think about it.’
‘D’you think you’ll get married?’
‘Bound to, Miss.’
‘And have children?’
‘Bound to, Miss.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘With all the attendant dangers?’
‘You mean I could be dead before I’m twenty, Miss.’
‘If you put it like that, Lizzy.’
‘If they couldn’t get the baby to come out.’
‘Or after indeed. Some women … What choice do we have, Lizzy? If we love the man who marries us.’
‘Or gets us up the stick. Pardon me, Madam.’
‘It’s nothing. Have you been in love?’
‘I may’ve been.’
‘Have you felt loved? Are you myself who is unspoiled? What is it like to be loved?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss. I don’t conceive you. What d’you want me to say?’
‘I don’t know these things, you see. I believe I’m a strange sort of woman. I live with a guardian. How should I know things?’
‘Are your folks dead? Your Mammy?’
‘Yes. They are. Quite. So in asking you I feel I’m asking in private: a magic mirror. Here I’m lighthearted. Can you believe that? It is a special place. If you saw me in London you’d not know me. There I’m usually troubled, but here I find myself closer to … I hardly dare say it because if it were said it might be taken away directly. Well-being. Perhaps it’ll only last one more day. One more day flicking away still faster. I see these flowers you’ve brought in, so clearly. So bright; how couldn’t I have seen such beauty before? I daren’t trust this. I have to go back. Soon. I wish I might stay here, Lizzy. I wish … I need to hear what women … I am a woman now, and shall have to go back to my … my fate. Does your mother love you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your father?’
‘He left.’
‘How does it feel to you to be shown your own likeness? We are twins, Lizzy, apart from our difference of precise age. What’s your notion? As if from your side of the glass.’
A pause. ‘You scare me, Miss, I ask your pardon. Can I go now?’
‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Is there some young man already?’
‘Handy. Handy enough.’
‘How do you … manage that?’
‘We lie together downstairs at my mother’s till he has a house. We don’t do it all up. Just … you know.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘He’s only a country boy, Miss. He don’t have London manners. You wouldn’t think of him.’
‘But you. Do you love him? This love is why we venture our bodies.’
‘I reckon I must do.’
‘I … No. I … A man will have me.’
‘What’s his name, Miss?’
‘His name? Charles.’
‘How old’s he?’
‘Forty. Nearly. A Restoration baby, Lizzy. And now a London man. A powerful, rich, political man, and I don’t know the first thing, Lizzy. I don’t know what I should say if I can’t … if I can’t … to stop him if I don’t … Help me, Lizzy. But you can’t. You can’t, can you?’
To Mrs Catherine Barton:
Kit, dearest, I am on fire for news of you. They tell me you are alive. I prayed that you should be spared. Confirm by your own hand that my prayers have been answered, and you will lift the devastating anxiety that possesses me on your account. Forgive the familiarity of my address, but is there not already an understanding between us? You must have discerned at our interview so tragically terminated some measure of the depth of my feelings for you; I cannot believe that we two are not in some sense by this time beyond the artificiality of opening politenesses. Kit, we know each other and what we are about; write as soon as you can that all is in truth well with you. I would be, dearest,
your ardent and ultimate servant, Charles Montagu
The Suitor
Pet went back before. Pawnee and I travelled after, with an armed guard, courtesy of an admirer.
‘You’re well, Kit. You’re beautiful, by the grace of God. You’re rich in most people’s terms. Why do you frown? We’re nearly at Colnbrook. If there was going to be an attack it would have come by now. There’s no cover here for them to hide in.’
‘I’m not afraid of robbers and ravishers. I told you that. I’d use the gun – on myself, if necessary.’
‘Kit!’
‘Or on us both. I’d find a way.’
She didn’t speak for a minute.
‘Is it Charles, then?’
‘I can’t bear it, Pawnee. I’m their prisoner. I know it.’
‘How’s this? Your uncle loves you I think. They both care for you. You just torment yourself with your suspicions of them. I see no reason, except they’re men, and all these European men are beasts in their own normal way. This I know for myself. But it isn’t as you think.’
“These aren’t just men. Now you’re like the voice inside me that tells me constantly I’m wrong or bad or ungrateful. Perhaps I am. Perhaps you’re right.’ I paused and looked out of the coach window, where the meadows stretched flat to the heath. We rumbled on the rutted Bath Road.
‘What’ll he expect of me? He’ll expect a real woman.’
‘You are a real woman, Kit.’
‘He’ll want a mistress. I shall want, ha! to fall in love. But I can’t, Pawnee. Not with him. Not with anyone, perhaps. I can’t. I’m a wreck. I’m maimed. I’m maimed in my deep self. I cannot let him. So then what’ll he think? I told you I was once a boy. I haven’t got the right feelings. I haven’t got the right responses. When he gets close
