“I am tired of being a Halifax Hellion.”
It shouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t who theywere,not really. It was just a stupid name, a role they adopted because it was easier to play the part than to try to be something else and to fail.
And yet Matilda’s words felt scored into her skin. It felt like a rejection not of the silly nickname but ofher,ofthem,of the life they’d shared since before they were born.
“I want to get married,” Matilda said. “I want to be—not respectable, bollocks to that. But I want to be steady. I want to beme,not some version of me that we invented seven years ago, that the scandal sheets embroidered into something I barely recognized.”
Margo’s mouth felt dry. She tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“Aren’t you sick of it too?” Matilda asked. “I don’t—I don’t even remember why we started—”
“Because fuck their rules,” Margo whispered, and the far-off thunder of the waterfall nearly swept her words away. She tried again. “Because it’s all a farce—our reputation, our virtue—they’re nonsense terms made up by men who want to control the women around them. There’s no power to the words if we ignore them. Do you not recall? None of it really matters. None of it is who we really are.”
Matilda threw up her hands. Her blue-and-white striped traveling dress brushed the leaves at their feet, and unlike Margo, she looked clean and put-together. “And what did we accomplish? All that talk of power and scandal, and for what? For a few years of sybaritic pleasure?”
Every word felt like a brand, searing into her. She had felt the same creeping dissatisfaction with their notoriety, with the way they’d built their lives these last few years. It had occurred to her that if she ever did find someone with whom she wanted to spend her life, she had so deeply blackened her reputation that it would be all but impossible for anyone to seriously consider her. Even in the last few days, it had been simmering in the back of her mind—that Henry could not be seen to attach himself to her without his career suffering for it.
“It wasn’t all useless,” she said. Her voice was thin. “There were other girls who saw us—who saw that some made-up notion of virtue is no true measure of their worth.” There had been young ladies whose minor scandals might have been much larger ones had they not been overshadowed by the antics of the Halifax Hellions.
And then for the first time, Henry’s voice cut in, deep and serious and reassuring. “You sell yourselves short.”
Matilda turned toward him, her lips pinched, but he held up a hand, and she didn’t say anything.
“I know,” he said, “it’s not my place to say. But I’ve been there for seven years watching you—not only you, Margo, justmostlyyou—and you do not give yourselves the credit you deserve. Either of you.”
Margo’s chest hurt. She didn’t know how to interpret his words, the shades of meaning that lay beneath them.
“You are good, both of you. Kind. When a debutante makes some silly social faux pas, you two rush in like Spartans ready to defend her to the death. The servants brighten up when you enter a room because you ignore the aristocratic precept that says you’re supposed to demand their service but never deign to thank them.”
“That’s an idiotic rule,” muttered Matilda.
Henry laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it. Margo could tell.
“Matilda, I don’t begin to know what is between you and Ashford, but don’t you think it possible that he was willing to approach you because he was aware of how open-minded the two of you are known to be? It’s your reputations, such as they are, that have brought you to this point. And it’s for the better, not for the worse. The people who would judge you, either of you, for doing things that hurt no one, that bring nothing but pleasure, are fools.”
Margo wanted suddenly to press her face into her hands and hide. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run away and never have to face him again.
Because it wasn’t true. She had hurt people. She had hurt Matilda with this godforsaken chase, with her foolhardy decision to confront Ashford in the guise of her twin.
She had hurt Henry. Here in this little clearing.
And before now. A horrible suspicion had crept into her head, and she could not shake it—that she had been hurting Henry, silently, heedlessly, for a long time now.
“For all there are people who’d look at you two and think you’ve done wrong,” Henry continued, “there are ten times more who look at you from the corners of the ballroom, and admire you. Who think you’re brave and—splendid—”
His voice trailed off, and when Margo looked at him, he was staring down ferociously at his shoes.
“Thank you, Henry,” Matilda said, and her voice was very gentle, as if she thought he might shatter.
Margo couldn’t say anything.
Matilda pinned her with a hard blue stare. “I am going to go back to Ashford now. We are going on to Scotland. And then we’re going to stop at his country estate for a time after we marry.”
Margo swallowed hard.
“I need you to trust me,” Matilda said. “I need you to believe that I know what’s best for my own life. Don’t follow me, Margo, not again.”
“I love you,” Margo managed to say. “I want—I just want you to be safe and happy, Tillie.”
