When she moved up to the sweet curve of the countess’s cheek, the lady leaned into the caress, slightly but unmistakably.
Lucy had embarked on romances with less encouragement, in her youth. But maturity and pain had made her cautious. Therefore she asked, in a sound barely more than a whisper: “May I kiss you?”
Lady Moth held her breath, then let out a sigh that formed a single word: “Please.”
Lucy leaned down, as the countess leaned forward, and the kiss exploded where they met.
Just a simple brush of one mouth against another, but it sent heat and light and stars through every inch of Lucy’s frame. She pulled in a breath and tried it again, the same way, repeating the experiment. The same result: sparkling fire.
When the kiss broke, the countess laughed a little, sounding surprised, and Lucy couldn’t blame her. She was beyond words herself. She wanted to sink her hands into the lady’s hair and hold her in place and kiss her until the sun went dark and the moon went dim and the stars blew out like spent wax candles.
Fate wasn’t so generous with her hours, however. Lucy was only able to kiss the countess until the tea tray rattled a warning in the hall.
The sound broke them apart, Lady Moth’s hands going up anxiously to her burning cheeks and Lucy’s going down to smooth out the folds of her skirt, rumpled up against the countess’s.
Brinkworth set tea and cakes on the table in front of them, bowed, and vanished.
Lucy looked at the contrast between her gray muslin and the countess’s fine plum silk, and felt herself bump down against the earth again. Lady Moth poured tea just as she did every day, though the pink in her cheeks was a spur to memory. By the time the last cake was eaten, there was nothing for it but for Lucy to return to the library and her translation.
The shawl was still there on the desk, patient and serene. Lucy wrapped it around her shoulders and basked in the warmth as, outside the window, day slipped softly into evening.
Lucy wore her new shawl in to dinner. Catherine went breathless when she saw it, watching the glass beads sparkle as the younger woman moved—though Lucy’s eyes sparkled more, as they met Catherine’s. The countess flushed from head to toe and was glad to be sitting down: she wasn’t sure her knees would have supported her, had she been standing when that look was sent her way.
But there were maids and footmen and Brinkworth around them, so there was nothing to do but eat dinner.
It took two glasses of wine before Catherine found courage enough to say: “Would you like to see my own embroidery sampler?”
Lucy looked up from her plate, her utensil suspended in midair like a tuning fork. A new knowledge hummed between them, taut and arresting as the note of a violin.
“I keep it upstairs,” Catherine clarified. “In my bedroom.”
Lucy cocked her head at this, as Catherine wished the parquet would simply open and swallow her up. It was the least graceless invitation the girl had ever been offered, no doubt. But every time she looked at Lucy, as the afternoon’s kisses thronged between them, well—all Catherine’s practiced phrases deserted her in favor of blunt, direct, short arrangements of words that would hopefully let other kisses happen as soon as possible. Why cast about for artful phrases when there were much better things to do with one’s mouth?
Then Lucy smiled, and for a moment her gaze darted down to Catherine’s lips. It was all the countess could do not to put her fingers up to feel the heat that gaze had left there.
“I would be honored,” said Lucy softly.
Finally the courses were finished, the plates were removed, and the two women were climbing the stairs to Catherine’s bedchamber on the north side of the house.
It wasn’t the largest room—George had claimed that for himself, in the center of the hall—but it had a small chaise and a perfect view of the back garden. Narayan was waiting to help Catherine out of her gown. “I think Miss Muchelney and I can do for one another tonight,” Catherine said to her, struggling not to feel transparently bold and reckless.
Narayan flicked a curious glance at Lucy, then curtsied and departed for her own bed two floors up.
Catherine had no idea what to do with her hands. Wait, no, the sampler book. She pulled it from its place in the top drawer of her night table. “This is my second volume of samplers. The first I made as a girl,” she explained, as Lucy took a seat on the chaise. Catherine joined her. “I started this one on the day George and I left on our first expedition.”
She opened the book to the first page, and was deeply gratified when Lucy gasped in admiration.
The first page was a map, the familiar lines of the globe picked out in black on creamy linen. Longitude and latitude were made of running stitches curving around the doubled hemisphere. Catherine’s finger traced the thicker line of stem stitch that traced a path across the sea, from England to New South Wales and through so many of the Pacific islands. At each port where they’d put in, Catherine had placed a tiny local flower, and four larger bougainvilleas lounged in each of the map sampler’s corners.
Lucy let out a sigh. “This is the whole voyage?”
“The voyage out.” Catherine turned the page. “This is the voyage back.”
Lucy leaned in, pointing to one bright red figure. “The pineapple ginger!”
Catherine grinned. “Precisely where I first saw it.” She turned more leaves, as the maps gave way to more experimental and practical embroidery, pages where Catherine was trying out new techniques of her own or practicing stitches she’d been taught by the people in the places she’d traveled to. Quilted silk patterns from India, bold geometrical shapes, and web-like stars and flowers made by winding a single thread around and between fixed stitches.
Then she turned the page and froze. She’d forgotten what came next. Lucy’s hand held down the corner firmly, her gaze turning keen. “Who is that?”
