A Little Light Mischief

by Cat Sebastian

  You’re more interested in bosoms.

  Molly’s words echoed in her ears.

  “Is it yours? I mean, would a lawyer say that thousand pounds was properly yours?”

  Alice wasn’t certain. All she knew was that it was what her mother had wished and that her father had known it; whether she had made a will or properly settled the money was quite a closed book to her. “It hardly matters. I can’t afford a lawyer to look into it.”

  Molly’s mouth was twisted to the side in a pensive expression. “What would you do with it?”

  “With a thousand pounds?” Alice knew that she could live off the interest. She could scrape by on even less. But that wasn’t what she wanted. “I’d open a boarding house,” she said, giving voice to an idea that had been lurking at the back of her mind for the past weeks of idleness. “I’m good at keeping house, and I think I’d find it satisfying if I were paid for my troubles.”

  “A boarding house,” Molly repeated, and then fell silent for so long that Alice began to wonder if she thought the idea a terrible one—shabby and ungenteel and all the things Alice knew she was, deep down. Finally, Molly nodded, as if she had come to a decision. “Well, I’m for bed.”

  That was it? Was their discussion of thievery purely hypothetical? What about Alice’s restitution? And what about the kissing? Was there to be no more kissing? That was even more disappointing.

  Molly turned her back to Alice and began wriggling out of her dress, the very picture of modesty, as if they hadn’t been groping and ogling one another by turns for half the day.

  “What about the, ah, cravat pin?” Alice asked, because that seemed easier to address than the kissing.

  “I’ll take care of that tomorrow,” Molly said, as if it were an utterly commonplace errand she was planning to complete, like sewing on a boot button. “Don’t worry about it.” She made an attempt to wave her hand in dismissal, but her arm was still caught up in her sleeve, arresting her motion.

  “For heaven’s sake, let me help you,” Alice said, and it came out as a scold more than an offer.

  “It’s all right,” Molly said without turning around. “I’m used to undressing myself.”

  “I wasn’t talking about undressing you.” But she went to Molly anyway, helping tug the sleeve away from her arm. “I meant the, ah, cravat pin situation. Let me help you with that.”

  “I’m used to handling that sort of thing on my own too, come to think.” Now the other arm was free, and Molly was shimmying out of the dress with a good deal more wiggling and bouncing than Alice could observe with equanimity. Likely Molly was using Alice’s lust to distract her from jewel theft, and wasn’t that something.

  “Bollocks on used to,” Alice managed to say. “Let me help.”

  Molly threw her dress over the back of her chair, quickly followed by a petticoat and corset. She was standing only in her shift, and Alice’s first instinct was to look away, to neatly fold the petticoat or do anything that would keep her hands busy and her eyes away from Molly’s barely clad body.

  Instead she stepped close, so close she could feel the warmth coming from Molly’s skin. “Please,” she said, tentatively touching Molly’s shoulder.

  “You don’t know the first thing about thieving.” Molly put her foot up on the chair and began rolling down one stocking, then the other. “You’d clomp around, get us sent to the gallows.”

  “I’ve never clomped in my life, I’ll have you know.” If Alice had known she would be spending the midnight hours proving her criminal bona fides, she might have gone to bed earlier. She was unspeakably glad that she hadn’t. “I’m quite good at sneaking.” She had learned the value of silence early. Silence was safety. “Besides, you have a daughter. You can’t take that kind of risk.” Alice had nothing, and therefore nothing to lose.

  Molly regarded Alice with narrowed eyes, one hand on her hip. “All right then.” Alice felt almost giddy. “But first, bed.” And with that, Molly dropped onto the bed and slid under the covers.

  There was to be no kissing, then. Surely Alice could live with that. She wasn’t supposed to be kissing anybody anyway. Kissing was for other people. This was something she had known as a basic truth from her earliest days: so much of life was for other people. Love and safety, admiration and friendship—Alice had never had those things and hadn’t wasted much time bemoaning the fact.

  But now she wanted those things too. She wanted cravat pins and kisses, things that were bright and warm and hers.

