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‘She was?’
‘Yes, and I didn’t know what to do, take her to be checked for rabies or go after you and try to bring you to your senses or something else; there were a million ideas flying around in my head at the same time, you know how it is.’
‘I can guess.’
‘But we had already made the signs, and we couldn’t just not go through with it because you had the jitters.’
‘Very admirable. But Eve…’
I should have known any attempt to stop her was in vain.
‘And then we showed up there, and you appeared up on the stage, all dressed in men’s clothes, and gave a speech! A speech! And everybody listened! And cheered! Long live suffragism! Oh Lilly!’
She hugged me again, but this time, I wasn’t trying to fight her off. My attention was focused on Leadfield, who was still standing at the door. There were two red patches on his normally pallid face, and his eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.
‘Dressed in men’s clothes?’ He gasped. ‘Miss Lilly! What in the Lord’s name…!’
‘Not in public,’ I groaned, hurriedly planting a hand over Eve’s over-eager mouth to shut her up. ‘It was charades! We were playing charades.’
‘Oh! I see, Miss.’ The old chap’s eyes retreated into their sockets, his frame visibly relaxing. He shook his head with all the bewilderment a sensible servant could muster at the upper classes' strange habit of dressing up in all sorts of insane clothing for fun. ‘Well, far be it from me, Miss, to begrudge you and your young friends your amusement.’
‘Thank you, Leadfield.’
‘Do you require anything? Master’s old hats and coats? His Indian turban? The old cook’s apron?’
‘No, thank you, we’re not planning on playing charades right now, Leadfield.’
‘I see, Miss. Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.’
‘That would be nice.’
The old servant turned with geological velocity. When he was almost facing the door, he tried to look back over his shoulder and almost toppled over in the process.
‘By the way, Miss, breakfast is almost ready. I shall begin serving in a few minutes, so you won’t have long.’
‘I’ll be down directly,’ I assured him.
When Leadfield was outside and the door was closed, Eve couldn’t hold it in any longer.
‘Vlt? Rrrrmt? Yrntnng dwnn tbrkfst tst dt ths gstl tmts…’
I removed my hand from her mouth, and she grabbed me by the collar of my nightshirt.
‘Lilly! Are you mad? You’re not going down to breakfast to sit and eat those ghastly tomatoes your uncle puts on the table! You’re staying here with us to celebrate, do you hear me? If you try to leave, I’ll personally tie you up and gag you!’
‘Which would rather get in the way of my celebrating,’ I pointed out, squeezing my eyes shut and massaging my skull for a second. Ah! That felt good. My headache was much better already. Apparently, I had the right stomach for this sort of thing. I felt a tinge of pride. ‘You needn't worry, by the way. When Leadfield says he’ll serve immediately, that means he needs ten minutes down the stairs, another fifteen to reach the kitchen, and another twenty to get to the dining room table with all the plates, bowls and platters. We have plenty of time.’
‘So… we can celebrate now?’
‘Yes.’ Sighing, I let myself fall back into bed. ‘We can celebrate.’
‘Topping!’ Two hands took mine in an iron grip and more or less wrenched me out of bed. Three seconds later I was dancing around the room in my nightgown, a trilling Eve as an over-energetic dance partner.
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them! Well, technically it was you, but who cares! We showed them! We showed those chauvinist sons of bitch… sons of bachelors! Huzzah! Huzzah!’
All I saw of the room were a few whirly impressions as Eve spun me around like a top. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of Flora’s anxious, but happy, face, and Patsy’s smile from where she stood in the background, leaning against the window, watching my impromptu dancing lesson. All this twirling around wasn’t doing much good for my woozy head, though. I saw lights beginning to flicker at the edges of my vision.
‘Eve? Eve, stop!’
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them!’
‘Eve? Hello, Eve!’
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them!’
‘Eve! I said stop!’
With all the force I could muster, I dug my heels into the ground. Unfortunately, the force I could muster after a night out on a bender wasn’t all that great. Eve rammed into me and we landed on the floor in a confused heap of cotton gowns, shawls, hats and shouts of ‘We showed them!’ You had to give Eve credit for being determined.
Spitting out the end of a silk shawl with purple peonies printed on it, I sat up.
‘What the dickens did you do that for?’ I challenged Eve. Sitting on her derrière, her crinoline flattened underneath her, she grinned up at me broadly.
‘We showed them! We showed them! We showed them!’
Apparently, she wasn’t quite ready for sensible conversation yet.
Scrambling to my feet, I turned to the other two. Flora gave me a shy smile, and Patsy… Patsy just stood there, leaning against the wall beside the window, in the background, where she was normally least likely to be found. The smile on her face was small, but unmistakably there.
Our eyes met.
She came forward. I came forward. The rest of the room didn’t exist anymore. We met in the middle, and she caught me up in hug so fierce it could have squashed an elephant into mincemeat.
‘Lilly!’ She said.
‘Pfft!’ I said.
‘I never should have doubted you.’
‘Plss let ggg!’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ Relaxing her grip, she stepped back, but I held on to her arms.
‘Don’t be,’ I gasped. ‘I needed that.’
‘Oh Lilly, Lilly.’ If I hadn’t known better, I would have said there were tears twinkling in the corners of Patsy’s eyes. But I did know better. She was much too tough to cry, right? ‘Lilly! You mad, ingenious, wonderful girl! Why didn’t you tell us what you were planning to do?’
Planned? Planned what? Why were they all so pleased with me? And then it struck me. She was convinced I had deliberately called off my participation in the demonstration, to go up on that stage and hold that speech for women’s suffrage.