“Your letters were always so diverting,” the new Mrs. Winlock said. “I used to try and sketch the places you described, while Lucy was going over your columns of figures. How strange to meet you at last, and so close to home.”
“We have a view of the coast from the parlor, and were wondering who would brave the shore in such weather as this,” Mr. Winlock added, beaming. “But we hardly expected such an intrepid traveler as yourself, Lady Moth! May we have the pleasure of asking you to take tea with us?” He unhooked the umbrella from his other arm and unfurled it, earnestness and expectation written plainly in every line of his face.
Catherine glanced at Lucy, who was looking strained beneath the polite mask. “Another time, Mr. Winlock, thank you,” Catherine replied. “I’m afraid we were just heading home.”
“Ah,” he said, and for one moment a ghost of anxiety passed over him like the spray from a cresting wave. But then his expression smoothed out, and he tucked his wife back into the safety of his encompassing arm. “Then I shall repeat the invitation at a more convenient time,” he said.
Everyone bowed and curtsied again, as was proper, and then the two umbrellas parted ways to bob each couple back to shelter.
Catherine walked in silence, watching Lucy nervously. There was a wan tinge to the younger woman’s complexion and a flatness to her mouth that made the stone in Catherine’s breast weigh heavier still. There was nothing she could think of to say that felt safe, so Catherine held her tongue and her lover’s arm and put one foot in front of the other.
Halfway through the wood, Lucy’s silence broke. “I’ve always liked Harry Winlock.”
A non sequitur like that was a delicate thing: pull too hard, and the thread would break. Catherine kept her face open and her voice calm. “Oh?”
She’d done exactly right: Lucy’s voice gained strength as she continued. “He and Stephen used to play together, before they went off to school—but afterward, they ran in different circles. Stephen’s friends were striving for genius, even then: they always wanted to be clever, or brilliant, or lauded in some way. And Harry wasn’t—isn’t—clever. Which isn’t unusual, young boys are never half as clever as they think they are, after all—but Harry never minded. He didn’t have to be the best, or the first, or the loudest. He just... he justlikedeveryone, despite how they treated him, and despite their own flaws. I never noticed it until I came back from Cramlington, and started helping my father with his astronomical observations. I would fall asleep in church, and all the other young people would mock me, but Harry simply asked how late I’d stayed up, and if I’d seen any comets, and how many stars I’d counted.”
She paused to duck the umbrella beneath a branch that hung particularly low over the path.
“And then Pris came to visit—partly, she said, because her family was always pressuring her to marry, and I was sort of an escape.” Her mouth pursed up as if she’d bitten into something sharp. “Apparently I wasn’t escape enough. She met Harry, and of course he fell in love with her. Even then, I couldn’t be mad at him—how could I? I’d fallen just as quickly, when I met her. But I never expected her to accept when he proposed. I left for London the day after they were married.”
So quickly! Catherine thought back to Lucy’s wild manner, which she’d chalked up to scientific ambition. It looked very different now in the light of this revelation. “We don’t have to see them socially, if you don’t like to,” Catherine offered quietly. “One of the great privileges of being a countess is that people expect snobbery, so you could tell them I refuse such low connections and we could continue as we have done.”
Lucy slanted her a look. “But youaren’tsnobbish, love.”
“Nobody in Lyme knows that.”
“But I don’t want them to think it, even for a second. You deserve better.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, while Catherine alternately yearned to move on to less painful subjects and cursed herself for a coward. Narayan and Sadie had tea ready when they arrived, hot and steaming, and they gladly shed their wet things and curled up before the fire in the parlor.
Catherine had brought her ammonites in and was turning them over and over, tracing the delicate spirals of ancient life.
Lucy tilted her head. “How old do you suppose they are?”
“Older than mankind,” Catherine replied. “Though by how much, I do not have learning enough to speculate. Aunt Kelmarsh might have a better idea.”
“She will love these for her memorial grotto, I am sure.”
“Very fitting,” Catherine sighed. Pris’s face wouldn’t leave off haunting her. “A memento of something wondrous and beautiful, which can never die.”
She must have sounded as mournful as she felt, because Lucy’s hands wrapped around hers, around the stones. “This creaturehasdied,” she said. “It lived once, long ago. But all that remains is the impression—fixed, not animate. Its time has long passed.”
Catherine could not pretend they were still talking about the ammonites, which were growing warm against her palms. Borrowing heat from their joined hands. “You loved her so much, for so long,” Catherine said, as helpless tears sprang to her eyes and roughened her voice.
Lucy’s lips twitched. “So long, but not so well. We fell in love as schoolgirls and hoped nothing would ever change—not me, not her, not the world. We tried to fix everything just as it was, thinking that we could preserve our happiness the way this fossil preserved the shape of ancient life. She came for long visits, but we never thought about sharing a home, either here or anywhere else. Her parents were insisting that she marry, and she couldn’t put them off forever, and I was so wrapped up in helping my father with his scientific work, but not daring to claim any of it as my own... It seemed like the only place we could really love each other was in this frozen space between the past and the present. There was nothing truly vital in it, nothing nourishing to the heart or the mind or the soul. When I look back, the wonder is not that we parted—it’s that we managed to hold on as long as we did.”
She untangled her fingers, pulled the ammonites from Catherine’s hands, and set them aside on the table.
Her arms went around Catherine’s shoulders, and the countess returned the embrace with a quiet sob, burying her face in Lucy’s neck. Somehow, at that moment, Lucy’s slight figure seemed to be the one steady axis around which the entire cosmos was spinning; Catherine held on tight, fearing to be torn away by the relentless forces of nature.
Lucy’s words, spoken against Catherine’s temple, chimed softly against her very bones. “Loving you is entirely different. You make me feel expansive, as though my heart is big enough and strong enough to contain the whole world. As though I can become anyone I need to, or want to, without fear—I can reach higher and farther and not lose you for the striving. And oh, my love, do you know how great a gift that is?”
“We still have to be a secret,” Catherine whispered.
“I know,” Lucy said with a sigh. “The world is cruel that way. But just because one part of us is secret, doesn’t mean our whole lives have to be lived in the shadows.” Catherine could feel Lucy’s lips curve in a smile, against the delicate skin beside her eye. “Aunt Kelmarsh said it used to be different, in her youth—maybe it will be different again, someday.”
Her hands lazily traced the neckline of Catherine’s gown, teasing and testing the swell of her breasts. Sensitive, scientific fingers followed the line of the white work embroidery Catherine had put there long ago, a series of ocean waves lapping and receding like a tide frozen in time. Lucy’s eyes narrowed and pulled away slightly. “Is this design your own?”
