‘Life is not about living the safer option,’ I told him sleepily. ‘Life is about living a life worth living.’
‘You won’t get to live a life worth living, or any life, if you go on like this!’ Grabbing my upper arms, he pushed me backwards until my back slammed into the wall. ‘Don’t you understand, Mr Linton? You could have died out there tonight! Died!’
And he shook me, as if he could get his point across by treating me like a salt shaker. All it did was make me angrier! All right, I admit it also made me feel the hardness of his body grinding and bumping against mine, but I tried my best to ignore that and focus on the being angry part.
I remembered another time not long ago when we had stood like this, pressed close together, my anger boiling like a volcano in me, his freezing cold in him. I remembered what it had felt like to feel every line of his sinuous, statuesque body pressed against me. Statuesque - that was normally a word you used only for women, if you wanted to say they were tall and graceful. But as I felt him now, I knew it described him perfectly. It described the hardness of his muscles. It described the lack of motion on his face. It even described his taciturn and stony manner. Like a statue. Statuesque.
The only thing it did not describe was the anger I swear I could feel underneath the stony exterior, in his deep, dark eyes.
What was there for him to be angry about? What was it to him if I died? He’d finally be rid of me, something he had been trying to achieve by a multitude of methods for weeks now. He should be glad if a stray bullet did the work for him.
‘You could have died,’ he repeated. Behind him, Napoleon, who had left the bathroom by now, the chessboard under his arm, nodded solemnly. Blast! Even the Emperor agreed with him. I had to swallow.
‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I know I could have died, but so could you. So could any of the men who were there, fighting.’
‘But you are not like them, Mr Linton.’
The unspoken spoken words hung like the sword of Damocles in the air over our heads: You are a girl. You are weak.
My chin rose up in proud defiance.
‘I can be like them, in all the things that matter.’
His icy, sea-coloured eyes wandered from my face then, went down my body, slowly, lingeringly, and up again. I could feel the breathing in his chest, still pressed against mine, quicken as he did so.
‘No.’ The word was absolute, brooking no contradiction. ‘You could never be.’
He leaned forward until I could feel his breath tickle my skin. What was he doing? His hands, his body, his breath, all melted together into a frightening, exciting melee of sights, feelings, smells and sounds. Suddenly, I could feel butterflies dancing in my stomach.
Butterflies? What the heck were butterflies doing down there? I hadn’t eaten any this morning, had I?
His silent, stony face was only inches away now. He was so near, so terribly near - and then he moved to close the last bit of distance.
Seeing Stars
I pushed.
It wasn’t a very hard push. Somehow, when pushing away Mr Ambrose’s hard body, my arms didn’t want to move as determinedly as I had ordered them to. But the push caught him by surprise, and he staggered back, letting go of my wrists.
‘Who do you think you are, telling me what I can and cannot be?’ I shouted. I was angry. Boiling hot volcano angry! ‘I can be anything I want! I could decide to be a member of a yellow piggy dance troop, and I could make it work if I wanted to!’
The yellow piggy removed its snout from Mr Ambrose’s coat pocket and shook its head vigorously. I ignored it.
‘You can never be a man,’ he repeated, not retreating an inch from his position. His eyes raked up and down my body once more. I was very conscious of how, without my tailcoat, the fabric of the shirt barely concealed my form, which, while lacking upstairs, was definitely feminine in the butt department.
But… that couldn’t be what he referred to, was it? He couldn’t possibly think of me in that way, could he? He was talking about women’s rights and liberties, not about me and him doing…
No!
Definitely not.
Oh God.
‘I don't want to be a man,’ I somehow managed to say. Especially when you’re looking at me like this, with eyes as deep and dark as the Atlantic Ocean. ‘All I want is to be treated the same!’
‘Where’s the difference?’ he demanded.
The difference is the way I feel right now. The way the blood is pumping through my veins twice as hard.
‘The difference,’ I said, with clenched teeth, ‘The difference is… it is…’
He regarded me like a scientist would regard a strange, undiscovered creature, while I searched for words that I could speak aloud. There were none to be found. All I could think about was how fast my heart was hammering and how hot my face felt.