The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

by Olivia Waite

  Lady Moth ducked her head. “It didn’t take so very long. I work very fast, after so many years’ practice.”

  Lucy dared to stroke her finger across one of the comets. It all but preened beneath her touch. “I’ve never seen embroidery with this kind of shading before,” she said. “It reminds me of a painting.”

  “It’s a technique my mother taught me. More painstaking than tambour work, but the results are striking, aren’t they? And very precise. My mother loved to create needlework depictions of the things her naturalists and botanists and explorers brought back from their travels.”

  Lucy folded up the shawl carefully to protect the delicate beadwork, and looked up to meet the countess’s hopeful gaze. “That would be something worth seeing.”

  “I’d be delighted to show you.” Then the countess smiled. A new smile, shy and hopeful. A smile like the first ray of dawn. Lucy was enchanted.

  Lady Moth led the way to the front parlor, the palm leaves on the wallpaper gleaming green and dust motes dancing gold in the sunlight. As Lucy took a seat on the sofa, Lady Moth went to the shelf over her writing desk and pulled out her mother’s sampler book.

  The pages were made of linen and satin and silk and printed calico, some obviously cut from old gowns taken apart, others pulled from samples that had been bound into issues of ladies’ periodicals like Griffin’s Menagerie. Every page was stiff with age and stitching, much thicker than Lucy had anticipated: the seventh countess had died long before the new airy muslins came to be popular.

  The embroidery itself was a wealth of color and shape: long chains of feathered stitches, bold bright florals, and pastoral scenes. Some were experiments, trying out color combinations and new stitches, or embroidering to fit a patterned fabric—but the more pages Lady Moth turned, the more botanical and scientific illustrations appeared, carefully rendered in blues, greens, reds, and rich browns. Vast ruffled conch shells, vivid tropical plants and flowers, and then in the midst of them, exotic for being so unexpected, one perfectly subtle, unmistakable garden snail shell. It was just like one Lucy had seen in the mosaics in Mrs. Kelmarsh’s garden, that memorial to a love long hidden . . .

  Oh.

  Lucy went dizzy as the world rearranged itself around her. The weight of revelation kept her pinned to the sofa, even as Lady Moth continued turning the sampler pages and providing expert explanations.

  Perspective, astronomers knew, was everything. Could Lucy have been viewing Lady Moth wrong from the start? Every sunrise blush, every time Lady Moth’s eyes sparkled when Lucy asked her a question, the way she sometimes stared so intently. All those tiny moments—if you assumed Lady Moth only desired men, those hints were dim as faraway stars in daylight. But if you thought maybe Lady Moth could want another woman as a lover . . .

  The countess had been right: astronomers spent a great deal of time being wrong before they recognized the truth.

  And now Lady Moth had made her a shawl as a gift. With her own hands. If Lucy was right, every stitch might as well be a caress.

  Forget all that nonsense about convenient distractions and unrequited pining: if the countess was really trying to seduce Lucy, Lucy was all for it.

  She just needed a little more proof. Just to be sure.

  Another page flipped over. This scene showed two female figures at a graveside, the taller one holding the smaller one’s hand and the letters on the tombstone spelling out birth and death dates while a willow spread mournful arms above and around them. “Your father?” Lucy asked.

  Lady Moth nodded. “I was seven,” she said. “It was very sudden. Mother wore black for three years.” She cocked her head. “Until Aunt Kelmarsh moved in, now that you mention it.”

  “Do you think . . .” Lucy swallowed hard. This was a terribly impolite question to ask, but the truth often mattered more than manners, no matter what the etiquette books said. “Do you think your mother was happier with your father, or with Mrs. Kelmarsh?”

  Lady Moth stayed quiet so long that Lucy began to despair she’d truly offended. She was trying to compose apologies in her head—difficult when you couldn’t openly acknowledge how you’d erred—when the countess spoke again. “I don’t think love works like that. You might as well ask the earth whether the sun or the moon is more important.” She blushed a little pinker and raised her eyes, star-bright. “You can’t always judge by what came before. Sometimes, there is a revolution.”

  The words burst over Lucy like sunlight, or the flare from a newly discovered comet. She stared, dazzled.

