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The new steward, short, sturdy and capably silent, wore a gold earring and a pigtail tightly clubbed with black ribbon.
‘Brown was turned ashore here by the British Navy,’ Olivia explained as the door closed and they were left alone.
‘How long did she last before they rumbled her?’
‘Oh! Most people don’t—but I suppose you would. Long enough to become captain of the foretop on a third-rate. And we say “he,” generally. It just fits better, with William.’
‘Yes,’ Viola agreed, moved by a sense of congruence that extended beyond the match of masculine pronoun to given name. ‘Yes, it does.’ Feeling obscurely exposed, she fumbled for an unnecessary handkerchief in the reticule on her lap; its net casing snagged on her crepe-de-chine tea-gown.
‘Aren’t they a nuisance?’ Olivia said. ‘I sometimes think I would prefer our grandmothers’ panniers. So much more room to hide in.’
‘But it would be like walking around inside this sofa.’
Olivia laughed, then looked thoughtful. ‘It would. I wonder, do you—’
But at that moment the footmen brought tea. They too had tell-tale lined faces and long natural queues under their wigs, the second a finned tattoo poking from his lace cuff.
Viola put her head in her hands. ‘Oh, dear me. It’s difficult to miss one of Sebastian’s enthusiasms, of course, but I'd no idea it had gone quite so far.’
‘It was with the greatest of difficulty that I persuaded him that Maria’s replacement must be a landswoman with the usual qualifications of a lady’s maid. He said, they dress one another’s hair, you know, each to his closest friend, that’s called a tie-mate. A sailor could do your Spanish puffs and your Van Dykes and what-have-you, better than any coiffeur!’
She skewered both the Messalinian accent and Sebastian’s impetuous intonation with merciless facility. Viola could not help laughing, but felt a lingering disquiet, and for once she did not scruple to make the unease manifest in a candour less kindly than was usual for her.
‘Don’t you mind?’ she blurted.
‘Mind what?’ asked Olivia, sipping.
‘That my shatter-pated brother fills your house with matelots and runs off to sea himself.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what he expects to find there,’ Olivia replied, with a demure smile that said on the contrary, she knew exactly what he found upon his off-watches in the great cabin of the Phoenix, and he was most welcome to it. She indicated the cake-stand. ‘Macaroon?’
When Viola’s mouth was safely full of almond and dried coconut, Olivia continued, ‘I married under a misconception. But not on a whim.’
Viola could have fancied herself back in the topsy-turvy humours of January. But also, everything had shifted. Whipped by the wind, a budding tendril of honeysuckle beat against the tall bay window; rain plastered cherry blossom to black boughs. She swallowed, not sure whether it was her dismay that made it taste like sand, or the pâtissier's being more accustomed to making hardtack.
‘Nor I,' she said. 'I loved faithfully, or I thought I did. But it was the situation I loved—the long rides, the days in the armoury, the confidences over the billiard-table—and not—not—the man.’ She felt the lace trim of her handkerchief give way under her fingers’ agitation, but she would not weep, she would not.
Olivia leapt from her chaise longue and joined her on the sofa, throwing her arm about Viola’s neck and clasping her hand. The bare skin was disconcertingly cool and soft; the covered radiated warmth through layers of muslin. So, this was the body that Sebastian had known for a fortnight, and then arose, put on his clothes, just like a blackguard sailor in a broadside ballad, and left. Viola imagined herself in her brother’s place, looking down upon Olivia in bed, curls escaping from her cap, one small breast peeping from the open bodice of her nightgown, the sheet tangled and pulled tight over her little mound of belly and plump, slightly parted thighs—it was the stuff of titillating engravings, that men kept in their dressing-rooms and smoking rooms—not Sebastian, not Orsino, but other men, men who would be inclined to think her husband and her brother fools, or worse than fools.
She jumped when Olivia spoke again. ‘My dear, what’s stopping you? You can ride the length and breadth of the five provinces of Illyria, summon the acknowledged champions of the Austrian Empire to fence with you, and play billiards for money all night, if you choose. It would bore me to tears, but in fact it’s practically de rigueur, in a Duchess. It’s only because you’re so unnaturally honest that it upsets you, not to be as much in love with him as you thought you were at first.’
Viola felt quite sick, macaroon rising in her throat, but—unnaturally honest—she persevered. ‘No—that’s not it,' she gulped. 'It’s not the activities themselves, it’s doing them as a man, as a man with his friend, that I miss.’
‘Oh.’ Olivia pressed a soft, dry kiss to the margin where the neckline of her gown and collarbone met. ‘I don’t know—’
‘And—and how ghastly it is when he looks at me and turns away again with a sigh of relief—having to wake up beside his relief, that there’s one woman on earth that he can—that proves him not—not—’
‘Not what he is?’ Olivia leaned back to meet Viola’s eye.
‘Exactly. When all I've ever wanted to be is the boy he fell in love with.’
‘Which is the one thing he can’t let you be—yes, I think I see. Damn. Damn. Is it too early for sherry, do you think?’
‘Never.’
‘Splendid. Give that bell-rope a tug.’
Olivia wriggled back against the arm of the sofa, tucked up her feet and hugged her knees. She put her head on one side and regarded Viola with a quizzical sort of gravity.
‘If it means anything at all, I’ve never been able to see you as anything else.’
Viola bit her lip, not wanting to believe what she so desperately wanted to believe. ‘Than the boy you fell—’
The door opened and Brown entered with a brief, efficient courtesy. ‘Yes, m’lady. Your pleasure?’