by Olivia Waite
“It’s beautiful,” Catherine said, moving forward. Close up, she recognized several species, though when she’d seen them last they’d been displayed in rows under glass, each one carefully labeled. This was not that sort of arrangement. That had been science; this was closer to art.
But as her eye followed the lines, variations of shape and style and color shifting like gradients, one species shaded almost imperceptibly into another, Catherine realized there was a science here as well. “Mother would love it,” she said softly, and was rewarded when Aunt Kelmarsh set her mouth and coughed as if to pretend it was not tears tickling the back of her throat.
Lucy paused in her spot in the center of the grotto. “You must miss her very much.”
Aunt Kelmarsh went utterly still, staring at Lucy.
Lucy looked back, her face calm, her eyes soft.
Tension crackled in the air, making Catherine tense her shoulders and bite her tongue to silence questions.
Aunt Kelmarsh sent her one flicker of a glance—and straightened, lifting her chin in the air. “She was my very soul.”
Lucy nodded, as if this were a perfectly expected reply, and went back to admiring the grotto.
For a heartbeat, Catherine was too stunned to move. Then memories washed over her, of all the years Aunt Kelmarsh had spent with Mother at Ruche Abbey. Picnics in the summer. Walking together every evening at twilight. Letters flowing back and forth whenever they were separated by so much as a single day. As she watched, the light flickered and shifted, the blurred lens of a young girl’s notice sharpening into the more precise view of mature adulthood.
Of course it was a love affair. It had been love the whole time.
Catherine’s shock broke beneath the weight of this truth, leaving behind only the embarrassed feeling that she should have seen it properly long, long before now.
Her aunt was watching her warily. As soon as Catherine was able to meet her eye, Aunt Kelmarsh said: “They don’t let you have anything whole, you know. If you don’t follow the pattern. You have to find your happiness in bits and pieces instead. But it can still add up to something beautiful.”
“Even if it all comes to nothing,” Lucy said, ducking past an arch to peer at the shell-studded dome above her, “what else are you to do? Sit around being miserable and bemoaning the ways of the world?”
Aunt Kelmarsh snorted genially. “The ways of the world aren’t so permanent as they say, my dear. It was quite different in the last century. There were times and places one could be open and free about such things.”
Lucy’s smile was knowing. “And there aren’t now?”
Aunt Kelmarsh pursed her lips, amused. “If you know where to look for them.”
“Or who to ask, apparently.”
Aunt Kelmarsh put on her most mysterious air, humming innocently.
Lucy laughed.
Catherine was having trouble finding her footing in the conversation. She felt as brittle and stiff as the leaves of the willow beside her, their edges sharp with ice, every little lick of wind making them shiver. She’d known marriage could exist separately from love—it had taken less than a year for her own affections for George to wither like a plant unwatered—but she had never openly acknowledged that the reverse must be true as well: love could exist—could even thrive—quite apart from the paper forms of marriage and classifications of sex. It was all at once appalling that she and George had been bitterly bound to one another in the sight of the world, while these devoted souls had had to cloak their joy and hide it behind walls and walks and secret gardens.
Aunt Kelmarsh might have been a stepmother, instead of an aunt.
It was a thought to break the heart. Catherine valued family all the more for having so little left of it. She knew an embrace was not to her aunt’s taste, so instead she tucked her arm in Aunt Kelmarsh’s and leaned gently into the older woman’s shoulder. “Thank you for bringing us here,” she said softly.
The older woman’s cheeks were red with more than the wind. Her lips curved in relieved affection. “I’m glad to know you appreciate it for what it is.” With one more glance at the bright oranges and golds of the shell grotto, she turned Catherine around on the path. “Now, let us get out of this cold and into Cook’s best brandy punch.”
“Can you serve brandy punch in April?” Catherine asked.
Aunt Kelmarsh chortled. “My dearest girl: who’s going to stop us?”
