Charlotte nodded and blew her nose hard on her handkerchief. She waited until the tea had arrived. Pitt glanced from one to the other with an air of consternation. “It’s all right,Pitt,” Mary said, waving him off, and he left the room, casting only a single backwards glance.
“Here,” Mary said, pressing a cup of hot tea into Charlotte’s hands. “Drink. You will feel better afterwards.”
“I’m fine,” Charlotte protested. “Really, I am.” Her hands trembled as she lifted the cup, betraying her nerves.
Mary smiled, her eyes full of concern. She reached out slowly, as if Charlotte were a wild animal she was afraid to startle, and brushed a curl of hair back from Charlotte’s face. Charlotte flinched before leaning into the touch; why not, after all? The floodgates were open, her secret out. Though, despite Mary’s prior declaration, she still could not believe that her friend was not just being nice out of pity.
“It takes time to adjust to a change, whether of the body or mind,” Mary murmured, her fingers sliding up into Charlotte’s hair and petting her with slow strokes. “I will never press you to say or do anything which makes you uncomfortable, but…do you feel as if you could talk to me about it?”
“Yes, although I do not know what kind of sense I will make.” Charlotte put down her cup and moved to sit on the rug beside Mary. They sat side by side, staring into the flames, much as they had only two nights before.
“So,” Mary prompted. “How long have you known you had these feelings?”
“I am not sure. I rather think you knew before I did.” A more evasive answer than Mary deserved, perhaps, but one which might shield her from close scrutiny, at least for the moment.
Mary made a half shrug, though she did not deny it. Her body had tensed a little. “It was Lizzie, wasn’t it?”
So much for shielding.“Yes and no.” Charlotte sipped her tea again, trying to get her thoughts in order. “That was the first time I felt something different, that I was sure I ought not to feel for another woman.” It struck Charlotte for the first time that Mary might have been feeling jealous at times too, of her ownsister. Certainly the Bennet family had never esteemed their middle daughter. “But, to be clear, I was never in love with your sister.” This seemed like an important distinction to make.
“Ah.” Mary relaxed. “I did always wonder. It played a small part in the discovery of my own feelings—” she shifted a little “—though it wasn’t until I confided in Aunt Cecily that I began to see the possibilities of the world in a different light.”
“You do appear to have bloomed here.”
Mary smiled, picking up her own cup and pouring tea. “Yes, I supposed I have. And so it seems have you.”
“On the contrary, I started to bloom the moment you arrived at the parsonage.” Charlotte blushed to say such things out loud, but Mary’s expression was worth all the blushes in the world.
“Why? What was it that began things?”
“I hardly know, really,” said she, thinking back over those first days together. “You came in all grown up, and not at all what I had expected or remembered, and the change quite unnerved me to begin with. Then, the more we spent time together… I do not know, exactly. You made me feel like…” She struggled to find the right words. “A long unwatered plant being offered a drink. Though I tried not to feel such things, or look at you in such ways. In truth, I rather suspected you saw me as just another older sister.”
Mary, who had just taken a rather large gulp of tea, promptly choked on it. “Gracious!” she exclaimed, after coughing and spluttering for several seconds. “As a sister!” She descended into another fit of coughing, although this one was punctuated with merry laughter. “I assure you,” she said, wiping her streaming eyes, “that I never did such things with my own sisters, nor did I ever see you in that way. I always looked up to you, though I don’t think you noticed me then, and I cannot blame you for doing so. No, let me finish—” for Charlotte had opened her mouth to protest “—for I was doing my best to behave well, at least to begin with, and then I found myself growing fonderand fonder of you. I had, I must admit, quite resigned myself to the fact that you were untouchable, though some of your looks and manners gave me several sleepless nights. I thought I was imagining things, and that my feelings of hope were frequently getting the better of my common sense.”
“I felt the same,” Charlotte admitted.
“We are perfect fools together, are we not?”
Charlotte rested her head on Mary’s shoulder. Before long, the memory of the kiss came flooding back. For all its belated joy, it was still edged with anxiety and fear.Which is perfectly natural, she told herself.All those years suppressing my feelings will not simply vanish like morning mist under the heat of the sun.Her inner voice still warned her about perversities, about giving in to sinful thoughts and desires. Still, the feeling of the kiss overrode all sense. Something which felt so good surely could not really be bad.
“What?” Mary asked, turning to crane down at her.
“Nothing. It is just…” She blushed, her voice dropping to a murmur. “Our kiss.”
“What about it?” Mary’s voice had dropped too, and the air between them, what little there was, became thick and electric.
Charlotte swallowed hard, and forced herself to look away. It had been one thing to kiss Mary in a blind panic, and quite another to do so soberly. “You were very good.”
Mary’s eyes crinkled. “Thank you.” She put a hand to her chest, stuck her chin in the air, and did her best impression of Mrs Bennet. “Other young ladies in the neighbourhood may be much praised for their needlework but our Mary has added kissing to her impressive list of accomplishments.”
Charlotte laughed, though her stomach was churning. She did want to kiss Mary again, so why had she spoiled the moment? Why on earth did she find it so difficult to pursue what she wanted, and so easy to pursue what she did not?
“Come,” Mary said, rising to her feet and offering a hand toCharlotte to help her up. “It is my firm belief that after a good weep one needs to eat a tremendous amount of cake.”
She led Charlotte downstairs, chattering all the while, and Charlotte was grateful for the flow of easy conversation. She needed a little time to become accustomed to things, although she had no wish to shut herself away from Mary. If anything, she wanted to cling to Mary, to follow her around, to sit as close as possible. In the drawing room, Charlotte sat first and Mary hesitated, as if waiting for permission to join her. Charlotte patted the seat in encouragement, and Mary acquiesced with a look of relief. The chatter did not stop, however, and soon Charlotte was being drawn into a discussion of the flowers Barton had mentioned in his diary, and whether they bore any resemblance to flowers she was familiar with. She saw now what should have been evident to her before—the way Mary’s eyes lingered, the way her companion followed her every word and thought with great attention, the brief displays of affection with a shoulder pat. Charlotte had thought it simply friendship, which in hindsight had been a foolish interpretation. Though her other friends had always been affectionate, none of them would ever have been so frequent or overt about it.
She smiled to herself—Lizzie would have made so much fun of her for being oblivious to a suitor’s attentions—but then her smile faded.Oh no. I hadn’t considered Lizzie.How could Charlotte ever face her friend again, knowing that she’d kissed one of her sisters? Lizzie had never been a particularly staid person, or fond of old traditions when they did not suit, but this was quite a different kettle of fish. One was often more accepting of others’ oddities when they did not conflict with the social standing of one’s family.
“May I ask a question?”
