A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 22

22

Violet layered her usual locking-spell on Maud’s stateroom door with a more serious warding that Mrs. Navenby insisted on teaching her. The spell looked spitefully hot as it formed in the cradle—Violet winced, as if her fingertips smarted—but Maud felt much safer once the orange glow of it had sunk into the door.

Violet then moved things aside in the larger room so that she could set out her own belongings. She’d packed only a single valise and intended to go back for the bandboxes and trunk tomorrow.

“ Careful with that! ” said Mrs. Navenby, as Violet cleared room on the dressing table.

Maud had had enough mediuming for one day. She wanted to be alone in her skin. She pulled the chain of the locket over her head and went into her smaller adjoining room to discard wrap and gloves and evening purse, and hid the locket in a corner of her trunk. When she emerged, Violet had wedged her valise in a space along the wall.

“I suppose I really should sleep in the same room as you.” Maud went to Violet and experimented with the upturning of her eyes. “For safety.”

“For safety.” Violet lowered her face: a tease, not quite a kiss. Warmth sang in Maud’s body. “I want to show you something.”

“Good. Yes.” Maud was so fond of the tantalising dip where Violet’s waist became the top of Violet’s buttocks. Her hand fitted there exactly. “You should show me whatever you wish.”

Violet laughed. “Something magical.”

“Oh!” She couldn’t feel disappointed. There was so much magic in the world, hidden in crevices and kept necessarily secret. Every small piece Maud saw, every new thing she learned, was a wonder. And she wanted all of it. She wanted to open her mouth and drink down the sweet and the fizz and the cream and the bitter; to poke her fingers into all the crevices she was offered.

It was the same feeling she’d had in bed with Violet. And so it was easy to take her hands back, to seat herself on the bed’s edge and look forward to what Violet might offer.

Violet opened a drawstring pouch and shook out a small collection of rings. She kept the wooden ones on her thumbs and added a pair of penny-bright ones to her middle fingers.

“Copper. It helps with replication clauses. Or it doesn’t, if you ask those people who think metal’s too dead for rings. I think they add something.”

“And the wood?”

“Illusion.” Violet’s fingers were moving already. The cradle seemed a complicated one. Small sparks of every colour swam between Violet’s hands. “This will be better without lights.”

Switching off the electric lamp plunged the room into soft darkness. The sparks danced in variegated colours. The front of Violet’s dress was a cathedral dappled by its own rose window.

“Ready?”

Maud grinned in the dark. “Yes!”

Violet gave a decided flick of both hands and the sparks soared to the ceiling, where they exploded.

Maud found herself gripping the bedcovers. A gasp punched out of her throat. Each spark was a blossoming, a dandelion puff grown at zoetrope speed into tendrils of glowing colour that drooped in the air and lingered before they faded.

Faded; and were replaced. More sparks became a shower of silver and gold mingling into molten raindrops. Colour rioted in the corners of the ceiling, and the plain wallpaper of the stateroom shone green and purple and blue and the fierce red of embers as each giddying of light had its turn.

“There were fireworks at the Exhibition, last year,” said Maud. She remembered standing in a crowd with Robin, having to shout to be heard above the bang-bang of the gunpowder. “These are better.”

“The good thing about illusion is there’s no noise and no cloud of smoke dangling in the air at the end. Though we usually added a bit of both, in the Penumbra, to make things a little less magical.”

Maud wanted to turn this enormous ship and sail herself back to New York and visit this theatre where Violet had worked. But this show was intimate. This was for her, alone. Violet stretched out her fingers, when the last fireworks faded and Maud lit the lamp again—all grey-eyed sparkle, all delight at her audience’s praise.

“Want to see more?”

“Yes.”

The next illusion was one that, Violet said, took five magicians working in careful harmony when they built it in a theatre. One couldn’t share power or share a mind’s-eye image with another person, but with exhaustive rehearsal they could create the effect of something enormous growing in many places at once.

