The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

by Olivia Waite

  “Did you miss what just happened?” Agatha snapped. “The King’s own soldiers came and took them all away. Do you take that as an encouragement to continue flouting the libel laws?”

  Her voice was rising in pitch and volume, and through the open workroom door Agatha could see the apprentices and journeymen gathering around to listen.

  Eliza’s eyes were wide and white at the edges. “Maybe we should’ve published ‘Lady Spranklin,’” she murmured.

  Sydney’s jaw set mulishly. The dangerous glitter was back in his eyes. Maybe it had never left. It sparked like a knife blade against flint. “Soldiers means we’ve been noticed,” he said. “We’re speaking loudly enough that they had to react. That means what the Widow Wasp says matters. Why would you want us to stop just when we’re starting to get what we wanted?”

  “Is this really what you wanted?” Agatha demanded. “What if the Countess of Moth hadn’t happened to be here? What if they’d destroyed the shop, smashed the presses, harassed our workmen? Or you, or Eliza? What if they decide to bring charges, and put us on trial?”

  “They can’t jail all of us!”

  “They don’t have to jail all of us,” Agatha shot back. “They only have to jail some of us, and frighten the rest.”

  Her son folded his arms, looking every inch of nineteen. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Well, I bloody well am!” Agatha shouted.

  Everyone froze.

  Agatha sucked in a deep breath, but she was too far gone to stop now. “I am frightened for you, and for myself, and Eliza, and for every single person who works here. I’m scared for the shop—what your father and I worked our entire lives to build—but above everything else I’m deathly afraid that you’re so selfish you would choose to put all of that—all of us in peril, just for a few moments’ acclaim from your reckless, radical friends!”

  Sydney stepped forward. Agatha realized with a bit of a shock that he was a good six inches taller than her. She’d known that, of course, but somehow it constantly slipped her mind. His voice was low and furious and the unshakeable conviction there nearly splintered her heart to pieces. “Mum, you’ve run Griffin’s for nearly three decades, in the heart of one of the greatest cities in the world. Aren’t you angry when rich, powerful men try to tell you what you are and aren’t allowed to print?”

  “That kind of anger is a luxury I do not have,” Agatha said bitterly. “Not when I am trying to ensure that we still have food and shelter and clothing. I want us to be safe.”

  Sydney scoffed. “There are greater things than mere safety, Mum. Happiness. Liberty. Justice.”

  Agatha yearned to shake sense into him. “But all those things start with safety—don’t you see? How can you be happy if you aren’t certain where your next meal is coming from? How can you fight for justice if your hands are trapped in chains?”

  Sydney only shook his head. “How can you fix a broken world if you can’t talk about where it’s broken?”

  “Talk all you like,” Agatha said, “so long you print none of it on my presses.” She slung her gaze around, pinning every single person in place so they understood this edict applied to all of them.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Sydney insisted.

  “It’s my mistake to make, because it’s my press,” Agatha returned. “That’s what liberty gets you.”

  “That’s what cowardice gets you!”

  Agatha gasped, then snapped her mouth closed. Hurt and fury raged like two wolves within her, tearing at each other.

  Sydney huffed, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the store. Walter and Crompton looked grim; Eliza was twisting her hands and biting her lip; Jane the apprentice looked to be on the verge of tears.

  All those eyes, reflecting Agatha’s own pain and frustration back to her, multiplied . . .

  Now the anger overwhelmed her, surging up and overflowing the banks of her soul. “Whatever’s next in the queue, get it done,” Agatha snapped.

  Everyone leaped into motion, some hurrying back to the press or worktable, others moving more slowly as if unsure of the very floorboards beneath their feet.

  Soon only Eliza was left in the shop, still wringing her hands. “We only wanted to help,” she murmured.

  “You can help by doing what you’re told,” Agatha said. “Why don’t you catch me up on the music reviews for next month’s Menagerie?”

