’s out there for people like us.”

The corner of Collin’s mouth turns up at his own words parroted back at him. “Bastards and Sapphists?” he asks, and Harry smiles too.

“I’d drink to that.”