Page 18 of The Manor House Governess

Darcy’s insinuating that Bron had an easier time of living was almost laughable, but he didn’t expect anyone like Darcy to understand the difficulties that fed into his every day. Up there in the highest echelons of society, was there a cost to freedom?Immediately he decided that there wasn’t, that Darcy was for one reason or another trolling him. But if he’d allowed himself more time to ponder the question, he’d have concluded that whatever the price was to pay, Darcy could afford it. “You have a rather simplified view of what you think you know about me. Commenting on the surface level of things.”

“The surface level of things? Well, I don’t mean to offend you, Bron, but doesn’t society struggle enough as it is to accept us as we are on the outside? Are we at a stage of letting anybody, truly, in?” and this Darcy said with an inkling of kindness. “I think living away from the eyes of enforced pressure affords one a certain freedom that some of us might lack.”

He was certain he’d misunderstood him.Us?He let the word linger. “You mean you are …”

“Gay? Queer? Yes, and again, is it so hard to believe?” Darcy laughed. “Yet another thing we have in common.”

Bron had quickly learned to expect that Darcy might say anything to him, but he hadn’t expected to hearthat. Darcy—gay? The two concepts didn’t fit together. A man like him: alluring, confidently masculine, sartorially refined, the very embodiment of a perceived “Englishness.” Flashy red trousers, a voice always pitched low. A man indistinguishable from the rest of his sort. Bron knew he had slipped into stereotypes here, buthowcould this be? Was he right? Were they the same? In their judgment of each other? And did their attraction to a specific gender make the two of them alike, of the same ilk? He didn’t think so. His identity was a complicated thing, one that shifted and evolved. Darcy was not a part of it, but a different group altogether, where things like pronouns and bathroom bills were the epitome of the gender nonconforming struggle.Thatwas the great fight. Not the constant debate of his existence in the right-wing press, not the scrutinizing of his body, nor the bouts of incredible loneliness and disconnect he felt at every glance in the mirror. It wasn’t at all as serious as that. No, Darcy and the likes of him were at liberty toexist however they pleased, without any fear of mockery or violence every time they stepped outside. Bron had heard it, seen it more online now than ever before. That expression of a community broken and torn at the seams.

“I am my own person,” Bron said, “as much as you are you. We struggle through life as best we can, and then we die. It is not okay for you to turn who we are into a comparative debate and make assumptions about my life. You say you feel confined to a box? Well, what a pretty box you live in. Some of us are not built to fit into any shape or size, and now that you are laughing at me—”

“I am not laughing.” Darcy grinned.

“—I would rather you suppressed it, or at the very least had the courtesy of waiting for me to leave the room.” This, he felt, was the perfect opportunity to stride toward the door and release himself from the situation. He flung it open.

“So I suppose there aren’t to be any playful debates throughout your stay here? Between friends?”

Bron stopped. Friends. It was a gray word, like a rotting corpse. Fri-ends, like something whose conclusion was embedded into its very fabric, confirming its destiny before it’d even begun. They were not friends—he knew that much—and shielding his face away, he felt his heart break open, a safety pin yielding from strain.Harry.Harry had been his friend, there to support him when times were bad, when stony words were thrown at him. But where was he now, his friend?

“We are not friends.”And how I choose to live is not up for debate.

“Ah, well then, that explains it!” Darcy stood to move toward him. Held out his arm in a way that barred him from leaving the room. “Now we understand each other a little better. You think me rude and obnoxious, and I need to be a little more understanding of who you are, you lost little thing. I’ve never been good at first impressions—but perhaps we may start again?”

Bron knew there was nothing left to be said, nothing else to be done. He nodded in agreement.

“Fine, but again starts tomorrow. In the meantime, will you please remove your arm? You are blocking my way.”

With this, Darcy raised his arm, and Bron exited the room as tactfully as he could.

PART II

5

BRON WOUND HIS WAYthrough Cambridge’s narrow streets, on his way back to Greenwood following a good six hours of exploring the city. A piano piece (Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Movement 2) beat through the headphones in his ears, placing him in a trance that heightened and tinted his surroundings with a romantic verve: the streets full of walkers, full of bikes; the gray puddles reflecting an even grayer sky; the chime of the church bell, a distant sound to complement the music. Down the road, across the market square, and along Bene’t Street onto Trumpington, he ignored the cars’ polluting exhaust, focused on the music in his ears and thought about everything and nothing at all.

In town, he’d picked up a new eyeliner, a new notebook in which to plan his lessons, and a matching calendar for Ada to see what he’d planned for her learning a week in advance. Having earned his first paycheck, he’d also searched the racks for new clothes. But fast fashion never fit him well, clinging as each piece did to all the wrong places, so he’d hurried away from the high street, thinking how ridiculous it all was, the effort to find something that’d allow him to feel at home in his own skin. He stopped outside the robemaker’s window display—“Ede and Ravenscroft, est. 1689”—and lost himself in the rigidity of amannequin’s black robe; the creaminess of the tuxedo; the bright yellow, green, and red of the folded cravats. He felt, as well as his gender, the reality of his class—yet more clothes he hadn’t been born to wear.

As he continued down the road, two people, having emerged from one of the college’s entrances, were heading straight toward him: a woman whose suitcase clanked beside her, and a man he was sure he recognized—oily, slicked-back hair; tanned skin. A man who was calling his name. He quickly pulled away his headphones.

“It is you?” Giovanni said.New prowject.He moved closer to his companion and said something Bron couldn’t catch. He stepped back, pressed into the glass of the window. “Do you remember me? I am Giovanni, and this is my sister, Toni.”

Bron shook her hand. The embarrassment of their first meeting kept him from meeting Giovanni’s gaze, but the brother and sister spoke rapidly, earnestly flitting Italian words back and forth. Giovanni in particular seemed much freer and relaxed outside the rooms of the house, and explained to his sister how Bron was connected to the Edwardses. Toni was keen to inquire into the whereabouts of Darcy—whom she called Theo—and to ask after the health of that little girl of theirs.

“I don’t trouble myself with his day-to-day activities,” Bron said, “but Ada is very well.”

“Bella Ada. But I see the man has got to you too?”

“He does have his opinions,” he said.

“Yes,” Toni piped. “He certainly does.”

It was all talk of the Edwardses, whom they seemed to know a lot about, and beautiful, beautiful Italy: the carbonara; the pistachio gelato; and Giovanni’s favorite Roman delicacy, cacio e pepe, which he craved so badly and which Toni teased him about. “Maybe you wouldn’t miss it so much if you came to visit your sister more.” Toni explained she was only here for a few weeks, catching up with old friends, and looking forward to a spa break in Edinburgh at the tail end of her holiday.

Giovanni quickly amended her narrative to suggest that she was being modest, that as an up-and-coming actress in Italy, she had been invited to do a photo shoot with a top-tier fashion photographer in London, and even had an audition coming up for a big-budget movie.

She laughed. “James Norton is rumored to co-star.”

“I am so proud of you, Toni, after all you’ve been through. You deserve it all.”

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