Chapter 39

Between gathering Orfeo’s things and conveying to Rufus where his wife was going, it took them about half an hour to get on the road, Belle clutching a pocket handkerchief full of ice which she had spent the early part of the journey holding against her jaw. Orfeo, dressed in the outfit they had performed in, with their hair hastily braided, cut a subdued figure, and they travelled, for the most part, in silence.

It was at about this juncture that Belle re-discovered her self-consciousness because, while she had always admired Orfeo from afar, she’d had little direct contact with them. Most likely they were disposed to think well of her, for Peggy’s sake, but now that they didn’t have the joint project of an attacker to overcome, she was slightly at a loss. Especially because, in the quiet, and with the address Bob had given her burning a hole in her reticule, her thoughts were churning and churning, growing rancid within her.

“I do not think,” said Orfeo, at last, “that I have congratulated you on your marriage.”

Belle’s heart fluttered nervously. Yes, she had helped Orfeo defend themself. Yes, they were married to her best friend. But they were still famous . “Oh, well, technically we eloped, so there hasn’t been much opportunity.”

“Did you have a good elopement, then?”

She flexed her jaw, grateful the ice had relieved the swelling some, though she was going to have a spectacular bruise. “I think so. The weather was nice. The roads were mostly in good repair. Oh, and I got shot.”

Orfeo’s dark eyes widened. “You were shot?”

“Yes. By a bookseller pretending to be a highwayman.”

“And now you have been hurt on my behalf also. What a life you lead.”

“At least,” she offered, not wanting them to feel guilty over what had happened, “it’s not boring.”

“Boring is not always such a terrible thing, Arabella.”

It still made her slightly giddy that they knew her name. Even though it would have been extremely odd if they didn’t, given their various connections. “Are you bored with Peggy?”

A smile broke upon their mouth like the dawn. “Blissfully. We go for long walks. Talk about the infinitesimal changes we have witnessed in our daughter. Peggy drinks a lot of tea. I have still not developed the habit.”

“And then you depart to perform before emperors.”

“Well”—they spread their hands wide, their nails polished silver, their voice full of private mirth—“why must things be this or that .”

They both fell silent again after that, but it felt, to Belle, like a different silence. The silence of people who could, perhaps, become comfortable with each other. Not today, but in some not-too-distant future.

Normally Belle chose not to delve into the weeds of the romantic connections she witnessed around her. She could, if she thought about it hard enough, usually find her way to an abstract understanding of them. Bonny and Valentine, for example. Bonny loved Valentine because he was a duke who treated Bonny like a king. And Valentine loved Bonny because he was an idiot. Or rather, because everyone loved Bonny, on account of Bonny being irrefutably loveable. Regardless, it clearly worked for both of them, even though Belle would have thrown herself into a pit of spikes before she would have subjected herself to anything like it. With Peggy and Orfeo, though, she was struck by sudden clarity. Why someone who could have had anyone, who was celebrated and beloved and impossibly talented, would ultimately choose a life with Peggy. For Peggy was the steadiest person Belle knew. The warmest. The least likely to be dazzled by anything as insubstantial as starlight.

“Orfeo?” she said, their name clanging through the quiet like something she’d dropped.

“Yes, Arabella?”

“I think ... I think ... I might owe you an apology?”

“That seems unlikely.”

Belle twisted her fingers in her lap. “You know last year? Do you remember me at all?”

“The tiny blonde with the hungry eyes—I remember you.”

“I ...” Why was it now so hard to speak of? Perhaps because at the time she’d not known enough to be ashamed. “I had this plan of falling in love with you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“No, you aren’t,” she said, refusing to accept the easy out. “Because all I saw was your voice and your beauty, and that is ... that is not who you are.”

The sound Orfeo uttered was part sigh, part groan, all exhaustion. “Cara, as we saw tonight, you are not the first to think and feel this way. You will not be the last.”

“That does not make it any less wrong of me. I’m truly sorry, Orfeo.” She addressed herself awkwardly to the floor, glad the interior of the coach concealed the worst of her blushes. “I will always love your art. But I also know you are more than that.”

For long enough that Belle considered casting herself into the road and hoping to be eaten by wolves, Orfeo did not speak. “I think,” they said finally, with some sweetly uncertain note in their voice that made Belle look up, “I may need to apologise as well.”

