The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

by Olivia Waite

  The way her voice turned low and smoky on the word fucked—it made Penelope want to rub herself against it like a cat, and set up a thrumming heat low in her belly. “We were always discreet,” she said. And all women, was the thing she carefully didn’t say. “It didn’t feel like the same pressure, even when we were together amid larger, louder groups. Nobody knew, so we weren’t . . . considered in the same way.”

  Griffin snorted. “Because nobody ever notices illicit love affairs.”

  Penelope laughed in spite of herself. “There wasn’t much time for anyone to notice anything: they were all very brief liaisons. Maybe I only have trouble with long connections.” She sobered. “Maybe I’m just not the sort of person who inspires a lifetime’s worth of passion.”

  “Rubbish,” said Griffin.

  Her answer was swift, her voice was firm, and her certainty was palpable. Penelope went all over red, thrumming with the sweet shock of that single word. She was unspeakably glad the darkness and the flickering light would hide her reaction from the woman who’d caused it.

  “You’ve been unlucky, that’s all,” Griffin went on. As though she weren’t tearing down the foundations of Penelope’s carefully built-up solitude. “You are extremely kindhearted and sweet, Flood—but you’re also observant and cautious, two things that aren’t often found in the kind of person who lets themselves get swept up in reckless love affairs. Especially where . . .” She paused for a moment. “Especially where there is good reason to be cautious.”

  Penelope felt turned into a statue, stiff as marble and leached of color.

  Griffin leaned forward. “Do you know what I think?”

  Penelope shook her head.

  Griffin’s eyes were bright with anger. “I think you let your brother and his beloved overwhelm you. I think you so wanted to help them, in whatever way you could, that you sacrificed your own happiness for theirs.”

  Penelope shifted in her seat. “Marriage was never in my future.”

  Griffin made a wordless noise rejecting this statement.

  Penelope felt a flicker of temper, shoring up the unsteadiness of her voice. “Marriage as it is practiced in England is not made for women like me.”

  Griffin openly scoffed at that. “Don’t be ridiculous, Flood: you are one of the sweetest, strongest, truest people I have ever met in my life. You worry about everyone’s happiness. You want the best for all your family, friends, and neighbors—even the ones you don’t like. And I don’t know if anyone’s told you this in a while, but you’re lovely to look at. On top of everything warm and wonderful about you, you are absolutely beautiful. I can’t imagine a single reason—”

  “It’s because of women!” Penelope exploded.

  It was a harsh cry, close to a shout, and it made Griffin rear back in her seat.

  Cheeks burning, Penelope lowered her volume back to a whisper. Her voice was just one more shadow in the darkness. “All my life, I have only ever loved women. And I cannot marry a woman, under English law. So it didn’t seem to matter much if I married somebody else. For practical reasons.” She heaved a frustrated breath, furious to have lost control. “So.”

  The silence stretched out, and Penelope’s nerves stretched with it.

  Her mind helpfully offered up all the awful possibilities Griffin could say in response. The best Penelope could hope for was a new and permanent awkwardness: The less said the better, perhaps, or the terrible I suppose it’s none of my business, really.

  The worst thing would be the unmistakable moment where a friend withdrew their friendship while you watched. To see a warm smile fall away, a bright eye turn cold, and to know there was no going back to how it had been before. Penelope had seen it happen half a dozen times in her life, and it never got any easier to bear.

  She squared her shoulders and braced herself, as the other woman stared off into the distance. No doubt she was stunned by the truth Penelope had revealed. No doubt Penelope had now officially ruined everything.

  “If you could . . .” Griffin asked slowly. “If you could have married any of the women you loved—would you have?”

  It was as though she had asked the question in some language other than English: it took far too long for Penelope’s slow brain to chew through the question. She thought back over her past, with the usual twinge of self-chastisement. “They often went and married someone else instead,” she said at last. “Emma Koskinen, for example, after our brief summer passed.”

  Griffin squeaked in surprise.

