by Olivia Waite
Catherine didn’t let herself flinch again, but only rose gracefully from the sofa. It cost her some twinges in muscles gone stiff with the effort of holding herself together, but she thought the movement played tolerably well for her intended audience. “I feel rather as though I have caught a chill from all this wet weather. I think I am going to retire early tonight.” And alone—she didn’t say it, but from the bleak look on Lucy’s face, she didn’t need to.
Catherine turned away before she could see anything worse, and made her way upstairs to a bed that seemed far bigger and emptier than it ever had before.
She spun around restlessly from side to side until the blankets were hopelessly tangled about her legs, and she had to kick violently to free herself. But her thoughts wouldn’t let her rest. Curse it, the lack of permanence had been so reassuring to her, at the start of this affair! Now here she was, writhing with jealousy and envy because she didn’t have any right to ask Lucy to choose her over Priscilla Winlock. She realized, with a shock, that she had never felt uncertain of George, not once, even in the years when they were barely speaking except to say something bitter to one another. She’d known he couldn’t leave her, and some part of her had taken a secret, shameful comfort in that.
She had depended far too much on the insolubility of her marriage license, it seemed. Not on her own merits at all.
Loving another woman—loving Lucy—didn’t bring any such luxuries, and all at once she felt the lack keenly. You could never sit back and let the official pieces of paper do the work for you, oh no: you had to choose the other person over and over again, every time. What’s worse, you had to trust them to choose you. It was horribly frightening—as though you started every day by reminding your heart to keep beating.
Narayan came in at dawn, her dark eyes anxious, but Catherine was already awake, a dressing gown wrapped around her as she sat by the window and stared anxiously out at the back gardens. Another rainy summer day, it seemed. As if the sun itself were weeping. Narayan’s eyebrows flicked up as she took in the fact that there was only one body in the room, but she helped her mistress dress and pinned her hair up without a needless word. Catherine went down to breakfast and stopped when she saw Lucy there, in the act of filling her plate.
Lucy Muchelney looked about as well rested as Catherine felt: there were dark rings beneath her eyes and a dull cast to her skin. She paused halfway to the table, a worry line appearing on her brow as she looked Catherine over from head to toe. “Still feeling ill?” she asked, setting her plate down on the table. She didn’t take a seat but hovered there, hands fixed on the back of the chair, fingers opening and closing.
“I’m afraid so,” Catherine replied, “but it will pass, I’m sure.”
She moved to the sideboard and began putting food on her plate: thick slices of toast with as much butter and jam as they could hold, pound cake, and more eggs than a single hen could produce in a week. After a time she realized she was only stalling, gripped the plate’s edge as though it were a shield, and turned back to the breakfast table.
Lucy’s mouth was full, so she said nothing as Catherine took the seat across from her. Just as they had every day—but everything felt changed now. Barren and final.
The butter dish and pitcher of cream seemed to loom over the place settings like cemetery guards. “Have you written to Mrs. Winlock?” Catherine asked.
Lucy swallowed. “She is coming by this afternoon for tea.”
Toast crunched and crumbled in Catherine’s mouth. She could barely focus enough to force her throat to swallow. It scraped her raw. “So soon?”
“The more I thought about it, the more delay felt intolerable.” Lucy dropped her eyes back to her plate.
“Ah.” Catherine had to choke down half her pound cake to fill her throat with something other than acid. So she was going to lose Lucy already. She’d known it would happen, had seen the inevitability in Lucy’s reaction to the letter, but it still ripped her open like a jagged seam.
Lucy seemed no happier about the news, which Catherine found puzzling. But then, it must be awkward to be reuniting with your beloved in your new lover’s house. Especially when that new lover was also your patroness.
But Catherine had forgotten: Lucy had her own funds now, didn’t she? She was an independent astronomer now, established and in full flourish. What more use did she have for Catherine, if not for loving?
This was unbearable. Catherine took a long draft of tea to clear her throat, then shoved herself to her feet. “I find I have little appetite this morning.”
“Clearly,” Lucy replied, staring down at the piles of food on Catherine’s plate.
