Waging War (12 page)

“A while. Archer and I ‘ad a talk before ‘e
went down for the day.”

That surprised me. “About what?”

He sipped his own coffee, loaded with cream
and sugar, in silence. I knew better than to prod Ringo. He’d tell
me whatever he was going to tell me, but he’d tell me less if I
poked at him. Finally, he took a breath and spoke. “We were
discussin’ women.” My eyebrows shot up, but I wisely, and with some
difficulty, refrained from comment. He continued. “Ye’re very
different from men.”

“We can do anything men can do.” I didn’t
usually get defensive about equal rights because I’d grown up with
a strong, capable mom who did the job of two parents. But every
time I had Clocked backward, I’d either had to dress like a man to
get by or put up with attitudes from natives that I was weaker
because of my gender.

He gave me a strange look. “I didn’t say
anythin’ about doin’, did I? People can do what they can do – some
are stronger, some are faster, some are more limber. Bein’ a man or
a woman doesn’t come into the doin’ of a thing. Except babies, of
course. But that’s just nature.”

He let his eyes travel out over the vista.
“We were talkin’ about the way we think. The way a man sees ‘is job
in the world, or in ‘is family.”

“How is it different than the way a woman
does? I don’t think I did my job at the museum any differently than
the guy interns did.”

He shook his head. “Yer back to the doin’ of
things.” He sighed as though he was saying it badly.

“Don’t try to give me context, just tell me
what you talked about.” I tried to sound more patient than I was.
Ringo’s mouth quirked in half a smile.

“We talked about the future. Our futures,
actually. About what defines us as men.”

“What defines you?” I asked. “Isn’t that
something you decide – who you’re going to be?”

Ringo turned to look at me. “It’s not just
who we decide to be. It’s who the world sees when they look at us.
Do they respect us? Do we respect ourselves? Are we doin’ somethin’
that matters, or are we just doin’ a job? Are we doin’ enough to
provide a life for the ones we’re responsible for, and are they
proud of us for doin’ it?” He exhaled. “That’s how men think.”

I thought about saying it wasn’t different
from how women think, but then I really considered what he had
said. If that’s the way men thought about the world, shouldn’t I,
as a partner to a man, want to be provided for, cared for, and
protected so that he could feel all those things? But I was totally
capable of doing all of that for myself and did so regularly. “Was
it a theoretical conversation or a practical one?”

He grimaced. “A little of both.” The silence
after that statement stretched between us until I realized that was
all I was getting on that subject. It wasn’t a confidence booster
for sure.

“You put a lot of pressure on yourselves,” I
finally said.

He scoffed. “Yeah. Ye could say that.”

We climbed back into the dormer window and
went downstairs, lost in our own thoughts. Just before he went down
the hall toward the east wing, he turned back to me. “I’m not sure
‘ow well either of us really knows ‘Is Lordship. ‘E’s ‘ad a big
life, with three lifetimes of memories to guide ‘im and keep ‘im
company.”

I tried not to think about how big Archer’s
life had been before me, because that path led to insecurity, which
hung out and drank tea with pointless things like jealousy on a
regular basis. Ringo called out to me as I turned toward my room.
“I’m goin’ to Raven’s fencin’ school today. Do ye want to join
me?”

Confronting Raven sounded far more
entertaining than spending too much time alone in my head. “Come
and get me when you go,” I said.

I could hear Ringo chuckle as he walked away
down the hall.

Instead of going to my room, I went to my
mom’s bedroom and knocked. She wasn’t there, but her gardening hat
was gone from its usual place on her dresser, so I slipped out to
the balcony of her room and used the drainpipes to climb down, just
to stay in practice. I found my mom in the walled garden that had
always been hers. Remarkably, she wasn’t alone. Millicent worked
nearby, pulling up dead plants and replacing them with winter
bulbs. I must have sounded as surprised as I felt, because they
both smiled when I said good morning.

“Would you like your mother to yourself?”
Millicent asked, sitting back on her heels to look up at me.

