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You take the carriage out to the park in Chelsea on Thursday afternoons. Sometimes, if you’re feeling brave enough, you ask the driver to stop, and there pretend to admire the gentle scenery; the boys playing cricket with rolled up sweaty sleeves on the green, the old women beckoning pigeons with scraps of crust, the girls of the Chelsea school in their pleated calf-length navy skirts in their games.
If the weather is fine, their teacher takes them here to the playing fields at this hour. Today, they carry lacrosse sticks, draped casually over shoulders as they chatter their way down to the fields. Some carry equipment, cones, balls. Others come arm in arm. As you watch, Sophia puts up her dark hair, pulling it into a messy ponytail. Maybe she feels the heat too, as you do. Her hair is ever an untamable mess of curls, the only thing she’s inherited from Harcourt– you don’t dwell on this similarity. Harcourt has nothing to do with the girl, and if you have your way, he never will.
“Shall I ride on, my lady?” asks the driver.
You’re lingering today, you know. Your brother likes you home so that the two of you might take tea together. Insists you dress up in certain dresses, picks out pieces of jewelry, as if you are a doll for him to place and pose at his pleasure. You let him, let him imagine that you are, for at the very least, you have this.
“A moment longer,” you tell the driver. He frets, but he doesn’t argue with the Lady Fitzpatrick.
Greedily you watch Sophia swing about her lacrosse stick, catching another girl’s hand only to let it go. She’s happy, you think. You hope she is.
She’s fifteen, now. Older than you were when you had her. That feels like a victory in itself. That precious knowledge; you’ve kept her safe.
If that means she’ll never know it, never know you, then so be it.
*
“What kept you today, sister?”
Harcourt looks at you out of the corner of his eye in that way he does, mouth hooked up in the anticipation of enjoyment. And he does enjoy it, dogging your every move, putting his fingers into every little scrap of life you have like a child with sticky fingers.
“The park in Chelsea was pleasant today. There were many making merry in the sun,” you tell him, making sure to keep your words bland.
Harcourt sits at the end of the table, snapping his fingers at the maid to refill his wine. He drinks. He never takes his eyes off of you.
“I imagine,” he says. He nods to the dish on the table. “Try the poutine. It’s good.”
You obey him. You can see the gears turning behind his eyes, and you know this isn’t over. There’s a catch in your throat, though you trouble to keep your expression flat and calm.
There can be no way he’s found out, has he? Or has the coach driver said something?
You wear your brother tighter than your corsets. His presence always upon you, squeezing.
“Why do you visit that same park on Thursdays, anyway?” he asks you, and you can breathe again. He’s just fishing. He has no idea.
You’d love to know, wouldn’t you, she thinks. You want no scrap of me left unsullied.
“Just habit. It’s pleasant,” she says.
She knows from experience, if she keeps her conversation dull enough, he’ll tire of her and move on, like a cat bored of pulling at string. If Harcourt wasn’t so terrifying powerful, he’d be nothing more than a vindictive child. He’s hardly grown up since you were children, and he liked to crush insects underfoot for fun. Only now, he has a seat on the House of Lords and your father’s fortune and he’s long outgrown insects.
You dread to think the games he plays with the other grown up boys he spends his evenings with, playing with lives like dice, merely for boredom and sport.
“Is that so?” He drinks. “Bernard said you were watching the children from the school. Feeling wistful for something?”
You swallow. Remind yourself; he knows nothing.
“They’re charming to watch. That’s all.”
“James was only asking the other day why you never married,” Harcourt says in contemplation, swirling the red wine in his glass. You particularly despise the Duke of Rotherford, and his eyes upon you. The only good thing about Harcourt’s possessiveness is that he’d never let his friends touch you.
Harcourt has not interfered with you since you were a child. He doesn't need to. The promise of his violence thrills him more than the act itself.
“I am too old now for such a thing,” you say.
Even if you’d wanted to, your brother would never let you. You will remain on his shelf, gathering dust, to be picked up and toyed with when he wants.
“I don’t know about that,” he says, with a horrible smile. “Wanting a child is a natural impulse for a woman. It’s part of how you’re made.”
“As you say.”
Harcourt sends the maid away to refill the pitcher. You hate how nasty he gets when he drinks, red splotches on his jaw. He leans forward, drops his voice. “I could always give you one.”
You can’t stop the shudder that passes under your skin. Harcourt sees it, and smiles wider.
“I jest, of course,” he says.
You breathe through the impulse to pick up your dessert fork, and stick it into his eye.
“Now, pudding?” he asks, aerily bright.
*
You’ve never told anyone about Sophia, kept the secret of her as close to your heart as your own skin. But Charlotte looks at you with eyes that reflect your own, and you know it; you can trust her.
Charlotte is beautiful, in a way that makes your breath catch like hooks against silk. Her fierce eyes, the mischief that sparkles in them. Her effortless charm, and her charmless grace. She makes no apologies for all she is. It’s intoxicating. She’s intoxicating.
