by Olivia Waite
Pris was perched on one of those chairs, her muslin walking dress embroidered with sprays of white work blossoms. She looked angelic, the dress glowing in the stark light, almost blinding Lucy after the comforting dimness of the library. Her gaze flicked once to Brinkworth as she rose and stepped forward to clasp Lucy’s hands. “My dear Miss Muchelney,” she said, her smile just the right shade of pleased without shading into a too-revealing eagerness.
Lucy couldn’t avoid the kiss Pris pressed to her cheek, but was acutely conscious of Brinkworth standing behind her. “May I offer you some refreshment, Mrs. Winlock?” The name sat like a stranger’s on her tongue, as Brinkworth rang for the maid to bring tea.
Lucy and Pris made empty conversation until the tea came, and then Lucy thanked Brinkworth and dismissed him with only the barest wince.
“Always happy to serve, Miss Muchelney,” the butler replied. For a moment his gaze was searching, but then he caught himself and his expression went polished again. “Let me know if there is anything else you or your guest require.”
There was some message here, but Lucy’s wits were too strained to unravel it. Every instant of struggle only pulled the knot tighter. “Thank you,” she said, and watched thoughtfully as Brinkworth shut the parlor door behind him. Then she turned to Pris—who smiled with all the old warmth, dimples appearing in her cheeks and the heat Lucy remembered so well brightening her eyes.
Once not too long ago Lucy’s heart would have leaped to see it. But Lucy then was not the same woman as Lucy now, and instead she only folded her arms and asked: “How’s Harry?”
“Oh!” Pris squeaked, and squirmed on her uncomfortable chair. “I know, I have been very churlish to you—but you have forgiven me, haven’t you?”
She stretched out her arms to Lucy and leaned forward, lips parting—but stopped when Lucy frowned and held up a warning hand. “What do you want, Pris?”
“You, of course.” Pris cocked her head, a teasing smile playing about her rose-tinted lips. “You did get my letter?”
Lucy bristled. “I am not a pet, to come when called.”
“Don’t be crude.” Pris sighed. “Of course you’re more than that. You have every right to be angry. I hurt you very badly, I know. But I have every intention of making it up to you, if you’ll only let me—”
“Why now?”
Pris blinked, brought up short by the sharpness of Lucy’s tone.
Lucy took a bitter satisfaction in the puzzlement on her former lover’s face. More words spilled over her tongue, a fountain-jet bursting out of the rock. “Two weeks ago you behaved like a proper new wife. Six months ago you couldn’t even tell me you were marrying Harry—and now you think you can just crook your finger and I’ll come running back, as though nothing at all has happened since then?” Lucy shook her head. “The ink on your marriage license is hardly dry, and you’re already throwing your vows aside like—like you threw me.”
“It was a mistake.” Pris’s mouth was set in a sad pout, but Lucy could see the color starting to rise in her cheeks. She hadn’t expected resistance, and it was beginning to frustrate her. Pris never had liked being thwarted. “I thought if I finally were married, my mother and father would feel they had done their duty by me and would leave me alone. Would leave us alone. I have my inheritance now, so I don’t have to work so hard to please them.” She sniffled, but if there were tears falling from her eyes, Lucy couldn’t see them. “I thought we would finally be safe.”
“Safe!” Lucy cried. “You left me for a husband you barely cared about! Did you really expect me not to feel hurt by that?” She narrowed her eyes. “Especially since you didn’t ask me about it in advance. You let me find out when the banns were read, in the family pew, with the whole village around me to take notice of how I reacted.”
“All you had to do was keep a calm head,” Pris snapped, “and we could have carried on as before—only better. But you couldn’t wait for that, could you? You ran away to London straight off, like a coward.” She sniffed again, out of pique this time. “A married woman has a deal more freedom than an unmarried one. People ask fewer questions, people forgive a bit more eccentricities.”
“Oh, was I to be an eccentricity, then?” Lucy retorted. “How flattering. Dare I ask if you informed Harry of this arrangement when you agreed to his proposal?”