I dropped down next to them and started
pulling dandelions to cover my shock. My mom tossed me a pair of
gloves. “Here. Save your hands.”

I pulled the gloves on and met Millicent’s
eyes. “I don’t want to bore you with my stupid stuff.”

“Your
stuff
isn’t stupid, Saira. And
if it’s acceptable to you, I’d be honored to be a part of one of
your mother/daughter conversations.”

I don’t know what possessed me to tease her.
“You’re kind of freaking me out, Millicent. I’m not sure what to do
with all this … kindness.” Maybe I was testing to see if this
transformation in Millicent was real or if my imagination had gone
into overdrive and was conjuring kindness out of thin air.

I didn’t expect her response though, and it
was perfect. She scoffed. “Yes, well, you’ve been
freaking me
out
since the day you arrived. So perhaps we’re finally
even?”

We all burst into laughter and then settled
into an easy working rhythm as we tended to the garden.

My mom spoke first. “You looked like a woman
with a mission when you came in here, Saira.”

“I just had a weird conversation with
Ringo.” I took a breath. “It was about the differences between men
and women. He says men think differently than us.”

“This is certainly true,” she said.

“And always has been,” added Millicent.

My mom smiled. “Was this about Archer?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” I sighed
dramatically. “They talked about stuff, but Ringo wouldn’t be
specific, and I got insecure because now I assume it was about me.
But mostly, the conversation made me wonder how we can ever want
the same thing if the things he needs to feel good at aren’t things
I need him to do for me?”

My mom looked thoughtful for a moment before
she spoke. “It used to be simpler.”

I fought mightily against rolling my eyes.
“You mean in the old days, when women knew their place?”

She laughed. “There were so many things
wrong with Victorian ideas of what a woman was
allowed
to
do, but none of us ever questioned what a man’s role was in our
lives. We needed them, they needed us, and our mutual need made for
uncomplicated ideas of who we were to each other. Since the
beginning of time, a woman who bore children had to be protected
from danger, and it became hardwired into a man’s DNA to do
so.”

She sat back and wiped a lock of hair back
from her face. It sounded like she had given this topic a lot of
thought. “Somehow, especially in America, the idea of equality
between the genders shifted into
sameness.
It’s a shift that
has caused quite a bit of confusion in relationships because it’s
difficult to find mutual need if everyone is equal
and the
same
. It’s in our differences that we can seek the things that
complement us and be the things that support our loved ones.”

Millicent spoke quietly. “There was a
gentleman once – Sean Mulroy – just after the war. He had been a
soldier, a pilot, and he came to the manor looking for work. My
parents were still alive then, and I was young, but not so young
that I shouldn’t have been married.”

She sighed – something I’d never heard
Millicent do – and then continued. “His family was Irish, which,
even in those days, was considered only a step above tinkers. But
worse than that to my father, he might have had mixed blood. There
were Irish Clockers left in those days, and Sean certainly seemed
to know a bit about our Family. But I also had the sense he could
See things before they happened; he was always moving things out of
the way before they were knocked over or smashed. He never
confirmed his heritage, of course, beyond his Irishness, and my
father hired him to work in the field, despite the fact that he had
a Trinity College education and had been a hero in the war. There
were so many people looking for work at that time and very few
people with means to pay them, which meant that any paying job was
like gold, and many of the laborers were far more educated than the
jobs demanded.”

Millicent absently picked a piece of
lavender and brushed the flower against her cheek. It made her seem
young and wistful, and I could suddenly see the twenty-eight year
old version of herself, with long, lustrous hair, a wide, smiling
mouth, and crystal blue eyes that missed nothing.

Her voice was even quieter when she
continued. “He always seemed to find me whenever I stepped outside
the manor, and I made up excuses to cross his path several times a
day. It became a dance between us. A glance, a smile, some clever
comment to make him laugh. I once twisted my ankle trying to climb
a tree for a perfect apple, and when he found me struggling to make
my way home, he wrapped my ankle in his own shirt so carefully and
so tenderly, I felt as though I were made of glass. After that he
always brought whatever fruit he could forage from the fields
around the manor – always with a posy of wild lavender.”

