“Well?”
Alice glowered at Lill with a growing sense of déjà vu. It was well over a week since Mr Seymour had found her in the teashop, and now it seemed she could not escape him.
“Let me get in the door, won’t you?” she huffed, closing it behind her.
“Well?” Lill folded her arms, a look that could etch glass fixed on her pretty face.
Alice threw up her hands in frustration, there was no point prevaricating. “Yes, he was there, blast you. Same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.”
Indeed, Mr Seymour’s handsome face turned up every day without fail. At the bookshop, in church, outside the butcher’s, or just strolling along the seafront. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was spying on her purposefully. But Little Valentine was a small place, and he was clearly an outdoorsy sort, the kind who hated sitting idle, drat him. Still, it was wearing away at her nerves.
“That’s it, I’m packing.” Lill turned on her heel, heading for the stairs.
“Oh, don’t give me the theatrics again,” Alice said crossly, though not without sympathy, for she knew well enough this was all her fault. “I’m going to deal with it, withhim, before I go mad.”
Lill paused with her hand on the newel post. “Deal with him how?” she asked, and then paled. “Oh. Oh, no. Alfie can’t be seen to come back to town. Not now. Do you want to end up at the end of a rope?”
“I said to stop the theatrics,” Alice told her, taking advantage of her horror to dart past her and up the stairs.
She heard the heavy tread of Lill’s feet as she thundered up after her.
“Are you out of your tiny bleedin’ mind?” she demanded. “What are you going to tell him? Eh? Where did you buy that wretched brooch? 'Cause whatever you say, he’s going to want a name and a place, and then he’s going to start asking questions, and if you put any of your contacts in the line of fire, that’ll be another price on your stupid head!”
Alice tried not to listen because she’d already posed all those questions herself and didn’t have any answers. Well, she hadanswers, but good ones? Probably not.
“I’ll say I bought it at a fair, or from a bloke in a pub. I’ll give him a description, and he can chase that phantom to his heart’s content.”
Alice braced herself, knowing exactly what Lill would say.
“Oh, aye, all the while bandying the name Alfie Marwick hither and yon. That won’t cause you a mite of trouble, now, will it?”
Sarcasm dripped from every word. Lill pushed past her, barring the door.
There were three bedrooms in Ocean View cottage. Lill had the servants' quarters all to herself, though they were done out with just as much luxury as Alice allowed herself. The two others belonged to Alice and to Alfie. Except Alfie Marwick didn’t exist, at least not in a manner that anyone other than Lill would ever understand.
It had begun for safety’s sake. When Alice and her mother had gone to the workhouse, Alice had been only five years old, and her mother had died soon after. Lill had saved her, despite being only twelve herself. They had run from the workhouse, where cruelty ran hand in hand with disease, and Lill had cut their hair and stolen clothes, so they looked like boys. Safer that way.
Alice and Lill had grown up pretending to be boys, until Alice got so adept at pickpocketing, cheating, and conniving and eventually burglary that she could provide funds enough to rent decent lodgings, to wear decent clothes and be respectable. Lill had loathed every moment of it, especially cutting her lovely blonde curls off, but to Alice it had felt entirely natural, just as easy as being Alice. Except being respectable Miss Alice Marwick was something she could only do for a certain amount of time, and then she got itchy and restless, unable to stand herself andthe confines placed upon a female which she had become too used to disregarding. So then she’d go out and about as Alfie, who could go places Alice couldn’t, and do things Alice couldn’t, like own property, and lend his sister countenance so she could live in a respectable village with her devoted housekeeper, even if he wasn’t there all the time.
It worked. Giving them freedom, independence, and the closest thing to safety and security either of them had ever had. Yet it was precarious, and in such a small place Alice knew in her heart their days were numbered. Eventually, someone would realise they never saw Alice and Alfie together, or she would make a slip up, and Alfie would say something only Alice could know, and then they would have to leave again. To run away and begin another life, in another place.
No,Alice vowed. Not this time. This time, it would be different.
“Lill, I don’t have all the answers,” Alice admitted, reaching out and grasping Lill’s rigid shoulders and giving them a brief squeeze. “But you’re going to have to trust me. I won’t put you or our place here in danger. I’ll do whatever needs doing to keep us safe. I know how much you like it here, I do too, though it surprises me to admit it. I never thought I’d be able to fit in with nice people, ladies and gents that live honest lives, that go to church on Sunday and invite each other to tea, but I can, and I don’t want to lose it, no more than you do. I’ll keep us safe. Cross my heart.” She drew her finger back and forth over her chest in a solemn vow they’d both practised since leaving the workhouse. It was unbreakable, that promise.
Lill sighed, the fight going out of her.
“All right, but if you go and get yourself hanged or transported—”
“You’ll never forgive me,” Alice finished for her with a smile, having heard her say so times past counting. “I know it.”
“Hmph.”
“Going to help me get ready, then?” Alice asked her, tilting her head to one side and bumping her shoulder against Lill’s.
“I bleedin’ well better had, or you’ll go out still wearing those earbobs and then there will be a deal of awkward questions you’llreallynot want to answer,” Lill replied tartly.
“I could say I was a pirate?” Alice suggested with a grin.