  Lady Moth held her chin high, though her breathing was coming fast.

  Lucy’s heart fluttered in response, as though someone had replaced the organ in her breast with something winged and frantic. Slowly, inch by inch, in case the countess changed her mind, Lucy raised her hand. Careful fingertips brushed along the line of Lady Moth’s jaw, barely skimming the tender skin.

  When she moved up to the sweet curve of the countess’s cheek, the lady leaned into the caress, slightly but unmistakably.

  Lucy had embarked on romances with less encouragement, in her youth. But maturity and pain had made her cautious. Therefore she asked, in a sound barely more than a whisper: “May I kiss you?”

  Lady Moth held her breath, then let out a sigh that formed a single word: “Please.”

  Lucy leaned down, as the countess leaned forward, and the kiss exploded where they met.

  Just a simple brush of one mouth against another, but it sent heat and light and stars through every inch of Lucy’s frame. She pulled in a breath and tried it again, the same way, repeating the experiment. The same result: sparkling fire.

  When the kiss broke, the countess laughed a little, sounding surprised, and Lucy couldn’t blame her. She was beyond words herself. She wanted to sink her hands into the lady’s hair and hold her in place and kiss her until the sun went dark and the moon went dim and the stars blew out like spent wax candles.

  Fate wasn’t so generous with her hours, however. Lucy was only able to kiss the countess until the tea tray rattled a warning in the hall.

  The sound broke them apart, Lady Moth’s hands going up anxiously to her burning cheeks and Lucy’s going down to smooth out the folds of her skirt, rumpled up against the countess’s.

  Brinkworth set tea and cakes on the table in front of them, bowed, and vanished.

  Lucy looked at the contrast between her gray muslin and the countess’s fine plum silk, and felt herself bump down against the earth again. Lady Moth poured tea just as she did every day, though the pink in her cheeks was a spur to memory. By the time the last cake was eaten, there was nothing for it but for Lucy to return to the library and her translation.

  The shawl was still there on the desk, patient and serene. Lucy wrapped it around her shoulders and basked in the warmth as, outside the window, day slipped softly into evening.

  Lucy wore her new shawl in to dinner. Catherine went breathless when she saw it, watching the glass beads sparkle as the younger woman moved—though Lucy’s eyes sparkled more, as they met Catherine’s. The countess flushed from head to toe and was glad to be sitting down: she wasn’t sure her knees would have supported her, had she been standing when that look was sent her way.

  But there were maids and footmen and Brinkworth around them, so there was nothing to do but eat dinner.

  It took two glasses of wine before Catherine found courage enough to say: “Would you like to see my own embroidery sampler?”

  Lucy looked up from her plate, her utensil suspended in midair like a tuning fork. A new knowledge hummed between them, taut and arresting as the note of a violin.

  “I keep it upstairs,” Catherine clarified. “In my bedroom.”

  Lucy cocked her head at this, as Catherine wished the parquet would simply open and swallow her up. It was the least graceless invitation the girl had ever been offered, no doubt. But every time she looked at Lucy, as the afternoon’s kisses thronged between them, well—all Catherine’s practiced phra
ses deserted her in favor of blunt, direct, short arrangements of words that would hopefully let other kisses happen as soon as possible. Why cast about for artful phrases when there were much better things to do with one’s mouth?

  Then Lucy smiled, and for a moment her gaze darted down to Catherine’s lips. It was all the countess could do not to put her fingers up to feel the heat that gaze had left there.

  “I would be honored,” said Lucy softly.

  Finally the courses were finished, the plates were removed, and the two women were climbing the stairs to Catherine’s bedchamber on the north side of the house.

  It wasn’t the largest room—George had claimed that for himself, in the center of the hall—but it had a small chaise and a perfect view of the back garden. Narayan was waiting to help Catherine out of her gown. “I think Miss Muchelney and I can do for one another tonight,” Catherine said to her, struggling not to feel transparently bold and reckless.

  Narayan flicked a curious glance at Lucy, then curtsied and departed for her own bed two floors up.

