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‘No, Beatrice, you must trust me. I know of what I speak.’
‘I’m sure that you do. You were right about the carriage ride, Briggs. You were. It was very hard for him. But look at how he has bloomed here in many ways. Exploring the city delights him, he adores the town house, his tantrums have slowed, the new environment is actually quite engaging for him, and it is clear he takes deep joy in it. So yes, you could’ve protected him from the carriage ride, but you would have also stopped him from experiencing all of this. And what a terrible tragedy it would’ve been. And think... If you would continue to protect me in all the ways my brother wished you to... We would’ve been protecting me from something that made me very happy.’
He shifted, his stomach going sour. ‘I do not know that I do you any favours.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You do. I feel... Connected. To my body. To you. I do not know if I can explain. I spent my childhood very much as an observer. I felt as if I was not part of my family. I was always at home. While Hugh was away at school, I was at home. While he was away in London for the Season, I was at home. I was like a ghost in that house. My parents often acted as if I weren’t there. Unless I was having some sort of episode.
‘Sometimes my mother went away for the Season. My father would bring mistresses into the house, under the guise of...them being governesses for me. He did not speak to me. He did not... He acted as if I wouldn’t tell. My mother wept outside my room often. Sometimes for me. Sometimes for herself. And I always felt as if I was pressing at a glass box, outside of all of it, controlled by everyone around me, and yet somehow completely distant from them. Closed off.
‘Sometimes I would be left at home with only a governess, while they went to London for the Season, and the doctor said that my lungs would not be able to handle the city. And I learned to go places in my mind. I learned to dream. To read to find something happier than what I had in reality. But... Briggs, you must know that is such a miserable thing.
‘And with you, I feel everything. When we are not separate. We are not distant. It is a revelation. It makes me feel like myself. In a good way. Not in the way I said the other morning. That I did not wish to be Beatrice. You make me feel as if Beatrice is a good thing to be. And I am always astonished by that. And I should take this feeling over protection always. Again and again.’ She sighed heavily. ‘You are a man who enjoys pain, and if you enjoy giving it you know someone else must enjoy receiving it. It is a balance. It is...life. How do you not see that sometimes to r
each beautiful things, you must endure pain?’
‘Because these are games, Beatrice. Games played in the bedroom, and they are not true to life.’
Her eyes were soft and filled with pity. ‘They are not just games. Not to me. There’s something so much more.’
‘Beatrice,’ he said. ‘I have learned how to... Be the man that I must be. I have learned that I cannot simply... That I cannot simply follow every whim inside myself. There are places where I can be all that I feel.’
‘Brothels,’ she said.
‘In the past that has been true. With women I have a transaction with, there is a certain expectation. I can meet them. And they meet mine. But I do not wonder about behaving this way to all and sundry.’
‘Quite apart from anything else it would be very shocking,’ she said.
‘Yes. You cannot control the way others will treat you. But you do not need to needlessly expose yourself.’
‘I do not wish to see William crushed.’
‘I do not wish to see William crushed at all,’ Briggs said. ‘I would see him protected. From anything and everything. The best way to do that is to teach him how to... How to look like everybody else.’
He knew the pain of standing out. That boy...he had rallied other children to come after him whenever he ventured outside Maynard Park.
Eventually he had stopped leaving.
Eventually he had decided he preferred being alone.
It was Hugh who had taught him how to behave.
‘Don’t talk about flowers all the time, Briggs.’
‘I don’t. All the time.’
‘No, but too often. And facts about soil and sun and things other boys don’t care about.’
‘I do not know what else to speak of.’
Hugh had looked confounded for a moment. ‘Do you like the look of a woman’s breasts?’
Shock and shame had poured over him in equal measure, as he was still coming to grips with the shapes his fantasies were beginning to take. But that at least was an easy answer to give. ‘Yes.’
‘That is something all those lot are interested in. If you can’t think of something else to say, extol the virtues of a woman’s figure.’
Be shocking. Be charming. He had learned how to do that. He had learned to be a rake.
And it had served him well.