Millicent had a faraway smile on her face as
she twirled the stalk of lavender. “My mother encouraged me –
perhaps she recognized that I was already becoming set in my ways
and therefore unlikely to marry. But my father could only see the
possibility of his mixed blood, his Irishness, and his lack of
title. It was he who planted the idea in my head that my
field-working ex-pilot would never be able to support me in the
manner a woman of my station would be expected to maintain. He
impressed upon me that as the last Elian, I would be Family Head
after my mother, and no man whose title or worth was less than mine
would ever accept my position of power.”

My mother sucked in a breath. She’d never
heard this story before either. Millicent’s voice caught on her
next words. “So I set a test for him. I told him I could only marry
a man who had made something of himself, a man with more ambition
than bringing me wildflowers.”

My mom exhaled softly. “Oh, Millicent.”

“It was cruel, and so unjust. The hurt in
his eyes cut slashes across my heart as he looked away, bowed his
head, and said he’d trouble me no more.” Millicent took a deep,
shaky breath and caught my eyes. “I had wounded his pride, you see.
I let him believe that there was nothing I needed from him that he
could give. I was wrong though. So wrong. What I didn’t know then
was that without someone to care for the woman, all the status and
titles in the world couldn’t replace the need for another’s arms to
comfort me when the weight of responsibility became too heavy to
bear alone.”

Millicent’s words came out in a whisper.
“Even as the words left my mouth, I knew I’d made a mistake.” Her
eyes hadn’t left mine. “So don’t ever believe, like I did, that you
don’t need care. It may seem unnecessary or even superfluous
because you’re strong and capable, but I promise you, its absence
would leave a hole in your life that no amount of self-reliance can
fill.”

Tears pooled in my eyes, and I realized that
words couldn’t take away the pain that Millicent had lived with for
more than half a century. So instead I kissed her cheek. “Thank you
for that,” I whispered.

Millicent wiped at her own eyes and laughed
a little at the fact that my mom had just done the same. “I’ve
never told anyone that story. It feels a little … lighter to let
some of it go.”

She stood and brushed off her trousers. “So,
I gather the reason this has come up now is that your young man is
struggling with your kidnapping and his inability to stop it?”

I let out a frustrated breath. “Maybe that’s
at the root of it, but he
did
stop it. He put his body in
the way and then got shot for his trouble, and here I am – not
trapped somewhere with a group of the mixed-bloods we’re trying to
find.”

Millicent looked hard at me. “You wanted to
be taken to them, didn’t you?”

My mom’s eyes were locked on me when I
blurted. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

Mom gasped, but Millicent didn’t blink. “You
thought you’d be able to Clock them out, a few at a time, right
under the Mongers’ noses.” There was no question in her tone, and I
finally nodded.

“Bob said they had tied your hands behind
your back,” Mom said. I nodded. “And you thought they would cut the
ties once they had dumped you, even though Seth Walters knows
you’re a Clocker?”

“He doesn’t know that I can draw my own
spirals.”

“He’s not stupid, Saira,” Millicent said.
“All he would have had to do was threaten to kill everyone he’d
taken if you so much as set foot out of his sight, and you would
have been as trapped as they all are. He’ll have cameras on them –
he’d be a fool not to – and you were his prized prisoner. How
easily he could have made you do things against your will – all he
would have had to do was hold a gun to one child’s head.” She spoke
the words in such a reasonable, straightforward tone there was
nothing I could push back against. She was right, and she saw in my
eyes that I knew it, so she went in for the kill.

“There’s a part of you that resents Archer
for having ridden in on his white horse to rescue you, because you
felt very certain you could rescue yourself – and about forty
people with you.” Her eyes were boring into mine, and despite every
instinct I had that said
run
, I didn’t look away. “Here’s
the truth, Saira. He didn’t ride in to rescue you because you
needed him to. He believes in your strength, he knows your skills,
he
trusts
you. No, Archer put himself in the way of a bullet
because it’s what
he
needed to do. And, whether you accept
it or not, you needed him to do it too.”