  Eliza whispered an inaudible yes ma’am and hurried out to get the latest letters. Agatha was truly alone now, as the gray rain murmured worries against the windowpanes, and the large central table stood bare and glaring in the middle of all of it.

  The shop bell jangled suddenly as the door opened and a customer came in, beaver hat shining and kid gloves protecting his hands. His face was all excitement—until he took one look at Agatha’s face, blanched, turned around, and strode right out again into the wet.

  The printer snarled silently at his back, but it did nothing to relieve her feelings.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Penelope was too anxious to sleep. Normally this would have been a cause for frustration—but it was autumn, and time to prepare the hives for the winter’s rest. Which meant making sure both the skep hives and the glass observation hive were free from the depredations of wax moths, who devoured the comb.

  And that meant staying up several nights with the light traps. So, for once, a little anxiety was more helpful than otherwise.

  After weeks when she’d demurred and remained in London, Griffin was finally returning to Melliton, and had promised to sit up and keep Penelope company during one of the long watches. Griffin had written Penelope about the Widow Wasp, and about the soldiers’ visit to the shop, and in addition to all Penelope’s worries for her friend’s livelihood and safety, well . . .

  She also worried Griffin would blame Penelope for the ugliness. It was a selfish little worry, a miniscule flaw she ought to have been able to ignore, like a hangnail of the soul. She worried at it until it was raw and red and angry.

  After all, Penelope was the one who’d introduced Agatha to Joanna Molesey in the first place. Penelope’s failure had therefore directly led to the catastrophe: if things with Mr. Oliver and Lady Summerville had been properly sorted out in Melliton, there would have been no need for Joanna to remove to London, and she would have never started writing those ballads with Sydney and Eliza.

  Penelope felt like she’d failed everyone, and they were simply too kind to mention it.

  Plus, there was the matter of yesterday’s letter from Harry, tucked in her bureau just across the room, making her squirm with a shallow, cowardly dread.

  Griffin arrived mid-afternoon, and Penelope tried to assuage some of her guilt by presenting Griffin with a truly overwhelming amount of food at tea. “Seedcake? Sandwiches? Ginger biscuit?”

  “Lord, no,” Griffin said, leaning back to sip at her tea. She looked more worn today than when Penelope had seen her last: the lines on her face more deeply carved by tension and tiredness. “I stopped for one of Mr. Biswas’s curried pies on the walk over. I’ve missed them terribly.”

  “You can’t get curry in London?” Penelope said.

  “I can. It’s not the same.” Griffin took another sip of tea, her eyes lowered.

  She was deflecting—which, Penelope realized with a flash, she wouldn’t have done if she were feeling angry at Penelope. No, Agatha Griffin wasn’t the sort to hide irritation. If she was upset at you about something, she would make certain you knew.

  Some of the tightness in Penelope’s chest eased at this. She picked up a ginger biscuit, and let the spicy-sweet flavor burst on her tongue. It tasted like relief. “I’m sure the curried pies have missed you, too.”

  Griffin went utterly still.

  Penelope swallowed the last bite of biscuit, and her eyes darted helplessly over to the bureau. She should tell Griffin about the letter, at once. Get it all out in the open.

  Instead, she stood up. “Shall we set up the light traps,
then?”

  Penelope always set up three traps, each of which consisted of a lantern fitted over a small box with slanting sides: fluttering moths were drawn in to the light, then funneled by the box shape into the hollow darkness beneath. A small switch in the watcher’s hand was useful to knock down stronger flyers and larger specimens who might have otherwise escaped. Penelope would gather all the fallen the next morning and bring them to the Four Swallows—Mr. Koskinen swore that wax moths made the best lures for fly-fishing.

  She and Griffin had the lanterns lit by the time the sun vanished; three small lights on the lawn, pushing back against the twilight. Daniel the footman hauled two cushioned chairs out—more comfortable for long hours than garden benches—and Griffin and Penelope wrapped themselves in blankets against the autumn chill.

  The sky drifted from pink to purple to navy blue, and the first brave stars came out.