Catherine and Lucy took their leave much later than they’d anticipated, bundled up in the sunset light with hot bricks at their feet and their cloaks wrapped tight around them. Lucy soon fell into a doze: Aunt Kelmarsh had indeed been generous with the brandy punch. Lucy’s bonnet was slightly askew, and a tendril of her dark hair had come loose and trailed down her cheek. She stirred slightly now and again, lips murmuring things that weren’t quite words. Catherine made herself comfortable in the opposite seat and finally opened up the box with the thoughts she’d been hiding away for most of her existence.
The inescapable truth: women could fall in love with other women.
Strange indeed that an idea could change your life so completely, and yet fit in so perfectly with all that came before. She felt the force of it in her very bones. It was less as if her biography were being rewritten, and more as though Catherine were suddenly able to read the other set of lines that lay crosswise on the familiar page. The way the curve of one woman’s waist had made her heart race. The elation when that Italian viscountess with dark hair and sparkling eyes had laughed at Catherine’s teasing. It was desire, the same as she’d felt for the attractive men she’d known, and some sly part of her must have recognized this all along because she had put a great deal of effort into keeping these thoughts and impulses from seeing the light of day.
And for what? For a proper, unhappy marriage and a proper, lonely widowhood. She’d taken a lover after George’s death, simply because she could: she was stranded, temporarily exiled from England by the uncertainty of the wars, and her sudden freedom from George’s constraints had sparked her into reckless rebellion. She’d drunk too much champagne, flirted outrageously with an embassy secretary, and embarked on an absolute tempest of an affair.
Then, at the one-year mark, her lover had gone down on one knee, and Catherine had been forced to break off the liaison. She had not known until he asked the question how deep ran her horror of putting herself once more under a man’s legal, financial, and emotional control. Her lover had been shocked, and angry. The parting had been bitter on both sides, and Catherine had not repeated the experiment. Better to remain alone, if seeking physical comfort led to one party’s raised hopes and everyone’s ultimate painful disappointment.
She’d believed she could bear a widow’s loneliness more peacefully than the misery of a bad marriage. But that was like choosing whether hemlock or belladonna was the better poison. In the end, they both sapped the life from you.
That same sly voice whispered to her now: if she had an affair with a woman, she wouldn’t have to dread the specter of marriage at all.
It would easily, naturally minimize the risks. A lady-love could assert no authority over Catherine’s finances, or claim any rights in legal matters. Should desire wear itself out, separation could be done privately and discreetly, requiring no Act of Parliament to make it official. There was the considerable chance of scandal if they were found out, of course—but even there, being women, they were safer from the cruelty of the law than if they’d been two men similarly inclined. Friendship, people would call it in public, even as they prayed silently their own daughters had no such friends.
It was shocking how perfect a solution it was. She wondered everyone didn’t think of it. Then again . . . maybe quite a few of them did, and Catherine just hadn’t noticed. Look at Aunt Kelmarsh and her mother, in the days of their idylls at Ruche Abbey.
No doubt the rolling hills and quiet cottages of old England’s countryside housed more than one pair of ladies who were as good as w
ed in the eyes of everyone but the church and the law.
Perhaps in past years the idea would have been nothing more than an idle philosophical game to play in the safety of her own thoughts. But now there was Lucy. Lucy, with her quick smiles and quicker mind—and who had made it perfectly clear how her tastes aligned with Catherine’s. That was the greatest hurdle in the business already leaped over, at least . . .
The carriage hit a bump, jolting the both of them. Lucy grumbled something incoherent and blinked wildly, but soon the swaying lulled her back into slumber.
Catherine let out a breath and leaned back again, the interruption allowing her natural caution to flow back into its accustomed corners. She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. Look at her, imagining seductions and passions and parting quarrels, when she hadn’t even set foot on the path yet. Hadn’t she doubted just this morning that Lucy even wanted a lover? Oh, Miss Muchelney might blush and give compliments, and once or twice Catherine had caught her staring in that gratifying way—she knew Lucy wasn’t entirely indifferent to Catherine’s charms, such as they presently were. But that kind of restrained flirtation was one thing. A seduction was quite another. Especially if all Lucy wanted was a friendship—in the usual, not the euphemistic, sense.
