Page 113 of Confounding Oaths
“What do you want, Anne?”
Miss Anne paused in the doorway. “Just to see you.”
“Well, you’ve seen me.”
“To speak with you then.”
Miss Caesar looked pained. “Whatever you have to say can surely wait until morning?”
“I wanted to say I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve been right here,” Miss Caesar replied, although even she knew that was a lie.
Miss Anne drew a stool across the room and sat by her sister’s side. “You can miss a person who is present, I think.”
Trailing her fingertips in the bath, Miss Caesar watched blood colour the water. “True. Perhaps I missed me too. Perhaps that’s why I came back.”
“Did it hurt?” asked Miss Anne.
“Being glass? Or not being?”
“Both?”
Miss Caesar frowned. “Yes. Still, I suppose it means you can have Mr. Bygrave now. It was never really me he wanted.”
“I’m not sure it was ever really me he wanted either,” replied Miss Anne, her eyes downcast. “Surely a gentleman who truly cared for me would not have had his head turned so easily.”
A rueful smile disturbed Miss Caesar’s lips. “There was magic involved. I do not think he can be held entirely accountable. But even if he does not come back, you will find other gentlemen. You are very beautiful, Anne.”
Miss Anne nodded, uncertain. “The wrong sort of beautiful, I think. I do not believe I will grow into the kind of woman gentlemen marry. I saw the way they looked at you while you were”—she did not finish the sentence—“and I misliked how familiar it was. I do not think either of us wish to be baubles.”
“You would rather we were old maids together?”
Still averting her gaze just the slightest amount, Miss Anne replied, “I can imagine worse fates.”
I understand litotes, reader, I truly do, but to one of my kind,I can think of worse fatesis seldom anything but a threat. We can, after all, think of so very many fates and they are most of them terrible beyond your comprehension.
“We could read to one another,” Miss Caesar suggested. “And I could teach you to play pianoforte.”
Miss Anne’s demeanour shifted somewhat towards its natural “Icanplay pianoforte.”
“Yes, but you play it very ill.”
“I have changed my mind,” Miss Anne declared. “I wish you to return to the fairies.” It had been intended as lighthearted, but Miss Caesar tensed. And to her credit (at least by mortal standards), Miss Anne noticed. “Oh, Mary, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—that is, I really am glad to have you back. Truly.”
Letting her fingers play a little in the water, Miss Caesar gave a soft smile. “I know you are. It’s just—those words have more meaning for me than they used to.”
“‘I wish’?” asked her sister.
Miss Caesar nodded. It was a good lesson to learn, although I knew from experience that mortals seldom held to it entirely. Common phrases slip out so easily, and it can be such fun when they do.
Satisfied that I had heard all I could from the young women and only slightly disappointed that they appeared, for the moment, to have ceased quarrelling, I resumed my original intent and went to call on Mr. Caesar. Like Nancy, he was in the business of cleaning wounds; unlike Nancy, the wound he had to deal with was singular, long, and deep.
“It’s fine,” Captain James was insisting despite its being clearly not. “I’ve had worse from the French.”
“You should see a doctor.”
“Didn’t need a doctor in Spain, don’t need one now.”