And growing it was. Uneven young grass peeked up through the ground, dotted with stray primroses and orange poppies. A hedge of dogroses grew along the wall and in front of the door, its leafy tangle a barrier between them and the outside world. Like the warding charm, it settled a feeling of safety in Maud, even though she knew it was illusion. The eyes clamoured to be believed. The heart clamoured to believe them.

Honeysuckle crawled up the walls as if the ceiling held the sun. Delicate white flowers unfurled their filigree, dense and profuse, until the plant sat heavy with their imaginary weight.

Violet’s lips were parted, her brow fierce with concentration. Illusion complete, she seesawed the cradle. Her fingertips drew close without touching, then drew away again to let the heels of her hands close—a rhythmic motion like the squeeze of a beating heart. No worse than a handful of splinters when you’re spinning an orchard from twigs, Edwin said sometimes. And here it was being spun from nothing.

“I can almost smell the flowers and hear the bees,” Maud said. “Would you have someone doing those, as well, in the theatre?”

Violet nodded.

“ How did no one guess it was magic?”

“The rules are different inside a theatre,” said Violet. “Fewer questions. More trust.”

Maud’s fingers passed through the honeysuckle like mist, and Violet laughed. “Ah. I should have known—illusions aren’t your thing. You like to touch.” Violet’s mouth curled up at the side. “It’s how you know the world.”

Maud’s breastbone burned. She pressed a hand over it as if she could push tears down into her chest and keep them from springing to her eyes. Silly, to be overwhelmed by the fact that Violet had seen that about her. She didn’t know what to say.

“I think,” Violet said slowly, “I can hold it—enough—” She paused the rock of her cradle, then dropped it. The garden of illusion around them faded only a little. “Ah, good. Finishing touches, then.”

The finishing touch was on Violet herself. She cradled a new spell, moving more quickly and confidently, before lifting her cupped hands above her head and letting the illusion spill down. Her features were still her own, but transformed with a man’s short haircut and a vanity-thin brown moustache. She wore trousers and a tweed sports jacket over a shirt, and looked for all the world like one of Robin’s school friends attending a garden party.

“Oh, very good,” said Maud.

“This one won’t hold up to touch either,” Violet warned, and held out her hand.

Maud walked through intangible grass and flowers to take Violet’s hand. She grinned and executed a curtsy that they were half a century too modern for. “ Mr. Debenham.”

“Miss Blyth.”

Maud didn’t care that there was satin and gauze beneath her palm instead of tweed. She put her other hand in Violet’s and was pulled into a close hold, and they danced with more verve than grace in the meagre space between the bed and the chairs. Violet smelled exactly of herself. In those grey eyes her pupils crept outwards like wine spilled onto a napkin every time Maud pressed tighter.

When Maud released Violet’s hand and shoulder it was only to slide her hands up and around Violet’s neck. The nape was still bare; no necklace tonight, and her hair dressed high, nothing to contradict the evidence of the illusion.

She pulled Violet down, and this time Violet bent all the way. The kiss was dreamy as the honeysuckle over their heads. Maud wanted to melt into the magic that surrounded her, and into Violet’s lips. She wanted to thank Violet for the gift of this beautiful, playful magic, created just for Maud’s pleasure, as if Maud had done anything to deserve it. She swept her tongue into Violet’s mouth and Violet’s hands on her waist tightened convulsively.

“Ah, hell, there it goes,” Violet murmured.

They drew apart. The garden had vanished and Violet’s costume with it.

“You broke my concentration,” said Violet, mock-severely.

“You barely need illusion. You’re still holding yourself like a man,” said Maud. “Exactly like when you were playing the young man who rescued the nymph. It’s extraordinary.”

“It’s part of music-hall.” Violet stepped back and spread her hands. “The audience likes seeing men dressed as women and women dressed as men, so they can laugh over it. Of course, they don’t laugh so merrily when faced with someone who prefers to live in what society thinks of as the wrong clothes all the time.” She was watching Maud as if eager to shock her, but she was a few years too late for that.

“One of Mrs. Sinclair’s friends from the Women’s Society is a—lady, of that nature.”

Miss Hannity had been a sailor, when she was young Mr. Hannity. She told jokes that made you laugh until you creaked.

Was Maud being told something, sidelong?