  Penelope chuckled. “I imagine I should have felt more upset about that—but she and Timo were so much better suited, and he was so serious and fascinatingly Swedish, and I was twenty-one and blissfully gay. We all stayed friends, quite easily.” She stretched her legs out, crossing and uncrossing them at the ankles. “Friends have always been more valuable to me, anyway. I’ve never wept over losing a lover; I’ve always regretted losing a friend.” She kept her eyes very fearfully on the lanterns and added: “I should regret the loss of your friendship more than anything in the world, I think.”

  She didn’t look around, not even when Griffin spoke in a voice so low and husky Penelope could practically feel it against her skin: “You’ll always have my friendship, Penelope Flood. There’s no question about that.”

  Penelope blinked and blinked into the lantern light, determined not to cry.

  Griffin cleared her throat and went on talking. “As for the question of Christmas, the answer’s quite simple.”

  Now Penelope did glance over. “It is?”

  “You’ll invite us to stay for the holiday, and I’ll be very charming to your husband, and if I see you becoming stiff or awkward or anything like that I’ll just turn to you and say, Maybe we need to check on the hive by the print-works, or some other such excuse, and you won’t have to be stuck.” She tilted her head. “If you think that might help.”

  It was simple, when Griffin said it. Simple—but not small. Penelope felt hope rise up, a fountain overflowing its banks. “You’d do that for me?”

  Griffin snorted, the sound bright and joyful in the darkness. “Of course. We’re friends, Flood.”

  Could it really be that simple? Penelope had stewed in dread and guilt about this for the better part of a decade, but Griffin sounded so matter-of-fact about the whole thing. As if it was something she was happy to help fix.

  For one warm, golden, glowing moment, Penelope basked in the hope that she wasn’t broken, that her secret flaws were overlookable, that she could throw open the welcoming doors of her heart and having something other than the cold wind answer.

  “Besides,” Griffin added, “after the Wasp business, it will do us all good to get away from London for a little while.”

  Golden hope vanished, smothered under shadowy wings. This wasn’t about Penelope, not in the way that she thought. She was only one of many things on Griffin’s mind.

  She wanted to be so much more important to Agatha than that.

  Realization would have knocked her legs from under her, if she weren’t already sitting down. Good lord, when had she gone and fallen in love with Agatha Griffin?

  And how did she not realize earlier, when she might have properly nipped it in the bud? It was in full flower now, a dark, dangerous rose unfolding in the heart of her, petals climbing up her throat and threatening to spill from her lips.

  She knocked down another moth, breathed in the scent of the dying year, and hoped winter would take pity and freeze that love all the way down to the root.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Before Agatha could contemplate Christmas, and having to be civil to the man whose wife she pined for, there was work to do: the Queen’s trial was coming to its conclusion.

  The verdict, when it came, raced through the city like a fire: the Pains and Penalties Bill had narrowly passed. The Queen was guilty.

  The Lords were, however, still arguing about the whether or not to keep the clause mandating divorce, which would thrust the Queen
from her throne and title. Agatha, etching another scene of Queen Caroline sitting stiffly in the dock, wondered how the woman bore the weight of so much naked cruelty. To be so loathed by your husband that even a continent’s distance wasn’t far enough; and now, out of pettiness and selfish power, to have him shine the worst possible light on the private details of your life and household.

  It was public humiliation on an imperial scale, and it lit a sick, slow-burning flame in Agatha’s heart that no amount of distraction or discipline seemed able to snuff out.

  It was one more appalling outcome of the risk every wife took when she said her vows and handed herself over to a husband’s legal rule. Agatha had loved being married, mostly—but she couldn’t deny that there were times she felt much more secure as a widow than she had during her marriage. Loving and kind as Thomas had been, Agatha was a pragmatic person, and she’d been well aware Thomas’s kindness had been just that: a kindness. Not something Agatha had a legal claim to. To have the bearability of one’s existence depend on whether or not one’s spouse was inclined to be generous, well . . .

  She had trusted her husband. But not the law that gave a husband so much power.

