Mrs. Stelm does giggle then. Gwen watches her reflection as her blush crawls from her chest to the tips of her ears. She looks like a tomato.
“Don’t know how many kisses you’ve had—though of course it should be none,” Mrs. Gilpe continues, fixing Gwen with a stern look before she cracks and laughs herself.
Gwen stares. She’s rarely seen the woman so open. “Only two—well, three,” she corrects, her face going further red as memories of her moment with Beth flit through her mind. “I just, I—How did you decide to... be like this?” She ends on a whisper, feeling embarrassed and ashamed for her curiosity.
She wouldn’t ask if one of them was a man. No one need ask when one is a man. That’s simply how it’s meant to be. You’re born a girl, you grow up to be a wife, then a mother, then more than likely a widow, and then you pass, hopefully with a smattering of male heirs.
You don’t grow up to kiss your best friends and become a spinster.
“I had more than my share of kisses as a lass,” Mrs. Stelm says.
Mrs. Gilpe strides to firmly shut Gwen’s door. Gwen swallows as full privacy surrounds them. She’s not sure she truly wants to know this. It feels like there’s no turning back, like somehow this conversation will cement a reality she’s not sure she wants to face. But she’s already started it. Already pressedherself to Beth and taken her mouth—would have taken more if she could.
“And none of them felt the way I’m betting it did when you kissed that new debutante you’re always talking about,” Mrs. Stelm says.
Gwen sways in place. How do they justknow?
“Oh, sweetheart, it was all over your face when you came home from that garden party,” Mrs. Stelm says.
“Like you’d been socked in the gut and slapped in the face, and then given a new pony,” Mrs. Gilpe adds, chuckling as Mrs. Stelm whacks her arm.
“Felt like that,” Gwen whispers, something releasing as she meets their eyes in the mirror—speaking it into the world is like breathing that clutching panic right out of her chest.
“Once you’ve been kissed like that, it’s hard to go back to other kisses,” Mrs. Gilpe says frankly.
Gwen feels her shoulders droop. She knows it won’t ever feel the same with a man. It’s not that the kisses of her first seasons were terrible, but they weren’t... Beth’s. “And you never thought of getting married anyway, either of you?” she wonders.
Mrs. Gilpe and Mrs. Stelm glance at each other for a long moment. Gwen watches their silent conversation in newfound interest. She’s seen couples at parties look at each other this way, silently discussing something before giving an answer.
“It was our wish to find a way to be married together,” Mrs. Gilpe tells her, meeting her eyes in the mirror. The two of them step close behind her. “But, and this is the only time in your life I’ll say this, it was simpler for us as commoners than it will ever be for you.”
Gwen lets out a startled laugh. “Oh?”
Mrs. Stelm smiles. “Though you know we sleep in the same room and call us Mrs. despite neither of us having husbands, how often have you really thought about our situation?” she asks.
Gwen bites at her cheek, unwilling to say she’s never, not once, thought on it. That’s just how it’s always been, even though she knows there are more than enough servant’s quarters for them both to have a suite of them should they wish it.
“Which is exactly as we expected it to be. And as your father takes as little interest in our love lives as he does the others’, it’s never been an issue,” Mrs. Gilpe adds.
“But, to be fair, your father is no ordinary lord. Certainly in another house we would not have survived. Your mother never caught on,” Mrs. Stelm adds after a moment.
“Oh, she would have had us both thrown in the asylum,” Mrs. Gilpe says with a snort. “We were simply careful.”
“Why would she do that?” Gwen asks, the question popping out like she’s an innocent child.
She knows her mother was anything but saintly. A vicious tongue Father pretends was merely witty, but Gwen’s heard enough stories to know there was cruelty behind the beauty. But to have two women thrown into the asylum for the crime of happiness?
“Your father is a good man. You mother was a woman of her time and station. It would have offended all that she knew,” Mrs. Gilpe says easily.
“Was she really that awful?” Gwen wonders, staring at her reflection.
What would her mother have thought of her, then, fantasizing of kisses with her best friend?
“I think she was very unhappy,” Mrs. Stelm says softly, reaching out to squeeze Gwen’s shoulder. “Unhappy people are often cruel to avoid the cruelty within.”
“Regardless, you are a lovely young woman, and anyone would be lucky to have you. Whether or not it’s as you’d wish it to be, there are arrangements that can be made,” Mrs. Gilpe says.
Gwen meets her eyes in the mirror. “What do you mean?”