“Don’t be absurd—Harry has nothing to do with us.”
“Pris, he is your husband.” Lucy took a deep breath, trying to keep her volume somewhere beneath a shout. The walls would echo here. “And he loves you.”
“But I don’t love him. My heart is full of someone else. How could you doubt it?” Pris reached out for Lucy again, eyes wide and limpid with unshed tears.
Lucy snatched her hand away, and leaped out of the chair for good measure. “You were wrong to come here, Pris. I thought we could talk, that we could come to understand one another, but you aren’t listening to me. What we had is gone now. It died the day you stood up in church and vowed to spend your life with someone else.”
Pris waved this aside with one graceful hand. “A man.”
“A person—who you chose,” Lucy insisted. “You took his ring, you took his name, you live in his home. You never told me what you hoped for us after the wedding, and you scoff when I ask if you’ve told him.” Pris’s cheeks were flame red now, and Lucy knew there would soon be an eruption, but she barreled onward regardless. “He made his vows in earnestness and sincerity, as you apparently did not.”
Pris sprang up from the chair, head high. “If you’re just going to be cruel, then you’re right, I should not have come. We’ll talk again when you’re back home, after you’ve had some time to come to your senses.”
This deserved more than the scornful snort Lucy gave it. “You will be waiting a long time.”
Pris narrowed her eyes. “How long?”
Lucy thought of Catherine’s face, and anguish chimed through her. “I cannot say.”
The other woman clucked her tongue at this, blond curls bouncing with the movement. “Come now. You’ve made your point, and I have apologized. To drag this out for pride’s sake would be childish.” Pris stepped forward again, reaching out, shafts of sunlight from the street outside making the pale muslin of her dress flash like lightning.
Lucy recoiled as if struck. Anger flared up, all the stronger for having gone so long unspoken. “You think I’ve stayed away half a year because of pride?” The selfishness of it shocked her, and Pris’s wide-eyed confusion somehow made it all the worse. As if Lucy just stopped existing if she weren’t standing at Pris’s side, or mooning over her, or scheming how to get her back. “I have been busy, Pris. I have been working. I have been making a life here—it may have looked to you like I was running away, but in fact there was something I was running toward.”
“And what was that?” Priscilla was seething now, the white work flowers on her dress trembling like apple blossoms in a spring storm.
“A future,” Lucy replied bluntly. “A life—and a happy one. A home where I can put my talents to use, for people who will appreciate them.”
“People like your Lady Moth?”
The barb struck home; Lucy couldn’t hold back a revealing wince.
Pris laughed, a harsh and horrid sound. “Oh, I noticed the way you looked at her in Lyme. You’d have a time seducing such a noble old matron as that—I doubt the idea that women can enjoy it would ever occur to her.”
Lucy bit hard on her lip to keep silent.
Pris cocked her head, scenting weakness, as she always had. Her eyes weighed every one of the words she spoke. “I doubt she’s ever thought about it beyond spreading her legs for her dead husband and hanging on until he starts snoring. I bet she’s glad widowhood removed that chore from her list. I bet she’s never pulled up her own skirts and slid her hands—”
“Stop it!” Lucy cried.
“Oh, this is rich.” Pris was at the full peak of her venom now, a sight Lucy hadn’t seen
since their school days, and had hoped never to see again. “You expect me to believe you really prefer a woman who’s just a duller, withered version of me?”
“Withered? Good lord, Pris, she’s only ten years—” Lucy cut herself off, with some effort. When she spoke again her voice was very soft. “I love her. That’s the plain truth of it. I love her and I won’t leave her for you.”