  Then Molly reached an arm out and patted the bed beside her. “Come on then,” she said, her voice already heavy with sleep. Alice climbed into bed, resting her head on Molly’s outstretched arm, settling into the space by Molly’s side. They fit together like this.

  Alice might have been astonished by the speed with which Molly fell asleep if she didn’t recall doing the same when her days had been filled with work. Alice wasn’t ready for sleep, though. Her nerves felt stretched out to the point where they vibrated with excitement. She was going to take back what was hers.

  But first she pulled the quilt up to Molly’s chin so she wouldn’t get cold.

  Chapter Six

  A few years of living the life of a decent, law-abiding servant had left Molly unready for the rush of mingled excitement and fear she felt upon waking. It was still dark, and Alice was still asleep, pale hair even whiter in the moonlight. Once again, one of her arms had found its way to Molly’s waist as if it belonged there.

  It had been a long time since Molly had wanted to touch someone so badly. It had been even longer since she wanted to be touched.

  Christ, it was even longer since she had planned a robbery.

  Last night she had only agreed to let Alice help in order to end the conversation. There was no possibility that a prim lady, a vicar’s spinster daughter, a girl who had never been anywhere or seen anything until Mrs. Wraxhall took her in, could be trusted to properly steal a diamond.

  And yet. Molly had noticed how Alice crept about as if on cat’s paws, how she had a knack for entering and leaving a room without disturbing so much as the air around her. Her fingers were as nimble as any pickpocket’s. And she wanted this. Molly had seen the look in her eyes, that gleam of want. Tenpenny—and her father, the lout—had hurt her, and she wanted to get back some of what was hers. This was her chance to do, to take, to earn something for herself.

  If Molly managed this robbery on her own, she’d be taking that chance away from Alice. Even if she then gave Alice the cravat pin—or, rather, the proceeds from the sale of the diamond, because she doubted Alice knew how to find a fence or even a pawn shop—it wasn’t the same as Alice taking it for herself.

  Molly wondered whether she could teach Alice to pick a lock. Sighing, she rolled over.

  Alice opened one eye, the other being hidden in the pillow. “What time is it?”

  “Not yet dawn,” Molly whispered, turning her head to the side. “Go back to sleep.”

  She didn’t shut her eyes though, and neither did Molly. They had spent the entire night pressed together, and now Molly felt achingly comfortable with the rise and fall of Alice’s chest, with the strands of silky moonshine hair that spread everywhere across the pillow, with the simple bodily fact of Alice’s closeness.

  “Thank you for helping me last night,” Alice said in a sleepy voice. “With the gown and hair and everything. I felt . . .”

  “Beautiful,” Molly interrupted. “You were beautiful.”

  Alice’s gaze darted off to some dark corner of the room. “I was going to say that I felt like I belonged. Or at least that I didn’t stand out awkwardly. Thank you for that.”

  Never had Alice heard such a fat lot of horse shite from an otherwise sensible woman. “God, I’ve never met one so keen on going unnoticed. You’d think you were one of those birds that looks like tree bark or what have you.” So quiet, so ready to assume an air of harmless nothingness when she was so much more than that. “And why would you want to
blend in with the lot of them anyway?” She was worth twenty of them. Molly tried to find words that might show Alice what she meant. “Last night you shone. You always do.”

  Alice returned her gaze to Molly, her eyes widening with surprise before narrowing skeptically. “I don’t—”

  “And if you think I’m going to spend the time until dawn making you take a compliment you can guess again.” In the darkness, Molly heard Alice let out a puff of laughter that crushed whatever last bit of good judgment Molly had.

  Ever so carefully, Molly shifted so she was leaning on one forearm, poised half over Alice.

  Alice went still. Molly held her breath, waiting. Then Alice tilted her chin up so their lips were so close, nearly touching. “Oh?” It came out as a breath that Molly could feel on her own mouth.

  And then when Molly finally dipped her head to bring her lips to Alice’s, she felt Alice rising up to meet her.

