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“You agree.” She pounced.
James shrugged. “I’m not implying he should have. You didn’t tell him why you were so frightened of that dog.”
“It wasn’t the time.”
James tilted his head. “You get to decide when to disclose something deeply personal. And he doesn’t?”
“It’s not the same.” She tried to think why. “He wasn’t being truthful.”
“Hmm.” James brushed a rose petal with his index finger. “Is it that he wasn’t being truthful? Or that the truth is more complex than you’d assumed?”
“Oh, God.” She slumped.
I live as a man, and…
“That. The latter. Obviously. But I feel…I don’t know how I feel. Intimidated, maybe.” She rubbed her temple. “As if my brain was too small and suddenly stretched, but still doesn’t fit enough new thoughts.” She frowned. “That fellow wasn’t correct? About the five ounces?”
“That fellow wasn’t correct about bollocks, which weigh about a half ounce each, in case you ever hear differently.” James waved his hand. “He probably read some drivel in a science column. I’ve looked inside all sorts of heads. There aren’t any consistent features that meaningfully distinguish male brains from female brains, or, for that matter, English brains from Irish brains from Zulu brains, not so far as I can see.”
She bit her lip. Her brain wasn’t literally stretching, but she could feel it working.
She’d resented her treatment as a woman on countless occasions. She’d imagined what she’d have done differently if she’d been born a man. She’d never imagined becoming a man.
How had Griffith imagined it? How had he dared? Why?
“James,” she said, and paused. “Is Griffith one of many?”
“One of many handsome men?” He shot her an aggrieved look. “No, if I recall, he’s singular in that respect.”
“James,” she sighed. “My very handsome friend. You know what I’m asking.”
He relented. “It’s hard to take a count. You do understand how risky it is, to speak of these things.”
She swallowed. In speaking, Griffith had put the life he’d built for himself in her hands. She’d been so focused on her own discomfiture that she’d failed to appreciate the enormity of it.
She closed her hands tight in her lap.
James glanced up at the clouds, faded now, all shades of gray against midnight blue.
“You’ve heard of female husbands?” he asked.
She gave a slight shake of her head.
“People raised as girls who live and marry as men. They’re caught out from time to time, and it makes a sensation in the papers. Usually, the wives had no idea, or so the story goes.”
“The marital relations, though.” She flushed. “Aren’t they…definitive?”
“Now we’re getting technical.” James narrowed his eyes. “Let’s discuss the bedchamber another day. In any case, it’s all up for debate. We can’t ever know from those accounts what either spouse really thought of themselves, or each other, or their marriage.”
The breeze stirred, perfumed with rose.
She wasn’t—she couldn’t be—now, at this very moment…But she was.
She was fantasizing about marriage with Kit Griffith.
Not an older don determined to mold her into the perfect helpmeet, to make her his doormat and his mirror.
A shameless rake tempted to touch her, to stroke her hair, to kiss her lips and….
