A Restless Truth

Memory plagued her, gutted her, snarled at her heels.

She hadn't anticipated Maud Blyth. She didn't know how anyone ever could.

Violet had been neglecting her strumpetly duties when it came to Lord Albert. She had no idea how really promiscuous women kept strings of lovers all at one time. Surely one would need vast organizational skills, or a secretary.

Maud, darling," she said, very soft. "You're worth more than this quest. I've told you that all along.

Maud said, “I’m a what?

A person is an act, Maud. A person is a theatre. You can change set dressing depending on the season. The real parts are the parts that aren't meant to be seen.

She should have been feeding Maud scraps of herself, seducing her with sweet mouthfuls of truth into believing that they were growing close - she should have done the dance of intimacy, keeping herself in the lead and safe inches of space between them.

Violet might wear her sparkling recklessness well, but beneath it she was careful, careful, careful. Maud was not; but she would learn to be. She would choose to be, as she chose every day to be generous and kind and all the other things that defied the coiled snake of her inherited nature.

Hawthorn waved that aside. “My sister…” He grimaced. “She was a little like you.” “Really?” “I would have followed her anywhere,” he said. “Into any battle.

Mrs. Sinclair says you look at the world and decide you can live with it or decide you can’t. And if you can’t, you decide what you’re prepared to do about it.

The man who cleans windows deserves a bit of pleasure in his life just as much as the man who owns them.

And maybe Violet would again be easy to abandon, and maybe she'd end up with yet more rings on her hand to remind her of it. [Maud] absently touched her breastbone, as if aware of the locket's absence.  Better thumb rings, surely, than jewelry worn as a reminder that everyday you ached and loved and settled for less than what you wanted.

What is it?" Maud said. 'Nothing' was on Violet's tongue, but Maud had requested truth from her, tonight. So Violet reached for Maud's hand, lifted the inner wrist to her mouth, and kissed it. It wasn't and answer. It was truth, withheld. Maud smiled, and in her smile was the fact that she'd noticed and let it go.

when you’re in a room I don’t want to look anywhere else

Mrs. Caroline Blackwood—fair, fussily dressed, and with a figure that put Maud unfortunately in mind of chicken bones—and this lady’s son, Clarence, a young man desperately in need of a portion more chin

Oh my heavens,” Maud heard herself squeak, and sagged back against the door. She felt a ludicrous pang of disappointment. Firstly, that she had squeaked. Secondly, that she hadn’t seized the opportunity to say Fuck. She’d never been game enough on any lesser occasion, and surely this was the most obscenity-deserving situation she would ever find herself in.

She swallowed, hard, and reminded herself that she’d done this before. This was what she did. Violet knew how to be exactly what a person wanted her to be, between the sheets. And these were classic, well-worn roles. The blushing ingénue and the rake willing to debauch her. Pleasure was pleasure. Violet didn’t have to trust Maud entirely to do this. In fact she should keep the dregs of her anger, coat herself in it, like licking one’s fingers before extinguishing a candle flame.

The head of security for the Lyric had a sturdy figure and a kind face with a reddish moustache that was doing its best to engulf his upper lip, as though he'd inherited it from a larger relative and was waiting to grow into it.

It is rather a lot to tell," she said. "But I suppose I should start with the parrot.

You have a real knack for beating people around the head with the truth like it's an umbrella, did you know that?

A pause, in which the table warily weighed the question of whether Lord Hawthorn was familiar with the concept of humour.

Ross named a price. Maud winced. Hawthorn named a much lower one. Ross called Hawthorn an inbred skinflint arsehole, pointed out that he was including the suitcase, and lowered his own price by an infinitesimal margin. Hawthorn, wearing the same expression he'd directed at the chessboard, called Ross a bloodsucking Mediterranean gutter-rat.

Mrs. Vaughn laughed. It was a comfortable chuckle, so warm and soft that you wanted to cut off a slice and spread it with butter.

Maud poured more coffee for them both. In between stories Violet sampled all the jams on the table and had a brief, passionate affair with the ginger marmalade.

Power you’re not entitled to. That you haven’t earned.” “Most power’s unearned.” Ross was sitting forward, tense. “What did Lord Arsehole over there ever do but be born to the right parents? What did he do to earn all those stewards tugging at their forelocks, or being a lordship instead of a simple sir, or any of this luxury we’re parking our arses on and pouring down our throats?

A few paragraphs into that one Maud’s voice thinned into nothing and she had to put it down; she couldn’t stop thinking about Robin and Edwin, which was frankly horrifying.