  Molly had tumbled her fair share of men and a couple of girls too. She was no stranger to lust or even to the stray feelings that sometimes got tangled up in lust, like those bits of rubbish that got spun into otherwise serviceable yarn, and needed to be picked out and cast aside.

  But now, so close to this perfect moonlight slip of a girl, she felt like she was entirely made of those impractical bits of fluff, all woven together into something gossamer-fine and unspeakably dangerous.

  One of Alice’s hands was fluttering in the general neighborhood of Molly’s elbow, as if it were lost and needed directions, so Molly took it and guided it to her breast. She wanted those clever hands all over her body, she wanted to taste every bit of that soft mouth.

  “Oh, fff—” Molly groaned, biting back a curse as Alice’s hand cupped around her breast.

  “Is that all right?”

  No, it was not all right. Nothing was all right. It turned out that Molly had spent her entire life wanting this woman’s hand on her breast and hadn’t realized it until now. “Don’t stop,” she managed.

  Featherlight touches through her shift were only going to drive her out of her mind, though. She broke the kiss long enough to sit back and pull her shift over her head. And then, oh, the look on Alice’s face, the wide-eyed wonderment and plain workaday lust. Molly thought she might burn from the heat of that gaze.

  Alice was keeping her fingers tightly wrapped around the sheets, so Molly cupped her breasts in her own hands, as if she were weighing them, stroking her thumbs over the hard tips.

  “I’ve imagined you doing that,” Alice whispered, her eyes wide.

  She had? “You have?” Molly had known the effect her breasts had on Alice and often felt the girl’s gaze following her hotly around the room. But the idea that Alice imagined Molly touching herself wasn’t even something she dared to think of. “Tell me more.”

  “I . . .” Alice shook her head.

  “Show me, then. Show me what you did when you thought of me doing this.” She lightly twisted her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers.

  “Oh . . .” Alice breathed, squirming under Molly. Her hands were fisted in the sheets, as if she were afraid that if she let go, her hands might do something unspeakable. “No. You show me. Let me watch.”

  Molly had her hand between her legs on the next heartbeat. As if she had to be told twice. Slowly, making a bit of a show about it, she traced the seam of her sex. “Just like that, nice and easy.” Beneath her, Molly felt Alice try to buck her hips, straining for contact, breasts arching up. “The only trouble,” Molly said, “is that I haven’t enough hands to do the thing properly.”

  And then Alice’s clever hands were on Molly’s breasts, stroking and teasing, squeezing and caressing, followed by her mouth, wet and hot and sweet. How had Molly ever thought her a shrinking violet, a meek and mild country mouse? Alice rose to every challenge; she met Molly more than halfway no matter what.

  Molly felt her pleasure start to gather, to tighten into something that couldn’t be stopped. A few more strokes of her finger and she burst, collapsing onto Alice’s chest. She could feel the other woman’s heart beating frantically, could feel the rise and fall of her chest with each shallow breath. Molly kissed her soft, parted lips before moving lower, kissing a path down to the lace trim of Alice’s night rail.

  Each one of Molly’s kisses kindled something dreadful in Alice, something that would surely have been better left undiscovered. These touches bore no resemblance to her own solitary pleasure, carried out on the rare instances she had a bedchamber to herself. Molly was stoking a flame Alice had previously thought a mere spark, something easily dismissed and ignored, but which was now going to burn the house down if she didn’t do something about it.

  If she asked Molly to stop, she would. Alice knew that. The trouble was that she wanted Molly to keep doing that, keep pressing her lips to the curve of Alice’s neck, keep her hand threaded in Alice’s hair, keep doing those things and more. Not just this moment, not even just now, but on and on. It wasn’t a safe thing to want. But Alice did want it, and that was reason enough.

  Alice moaned when Molly’s lips closed around her nipple through the thin linen chemise, fervently licking and sucking, and she seemed to be relishing every soft murmur she drew from Alice’s lips.

