I chuckled. “You have led too sheltered a life, little one.”
“No, you have led too dissolute a one.”
“Aleksey, use your head. Women join with women as often as men do with men. Only, I grant you, it is less noticeable. Do you remember the sisters aboard our ship? The ones who helped you nurse me?”
“What!”
“Hush! Yes, they were not sisters.”
“What!”
“Aleksey! Shush.”
“But… but….” I waited for it, knowing it was coming. “But how?”
I chuckled. “Think about it.”
He did and made a low grunt of amazement.
“I thought for a while that Anastasia was….”
“What!”
“Be quieter!”
“Anastasia! No! Poor Johan!”
“Oh God, I did not say shewas, only that I thought she might be.”
“So there are women who look at a man and do not admire him?”
“Oh, I think they do not have to prefer unnatural acts to think that about most men, do you?”
“But could a woman look at you and not want you? I find that very hard to believe.”
I felt a surge of warmth from his disingenuous thought that made me smile privately, but I replied, “Do you not look at the most beautiful women… and I take Anastasia as my example yet again… and want them not?”
He was silent for a very long time and then said hesitantly, “I think I have a theory. Do you want to hear it?”
“Is it as good as my theories?”
“Much better, for it comes out of an educated and intelligent brain.”
“All right, then. I am agog to hear it.”
“Your mimicry of my accent is awful.”
“Hurry up, or I will be soon asleep.”
“Well, what if some women get born with a man’s brain—I mean, we know some bodies are male and some female, but what if brains were male and female too, and the woman who does not desire you has in fact a man’s brain.”
“But what if she had a man’s brain, but was then a man like us? She would be a woman with a man’s brain who wanted other men. That would be interesting. And then, my little thinking one, would not some men be born with women’s brains, and someone who did not know you might say, oh, that very pretty man with the green eyes is actually a woman called Posy.” He hit me very hard, which was not easy given how close we were lying, but he had a lot of practice and so had perfected this over the years. I laughed quietly. “But I do like your theory a great deal.”
“No, you do not. You are only humoring me.”
“No, seriously, I do like it. Think back to the sisters Peel aboard the ship. Did not something strike you about them that might prove your theory?”
He thought about this for a while, then said in a wondering voice, “Miss Jane Peel was very… mannish… wasn’t she? She strode around giving orders just as you would have done had you not been… I do not like thinking about that.”