“It seems unlikely,” she returned, hoping to lighten the mood with a touch of her usual mischief.

Orfeo’s fingers fluttered, in both acknowledgement and dismissal, though they remained serious. “I have not been fair to you. I have taken it for granted that you were like everyone else. But”—and here their head tilted inquisitively—“you’re not, are you.”

She wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that, eventually settling on “I sometimes wish I was.”

“Oh no,” Orfeo told her. “Never wish that.” Before Belle could frame a reply, they swapped to her side of the carriage, curling up beside her on the seat with the facility of someone who had spent a lot of their life travelling. “Do you mind?” they asked, putting their head in her lap.

“Um,” said Belle, “no.”

“Grazie. This has been a tiring day. You may stroke my hair if you wish. I very much enjoy it.”

With that, Orfeo was asleep and Belle was stunned. Reaching out a disbelieving hand, she ran her fingers through Orfeo’s tresses. Their hair was straight as arrows, soft as feathers, and, within the shadows of the carriage, the deepest of deep blacks. As Belle continued her caresses, growing bolder once she was sure of welcome, Orfeo’s only response was something perilously close to a purr.

Slowly it dawned on her that they were giving her their trust. Showing her who they were when their voice was silent and the stage was dark.

It was a little after midnight when they arrived at Hadwell Hall, the somewhat eccentric house Peggy had leased from its somewhat eccentric owner. Belle had visited a couple of times since Peggy had taken up residence and been shown—with great pride—the moody stuffed crocodile in the hall and the summerhouse shaped like a pineapple. Belle had not-so-privately thought it was shaped more like a boob, but Peggy had insisted upon pineapple, and disparaged the boobs Belle had witnessed if they reminded her so readily of pineapples, an exchange that had not, in the end, gone well for Peggy, since hers were some of the boobs Belle had witnessed.

Given how quickly they had departed London, it had not been possible to send word in advance, but Peggy was still awake, pacing around the entrance hall in breeches and a dressing gown, murmuring to the baby in her arms.

At their entrance, she cast them the sort of look you cast people when you have no energy to spare for anything. “Oh, hello,” she said. “She won’t sleep. She’s supposed to sleep. The nanny says this can happen, but what if she never sleeps again? What if I never sleep again?”

“Aurrrghhh,” contributed the baby. “Ehh—ehhhh—ehhhhhh.”

Which caused Belle to regard it in horror.

Then Orfeo stepped forward, tension falling away from them like rainwater. “Mio principe.”

Peggy froze, still hunched over the baby. “Orfeo?” Then, in an over-spill of something Belle could only call joy, “Orfeo? Oh my God, Orfeo. I thought I wasn’t going to see you for weeks.”

“No, I . . . there was . . . I had to . . .”

“Belle”—overwhelmed as she was by the presence of her spouse, Peggy was still taking Belle’s attendance largely for granted—“take my kid a sec.”

“What?” cried Belle. “No, I’ve never—”

“Support her neck, don’t drop her on the floor; it’s not difficult.”

Before Belle could issue further protests, a baby was being shoved at her—a baby she just about managed not to lose her grip on. Thankfully, this new experience of being left in the care of someone who had no idea what they were doing seemed of interest to Peggy and Orfeo’s daughter. Her eyes widened as she peered into Belle’s face, her cries softening into curious burbles.

Peggy and Orfeo, meanwhile, were in each other’s arms, exchanging flurries of kisses and frantic little whispers. Then Peggy’s gaze fell upon Orfeo’s wrist. “What happened?” she asked, her fingers tracing the marks that someone else had left upon them.

Orfeo let out a slow breath. “It’s ... a story. I’m sorry, tesoro mio. It’s why I’m here. Over and above wanting to see you, I needed to feel safe somewhere again.”

“We’re your family, Orfeo.” Peggy pulled them into another fierce hug. “You can come here for any reason or no reason. You know that.”

Bowing their head, Orfeo melted against Peggy, their hair falling forward to conceal their face. “It seems I may sometimes still need reminding.”

Still holding Orfeo, Peggy swivelled towards Belle. “Sorry, Belle, I didn’t see you there.”

“I’m holding your child ,” Belle pointed out.