Catherine was going to have to go about this carefully. One step at a time. Inviting, rather than pursuing. Always leaving Lucy the chance to retreat, or reject. It would sting, but that was nothing. Catherine valued Lucy’s freedom in this as much as her own. I want more; I understand if you don’t.
Best to start with something simple. A gift, that’s what was needed. Something that would bring Lucy delight, but that wouldn’t feel like a burden. Sweets or flowers or jewelry, the usual kind of courting gifts, felt unspecific and therefore unsatisfying. It should be something particular.
Catherine combed back through their shared days, and remembered all the times Lucy had turned those keen eyes onto her needlework, asking about the names and species of the flowers Catherine embroidered. And hadn’t the infamous Priscilla worked the vines on Lucy’s best gown?
Catherine was beginning to loathe the sight of that strip of green embroidery. Lucy had worn the dress twice more in the weeks since the Society dinner. Her wardrobe was as limited as you’d expect from a girl raised in a quiet corner of the country. Perhaps Catherine could arrange a new gown or two . . .
No. Tempting as it was to send Lucy to her favorite dressmaker and say the Countess of Moth would see to the bill, doing so was a good way to make Lucy feel embarrassed and obligated and perhaps a very little bit like a pet.
Turning someone into a project was a terrible way to woo them.
Lucy shifted in her sleep, pulling her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. She must have a tendency toward chills. No wonder, as slender as she was. Catherine recalled loaning her a wrap the night of the Society dinner—and inspiration slipped in like a breath and exploded in her body like a lightning bolt. She took her notebook out of her reticule and began making sketches.
The next afternoon, when Lucy returned to the library, Catherine began gathering supplies. Her needle case, since the tambour hook wouldn’t do for the kind of fine work she had in mind. Silk skeins in pale shades of white, green, gold, and silver. And a length of deep blue fabric, silk and wool blended, the drape of it light and soft and warmer than its cool color suggested.
Her initial hasty sketches she spread on the writing desk, making notes to herself about alterations and possibilities in the margins. Slowly she began working out a shape in pencil on a clean sheet of paper, refining the curves and adding long trailing lines and delicate swirls. When she was satisfied with it she would pierce the paper with tiny holes along each line and dust it with pounce, leaving a dotted version of the design on the fabric beneath, ready for needle and thread to fill in.
She hid it away when Brinkworth brought in the tea, until Lucy was gone again. By dinnertime, she had her pattern finalized and pierced and ready for the next day’s embroidering. She took care to work as slowly and meticulously as she could, not only for the sake of those long, precise lines, but because each day that passed was one more day for Lucy to move further away from her earlier love affair.
Catherine wanted Lucy, but more than that, Catherine wanted Lucy to want her back. And Lucy wouldn’t, if she were still pining for the girl she’d lost. So Catherine let the days flow by like water while she put in stitch after stitch after stitch, as though each one were mending a small rent in Lucy Muchelney’s heart.
Chapter Five
With heartfelt passion, Lucy cursed the French subjunctive tense.
She cast a bitter eye over the scribblings of her latest efforts. Oléron deserved so much better, and Lucy was beginning to despair of capturing even a third of the crystalline clarity of the original. Two months of consistent translating and expanding still hadn’t made the frustrating compromises easier to bear. She put down might for this verb’s translation, frowned at it, crossed it out, wrote might again, and then in parentheses added should with a pair of helpless question marks.
Let Future Lucy make the ultimate decision during revisions to the text. Future Lucy was always so much more decisive, somehow. Maybe because she was ever-so-slightly closer to death than Present Lucy?