Pris’s smile uncurled, a small but venomous serpent beneath a rose leaf. “Maybe you won’t want to,” she said. “But have you considered that maybe your Lady Moth won’t want to keep you? You’re exciting now, with your youth and your brilliance and the fuss about your little book. But what happens when your lady’s tastes wander?” She smoothed down the skirts of her gown, hands skimming over the delicate knots of buds and blossoms. “You can throw my marriage in my face if you must, but I have something you and Lady Moth never will. I have certainty. Harry can never leave me, not even if he wanted to—which he doesn’t. He is bound to me, until death, in a way you could never be.”
“I might have tried, if you’d asked,” Lucy said gently. “But you chose someone else for that.”
“And now you’re doing the same thing, just to hurt me.” Pris delivered this conclusion as though it were a crowning triumph. Because of course, she must be at the center of everything important. In her own mind she was the magnet the whole world’s compass turned toward.
Suddenly Lucy was sick of it. The sparring, the dramatics, the way every argument spiraled deeper and deeper with never an end in sight. Victory by these terms could only ever belong to Pris—and Lucy was tired of playing a game she could not win.
Her anger and hurt evaporated, replaced instead by a solid, steely certainty that seemed to hone the edge of every surface in the room. I don’t have to play by these rules any longer.
She didn’t even have to finish the argument—though Pris was clearly waiting eagerly for a heated reply. Lucy turned instead and walked to the door, deeply proud of the way her hands remained steady as she pulled it open. What she saw in the hallway made her smile sincerely. She pulled the door wide and folded her hands, every inch the demure young hostess. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Winlock. I hope the rest of your stay in town is pleasant.”
Pris leaped forward, a cutting remark upon those rosy lips—but the words died unheard. Brinkworth was waiting in the hallway with her bonnet and gloves at the ready, a perfectly helpful expression on his face and a dagger’s glint in his eyes.
Pris thanked him readily, and he bowed with all evidence of polite obedience. Pris pulled on her gloves one finger at a time, mouth set in a mulish line.
With a flash of clarity, Lucy realized she didn’t have to play out the last part of this farce, either. “I believe I’ll return to the library, Brinkworth. Do have one of the footmen summon a hackney for Mrs. Winlock.” She could imagine the look on Pris’s face at that, but didn’t stop to see it. Instead she proceeded up the stairs as gracefully as she could, leaving her jilted lover to gape silently at her retreating back.
Five minutes later, Brinkworth found her again, though she was having no more luck with her book now than before. The gust of audacity that had sent her sailing upstairs had died out. Her hands were shaking as she relived the argument, agonizing over what she ought and ought not to have said.
The butler bowed, his brows knitting together with unusual concern. “If I may be so bold, miss?”
Lucy blinked. “Yes?”
“Lady Moth often found it helpful to sip a little brandy and lemon, after a conversation like the one you have just had.” He held out a tray with a tumbler: three fingers of amber liquid, the gold clouded with citrus.
Lucy knew if she cried, the butler would be appalled, so she swallowed back the lump in her throat and offered him a brilliant smile as she accepted the drink. “Thank you, Brinkworth. It’s very kind of you.”
The butler coughed as he straightened. “Lady Moth has been more than kind to me and my family,” he said softly. “She deserves everything kind in return.”
Lucy’s hands tightened around the crystal. Brinkworth knew. He knew. But his eyes were worried, not hateful or disgusted. He’d brought her a drink to soothe her nerves. And he thought Catherine deserved kindness.
Her shoulders relaxed and she met Brinkworth’s gaze as directly as she could. “I completely agree.”
For one moment, the corners of his mouth twitched upward—but just as Lucy, fascinated, thought it was about to tip over into a smile, he controlled himself and bowed again. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need, miss.” The door shut softly behind him, and Lucy leaned back on the worn, creaky sofa to sip her drink, cough in surprise at the strength of it, and watch the dust motes float in the weak afternoon sun.
By the time she’d finished the glass, warmth and lassitude had wrapped soft threads around her limbs, and a gentle rain had begun falling outside. Droplets fluttered against the windowpanes and raced one another down the glass. Lucy slumped a little lower and let the shadows gather in the high corners of the library.