And you should pull away, but as she threads her fingers into your hair, you find yourself leaning into it. Into her. There are parts of you thought dead, murdered in their infancy, but something stirs in Charlotte Wells’ presence. The ghost of your desire.
It excites and frightens you, in equal measure.
Charlotte does not shock at the news that Harcourt is Sophia’s father. Her eyes only soften in understanding, her hand finding yours. Warm. Squeezing, as though to impart some silent empathy through veins, nerve endings, epidermis.
You shudder an exhale. Even this is new; the understanding of skin upon skin.
“Let me break his spell,” she whispers.
You never understood that touch could be words, that it could impart more than fear or violence. That it could speak more than submission. But the language Charlotte’s hands speak is familiar, after all, for your body responds to her touch. Heat pools in your belly as she deepens the kiss, a shudder of something as her nails graze through your hairline, something sublime in the soft against sharp.
“I fear I do not know these steps,” you murmur to her, and she hooks a grin.
“I fear I know them all too well. If you’d have me teach you,” she says.
You do.
You let her guide you, pressing you down against the silken pillows as she climbs atop, unlacing your gown.
This should be too familiar, the weight of another body on top of yours like the lid of a coffin. Suffocating, dark. But you don’t think of Harcourt at all, only the sensuality of her skin against yours, the heavy, hot feeling of her breasts pressed against your own as she takes another sweet kiss.
She reaches for the ends of your petticoats. “May I?” she asks. Something so mischievous in her eye, even now. It delights you. She delights you.
“I think I will die if you don’t!” you say through a laugh. You buck your heat against her hand, embarrassingly eager. But she smiles at you for it, like you’ve done something endearing. Kisses you again.
Undergarments are disposed of. Charlotte tosses them carelessly over her shoulder. Says, “My goodness, where did those go?”
Your laughter rumbles against her chest. In your head, you’d always thought intimacy such a serious matter.
Her laughter turns into a gasp as Charlotte pushes two fingers against your clit.
“You’re so wet for me,” Charlotte murmurs, like you’ve given her a gift. You’re far too old to feel so embarrassed, but still you feel the urge to hide, to shield your eyes under your elbow.
She gently pushes it aside. “Come now. I want to see you.”
You do see me, you don’t say.
Charlotte doens’t take her eyes off of you as she pushes at your clit. It draws something from you, like she’s stealing breath from your lungs. You give it to her, gladly.
The two of you are damned and cursed. The ministers would call this act between you abhorrent and unnatural, so why does it feel like an exorcism? Like some sort of salvation?
Charlotte pauses to unlace your corset, and you instinctively try to cover the stretch marks on your belly. Proof of your guilt written into your skin.
“Don’t,” you whisper, as Charlotte traces them. You shudder when she leans down to kiss your stomach, the little white scars. “It’s shameful.”
Somehow, she ends up parroting your own words back at you. “He’s the one who should be ashamed, not you. You committed no sin, Isabella.”
You let her, fingers curling tight as she presses back against you, pushing inside. The odd intimacy of feeling filled pulls a gasp from your chest.
“Is that alright?” Charlotte asks, as she kisses your hair.
“It’s– it’s strange.”
“Should I stop?”
“Don’t stop.”
She builds you up, up up, until you’re squirming and pushing against her. Face stained red, gasping for breath, fingers grasping.
Oh. Oh.
For a moment you’re flying. You’re untethered. No docility, no submission. You’re biting into the pillow, shuddering against Charlotte.
“Yes, that’s it, my sweet, yes, yes,” Charlotte says. She’s deep inside you, rocking her own heat against the crease of your thigh. You’re clenching around her fingers. You cannot contain your voice.
Charlotte pulls you, sweaty, gasping, into her embrace. Later tonight, you’ll return the favour, although Charlotte insists it’s not necessary. You want to see her fall apart. You want to see every part of her.
If touch is a language, you want to learn every phrase, every word. If Charlotte is to be your teacher.
*
“I have to ask. What did that mean?”
Charlotte pauses, hand hovering over her half laced stays. You move to help her.
“Whatever you want it to mean, I suppose. Everything. Nothing,” she says.
You frown. “What did it mean to you?”
She hesitates. The first time you’ve seen any form of doubt in her tonight. “I’m a harlot,” she says. Something wry and deprecating in the twist of her voice. “Sex doesn't usually mean much to us.”
Something in your chest drops. But you pull at the small catch in her voice, as though you're pulling at a stray thread. “Usually?”
“Usually,” she agrees, as you pull her stays tight. You take her by the shoulder and turn her to face you. Your fingers brushing against her cheek. Even then, there’s something guarded in her. You can hardly blame her for reticence. Both of you have survived this long because of it.
“Though, maybe… not this time,” she murmurs, segwaying into a laugh. The looks she gives you is almost shy. “Maybe I’m a fool.”
“We’re damned and cursed, remember? Might as well add foolish to the list,” you say.
She laughs at that. God, you love her laugh. “I don’t feel so cursed,” she says, pulling you close. “Not right now.”