Liberty & Other Stories: A Prosperity Collection by Alexis Hall

Author:Alexis Hall [Hall, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2015-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

A couple of days later, Lord Wolfram’s daughter found me in the library. It was after the rest of the household had retired, and as I had long since believed my nocturnal rebellions to be my own (and perhaps my only) secret, to say I was displeased to see her does not quite do justice to the vast mess of confusion, terror, hostility, and betrayal that rose monstrously from the depths of my heart.

She came inside, closed the door, and stood with her back against it, studying me with eyes as cold as our father’s. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she began.

I was not inclined, just then, to be civil. “Then don’t.”

We regarded each other in silence. On the mantel above the unlit fire, the Ormolu clock ticked its heavy tick.

Lord Wolfram’s daughter—Rosamond, she was called—tilted her head inquisitively. It was a charming gesture, harmless, artless, clearly practiced. “Are you truly half-Celestial? My mother says your mother was a demon whore.”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I was required to.

“You’re very beautiful.” She came a few steps farther into the room. “I thought men were supposed to be handsome.”

I stared at her, lost, anticipating cruelty, entirely uncertain what was expected of me.

“Lord Iron’s son came to visit me today,” she continued. “He is handsome. I hoped he was coming as a suitor, for his family are very rich and quite powerful, but he told me he would not make a proper husband for me. Which I took to mean he had sodomitical tendencies. Do you know what a sodomite is?”

“I . . .”

She drifted past me, her nightgown flaring in the draughts that rattled down the chimney flue. “It is a man who practices intimacies with other men. We were all lesbians at Miss Githers’s Finishing School. I believe between practicing deportment and memorising family trees, we would have all run mad had we not been fucking each other senseless. My mother’s a laudanum addict, you know.”

I opened my mouth, had no idea what I was supposed to say, and closed it again.

“Do you actually speak English? Or are you too stupid and foreign?”

“I can speak English as well as you can. You just haven’t given me any opportunity.”

“Oh, I suppose I haven’t. But I don’t often have opportunity to say things either, so when I do, they all come out at once.” She wore her hair in a long yellow braid, and now she tugged it over one shoulder and began twisting it back and forth between the fingers of one hand. “A lady says ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and ‘I am sure you are right,’ and ‘How terribly clever,’ and ‘I am having a lovely time,’ and ‘Certainly you may have this dance,’ and ‘I would be delighted,’ and ‘I do hope it won’t rain.’”

“But,” I asked, a little dizzily, “why are you telling all this to me?”

She laughed, showing small, white teeth that—in the light from my single phlogiston lamp—seemed somewhat pointed. “Why, because I can, of course.

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