Ree was watching him with a frown.
“To make a long story short,” he said, “we argued. She made it clear what she thought of my past, and I told her she was…” He couldn’t say those words. Not to his aunt.
“I heard what she said.” Her voice was cold. “You told her she was a waste?”
He’d heard that voice before. Not for years, but that warning tone could still make his blood run cold. “Aw, Ree. Not like that. It was more in the context of—”
“The context of the inevitable happening?” Ree frowned at him. “Do you mean that you had sexual intercourse with her?”
“I…” He frowned. “Yes.”
“And she’s been brought up to be a good little English girl, hasn’t she? Don’t lie; I can tell from her accent.”
“Yes, but—”
“So that was the context you refer to, then? ‘I know I just took your virginity; terribly sorry, but it was a waste of my time.’”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He winced. “It wasn’t— I didn’t— She was the one who overreacted in the first place.”
“Think of it from her point of view.” Ree folded her arms. “The way she talks—she has gentility in her background, does she not?”
He gave her a curt nod.
“So all her life, everyone has told her the only thing she has of value is her virginity. That she must guard it; that it’s the only thing she can sell to safeguard her security. And here you come. You overwhelm her.”
“I didn’t—”
“Oh, shut up, Crash,” his aunt said. “Don’t be stupid. Of course you overwhelmed her. She told you she loved you, I wager.”
He looked down. “Maybe. But I said it back, and—”
“And,” his aunt continued inexorably, “you idiot, you removed her of the one thing she’d been told had value, and you went right ahead and made her think everyone else had been right. That without it, she was a waste.”
He stared at her, appalled. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “It wasn’t. There were other things that happened first. I offered to marry her.”
“Crash,” Ree said, “do shut your mouth and listen. Do you know how hard it was to raise you to believe you could be more?”
He stopped.
“Every day,” Ree said. “Every moment we had. Your grandmother, your uncle, my friends… Every day we had to sit you down and tell you. ‘He doesn’t know who you are; he’s accusing you of stealing because he can’t see you.’ Every damned day we had to drum it into you until you believed it.”
He put his hands in his pockets.
His aunt wasn’t finished. “Do you suppose anyone told her she was worth anything?”
He paused, and for a moment, he didn’t know how to answer. “But… She…”
“I’m sure she never had anyone think her a thief just by looking at her,” Ree said. “But men have thought her a great many other things. Including a waste.”
He had nothing to say to that. His aunt was right.
“So tell me,” she said. “Why did you pay attention to Miss Whitlaw in the first place?”
Crash swallowed. “The first time I saw her, she was defending her mother. Her mother has pains.” He indicated. “She tries to work, but, well…”
Ree nodded.
“Someone was accosting Daisy. Telling her that if she didn’t confront her mother about her malingering, she’d end up walking the streets.” He could almost remember that moment. “Daisy threatened to punch him in the kidneys to see if he could work while in pain.”
He could still see her, her hands on her hips. Do you know my mother, or do I? Then stop telling me what she’s doing. If you felt pain the way she did, you’d never leave your bed.
He shrugged and looked over at his aunt. “I…liked that. I wanted it. I wanted someone who was so loyal to me that she’d punch a man. And then I started talking to her, and she was…”
He stopped again.
“She was trying,” he said. “So hard, with so little, and I thought, this is someone who can understand what it was like to be me. Finally. To have to try so hard, and to not let anyone know how hard I was trying. And she understood. I thought she did.”
“Crash,” his aunt said quietly. She didn’t offer advice. She didn’t tell him he was wrong. She just looked over at him.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything.
He’d been holding on to his anger—righteous anger!—for so long. Daisy had forgiven him his existence, damn it all. She’d been as bad as that lady, telling him he was a sinner because…
No. She hadn’t been that bad. He frowned. He had this to complain about. She’d sent him away. She had found someone else.
He had told her she was a waste.
Maybe… Possibly…
Damn it. Under the circumstances, he’d have sent himself away, too.
He exhaled and looked at the package in his hands.
“There,” she said. “Now what do you have?”
He didn’t know. Slowly, he unwrapped it. Inside was a glass flask labeled carbolic acid. An india rubber ball was attached to a tube. He turned the ball and found a little opening.
She had found him a carbolic smoke ball. He had read an advertisement. This was supposed to rid a room of the fumes that caused pneumonia and influenza. He’d looked for one for days.
And Daisy had obtained one for him as an apology.
Oh, God. What was he doing?
Daisy was angry with him. Crash could tell by the way she smiled at him when she saw him the next evening—a cold, glittering smile that came from the quiet reserve of strength she always kept.
She came up to him at the bench near the canal. “I understand how it is supposed to be now.” She looked over at his velocipede leaning against a wall. “If you fall,” she said, “you get back on and go faster.” Her eyes were dark and steady. “You don’t think I can do it. Well, if this is my one chance to secure my fate, I should try to go faster.”
She’d leave him behind.
“Daisy.”
Her eyes cut to him. “I prefer Miss Whitlaw.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“You owe me at least two.” She looked away from him. “Don’t worry; that’s one debt I don’t intend to collect. Now are we going back to the velocipede?”
“No. I wanted to show you something else today.” He gestured. “Come. Walk with me. We’ll get cold otherwise.”
She looked at him a moment, as if considering walking away. Finally, she took a few steps toward him. It was enough. They started down the gravel path, a sedate two feet apart.
“There’s a trick my grandmother taught me,” Crash said. “She got it from her mother. She told me to imagine I had a bubble around me. When someone said something about me—something harsh and untrue—she told me to push out on my bubble, t
o shove those words away. Someone said I had shifty eyes and was up to no good? That was his thought, not my reality. I had to push it away. I looked like the devil’s spawn? That was their belief, not my truth. It wasn’t inside my bubble, so I could push it all away. Don’t let anyone else’s rubbish inside your bubble, she would say.”
Daisy didn’t look at him.
“It was a good trick,” Crash said. “And when it became hard to believe that I was good for something, when everyone told me I was destined for the gallows, I just pushed harder. She taught me to let my mistakes just be mistakes. Not an indictment of my character.”
“Is that what I need to do?” Daisy asked. “Learn to push those thoughts away?”
“Yes,” Crash said. “And…no. Not yet. You see, you got inside my bubble. Back when we were something to each other. You said things, and I reacted the way I always had. I pushed. Hard. I pushed those thoughts away from me the only way I knew how.”
She didn’t look up at him.
“I sometimes forget how much of me is truly invisible. People have assumed I was wicked since before I could spell my name. They wouldn’t hire me on for respectable work, so I decided to use what they thought of me, and make a name for myself as fashionably unrespectable.”
Daisy nodded imperceptibly.
“People look at me and think only the devil will care about me. So I laugh off all their insults with my best devil-may-care attitude. I give the impression that nothing can ever hurt me, because that way…” He shrugged. “That way, fewer people try.”
She looked up at him. “I didn’t understand. I hadn’t thought it through. And…” Her eyes glittered just a little. “I think yesterday was the first time I understood that I hurt more than your pride. I am sorry.”
“So am I.” He wanted to take her hand. To tip her chin up. “I was at least as wrong. You didn’t have a bubble. You’ve never had anyone telling you what thoughts you could push away. Yes, you made a mistake. But so did I. All your life, they’ve been tossing rubbish at you, telling you that you had to believe it. Blaming you for not understanding it was rubbish. That was my mistake. I should have trusted you enough to explain, instead of dumping more garbage on your head.”