  The moths came with them, dancing toward the lantern lights, wings looming large against the glow and casting flickering shadows over the small space of Penelope’s apiary. She left the larger, fancier types alone—they weren’t a threat to the bees—and focused on using little flicks of the switch to knock the pale, mottled forms of the wax moths down into the box. One by one, moth by moth, as the breeze whispered warnings in Penelope’s ears. It was far too late now for wildflowers, so the breeze carried only the earthy, memento mori scent of fallen leaves from maple, ash, and hawthorn trees in the forest behind Fern Hall.

  Griffin reached into her coat and pulled out a flask. “I brought a little something to help us keep warm.”

  She handed it over, and Penelope took an experimental pull.

  Brandy rushed over her tongue, strong and sweet with that alcohol haze that settled into one’s throat like steam. She swallowed appreciatively. “This is good.”

  “It was Thomas’s favorite,” Griffin replied. She settled back against her chair, woolen shawl wrapped around her throat. “French. Hard to come by during the war, unless you wanted to pay smugglers’ prices for it. We hadn’t bought any for a few years, when he died.” She took the flask back, tipping it up against her long mouth. “So I drink it now in his honor.”

  Ah, yes, Griffin’s lost husband. Did she still pine for him, in the secret places of her heart? Penelope felt heat prickle in the corners of her eyes, and tilted her head up as she stared at the stars. But they offered her no clear answers, only a cold and distant glitter. “You must miss him awfully.”

  “If I could wish him back, I’d do it in an instant,” Griffin replied. “Though there would be some awkwardness, I expect. He’d notice all the ways I’ve changed in the past three years. So many days, so many hours, and I had to figure out how to get through each one without him. It . . . left a mark, you might say.”

  “A crucible transforms the metal,” Penelope replied.

  “Just so.” Agatha took another long pull of brandy, tongue slipping out to catch one errant amber droplet from the silver rim of the flask’s mouth.

  Penelope felt heat clench low in her belly. It was the brandy, that was all, sucking the air from her lungs and sending that lick of flame through her veins.

  She reminded herself they were speaking of Griffin’s late husband. And grief. Penelope was far too familiar with grief.

  “I know precisely what you mean,” she murmured. “It’s so easy to think you’re living your life as the same person you always were. You don’t notice all the new little thoughts and feelings you’ve had, hour by hour, each one turning you slightly this way or that—until he comes back at the end of the voyage and you notice how far out of alignment you’ve become. Things you didn’t even think were important enough to say aloud, but taken all together they accumulate.”

  A short silence. “When who comes back?” Griffin asked carefully.

  Damn.

  So much for secrets. Penelope shifted in her chair, and flicked another moth away from the light and into the darkness. But there was no graceful way out—only the direct way, straight through awkwardness into whatever lay on the other side. “My husband, John. And my brother, Harry.” She kept her eyes fixed so tightly on the flame that the rest of the world faded into darkness. “They wrote to say they’d be back at Christmas.”

  “That’s good,” Griffin said. “Isn’t it?” She cocked her head, lamplight gleaming off the silver hair at her temples. Her eyes turned cold as the stars overhead. “Forgive a blunt and indelicate question but: Does Mr. Flood expect to share your bed when he returns?”

  “Lord, no.” Penelope let out a short burst of a laugh, that settled into her chest like lead. “He’d be horrified if I even suggested it.”

  “How very flattering of him,” Griffin returned, her voice dry as the desert. She reached out one booted toe and knocked a moth into the box nearest her. “So why is it a problem?”

  Because I know I’ll feel mortified if my husband and the woman I’m desperately lusting after are sleeping beneath the same roof. “Because I wanted to invite you and your family to come stay with me for the Christmas holiday.”

  Griffin considered this. “And now you won’t have the room?”

  Penelope swatted at more moths. “No, I just . . . I wasn’t sure you’d still want to come, if Harry and John were here, too. You’ve never met them, after all.” She sighed. “This isn’t at all how I imagined our conversation going.”

