“The Napoleon snuffbox!” Agatha gasped. “But where...?” She poked at the comb that encrusted fully half the small object.
“Remember when John was captured, and he’d knocked over one of the Abington hives?” Agatha nodded. “Well, when I finally had a chance to repair it, I found this jammed into the straw of the skep. Waiting to be found until the hive was replaced. Isabella must have hidden it there for me to find, because she knew I’d get it safely to its proper owner.” She laughed. “It was the one place she knew where her niece would never go looking for it. I’ve already written to Joanna to tell her the good news.”
“Aren’t you going to clean it?”
Penelope wrapped it back up. “I thought Joanna might like to see it this way first. It’s a little more poetic, don’t you think, if the bees were helping Isabella hide it?”
“Poets.” Agatha said it like a curse, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Penelope’s grin said she knew as much.
They changed into bee clothes and walked the circuit, feeling the heat rise off the earth as spring declined into full summer. Nell Turner’s hives were thriving, though her garden had become rather overgrown in her absence. Mr. Scriven showed them his newest baby goats, two heartbreaking, mischievous bundles of black and tan.
The women bypassed Abington Hall and curved around down the hill.
Grass shushed in the breeze, bees and other insects buzzed from flower to flower, and the wheelbarrow full of beekeeping equipment clanked and thunked as it trundled over the packed earth of the road. Agatha rolled up her sleeves and opened her collar against the warmth—and as they walked through one of the shady, forested sections, Penelope dropped the wheelbarrow, stripped off her gloves, and pressed Agatha up against the cool white bark of a birch tree. “I’ve been wanting to do this formonths,” she said, kissing Agatha’s neck, hands clutching at her trousered hips.
Agatha tilted her head back and sighed happily as Penelope’s mouth skated over the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. “I missed you, too, Flood.”
“A week shouldn’t feel like such a long time,” Flood murmured, a nip of her small teeth making Agatha shiver with pleasure. “What if...” She nuzzled into the crook of Agatha’s neck. “What if we never had to be apart?”
Agatha’s fingers had slipped into Penelope’s short curls—but at this question, they tightened.
Penelope’s head bent back at the pressure, her smile sly, and her eyes wanton.
“How do you mean?” Agatha asked.
“What if you came to live with me, Flood?” Penelope went on. “Harry and John won’t be staying past the coronation, and the house will feel so empty when they’re gone. It’s felt empty since Christmas, even with them here. Becauseyou’regone. You should be here. With me.” Penelope bit her lip. “I’m rambling, I know—how about I stop talking and let you answer the question?”
Agatha had forgotten how to breathe. Spending every day with Penelope Flood. Everynight. No more empty beds, no more dull and solitary sleeps. To have someone again—not a husband, not something legal—but someone real, and loving, and true.
It was everything she’d wanted for herself, and it was going to break her to have to turn it down.
Because the truth was: “I can’t, Flood,” she said, through the iron bands tightening around her chest. “I can’t leave Griffin’s. There is so much to do in London still. Eliza and Sydney need me too much.”
The light went out in Penelope’s eyes. She smiled, but she stepped back, her hands tugging at her cuffs and smoothing down the curls Agatha had been so glad to tousle. “Of course,” she said with a laugh. Agatha feared Penelope was laughing at herself: it was such a small and brittle sound. “Not being a mother, I forget how it is sometimes. You have to put your son first.”
Agatha nodded miserably. “It’s not the answer I’d prefer to be giving you, Flood.”
“I know.” Penelope’s smile began to crumble at the edges. She turned hastily away, taking up the wheelbarrow again and getting back on the road.
Agatha gulped a little and hurried to catch up. “Penelope...” she said.
“It’s alright,” Penelope said at once. “I’m just... I’d been hoping, that’s all. But I suppose... you can only have one queen in a hive.” She glanced over her shoulder, and her smile was almost back to normal. “I’ll ask you again next summer. Maybe you’ll be in a position to give me a different answer.”
“I hope so,” Agatha murmured, and fell in step beside the wheelbarrow.
The day was still beautiful, and before long Penelope was reciting pastoral poetry again, as always. She seemed to have shaken off the sting of Agatha’s rejection entirely. The bees hummed sleepily in spruce-and-lavender smoke, there was plenty of honey in the skep jars, and everywhere they turned, Melliton looked like a maiden decked out in her finest frock to meet a long-missed lover.
So why did Agatha feel so damn dismal?
Penelope barely waited until the household was abed before tugging on her dressing gown and slipping into Agatha’s bedroom.
She nearly ran right into the woman, who’d been in the act of reaching for the door handle. “Penelope—?”
Penelope wasted no time. She all but yanked Agatha’s mouth down to hers.
Agatha gasped against Penelope’s lips, but something of the shorter woman’s desperation must have caught her in its tendrils, because soon her hands were sinking into Penelope’s short hair and her fingertips were almost painfully tight against Penelope’s scalp. Her mouth opened, dark and hot and hungry as the kiss deepened. Penelope welcomed the little sparks of pain, as they kept her distracted from the larger cloud of hurt and worry that stormed in the center of her breast.