Catherine flushed. “I should make sure the first few designs are ready for Mrs. Griffin to look over,” she said. Her hands didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves—they wanted to reach out, to pull Lucy close, but the temptation must be resisted. No matter how much sadness hung in those gray eyes. Catherine had no right, no right at all.
“Will I see you for dinner?” Lucy asked softly.
“I . . .” Catherine swallowed again, stomach weighing her down as though it were filled with lead. “I am not sure.”
Surely those weren’t her footsteps, echoing off the walls in the silence that followed. They were far too hasty, almost running. But when she reached the parlor where her sketchbook awaited her, she was breathing hard from exertion.
She grasped her sketchbook—all of it, not only the designs she’d meant to take to the engraver. This one part of her heart she could keep safe, even as she lost everything else. She took refuge in her bedroom again until early afternoon, driving Narayan mad with running back and forth for tea and cake, taking half-eaten slices back down to the kitchen to Cook’s sure annoyance. Finally it was late enough that she was able to put on a walking dress, clutch her sketchbook in one hand, and mount the steps into the carriage for the trip to Griffin’s print shop.
It was quieter in the shop than it had been the first time, which made Catherine grateful; the sunlight slanted in and graced every watercolor-tinted scene with a reverent halo. Catherine felt herself relax under the soothing spell of color and line, until she spotted the familiar blue of the cover of The Lady’s Guide, displayed in pride of place to tempt readers.
She raised her chin and walked past it, though her hands tightened around her sketchbook.
Instead of the young man from before, there was a familiar face behind the counter. Eliza Brinkworth lit up with a smile of recognition and curtsied to her former mistress. “Good afternoon, Lady Moth.”
Catherine smiled back. “Good afternoon, Eliza—is Mrs. Griffin available?”
The girl’s smile faltered. “I’ll go and see, my lady.” She popped into the back—a brief hubbub swelled as the door opened and closed—and soon Catherine was being shown into the small office again.
Mrs. Griffin looked wary and got straight to the point. “If you’re here to take Eliza back, you can’t have her.”
“What?” Catherine blinked, as the self-involved fog of misery lifted a little. “Goodness, no, that’s not why I’m here.” She drummed her fingers on the cover of her sketchbook. “I take it Eliza is doing well as an apprentice, then.”
“The best I’ve had,” Mrs. Griffin replied. She leaned back, some of the tension leaving her, though her eyes never lost their keenness. “So if not for that, why are you here, my lady?”
Catherine’s mouth went desert-dry. How had it come to this? Was she really supposed to spill all her hopes and dreams out in words, like so many petals and pearls from the lips of a cursed princess, and hope that Mrs. Griffin deigned to pick some few of them up?
She cleared her throat, stalling, and the print of a world map caught her eye, hanging high on the wall behind the engraver. A line of bright dashes showed some expedition’s route—maybe even one Catherine had been on.
I have sailed half a world away, she recalled, and felt confidence rush renewed up her spine like a fountain gu
shing with clear, cool water.
Hadn’t she survived much more harrowing things than one conversation where somebody might say no?
“I have a proposition for you, Mrs. Griffin,” she began, heartened by the steadiness of her tone. Words came more easily once she’d begun. “You mentioned you were always looking for more embroidery designs . . .”
She pulled out her sketchbook. The more pages she flipped, the more Mrs. Griffin’s eyes gleamed, and the brighter Eliza’s cheeks flushed in excitement. “Oh, yes,” the engraver murmured. She lifted shrewd eyes to Catherine’s. “Of course you know how much success we’ve had with Miss Muchelney’s book. A great many more women are now talking about astronomy—and no few of those will want to flaunt this interest in their dress, while it’s fashionable. You’ve gone and created your own captive market, my lady.”
Catherine’s lips pursed. “It sounds horribly sordid when you put it that way, Mrs. Griffin.”
“So you won’t want any of the profits from your pattern book, then?”
Catherine snorted denial.
