Harriet set her candle on the shrouded piano, and held out one hand.
Lydia went willingly.
She was stiff from the cold and out of practice, but how could that matter when she was in Harriet’s arms, following her lead in the steps of a reel only half-remembered. The sparkle of diamonds was nothing to the glint of moonlight on snow, and no well-tuned orchestra easier to dance to than the old sad song Harriet began to help them both find a rhythm:
* * *
She raised her head from her down-soft pillow,
And snowy were her milk-white breasts,
Saying: ‘Who’s there, who’s there at my bedroom window
Disturbing me from my long night’s rest?’
‘’Tis I, your love, but don’t discover,
I pray you rise and let me in
For I am fatigued from my long night’s journey
Besides, I am wet unto my skin.’
* * *
The moonlight wasn’t ice now—it was silver, and struck Lydia’s heart like a bell as two pairs of feet shuffled softly over the parquet in perfect unison.
Harriet continued:
* * *
Then oh cock, oh cock, oh handsome cockerel,
I pray you not crow until it is day,
For your wings I’ll make of the very first beaten gold
And your comb I’ll make of the silver grey.
* * *
“Take me upstairs,” Lydia whispered against Harriet’s throat.
The song faltered as Harriet gasped, then laughed, a breathy sound soft as the wind outside.
She gathered her taper and they crept up to the upper story, to a bedroom at the end of the hall whose windows looked out on the abbey ruins. A banked fire kept away the worst of the chill, but Lydia was glad there was still moonlight and stone. This was not a cage, not a place set apart or hidden from the world: it was the heart of everything.
Harriet’s hands became busy with her buttons, and Lydia forgot about the view outside.
Lydia hadn’t taken someone to bed since before crinolines were in style, and she marveled at how relieved she felt when the thing was shed and she could press herself against Harriet with only scant layers of linen between. Kisses were heated, but hunger burned hotter. They shivered and stripped and all but dove beneath the blankets, Harriet nipping at Lydia’s shoulder as she wrapped her arms around her waist.
Lydia shook at the feel of skin on skin and yelped as Harriet’s chill fingertips stroked low on her belly, then lower still between her legs.
“Sorry,” Harriet murmured, sounding not sorry at all. “Do you want my hand? Or my mouth?”
“Both?”
Harriet laughed. She sucked two fingers into her mouth, slicking them and warming them, and then her hand was back at Lydia’s entrance and those fingers were slipping into Lydia and all the stars in the sky fell and burst behind her eyelids.