“And I haven’t slept for thirty-six hours. Look”—she flapped her spare hand towards both Belle and the baby—“can you just take her for a while. Orfeo and I need to talk, and I ... I need to close my eyes. Just for five minutes. Maybe slightly more than five minutes.”

Belle gave an alarmed squeak. “You want me to—Peggy, I can’t. I don’t know anything about children. What do I do with it? What if I kill it?”

“Well, for starters, you don’t refer to her as an it . Her name’s Stella. But she also answers to Li’l Goblinface and Munchbunch and Poomageddon—don’t ask—honestly, most things because she doesn’t have any language skills yet. And you probably won’t kill her. Babies are pretty hard to kill.”

“Probably?” shrieked Belle.

“Yeuuuuuuurgh,” offered the baby, abruptly—and not unreasonably—apprehensive, waggling her socked feet in a wholly terrifying fashion.

“Thanks,” said Peggy. “Appreciate it.”

Belle clung to Stella, then worried she was squeezing her too hard. “Peggy, please. This is a life we’re trusting me with.”

“Try to make her go to sleep. It’ll be fine.”

“How, though?”

“She’s just a person, Belle. Well, the beginnings of a person. Go from there.”

With that, Orfeo and Peggy disappeared upstairs, leaving Belle quite literally holding the baby.

“Um,” she said, looking down at the bundle of gently flailing human in her arms. “Hello, Stella. Hello, little person.”

Stella, still dubious, blinked up at her.

“Peggy wants you to go to sleep. Wouldn’t that be nice? Going to sleep?”

“Auuuuuuurhhhhh.” Stella did not feel going to sleep would be nice.

“That’s all right; sometimes I don’t want to go to sleep either. Oh, no no.” She caught a tiny hand as it thunked against her jaw. “We don’t punch Auntie Belle in the face tonight. You have to join the queue for that.”

At this, Stella made a different sound: an utterly delirious trill that seemed to paint the whole world in the prettiest, brightest colours.

“Are you,” asked Belle, “are you laughing ?”

Stella made the sound again.

“Well,” said Belle, helplessly enchanted. “I’m beginning to see why Peggy keeps you around.”

All at once, Stella’s face scrunched up like a fist, and she burst into fractious tears.

For some reason, Belle was less panic-stricken by this than she thought she might be. “Oh, you’re quite the little drama, aren’t you?” She gave Stella a gentle jiggle. “Is that better?”

Stella did seem to think it was better. Her tears vanished as quickly as they’d come as she bounced in Belle’s arms.

“I can certainly tell my twin was involved in your production,” remarked Belle. “You are going to be an absolute menace when you grow up.”

“Yeh-yeh,” declared Stella.

“No, you’re right. Why wait until you’re grown up. Start as you mean to go on.”

The jiggling was already becoming yesterday’s news with Stella. She gave a determined wriggle of her own that made Belle’s heart plummet fearfully in case this was the moment when she inadvertently smashed Peggy’s child on the floor. But no. Everything was fine.

“My, my,” said Belle, still recovering, “you do not like to be bored, do you? I don’t blame you. I don’t like to be bored either. Is this why you won’t go to sleep? Do you think you might miss something important?”

Stella gazed up at her, temporarily lulled by the rise and fall of Belle’s voice.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. Because you are the something important. Never let anyone convince you otherwise.”

This was sterling advice and made Stella laugh again.

“I know,” said Belle. “Let’s go on a little explore, shall we? And we can look at all the things and—oh.” She noticed a basket on one of the chairs, absolutely bristling with toys and blankets and other items she supposed necessary for the well-being of a small person. “Are these your friends? You’d better introduce me to every single one of them. Because that won’t be exhausting at all, will it?”

So they made their way around the hall, Belle doing her best to distract Stella with whatever they came across—the fancy moulding around the fireplace, the wibble of their reflections in a set of silver candlesticks, a petal that had fallen from a jar full of roses—until even Stella’s boundless inquisitiveness seemed to have run its course. Then Belle settled down in the big chair by the fire and went through the basket, waving various items in front of Stella’s face and making them disappear again by holding them very slightly out of reach. In some respects, she thought, as Stella reacted in shocked delight to a rattle she’d seen two seconds ago, babies were a lot easier to deal with than their grown-up counterparts.

Eventually, to Belle’s mild surprise—for Peggy had given her to understand such a thing was absolutely impossible—Stella slept, her favourite cuddly bumblebee in attendance, her whole fist clenched around Belle’s little finger.