  Catherine had no idea what to do with her hands. Wait, no, the sampler book. She pulled it from its place in the top drawer of her night table. “This is my second volume of samplers. The first I made as a girl,” she explained, as Lucy took a seat on the chaise. Catherine joined her. “I started this one on the day George and I left on our first expedition.”

  She opened the book to the first page, and was deeply gratified when Lucy gasped in admiration.

  The first page was a map, the familiar lines of the globe picked out in black on creamy linen. Longitude and latitude were made of running stitches curving around the doubled hemisphere. Catherine’s finger traced the thicker line of stem stitch that traced a path across the sea, from England to New South Wales and through so many of the Pacific islands. At each port where they’d put in, Catherine had placed a tiny local flower, and four larger bougainvilleas lounged in each of the map sampler’s corners.

  Lucy let out a sigh. “This is the whole voyage?”

  “The voyage out.” Catherine turned the page. “This is the voyage back.”

  Lucy leaned in, pointing to one bright red figure. “The pineapple ginger!”

  Catherine grinned. “Precisely where I first saw it.” She turned more leaves, as the maps gave way to more experimental and practical embroidery, pages where Catherine was trying out new techniques of her own or practicing stitches she’d been taught by the people in the places she’d traveled to. Quilted silk patterns from India, bold geometrical shapes, and web-like stars and flowers made by winding a single thread around and between fixed stitches.

  Then she turned the page and froze. She’d forgotten what came next. Lucy’s hand held down the corner firmly, her gaze turning keen. “Who is that?”

  Even after two years of freedom, Catherine’s stomach tightened painfully as her eye traced the lines of her late husband’s face. “That’s George.” She’d shown him with his gaze fixed on the heavens, his hair wildly curling, his skin shaded with tan and the ruddy hues brought out by harsh sea winds.

  The date carefully placed in the lower right corner mocked her: she’d worked this portrait when her love was still shiny new, like a pewter mug that hadn’t yet been dropped into the sea to rust and ruin. “We were newly married, and it was my first time traveling aboard ship—everything was so exciting. Navigators and astronomers were taking readings at all hours, the botanists were preparing to collect samples once we landed, the naturalists were studying weather patterns and bird flights and the sea creatures we managed to sight along the way. And of course the sailors who kept the ship on course and the sails stretched out to the heavens were always working and watching the skies. But there wasn’t anything I could do to help—rather, there wasn’t anything George wanted me helping with, so I decided I could make a record of sorts.” She turned over the next page, with a throb of mingled affection and grief. An old man with a twinkling eye and a boisterous set of whiskers. “This is Captain Lateshaw.”

  She turned page after embroidered page, showing Lucy the full set—all the scholars and sailors‚ so many of whom had been lost to illness and accident—as well as the landscapes she’d added later, once they’d reached the islands.

  And then, of course, she came to the princess’s portrait, bare of breast with a defiant regal glint in her eyes. She’d been a chieftain’s daughter on an island whose map name had been changed several times since the first European arrivals landed there.

  Catherine shook her head, a pang of shame flaring hot within her. “Nearly the whole island’s population has been lost since then to disease. One of the sailors told me on our second voyage out. This portrait, clumsy and obscure and half a world away, may be all that remains of her.”

  “I don’t know why you insist on calling your work clumsy. Your stitches look almost like brushstrokes; I doubt my brother or any of his friends could have done so much with even the most delicate brushes and perfectly blended tints . . .” Lucy glanced up at Catherine’s troubled face and hastily reached out to turn the next page. “Oh,” she said, startled. “Who is that?”

  A black-haired, fox-faced woman in burgundy stared back out, her chin tilted haughtily and her hazel eyes knowing and warm. Her lips were a sensual symphony, the dimple beside her slight smile perfectly placed.

  Catherine’s mouth went dry. Lucy couldn’t know how often she’d turned to this portrait in the privacy of her own room—or how it stirred her every time. “That is Contezza Maddalena Bricci,” she said, blushing to hear how raspy her own voice had turned. “We met her on our voyage back from Egypt after our second expedition. She was a painter, and taught me many things about color and shading. You’ll notice the embroidery gets markedly better after this point in the sampler.”

  “She’s lovely,” Lucy marveled.

