“Me?”
“They seem to think I’m in love with you. And of course, in their eyes, there’s no one better than you that walks the face of the earth. They’re afraid I’m missing my chance for happiness.”
I didn’t know what to say. “What do you think?”
“I think you could do better than me,” Cymbeline said.
“You know my thoughts on that.” I was quiet for a moment, thinking through how to approach her with my idea. “I’ve an idea about the competition. What if you dressed up as a man?”
Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “A man?”
I warmed under her glare. “Like in Shakespeare. You could disguise yourself and enter the ski jumping race.”
She continued to stare at me, frozen other than a twitch at the side of her mouth. Bats from one of the trees swooped low, then back up again, distracting me for a moment from my lovely companion. “Shakespeare?”
“Yes. As You Like It.” I rubbed my sweaty palms together.
“Rosalind,” she said, “fleeing persecution, must disguise herself as a man.”
“Correct. You’re not persecuted, of course, and your life isn’t in danger.” I cleared my throat. “Obviously.”
“Sometimes it feels that way,” she said.
“I know,” I said softly.
“That’s a play, though. A man playing a woman playing a man.”
I had to laugh. Mrs. Barnes would be proud to hear both of us conjure the plot and characters of the play we’d studied in school. She’d told us that in Shakespeare’s time, female characters were played by twelve- to twenty-four-year-old boys. Essentially, Rosalind would have been an actor pretending to be a woman who then pretended to be a man. The other boys and I had looked at one another in wonder at such an idea. After that particular lesson we’d gone out to the schoolyard and pummeled one another with snowballs.
“How could I possibly disguise myself well enough that my own brothers wouldn’t recognize me?”
“My father’s a very clever tailor.”
“Yes, true.” She seemed to mull this over, glancing upward at the sky, then back to me. “Eventually the truth would come out, wouldn’t it?”
“Would you want it to?”
She seemed to contemplate this for a moment. Her brow furrowed before she turned to face the direction of the house. “Does it make me a bad person to admit that I’d want everyone to know?”
“Not at all. Part of the fun of competition is winning in public.” I turned slightly to get a better look at her.
She sighed, forming clouds in the air with her warm breath. “I can’t stop thinking about what Flynn said.”
“What part?”
“About me wanting to show off,” Cym said.
“That bothers you? Do you know why?”
“I suppose because it’s true.”
“You’ve threatenedthe way of doing things the way they’ve always been done. That’s disconcerting for a man.”
“Yes.” Her gaze slid toward the house. “Flynn’s stubborn. Like me. We’re alike, you know.”
I nodded. The words headstrong, wickedly intelligent, and ambitious came to mind when I thought of either of them. They were mountains ahead of the rest of us but at times were blinded to the right path by their aspirations.
“Flynn’s dream was to bring skiing to Emerson Pass. His heart is in that mountain. He wants badly for it to succeed. Ambition can make a man short-sighted.”
“Macbeth,” Cym said.
“Lady Macbeth,” I said. “It’s her in the end, you know.”
She laughed. “Yes, it was. Like me, maybe?”
“You’re not murdering anyone. You’re simply asking to compete in a sport.”
Nodding her head, she turned back to face me. “I think that’s what it feels like to Flynn. I’m murdering a way of life. Tradition even.”
“Sometimes we have to do so—for change that’s necessary.”
Her face crinkled into a dozen skeptical crevices. “Do you think I’m spoiled and ungrateful? Should I just take what’s offered me?”
“You already know what I think. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s the rest of this that’s not right. The world’s set up for men, not women. You should be able to do whatever it is you want to do. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Oh, Viktor. Do you really think these things?”
“I never say anything I don’t mean.”
The night settled in around us as I waited for her response. A breeze rustled the fallen leaves, making them dance along the stone pathway. From the back porch came the sound of laughter.
“Do you really think this plan will work?” Cymbeline asked. “Or is it simply a way to get everyone really mad at me?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s worth trying, don’t you think?”
She laughed. “Perhaps. The whole idea seems like something that could land me in the asylum.”
“Your sisters think it’s a good idea.”
She jerked back to look at me. “You talked to them about this?”