Freya Marske

Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance! The second entry in Freya Marske's beloved The Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light The most interesting things in Maud Blyth's life have happened to her brother Robin, but she's ready to join any cause, especially if it involves magical secrets that may threaten the whole of the British Isles. Bound for New York on the R.M.S. Lyric, she's ready for an adventure. What she actually finds is a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and a beautiful stranger in Violet Debenham, who is everything—a magician, an actress, a scandal—Maud has been trained to fear and has learned to desire. Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of loathsome, aristocratic suspects, they must solve a murder and untangle a conspiracy that began generations before them.

A Restless Truth

bri 🍂

The truth was a flexible reed of a thing. One could weave it into all sorts of shapes, depending on what one needed it to be.

Sometimes truth was the most devastating when you delivered it unadorned.

She was the opposite to Edwin; his walls were all up front, the warmth there beneath them if you had the patience to wait to be granted entry. 

Violet's warmth was on the outside. Sweets spread temptingly out on a blanket. Pause and let yourself accept the entertainment, the offering, and you might not notice the wall at all. 

A person is an act, Maud. A person is a theatre. You change the set dressing depending on the season. The real parts are the parts that aren't meant to be seen.

betty

Griefs jaws were not blunt of tooth. They snapped shut like a poacher's trap. Elizabeth stood with her hand clenched around her silver locket and kept painfully behind her teeth the urge to curse the dead for dying. She wanted to hurl magic at those green lamps for the pleasure of watching something shatter.

"Well," Violet said lightly, "in some ways it's easier for Women inclined to their own sex than it is for men, because women can be companions. Or dear friends, who never marry and choose to share a house. Affection is expected of girls. Nobody will blink if I take your arm, like this” she did so. “Or slide an arm around your waist like this. And kiss your cheek.” 

That was usually the point in the proceedings at which Edwin would slam his research book shut and then immediately lay his palm on the cover in silent apology. After which Robin would go to haul his beloved forcibly out of his seat and insist on a brisk walk in the fresh air.

Maud felt like she'd been handed a jigsaw puzzle: one made for children, with large, obvious pieces. One of the pieces was the way her body had turned to a slow bonfire of curiosity beneath Violet Debenham's hand, and her inability to stop thinking of Violet's lips. The other was the last time she'd felt anything even close to that, when she and Liza lay giggling on Liza's bed with their arms linked, breathlessly reliving the jokes of the pantomime performance they’d just seen. Maud buoyant with unquestioned joy at her friends attention; Maud feeling as though she’d been punctured with a knife when Liza drew away and promised her laughter to someone else 

Maud had never quite picked up the knack of conversation with Edwin Courcey. She loved him for how happy he made her brother, but he had a way of looking at you as though he saw all your worst qualities and was waiting to have them turned onto himself like knives.

He played a beautiful game of chess, though.

Maud seized a desperate burst of courage and moved her hands to rest on either side of Violet’s waist. Maud's back was on solid wood. They were in shadow. The deck was empty and the stars were kind, and glittering, and very far away. Maud?" said Violet softly. "What are you doing?"

“Looking,” said Maud, above the din of her heart “for a more practical education.”

A Restless Truth quotes

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