  “This portrait may be an improvement, but it still fails to do her justice,” Catherine hastened to point out. “You ought to have heard her laugh . . .” She looked up to find Lucy’s gaze on her, eyes narrowed in consideration. “What?” she asked.

  Lucy’s long mouth curved up knowingly. “I assumed I was the first woman you ever kissed,” she drawled. “Was I?”

  Catherine went full scarlet. “You were,” she said tartly, “but I confess: you weren’t the first I wanted to kiss.”

  “So you are drawn to dark-haired, troublesome women,” Lucy said, leaning closer.

  “God help me, it seems I am.” There was only one way to end such a conversation—Catherine happily pulled Lucy forward until she could reach her lips.

  The afternoon’s tender delicacy was gone, replaced by a kiss that tasted lush as wine and scorched like fire. Catherine drank pleasure from Lucy’s ready mouth, the girl’s encouraging gasps firing her newly bold impulses. She hadn’t been dizzy from the wine at dinner, but she was giddy now, the room spinning around her and the only solid thing the skin and heat and feel of the woman in her arms.

  The kiss went on and on, but when Catherine’s curious fingers slipped along the line of Lucy’s bodice, the girl broke away with a gasp.

  Catherine dropped her hand at once, panicked and aroused in equal measure. “Too fast?” She’d done it now: she’d lost control, tried to take too much, too soon . . .

  Lucy laughed and reached out to pull her back. Catherine stiffened automatically, shame at her unruly desire turning her yearning into ash.

  Lucy’s keen eyes watched her closely. “It wasn’t too fast for me—but perhaps it was too fast for you?”

  Catherine fought to loosen the tangled knots of her feelings, then huffed in frustration. “I don’t know.”

  Lucy took Catherine’s hands, gently rubbing them between her own. “Then we stop.”

  Catherine blinked. Her senses were still a riot, her breath still coming fast and hot in her throat. “As easy as that?” She didn’t know if she was protesting or demanding proof Lucy meant what she said.

  “Of course,” Lucy replied breezi
ly, as though she hadn’t just said one of the most puzzling things Catherine had ever heard. “The whole point is to feel excited about one another, isn’t it? If you’re more anxious than excited, then we wait. Simple.”

  Catherine narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you want to do more than kiss me?”

  Lucy laughed again, and the sultry echo of it slid like warmed honey down Catherine’s spine. “Oh, if you wanted me to write out my full list of wants, it would be Christmas before I was through.” She slipped a thumb over the inside of Catherine’s wrist; the countess’s pulse leaped to meet her fingers. “But all those ideas depend on you wanting those things done to you. Or wanting to do things to me. Because it’s not about you doing, or me doing—it’s what we do together.” Her eyes turned faraway, fixed on some memory. “The very first girl who took me to bed taught me that. She was kind, and patient—and very, very creative, once I was ready.” She chuckled, seeing the blush bloom on Catherine’s cheeks. “But for the first six months, all we did was kiss.”

  Catherine’s cheeks warmed further, and her eyes slipped down to Lucy’s mouth. “I’m not sure I want to wait so long as that.”

  Lucy’s gaze sharpened, and her lips parted as she sucked in a breath, but she only said, “As long as you need. Now, since you have dismissed your maid, let me help you undress.”

  It was not how Catherine had imagined being disrobed by Lucy. She had had vague notions of hasty, desperate gripping and pulling and a general carelessness about buttons and laces and seams. George had been that way—until he stopped seeking her bed at all—and so had Darby; Catherine had assumed that’s just how people behaved in the throes of lust. Didn’t passion overwhelm people beyond the bounds of good sense, caution, or control?

  But Lucy’s hands were careful and soft as they unlaced the back of Catherine’s gown, loosened her stays, and pulled all the pins from her tousled hair. It was closer to how Narayan would have undressed her—though Narayan would never have dropped a kiss on the back of Catherine’s neck, or combed fingers through Catherine’s tumbling hair in that luxurious way. It was—it was like every touch of Lucy’s hand was a silken thread, painting a sunrise one skein of warm light at a time. At the end, Lucy wrapped Catherine’s favorite velvet bed jacket around her shoulders and kissed her once more, sweetly. Catherine couldn’t help melting a little. “Good night,” she whispered.