  She thought of Penelope Flood, whose husband was not unkind, but that didn’t seem to help. Flood found her marriage uncomfortable, and took all the blame for that feeling upon herself.

  Agatha dug the graver doubly hard into the wax, her heart bubbling like an acid bath as she sketched in the angry shapes of the men in Parliament. The curling wigs and crowded benches looked like storm clouds, swirling with chaos.

  This treason wasn’t anything like Cato Street. Queen Caroline hadn’t attempted to murder anyone. She’d only dared to return to England and remind her husband she existed. And now the whole engine of the government was turned against her, simply because her husband—one man—wanted out of an unhappy marriage.

  The unspeakable, unbearable unfairness of it all seethed in her breast like a canker. She silently cursed King George’s name, along with all self-serving, neglectful men.

  Men like John Flood.

  Agatha carved away another line: another lordly figure asking primly prurient questions of a likely bribed informant. Agatha was only a printer’s widow; she had no vote, no power. There was nothing she could do to help the poor Queen now.

  Sydney burst into the workroom, collar askew and face flushed despite the November chill in the air. He declined to meet his mother’s eye—since the argument, they’d stepped too carefully around one another, as if avoiding the shards of something precious lying broken in the space between them. He made a face and announced to the room at large: “They’re keeping the divorce clause!”

  Crompton shook his head, and one or two of the journeymen muttered cynical disappointment. Small Jane’s eyes were wide as she looked to Eliza for guidance.

  Eliza was watching Sydney intently. “So there’s to be another vote, in the Lords?”

  He nodded.

  Eliza’s mouth set in a thin, angry line.

  Sydney cast a defiant glance at his mother. Agatha could guess why. One of the Widow Wasp’s most popular songs had been a parody of the old tune “Once Again I’m Vainly Dreaming,” a ballad depicting Anne Boleyn’s last thoughts before King Henry sent her to be beheaded. The original was melancholy and nostalgic, a woman condemned by her husband, hearkening back to the days when love was fresh and young.

  In the new ballad, Queen Caroline’s faux-wistful asides comprised a long, long list of King George’s many scandals and failings and insults as a husband. The lyrics were bitter and pointed and side-splittingly funny.

  It was the ballad Sydney was proudest of, and it would never be more apropos—or more saleable—than right now.

  “There’s another caricature caption to be composed, if you please,” Agatha said coolly.

  Sydney’s expression soured, and he stomped across the room. His hands were shaking as they pulled type from the cases and slid it into the composing stick. Every tiny chink of metal on metal was like a barb sinking into Agatha’s bruised heart.

  She held her tongue, though her throat burned with words unuttered.

  As soon as the day’s work was done, Sydney vanished for the evening, and was still not home when Agatha fell into a fitful, irritated sleep.

  On the new vote, the bill again squeaked through—but so narrowly that Lord Liverpool grudgingly retracted it before it could be sent to the House of Commons. Everyone knew—and if they didn’t, the papers soon told them—that this was because such a narrow margin meant the bill had no chance of passing the Commons, where the radicals had stirred up every friend and supporter to the Queen’s cause.

  It was over. The Queen would keep her husband and her throne.

  The country triumphed as though a war had been won. More so, even—the grand celebrations after Waterloo were now entirely eclipsed. Bells rang out from church steeples and Dissenting chapels throughout London. People flooded the streets, singing and crying, “The Queen, the Queen!” and hurling bricks through the windows of the papers who’d printed articles and letters against her. At the Crown and Anchor, radicals drunk on more than the tavern’s best ale loudly and indiscriminately toasted the Queen, the King, the army, the navy, Thomas Paine, George Washington, and every revolution. Fireworks and firearms and even cannons went off at such frequent intervals that the rich pulled their curtains shut and trembled in fear of the guillotine, imagining every cart and carriage rolling past was a tumbril coming to bear them to their doom. Insulting effigies of the Italian witnesses and the lordly prosecution were burned on street corners, and guillotine flags with ominous slogans waved from pubs and taverns across the city.

