The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(42)
“It may not have been exactly those words,” I say. “But you made it very clear you thought me less of a woman because I don’t care about balls and card parties and boys and ridiculous blue dresses.”
She folds her arms. “Well, you seemed to think I was less of a person because I did.”
“Well, you’re certainly a less interesting person now than you were.”
I want to take it back as soon as I say it. Or better yet, want to go back and try this conversation again and not say it at all. Or maybe go back even further and never fight with her. Because I used to know Johanna like she was another version of myself—I had forgotten just how intimate our friendship was until I saw her again. The hollow spaces in my shadow, the second set of footsteps beside mine. I could have listed her favorite foods, animals, plants, books in preferential order like I had memorized them out of an encyclopedia. We made up a song about the four humors before I stopped taking Galen seriously as a medical writer. We got poison oak from hiking along the River Dee looking for sea monsters and didn’t tell anyone for fear of being kept apart. But standing beside her now, it doesn’t feel the same. It likely never will. Returning to a place you once knew as well as your own shadow isn’t the same as never leaving at all.
“I’m sorry,” I start, “I shouldn’t have said—”
“It’s not a blue dress; it’s indigo,” she interrupts. “I chose this shade because it comes from Persicaria tinctoria, which is a flower like buckwheat that my mother collected while she was in Japan and brought back to Amsterdam for cultivation.”
We stare at each other, the silence between us thick and fragile. Hearing that Latin classification from her lips is like a melody from childhood, half-remembered and suddenly played in full. Things I did not know had been askew fall back into place inside me.
I miss you, I want to say.
“I think the talc is dry,” I say instead.
The talc has turned a faint brown, and it crumbles like plaster when I scrape it off with my fingernail. Max pushes his nose into the discarded chunks until Johanna hisses at him that he is a filthy creature and absolutely should not eat that. He does not seem particularly deterred.
“Did it work?” she asks, hands pressed over her eyes.
I heft the not inconsiderable amount of material into my arms and stretch the offending patch between my hands for an examination. “It’s not entirely gone, but if you don’t know it’s there you can’t hardly tell.”
“Promise? I’m trusting you because I can’t see it.”
“You can trust me.” I falter. The fabric of her dress suddenly feels slick as buttered glass between my hands. “I didn’t know your mother was in Japan.”
Johanna tugs on her necklace, pulling the clasp back into place. “She was quite a lot of places. When she died—”
“She died?” I interrupt, the words coming out in a sharp breath. “When?”
“Last year. Near Algiers.”
“Johanna, I’m so sorry.”
She shrugs. “I never really knew her.”
The lie of that hums behind the words like a hive. I did not know much of Johanna’s mother—I never met her—except that she had left an abysmal marriage and was away (in Japan, apparently), and when Johanna’s father died, her mother would not or could not come home for her daughter. That had been the story that had been passed down the church pews and through tea parties and over card games until it finally reached me, because she was gone from my life by then, sent away to a relation in Bavaria because her mother didn’t want her.
“Would you like a hug?” I ask.
She frowns at me. “You hate hugs.”
“Right, but I could make an exception. If it would help you.”
“How about instead . . .” She offers me a hand and when I take it, squeezes gently, the same way we used to when we helped each other up rocks and fallen trees, so we knew the other had a grip. We knew we had a hold of each other. We could step more boldly than we would without a mooring.
Then Max, ever the jealous lover, sticks his nose between our hands until we use them instead to scratch his head.
Johanna and I leave my room together, Max prancing behind us like a show pony. The bow around his neck seems to make him feel very pretty. At the top of the stairs, we nearly smash into Johanna’s uncle, who is making a very dramatic ascent with a lot of huffing and muttered curses. “Johanna,” he snaps when he sees us. “Where have you been?”
Johanna halts, reaching out for Max’s head. “I was . . .”
“All of these insane festivities are for you”—and here he shakes his hands in the general direction of the still-unseen party—“and you can’t even be bothered to show up on time. Do you know how much I wasted on flowers alone? It’s the middle of the winter and you insist on lilies—”
“I had a problem with my dress,” I interrupt, for Johanna looks like she may start to cry, and I don’t want to add ruined cosmetics to the list of this evening’s fashion catastrophes. “Miss Hoffman was helping me.”
“You have a maid for such things.” The uncle takes Johanna’s arm with a grip that looks like it pinches and starts to drag her away, but then pivots back to me for a last word. “Miss Montague, is it? While we’re on the subject, you’d best keep a closer eye upon that maid. I chased her out of my study this morning.”