The engraver’s smile was a silverfish, flashing bright and then just as quickly gone. “I appreciate when my artists are canny about the business aspects,” Mrs. Griffin went on warmly. “I’m sure we can work out percentages that will please us both.”
She turned another page and stopped. It was the design Catherine had started thinking of as the siren’s gown, conceived on the beach at Lyme and refined after that first meeting with Mrs. Priscilla Winlock. It was an evening dress, a deep metallic silver overlaid with a net of ocean green. Careful gathers here and there gave it the look of waves breaking, and a froth of lighter silver lace completed the marine look. It would have been soft and delicate and perfectly ladylike—except that Catherine had also added thick slashes of chestnut and amber embroidery to encircle the high waist, like tortured driftwood or a belt made from the spars of broken ships. The kind of dress someone might wear to both allure and to frighten.
Mrs. Griffin stared at it so long that Catherine felt her cheeks flush. “Not all of the designs are scientific,” she said. “Or even suitable for ladies. Honestly some of them get a bit wild. But if I don’t get them down on paper they just hover in my head and take up room that the more proper designs could be filling, so . . .”
She snapped her mouth shut. Mrs. Griffin wasn’t listening. Her eyes were fixed on the page, but her gaze was faraway, and there was so much yearning in it that Catherine felt embarrassed to be a witness to it.
The silence stretched further. Catherine began to fidget, and coughed to clear the dryness from her throat.
Mrs. Griffin’s head snapped up and she blinked, coming back from wherever it was she’d gone. “Don’t even know where I’d wear it . . .” she murmured, then her dark brown eyes sharpened on Catherine with a look that was part avarice, part something very like fear. “You have a distinct taste for the fantastical, Lady Moth.”
Catherine shifted uneasily. “I try my best to keep it in check.”
The engraver’s eyes softened. “Maybe you shouldn’t try quite so hard. I look at a great deal of clothing in my work, my lady—and many great works of art, too. I recognize genius when it shows up face-to-face.”
Catherine’s cheeks flamed and a thrill ran through her. She was afraid to move, afraid that she’d misheard somehow.
Mrs. Griffin flickered a look back down at the siren’s gown, squared her shoulders, and resumed her usual businesslike manner. “We’ll start with the scientific designs—and a few of the botanicals as well, I think.” They quickly reached an agreement about payment and a date for Catherine’s return with the completed set of sketches, and a handshake sealed the transaction.
Catherine gripped the other woman’s hand a little harder than was strictly necessary. She could feel the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “For the chance.”
“Oh, my lady.” Mrs. Griffin’s other hand came up to cover both of hers. “When you get about a half dozen of those fantastical designs, will you bring those in, too?”
Catherine blinked. “Do you really think women would want to wear them?”
“I think some women will set the world on fire for the privilege,” Mrs. Griffin said, her voice low and intense. “One or two dressmakers, to start, who can well afford to pay for something this compelling . . . Perhaps not enough to justify a full print run like the others, but certainly well worth the expense of printing a few loose pages.”
Catherine promised. The bargaining thus concluded, Mrs. Griffin bid Eliza show the countess out the front, while she returned to her print shop with its rattle of metal and manpower. Eliza had more of a bounce in her step than she’d had as a maid. “Are you satisfied with your apprenticeship, Miss Brinkworth?” Catherine asked.
“Oh yes, my lady,” the young woman breathed. “She says I have a neat hand, and has been teaching me to make music plates for popular songs and ballads.” She flushed, ducking her head. “I’m excited to get back to pattern drafting, though—I think I can persuade her to let me do a few of my own, now that I’m getting better at the engraving part.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
Catherine took her leave and climbed up into her carriage with a mixture of hope and regret such as she had never experienced. Hope for the future, for her own designs and the work she was already eager to return to. Regret because she had already wasted so much time. Eliza’s youth was as good as a fortune: the bulk of her years spread out before her, so much space, so many hours to spend. Catherine’s youth was long past, and she wasn’t sure she had anything to show for it but a handful of heartbreak.
She ought to have paid more attention to her own self before now. She ought to have allowed herself to want things.