It should have felt like her library now, from spending so long working here—but it wasn’t, was it? It was George’s library still, almost three years after his death. Which should have made it Catherine’s library, really, but it didn’t feel like hers, either. It felt like a place the countess tended but didn’t inhabit. Like a grave. A very large and echoey grave, with book covers arrayed on the shelves like tiny tombstones.
Lucy could probably blame that image on the brandy. She put the empty glass aside, slipped off her shoes, pulled the stellarium shawl around her shoulders, and curled up tight against the arm of the sofa.
All around her were the spines of books, bound to match in sets of black and brown and poison green. Authors’ names. Men’s names, all of them. Except for the one small blue octavo volume, there on the shelf with the other astronomers’. Lucy had put it there herself, under Catherine’s proud eye—but oh, it looked so alone amid all the other hundreds and hundreds of books. And after all, Lucy was only a translator, stringing pretty words around someone else’s thoughts.
Borrowing someone else’s genius.
What were the chances the next thing she wrote would be even half as successful? Especially if she were writing it herself, not translating another volume of Oléron’s masterwork. Thanks to the first, Lucy had money enough now to live for some time if she were frugal, but those funds wouldn’t last forever. Eventually she would find herself dependent on someone else’s charity again: Stephen’s pinch-minded prudery, or Catherine’s more gracious support.
What if the bloom was off the rose by then? Lucy knew she was the first woman Catherine had dallied with, the first woman she’d fallen in love with. Maybe she would decide it wasn’t to her taste. She’d been married before: she knew something of permanence. Maybe she would ultimately feel held back by passing affection for a self-conscious scholar who brought nothing else to the union.
Lady Moth deserved a brighter future than that. Brinkworth was right to feel protective of his mistress. Lucy should be just as selfless, if not more so.
By the time Catherine’s steady footstep was heard in the hallway outside, Lucy had sunk herself deep into a truly hopeless mood. The countess knocked softly and peered warily around the door, squinting in the dim light.
Lucy scowled harder at the thought that she ought to have lit a lamp or asked for a fire. It was growing chill as the daylight slipped away.
Catherine came into the room and stopped. She must have come straight up from the carriage: she still held her gloves in her hand, and there were raindrops glimmering in her hair. “You’re still here,” the countess said.
“Where else would I be?”
Catherine didn’t answer, only looked at her with eyes as wide and wary as if she were looking at a ghost.
Lucy forced herself to sit up and tried to hide her melancholy; nobody liked a lover in a low mood. “How was Griffin’s?”
“It was ra
ther marvelous, actually.” Catherine perched gingerly in her usual seat. “We made an arrangement for an entire book of scientific embroidery designs.”
Soon half of London could be wearing Catherine’s handiwork. Lucy wouldn’t have that to feel special about anymore. “That’s wonderful.”
“But she also saw one of the more—well, she called them fantastical gowns,” Catherine went on. “She actually wants to print a handful of those designs separately, for individual sale.” Catherine shifted, hands twisting her gloves. Her expression was equal parts delight and fear. “She said she recognized genius when she meets it face-to-face.”
Lucy remembered the engraver: sharp as her tools, and clear-eyed as any artist. Attractive, too, in a stern kind of way. “She would know better than anyone. I’m sure you and she will get on famously together.”
Catherine froze. “I beg your pardon?”
The more she pictured it, the more Lucy’s bad mood curdled further. “It’s perfect, isn’t it? You have the inspiration, and she has the skill and the means to make it known far and wide. She’d be a much better match for a budding artist. Much better than some star-mad astronomer who’s already outraged half the scientific community in London. It’s really a move for the best: you’ve already gotten plenty of use out of me.”
It was the worst thing Lucy had ever said, and she knew it, but she knew it too late. She watched, helpless and heartsore, as Catherine’s face flamed at the implication. “It is strictly a business arrangement. If you imagine otherwise, well—I am not the one who spent the afternoon in a tête-à-tête with my former lover. My conscience has nothing to feel guilty about.”