It would easily, naturally minimize the risks. A lady-love could assert no authority over Catherine’s finances, or claim any rights in legal matters. Should desire wear itself out, separation could be done privately and discreetly, requiring no Act of Parliament to make it official. There was the considerable chance of scandal if they were found out, of course—but even there, being women, they were safer from the cruelty of the law than if they’d been two men similarly inclined. Friendship, people would call it in public, even as they prayed silently their own daughters had no such friends.
It was shocking how perfect a solution it was. She wondered everyone didn’t think of it. Then again... maybe quite a few of them did, and Catherine just hadn’t noticed. Look at Aunt Kelmarsh and her mother, in the days of their idylls at Ruche Abbey.
No doubt the rolling hills and quiet cottages of old England’s countryside housed more than one pair of ladies who were as good as wed in the eyes of everyone but the church and the law.
Perhaps in past years the idea would have been nothing more than an idle philosophical game to play in the safety of her own thoughts. But now there was Lucy. Lucy, with her quick smiles and quicker mind—and who had made it perfectly clear how her tastes aligned with Catherine’s. That was the greatest hurdle in the business already leaped over, at least...
The carriage hit a bump, jolting the both of them. Lucy grumbled something incoherent and blinked wildly, but soon the swaying lulled her back into slumber.
Catherine let out a breath and leaned back again, the interruption allowing her natural caution to flow back into its accustomed corners. She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. Look at her, imagining seductions and passions and parting quarrels, when she hadn’t even set foot on the path yet. Hadn’t she doubted just this morning that Lucy even wanted a lover? Oh, Miss Muchelney might blush and give compliments, and once or twice Catherine had caught her staring inthatgratifying way—she knew Lucy wasn’t entirely indifferent to Catherine’s charms, such as they presently were. But that kind of restrained flirtation was one thing. A seduction was quite another. Especially if all Lucy wanted was a friendship—in the usual, not the euphemistic, sense.
Catherine was going to have to go about this carefully. One step at a time. Inviting, rather than pursuing. Always leaving Lucy the chance to retreat, or reject. It would sting, but that was nothing. Catherine valued Lucy’s freedom in this as much as her own.I want more; I understand if you don’t.
Best to start with something simple. A gift, that’s what was needed. Something that would bring Lucy delight, but that wouldn’t feel like a burden. Sweets or flowers or jewelry, the usual kind of courting gifts, felt unspecific and therefore unsatisfying. It should be something particular.
Catherine combed back through their shared days, and remembered all the times Lucy had turned those keen eyes onto her needlework, asking about the names and species of the flowers Catherine embroidered. And hadn’t the infamous Priscilla worked the vines on Lucy’s best gown?
Catherine was beginning to loathe the sight of that strip of green embroidery. Lucy had worn the dress twice more in the weeks since the Society dinner. Her wardrobe was as limited as you’d expect from a girl raised in a quiet corner of the country. Perhaps Catherine could arrange a new gown or two...
No. Tempting as it was to send Lucy to her favorite dressmaker and say the Countess of Moth would see to the bill, doing so was a good way to make Lucy feel embarrassed and obligated and perhaps a very little bit like a pet.
Turning someone into a project was a terrible way to woo them.
Lucy shifted in her sleep, pulling her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. She must have a tendency toward chills. No wonder, as slender as she was. Catherine recalled loaning her a wrap the night of the Society dinner—and inspiration slipped in like a breath and exploded in her body like a lightning bolt. She took her notebook out of her reticule and began making sketches.
The next afternoon, when Lucy returned to the library, Catherine began gathering supplies. Her needle case, since the tambour hook wouldn’t do for the kind of fine work she had in mind. Silk skeins in pale shades of white, green, gold, and silver. And a length of deep blue fabric, silk and wool blended, the drape of it light and soft and warmer than its cool color suggested.
Her initial hasty sketches she spread on the writing desk, making notes to herself about alterations and possibilities in the margins. Slowly she began working out a shape in pencil on a clean sheet of paper, refining the curves and adding long trailing lines and delicate swirls. When she was satisfied with it she would pierce the paper with tiny holes along each line and dust it with pounce, leaving a dotted version of the design on the fabric beneath, ready for needle and thread to fill in.
She hid it away when Brinkworth brought in the tea, until Lucy was gone again. By dinnertime, she had her pattern finalized and pierced and ready for the next day’s embroidering. She took care to work as slowly and meticulously as she could, not only for the sake of those long, precise lines, but because each day that passed was one more day for Lucy to move further away from her earlier love affair.
Catherine wanted Lucy, but more than that, Catherine wanted Lucy to want her back. And Lucy wouldn’t, if she were still pining for the girl she’d lost. So Catherine let the days flow by like water while she put in stitch after stitch after stitch, as though each one were mending a small rent in Lucy Muchelney’s heart.
Chapter Five
With heartfelt passion, Lucy cursed the French subjunctive tense.
She cast a bitter eye over the scribblings of her latest efforts. Oléron deserved so much better, and Lucy was beginning to despair of capturing even a third of the crystalline clarity of the original. Two months of consistent translating and expanding still hadn’t made the frustrating compromises easier to bear. She put downmightfor this verb’s translation, frowned at it, crossed it out, wrotemightagain, and then in parentheses addedshouldwith a pair of helpless question marks.
Let Future Lucy make the ultimate decision during revisions to the text. Future Lucy was always so much more decisive, somehow. Maybe because she was ever-so-slightly closer to death than Present Lucy?
Lucy groaned and slumped back in her chair, rolling her shoulders to ease the soreness from leaning for hours over the desk. When she started musing about the inevitability of death and the terrifying brevity of the mortal lifespan, it meant she’d spent too long looking at things from the perspective of the universe. She needed something on a human scale to focus on until the framework shifted back.
A soft knock heralded Lady Moth’s entrance to the library. Her dress today was a lush plum that brought out the gold in her hair and the pink in her cheeks. She looked positively radiant, and deep within Lucy a chord hummed as if a hand had strummed the very fibers of her soul and set them to music.
It ought to have been agonizing, living and working in close quarters alongside a woman so beautiful and yet so unattainable. But Lucy’s heart, newly mended, was prepared to bask in any sensation that was not the sharp pain of loss—so unrequited fascination for her benefactress came not as a trial, but rather as a pleasurable seasoning to any day’s difficult work. And if the feeling occasionally stole her breath and her wits and kept her awake into the small hours of the night, well, nobody had to know. Really, it was much safer and more convenient than any actual love affair would have been.
Perhaps this was how her future could best be managed: devoting her days to scientific work and spending her nights silently, secretly pining for a woman with golden hair and clever hands.
It wasn’t until Lady Moth set the bundle of cloth down on the desk that Lucy realized: one, she had been staring, and two, there was quite a lot going on with that bundle of cloth. It was deep blue, rolled tight, and looked very fine indeed. “What is this?” Lucy asked.
Lady Moth sat in her usual spot on the sofa, but the way she leaned forward and the spark in her eyes had Lucy’s pulse racing with anticipation. “A little something I’ve made,” the countess said. She smiled, not without some anxiety. “A gift.”
Lucy sat straight up in astonishment. “A gift for me?”
Lady Moth’s laugh was always soft, as if it had been packed away in an attic for too long, unused. “Who else?”
Lucy shook her head, feeling silly, and reached out a hand. The fabric unrolled and revealed itself to be a generous shawl, and Lucy choked back a gasp.
