“I knew all that political talk would be trouble,” Griffin muttered. “I just didn’t foresee how.” She looked up, her mouth a flat line. “They’ve beenreading.”
Penelope sputtered out a laugh. “Not that!”
Griffin remained unamused. “Eliza says marriage is a trap, and Sydney is unwilling to try to change her mind.”
Penelope’s laughter faded. “I sympathize, Griffin—really I do...”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “But?”
“But...” Penelope sighed. “Do you think she’sentirelywrong about marriage?”
Griffin’s jaw clenched, and she took another long draught of mead. “No,” she admitted. “Which is why it’s so damned hard to argue with. But I’ve spent all night thinking it over, and I believe I know where to start.”
“Tell me,” Penelope said.
“My son is right that Eliza stands to lose the most if they married,” Griffin said. Her hand began spinning her glass again, round and round on the old wood of the kitchen table. Her face had gone rosy, whether from drink or determination Penelope couldn’t say. Griffin went on: “The problem is that Eliza also stands to lose the most if theyaren’tmarried. Her reputation will suffer far more than his, if people take note of their intimacy. And I don’t know if she’s told her family, or how they’ll react.” By now she was turning the glass so fast it was beginning to ring a little against the wood. “Because it’s not only marriage that’s the trap—it’s being a woman. And I don’t have a solution for that, either. But I have to do something. Ideals are all very well on paper, but in the real world sometimes one has to bepractical.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“What?”
Griffin’s tone was such a thunder crack that Penelope winced a little. She tucked her hands between her knees, squeezing hard. “I made a thoroughly practical marriage,” she countered softly, even as her cowardly heart wailed a protest. “I thought it was the right choice at the time. But now... I am not so sure.”
Griffin’s head snapped up, her eyes widening.
Darkness and the warmth of the mead lured Penelope forward, into a confession she would probably regret in the cold, clear light of morning. “There are times when I think... there are some things that would be easier if I did not have such a knot in the fabric in my life.” She took a breath, hoping it would steady her, but it was only a desperate gulp for air, a momentary respite and nothing more. Her stomach twisted, and in a burst of recklessness she blurted out the truth: “Perhaps if I hadn’t married John, I wouldn’t feel as though it were betraying him to love someone else.”
“Someone else,” Griffin said thickly. “Who, Penelope?”
Penelope was already starting to feel hot regret seep in through the cracks in her composure. She’d sink beneath it before too long. She shook her head as though she could shake the world away. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. Then she did something foolish.
She looked straight at Griffin.
Agatha Griffin’s eyes widened.
Penelope’s bravery crumpled, and she looked away again.
The silence stretched on for years.
Griffin’s voice came slowly. “When I was younger, I thought kissing was something only girls did.”
It was hardly more than a whisper, but it sliced through the night like an arrow and nailed Penelope to her seat.
Griffin continued, as Penelope held her breath so as not to miss a single soft word. “Plenty of us treated kissing like practice. For when we were grown up and could do it with men. It all seemed so innocent, really—holding hands, sharing clothes. Sharing a bed. Wrapping your arms around each other while you both dreamed. Kisses... and caresses.” She fidgeted with the shawl on her shoulders, plucking at the fringe on the hem.
Her gaze flickered to Penelope, then away; Penelope shivered.
“When Thomas came courting—when I felt I had to grow up—I put all those feelings aside. They complicated things, and I wanted simple. Sure. But lately... Well, lately I have been thinking perhaps it’s not something I’m going to grow out of after all.”
Penelope remembered to breathe, and suddenly couldn’t seem to breathe deeply enough to satisfy. She felt dizzy, disoriented. And not from the mead. “You’re saying you could love women.”
“Not just that.” Griffin raised her head, and her eyes met Penelope’s with a clarity that made the spinning world pause in its orbit. “I’m saying I could loveyou.”
Penelope’s heart was a firework, bursting into sparks in the middle of the night. The explosion propelled her forward, right into Griffin’s arms.
Kissing, it turned out, was not something Agatha Griffin did by halves. Firm hands seized Penelope by the shoulders and held her in place, while Agatha’s hot tongue slid hungrily between Penelope’s lips. Penelope let her own hands tangle in the long waves of Agatha’s hair, happy to let herself be devoured. There was no room for hesitation now, not a drop of reticence; only this wild, desperate entwinement.
Penelope’s world split nearly in two: Before this kiss—and After. Nothing would ever be the same. She twisted Agatha’s long locks around her fingers and kissed back as hard as she could.