The hours ticked by, moving neither fast nor slow, but passing inevitably, bearing Belle with them, like waves drawing a lost sailor further and further out to sea. She was at once terribly content and terribly afraid because it had never before occurred to her that she might want this. That she—with her unmoved, unmoving heart— could want it. And not whimsically or impulsively, as she generally wanted things, but with the deep ache of waking to discover you’d bruised yourself in the night. This sad little pain that had been yours long before you’d noticed it.

The nanny eventually disturbed Belle’s listless slumber, drawing a still-quiet Stella from her stiff arms. Then Peggy, looking less tired than she had the night before, assuming a scale of human exhaustion that began at weary and ended at dead , brought her a cup of tea.

“Looks like my kid’s still alive,” she said.

Belle yawned, stretched, and then winced as a joint or two popped with a crack. “It was touch and go for a while.”

“You got her to sleep.”

“Yes, I banged her head against the wall. That seemed to do the trick.”

One of Peggy’s brows arched. “Funny.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m fucking with you. We joke about that stuff all the time. I think it’s how we protect ourselves because I can’t imagine anything worse than anything bad actually happening to Stella.”

“She’ll be fine.” Belle shifted, found the shifting agonising, and wondered if she was going to be armchair-shaped for the rest of her life. “You said yourself that babies are hard to kill.”

“Jesus, Belle, I was just trying to make you feel better.”

Belle gaped, retrospectively appalled at her former ease.

“I’m fucking terrified,” Peggy went on, “all the time. My mind is a constant litany of ‘What if I drop her, what if she falls down the stairs, what if she falls out the window, what if she falls down a well, what if she gets eaten by a lion ...’”

“I mean,” Belle tried, “she hasn’t died yet?”

Throwing herself into the chair opposite, Peggy extended her feet towards what remained of the fire, looking effortlessly louche for someone contemplating the demise of their offspring. “Suppose not. Thanks for, you know, taking care of Stella for me. The sleep I just had might have been the best sex of my life. God, I feel like a whole new person.”

“How’s Orfeo?”

“Better. Still in bed. Look, I”—Peggy leaned forward over her knees—“I hate that this happened to them and I wish it hadn’t. But we’re both grateful for the time together. Maybe it’ll serve as a reminder that they can come home without needing someone to attack them first.”

“I think that would be good,” agreed Belle.

Peggy smirked. “Very gooth.”

“Oh, stop it.” Belle’s pout was only about 30 percent counterfeit. “I was legitimately injured.”

“I know, I’m sorry. You were heroic. But Orfeo’s impression of you is the funniest shit I think I’ve ever seen.”

“So,” said Belle, “while I was down here taking care of your child for you, you were both upstairs laughing at me?”

Peggy nodded. “That’s about the strength of it. Married couples. Can’t trust us.”

“Apparently not,” returned Belle loftily.

“Though speaking of married folks”—Peggy’s lazily shrewd gaze became energetically shrewd—“you and Sir Horley. Can’t say I saw that one coming.”

“To be fair, I’m not sure we did either.”

“And it’s all right . . . you know, with your . . .”

“My incapacity to love?” suggested Belle, hating to be the one thing the usually blunt Peggy felt uncomfortable talking about.

“It’s what you want, though?”

Belle opened her mouth, intending to say yes. Because, in many ways, it could have been. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “Maybe I’m not very good at knowing what I want. Maybe that’s been the problem all along.”

“Or maybe,” Peggy offered, in her brisk way, “it’s not and you’re fine.”

It was hard to resist Peggy when she was set upon a course of making you feel better. Even if what that meant in practice was you gave up and agreed. Which was sort of what Belle did now. “Maybe.”

“Anyway.” Peggy’s briskness tended to extend to her actions too. Done with sitting, talking, and Belle’s nonsense, she stood. “Sir Horley’s a good man. You’ll figure it out. Are you staying for breakfast?”

And Belle said yes, because not staying for breakfast had never helped anyone. Though she might have been better off had she departed immediately, because, while Orfeo and Peggy did their best, they were too involved with each other to be good company. By the time she was back in the carriage, she was beginning to ask herself if she was actually going home, or if she’d just run out of places to leave. And whether letting herself become part of other people’s compromises had only trapped her in one of her own.