  Penelope’s next letter showed that Melliton had rejoiced just as loudly as London.

  Everyone from town trooped down to the rectory again to demand the vicar ring the church bells in the Queen’s honor. Mr. Koskinen ran up the steeple and pulled bell ropes until dawn broke. I don’t think anyone for ten miles round got any sleep that night, but everyone was as merry as midsummer, anyway.

  Lady Summerville held a tea at Abington Hall, to celebrate having banished the specter of aristocratic divorce. Fine ladies congratulating one another on all their hard work. I slipped out into the garden maze and found all the satyrs and Napoleon gone—only Josephine remained, sad and solitary.

  Please go visit the nymph and the dryad for me, won’t you? I need to know at least those two are still safe.

  More statues sold? Agatha dashed off a quick inquiry to a few of the art brokers she knew from the Menagerie. Perhaps Napoleon was somewhere she could take Flood for a visit. Maybe somewhere with moonlight and a fountain and a concealing veil of leaves . . .

  She was interrupted by a knock at the door; she put down her pen and craned her head to see Sydney standing there, a pamphlet in his hand and sheer misery in his face. “What’s happened?” she asked.

  In answer, he merely handed over the paper, which had A Letter from the King to his People emblazoned across the top. “It’s lies,” he said. “Self-serving, unjust lies. And it’s selling out on every corner in the city.”

  “Oh,” said Agatha on a sigh. So the backlash had begun. There would be as many pieces against the Queen now as there had been before.

  Sydney all but collapsed on the bench at the foot of Agatha’s bed. “I really thought they were all listening,” he said. “The Lords, the people—everyone. I thought we were getting through. Damn it all, I thought something was going to happen.” He slapped an emphatic palm down on the padded bench top.

  Agatha set the pamphlet aside and patted her son’s shoulder. “It rarely does,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He blinked. “You knew? How did you know?”

  Agatha pressed her lips together. “I’ve seen it before, of course. Happens all the time in this business. The upward sweep and the crash afterward. Sometimes it’s bigger, sometimes smaller. You’ll get used to it eventually.”

  Sydney’
s horror was gradually giving way to a dawning recognition. “All the time?”

  “All the time. Though—this was rather a large one. It’s not always quite so excessive. And it’s particularly hard when you care deeply about the matter the storm is centered on.” She smiled softly. “Which you do.”

  Sydney was staring as though he were bobbing in unruly seas, and Agatha held the only lifeline. “How do you bear it?”

  She could only shrug. “Strong drink?”

  Sydney let out a broken laugh.

  His mother clasped her hands against her knees. “You focus on the things that are important. The people you know. The work you do. You take the anger that burns inside you and put it to use, so your heart doesn’t devour only itself.”

  Sydney sucked in a sharp breath. “Has anyone ever told you you ought to write poetry?”

  “Careful, my darling son.” Agatha laughed. “I will cut you right out of the will, see if I don’t.”

  “Do you think . . .” Sydney paused, looking grumpy, and for a dizzying moment Agatha felt as though she were looking into a mirror. Sometimes she forgot he was as much her son as Thomas’s.

  Sydney’s voice was soft, but steady. “Do you think if we’d kept going as the Wasp, things might have been different?”

  Agatha bit back the urge to tell him not to be foolish. That was the fear talking, and fear had almost ruined things between herself and her son. “I’m not sure,” she admitted, and saw Sydney’s eyes widen in surprise.

  Her cheeks went hot, but she pressed on. “When your father was still with us, Griffin’s was much more focused on the arts and sciences. The Menagerie was everything. He was part of the political conversations—but distantly, as a listener more than a speaker or a publisher. The political jobs you’ve brought in to offset the stamp taxes have been financially sound choices, it’s true—but I don’t have a good sense yet of how to balance the risks and the rewards in the political sphere. Until I do, I am likely to want to avoid the larger risks, if I can.” She plucked at the nothing on her skirt. “Even if it means doing something rather cowardly.”