She hadn’t quite known how, until Lucy. But she’d wanted Lucy, and wanting Lucy had led to wanting everything else. Now it was all changed, and even if Lucy left—or when Lucy left—Catherine could no more go back to her old life than she could pull out a day’s worth of embroidery stitches and leave the fabric as pristine as it was at first. The needle marks would always show.
She must get used to being a person who wanted things. No, Catherine corrected herself, taking a breath and letting the cool air fill her with the first taste of the coming harvest season, she must get used to being a person who got what they wanted. Even if it didn’t always last.
Lucy would go back to Priscilla, and continue being one of the great scientific minds of her age. Catherine would watch her progress with interest, at a distance, and think fondly of the time they’d shared.
It would be acceptable, if not ideal. It would hurt, but less so as time went on.
It would not destroy her, Catherine vowed. It would not. She chanted it to herself in time with the beat of the horses’ hooves the whole way home.
Chapter Thirteen
Perhaps the holiday in the small house at Lyme had compressed Lucy back into a small girl again, because that afternoon the London house felt like the largest, emptiest building in the world. Especially once Catherine had departed. Three full stories, high ceilings, wooden floors, hallways that rang sepulchral with footsteps whenever the servants went ghostly about their duties. Lucy took refuge in the library, but every time she turned a page in her book, instead of printed letters and numbers she saw only Catherine’s face, pale and pinched with hurt.
Lucy should have been angry. And she was. But she ought to have been only angry: Catherine had read her letter, then tried to keep Lucy from seeing Pris out of jealousy. Those actions merited Lucy’s anger.
But the worst part was the persistent, irrefutable fear that Lucy had done something wrong, as well, unconsciously. Why else would Catherine have been jealous now, when she hadn’t seemed to be at Lyme? Had Lucy done something, said something to cause Catherine to doubt?
And did the fact that Lucy was asking this question at all mean she was already tangled in the trap Stephen had described?
> Three days ago, Stephen’s concerns had seemed—not wrong, precisely, but misapplied. General, rather than specific.
Now, though, it seemed a far more plausible explanation. Catherine had been a guest in Lyme, a visitor to the town and to Lucy’s house there. Maybe she’d thought of meeting Pris as something separate from ordinary life—the kind of strange, solemn adventure one had when one was away from home. Like visiting the ruins of Pompeii and marveling over the remnants of that ancient tragedy.
Not the sort of thing one made a habit of.
But now that Pris was coming here, Catherine protested. To protect her territory. Her home—but also Lucy. Was it so outrageous to imagine a countess being a possessive lover? Was it unreasonable to imagine she might try to use whatever power she had to keep Lucy close to her side?
Some part of Lucy refused to believe this; another part insisted it was the only logical conclusion.
She tortured herself with increasingly elaborate theories to fit contradictory evidence, until Brinkworth came in and interrupted her. “Mrs. Priscilla Winlock to see you, Miss Muchelney.”
Was it her guilty imagination, or was the butler being extra-stern today? Lucy didn’t know how much Narayan had let on to the other servants what Lucy and Catherine got up to together, but she couldn’t suppress a flash of anxiety that Brinkworth might think she was betraying Catherine in her own home. The thought left an oily, sick feeling in its wake, and Lucy took several gulps of air to try and temper her stomach.
“I’ve put her in the blue parlor, miss.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed, but Brinkworth’s facade never cracked. He might have been pure marble, a stoic and high-moraled Senator from the glory days of Rome. “The blue parlor?” she asked pointedly.
“Yes, miss.” He bowed, and held open the door.
There was nothing to be gained by delaying. Lucy shoved herself to her feet and all but stomped down the hallway.
The blue parlor was the room nearest the front door, and rarely used. The countess preferred her own cozy sitting room at the back of the house, where the light streamed through filtered by garden leaves to gild all her heirlooms. The blue parlor faced the street, tall windows stretched high like mouths open to the sight of anyone passing by on the sidewalk just outside. The decor was neoclassical, all Grecian restraint and painful elegance: thin-legged chairs, stiff and spindly, with a slender tea table between them.