  “Show me,” Molly said, lifting her head away from the now-wet linen. “Show me what you do when you think of me.” She rucked up the hem of Alice’s night rail, and when Alice felt the cool morning air between her legs, her brief wave of embarrassment was quickly displaced by the urgency of desire. Alice took the hem higher, until it was under her chin and she was fully exposed, on display, for Molly’s hot, seeking gaze. “Oh, God, look at you,” Molly said. She skimmed her hands down Alice’s sides, from ribs to waist to hips, as if Alice were a rare and precious thing.

  With one hand still on her hip, Molly used the other hand to stroke between Alice’s legs. “Is this how you like it?” She brushed fingers across Alice’s tender skin, so lightly, nothing more than a whisper of a touch, skimming again and again over the place where all her want was concentrated.

  Alice stifled a cry. That was most definitely not how she touched herself. She was more given to efficient, workmanlike self-pleasure, nothing like this torture.

  “Or is it like this?” Now Molly’s fingers were parting her. Another flush of embarrassment, quickly dismissed as trivial. “Maybe like this?”

  Now there was a finger inside her, which was a strange thing to contemplate. “That’s not how I do it,” Alice whispered. It had never seemed quite necessary—she could get the job done without that, after all.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No,” Alice whispered. “Please don’t stop.” She really didn’t know what would become of her if Molly stopped. Perhaps she’d crumble into a heap of ash. Perhaps she’d cry. Who knew? She hoped she didn’t find out.

  Molly didn’t stop. Instead she did something magical with her hand, so that she was touching inside Alice and also stroking that sensitive place outside with those infuriatingly featherlight touches. And then—oh—she bent her head to Alice’s breast and drew a nipple into her mouth, this time without the linen between them.

  Alice was dimly aware that she was arching her back, trying to press into Molly’s hand. She was vaguely conscious of the stream of whispered blasphemy that was pouring from her mouth. But compared to the twin sorcery of Molly’s hand and mouth, none of that signified.

  Her climax felt wrenched out of her, terrible and miraculous all at once, wracking her body with an intensity one usually associated with disaster—carriage accidents and hurricanes.

  “Molly,” she said. “Molly.”

  “I’m here,” Molly said, holding her tight.

  Chapter Seven

  “You’re a cuddler,” Molly said, after they had dozed. “You chased me into this corner of the bed and gave me no quarter until you had your arm around me.” Alice moved to pull her arm back, but Molly grabbed it, fixing it in place on her own waist. “Nah, I like
it. I’d have shoved you off if I didn’t.”

  “It’s true.” The first rays of sunlight were glinting off Alice’s loose hair. She stretched an arm lazily over her head. “I suppose I ought to get a cat.”

  “I don’t think cats go in much for cuddles.” Not the ones Molly had known, at least, but they had mostly been a hungry, rat-obsessed bunch. Perhaps ladies’ cats had different priorities.

  “Maybe a dog, then,” Alice said, yawning.

  “Or a person,” Molly suggested.

  “A person?”

  Molly cringed at her own stupidity. “You seem to be doing all right in the bed with me, I mean to say. We could keep on doing this, if you like.”

  Well, that woke her up. Molly watched in chagrin as all the sleepiness drained from Alice’s face. “But only for the remainder of the house party,” she said, her voice tight. “After that we’ll have our separate rooms.”

  “It doesn’t need to be that way.”

  Alice, her face once again set in that bland and harmless mask, glanced away to some point over Molly’s naked shoulder. “I doubt that even Mrs. Wraxhall would tolerate this kind of carrying on under her own roof.”

  Was that what they were doing? Carrying on? Molly had thought it was more, something, unlike every bloody connection she had ever made, that might last longer than the other person had use for Molly, that might last longer than it took for the other person to find out what Molly really was.

  She climbed out of bed and pulled a fresh shift out of the clothes press. Last night’s was God knew where. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit,” she said briskly. Alice still hadn’t gotten out of bed, and Molly hardly dared look for fear her expression would give her stupidity away. “You ought to get dressed before you catch your death, and then I’ll show you how to pick a lock.”