Lucy groaned and slumped back in her chair, rolling her shoulders to ease the soreness from leaning for hours over the desk. When she started musing about the inevitability of death and the terrifying brevity of the mortal lifespan, it meant she’d spent too long looking at things from the perspective of the universe. She needed something on a human scale to focus on until the framework shifted back.
A soft knock heralded Lady Moth’s entrance to the library. Her dress today was a lush plum that brought out the gold in her hair and the pink in her cheeks. She looked positively radiant, and deep within Lucy a chord hummed as if a hand had strummed the very fibers of her soul and set them to music.
It ought to have been agonizing, living and working in close quarters alongside a woman so beautiful and yet so unattainable. But Lucy’s heart, newly mended, was prepared to bask in any sensation that was not the sharp pain of loss—so unrequited fascination for her benefactress came not as a trial, but rather as a pleasurable seasoning to any day’s difficult work. And if the feeling occasionally stole her breath and her wits and kept her awake into the small hours of the night, well, nobody had to know. Really, it was much safer and more convenient than any actual love affair would have been.
Perhaps this was how her future could best be managed: devoting her days to scientific work and spending her nights silently, secretly pining for a woman with golden hair and clever hands.
It wasn’t until Lady Moth set the bundle of cloth down on the desk that Lucy realized: one, she had been staring, and two, there was quite a lot going on with that bundle of cloth. It was deep blue, rolled tight, and looked very fine indeed. “What is this?” Lucy asked.
Lady Moth sat in her usual spot on the sofa, but the way she leaned forward and the spark in her eyes had Lucy’s pulse racing with anticipation. “A little something I’ve made,” the countess said. She smiled, not without some anxiety. “A gift.”
Lucy sat straight up in astonishment. “A gift for me?”
Lady Moth’s laugh was always soft, as if it had been packed away in an attic for too long, unused. “Who else?”
Lucy shook her head, feeling silly, and reached out a hand. The fabric unrolled and revealed itself to be a generous shawl, and Lucy choked back a gasp.
She’d thought at first it was an ocean blue, but there in front of her was spread the whole night sky.
Each edge of the shawl glittered with comets, icy silver spheres made of spiking stitches, a few with long wispy tails of single strands stretching out toward the center of the fabric. Arranged in a line, they formed shapes like classical columns, or arches on some Palladian monument. Between these edges was a vast, starry expanse, tiny glass spangles scattered across the blue l
ike diamonds on velvet. Lucy’s trained eye picked out the familiar patterns at once—there was the boxy bulk of Ursa Major, and spiky Cassiopeia the jealous queen, and the broad shoulders of Orion the hunter. She looked back again in wonder at the comet border, marveling at the subtle color variation in the silk threads. Silver and white and gold and even a hint of palest green, each thread as precisely placed as a brushstroke on a portraitist’s masterpiece, giving the impression that each comet was still somehow streaking across the nighttime sky on its impossible journey.
She wanted to wrap the whole thing around herself like armor—and oh, wouldn’t it make the most of all her gowns in their simple lines and mourning colors? Her lavenders and grays would look restrained and mature, rather than simply undecorated.
“Do you like it?” Lady Moth asked.
Lucy looked up, English and French and the language of astronomy spinning madly together in her brain. “I am trying very hard not to cry on you again,” she stammered, “but it’s difficult—because this may be the single loveliest thing I have ever seen.” She put one hand out again to feel the softness of the wool—and stopped, hand hovering over the spangles of what could only be the Pleiades. A whole stellarium, worked in silk. “Did you say you made this?”
Lady Moth nodded.
This whole scene had been carefully, painstakingly sewn one stitch at a time by Lady Moth’s own talented hands. Lucy’s breath caught, and she hoped her red cheeks could be mistaken for a grateful blush, but all she could imagine was Lady Moth’s hands going everywhere the shawl would: curving over Lucy’s shoulders, tucked tight in the crook of her elbow, cupping the tender skin on the back of her neck . . .
She swallowed and cast about for something harmless to say. “Thank you. This is astonishing. When on earth did you find the time?”