  Griffin sat up, hands gripping the arms of the chair. “Flood, do you like your husband? I know you don’t love him—but do you enjoy his company? Do you find him a pleasant, sociable man in general?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you think he’ll dislike me, or Sydney? Or that we’ll dislike him?”

  Penelope snorted, and carefully poked the fuzzy back of a lunar underwing to move the creature away from the trap. “Oh, he and Sydney will take to each other like two political ducks. John has very definite opinions about the Combination Laws that he will be only too happy to expound upon at some length.”

  “Then is it your brother who’s the problem?”

  “No, damn it all, it’s me!”

  Griffin snapped her mouth shut, blinking. The silence of the night slammed down again, leaden and thick.

  Penelope blew out an exasperated breath, and lowered her voice again. God, she was bad at untangling things. The secret of what she most refused to say burrowed beneath her skin like a worm in an apple.

  But she had to try and explain something: Griffin was looking at her too closely, and Penelope had never been very good at subtlety or subterfuge. “When I was young . . .” she began, swallowed hard, and held out her hand.

  Griffin gave her the brandy at once.

  Penelope took a long draft, and braced herself. “When I was young, the house was always full of people, all of whom were older and bigger and busier than me. So I got used to just . . . going along with someone else’s idea of what we ought to be doing at any moment. Didn’t matter whether it was my mother, my father, any of my siblings. Or later, the vicar or Joanna or Isabella. I found myself behaving a little differently, depending on who I was with and what made it easiest for them to overlook me, or be amused by me, or not ask me to leave. The more I loved someone, the more I worked to please them—and the harder it was for me when pleasing one person meant disappointing someone else.”

  Another flick of the switch, another moth into the box.

  Griffin’s mouth had gone somber, the lip of the flask resting thoughtfully against one lip.

  Penelope went on. “I wasn’t conscious of this for a long while, of course—and then I assumed it was something everyone did, if I thought about it at all. One by one, my siblings moved away. Owen died, then my parents. I started doing the bee circuit, as more and more families struggled to keep their homes. I got used to being on my own, to being myself. And then I married John.”

  Griffin held out her hand; Penelope passed over the brandy.

  She continued her story as Griffin raised the flask to her lips. “We
only lived together for six months, but it was unpleasant in a way that took me at least that long again to understand. I had never been half of a pair before—not the kind of pair people could acknowledge, anyway.”

  Griffin choked on the brandy.

  Penelope chewed on her lip. She certainly wasn’t going to get into that tonight as well. One shameful confession per evening was more than enough, thank you very much. She hurried on. “Every time we went out, to church or the Four Swallows or anywhere, someone would make a perfectly ordinary remark—I knew how a wife was supposed to behave to her husband, and I knew how John and I behaved as friends, but because those things were different I wouldn’t be able to do anything. It was like my heart was a rope pulled in two directions at once. It tied me right up: I couldn’t move; I couldn’t speak. So I’d sit there, silent and sweating into my delicate Sunday gloves. For six months’ worth of Sundays.”

  “That sounds terrible,” Griffin said.

  “It was.” Penelope pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, fending off the night’s chill. “It was easier with friends, somehow—you introduce your friends to each other, and then they become friends, and you don’t get pulled apart. But a husband? There was . . . a sense of being watched, as if every word and gesture meant something different and particular than what I intended. As if all my eccentric behavior reflected on him, too. It froze me right up, and I could tell John noticed and felt hurt by it, and then he and Harry left—but the next time they came back it happened again, but worse. It was years before I was able to put words around what I felt was happening.”

  “That you weren’t good at being a wife in name only?”

  Penelope stared into the burning heart of the light trap. “That I don’t always know who I am supposed to be.”

  Griffin, bless her, didn’t scoff. She turned this over, while moths blissfully flirted with the flame. Blades of grass stood out sharply in the flickering, ghostly night. “What about those lovers you mentioned? Was it different with them?” One corner of her mouth lifted. “You were very emphatic about having been fucked, Flood.”