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“Miss Crowley, I would hate to think I had given you the wrong impression—“
“Oh no, Miss Lister. I find you endlessly fascinating and compelling but my heart is spoken for—if the object of the stupid thing’s affection reciprocates or not is besides the point, it will not settle for anyone else. You might consider my interest in you to be professional.”
“Professional, Miss Crowley? I hadn’t taken you as a woman of profession,” Anne tipped her head to the side and furrowed her brow, studying Miss Crowley.
Miss Crowley smiled wide and slightly vicious, showing crooked, unnaturally white teeth, but Anne was transfixed by her sunglasses, the way the corner of her eyes crinkled visibly beneath them, the mystery of what lay behind the smoked glass. The smile was meant as a distraction. Anne surprised herself by allowing it. She reached out and tapped the sharp line of Miss Crowley’s jaw with her knuckles and the smile softened to something fond.
They sat on the sofa in a comfortably brooding silence, near perfect mirrors of each other—dressed in all black, inelegant sprawls of limbs—broken only by the shocking red of Miss Crowley’s hair.
“Have you ever,” Anne eventually spoke, her voice a soft hush, not daring to look at her companion, “Have you ever been mistaken for a man?”
Anne observed Miss Crowley’s spine straighten. Not in fear or anger, but an odd, watchful tension.
“Why do you ask?” Miss Crowley’s voice was even and restrained in a way it rarely was.
Anne frowned. She no longer wished to have this conversation but did not think she could dissuade Miss Crowley at this point.
“There is something about you; I thought we might share a similar affliction—to behave in a way that one might not be willing to divorce from a set of presumptions, societal standards...”
Miss Crowley’s eyebrows slumped with sadness, just visible above the rim of her glasses. She brushed the tips of her fingers briefly against the hands Anne had clenched together in her lap. “To answer your question as honestly as I may, only when it suits my fancy.”
Anne did not know what to make of that. It must have shown on her face as Miss Crowley’s expression had taken on a guarded cast.
“I let people see very little of myself—”
“I’ve offended you. I—” Anne tried to cut Miss Crowley off only to be interrupted with a loud sigh.
“I let people see very little of myself, only the parts of me that serve my purposes, so they can think of me only what I want them to. I’ve let my guard drop a bit, shown you more than I meant to,” Miss Crowley frowned slightly, drawing her shoulders up towards her ears. “But you won’t be any less than yourself. I wouldn’t either when it mattered. The world does not get easier for people like us—people who won’t stop asking questions, won’t conform. It’s not part of the Plan.”
“I’m sorry, I have to...” Miss Crowley started to speak abruptly before trailing off with an awkward wave of her hand.
“Of course,” Anne replied. She watched thoughtfully and unmoving from the couch as her companion swept out of the room, moving quickly and surely despite the uncanny sway of her steps.