“Are you…” Maud didn’t know how to shape the question. “Would you prefer…?”

“Goodness, no. I got into that sort of act because I have the build for it. And the eye for mimicry.” Violet tucked her hands into the pockets of invisible trousers and swaggered. “I saw the actress Maude Adams as Peter Pan soon after I arrived in New York. This woman was thirty-four years old and still playing a young boy, and when she was onstage you utterly believed it. No magic at all, just stagecraft.”

“Show me that,” said Maud, daring.

Violet gave a roguish wink, flung one arm up as if brandishing a sword, and attempted to spring into a wide-legged crouch.

Unfortunately, the skirts of her gown were neither wide nor illusory. Violet overbalanced and fell onto the rug with a yelp that quickly turned into her smoky chuckle.

“Well, that’s punctured my performer’s dignity.” She sat up and looked musingly at her evening shoes where they emerged from the frilled gem of her skirts. “I told you the theatre’s a good place for people who are different. Maude Adams is another woman who prefers the company of other women.”

“How do you know?”

Maud expected another wink, but Violet blushed a sudden and complete scarlet. Maud felt a tug of wistful jealousy—but also relief to think that Violet, too, had once been young and inexperienced. And she wouldn’t change anything that made Violet the person she was now.

“Thank you for showing me that. All of it.” She helped Violet to her feet, and Violet kept hold of her hand. The circling of her thumb on the back of Maud’s hand was deliberate. Maud’s body went from relaxed with laughter to pulled taut with desire as if she were hooked up to the electric and fitted with a switch. It must have shown on her face; Violet laughed and kissed the angle of her jaw.

“You undress. I need to find where I threw a few items when I was packing.”

A few minutes later Maud—down to only her chemise—set eyes on the items in question and said, “ Oh! ” She reached out and picked up a large rod with a flared base. Cool ceramic kissed her fingers.

“ Not that one,” said Violet, taking it back and lifting something more modestly slender. “For your first time you don’t want anything bigger than this, and we’ll warm you up first.”

“One of the ladies in the pamphlets fit an empty wine bottle up there,” said Maud. “She did wail a lot during the process, though.”

Violet made a choking sound and, delightfully, flushed again. “Hawthorn was right. We have corrupted you beyond repair. I am confiscating your entire collection. Where is it? In here? I shall—”

Her laugh became a small scream as Maud grabbed her around the waist and hauled her over to the bed. Violet too had undressed, down to chemise and drawers, and had taken down her hair. It spilled out like sweet yellow wine around her head as she flopped onto her back. Maud still had the smaller phallus in her hand, but lost track of it when Violet got her hands beneath Maud’s chemise and moved her fingers in what was unmistakably a tickle.

Maud writhed and grabbed at Violet’s wrists, trying to force them away, while her own laughter became a steady “No no no no—” which leapt up and down the registers of her voice.

Violet pulled away. Maud bit her tongue and studied Violet’s face, anxious, too breathless to explain.

Violet was studying her in return. “No?”

“Please. Don’t do that.”

“No, of course,” said Violet easily, and the next stroke of her hand was firm enough not to tickle in the slightest.

Affection pooled in the cracks around Maud’s heart. She was inexperienced, yes. She still knew the value of feeling safe. She let her legs fall open and reached out to slip some of that yellow-wine hair between her fingers.

Violet seemed to take the reminder of Maud’s academic knowledge as a challenge to prove her greater experience. She proceeded to warm Maud up with lips and hands and tongue. Maud tried to commit the best tricks to memory, but her scattered attention fell even further apart when Violet lifted her head from between Maud’s legs, leaned her elbows on Maud’s hips, and cradled a very quick spell that left her with that illusion of a moustache again.

Maud’s stomach shook with silent giggles. Along with Violet’s long hair, the thin moustache made her look like a painting from the court of the French Sun King. An exceedingly lewd painting.

“It won’t feel like a real one would,” said Violet, “but perhaps you could pretend.”

“Oh, sir . Do be gentle. I am but an innocent maid.”

Violet bit Maud’s inner thigh, hard enough for a delicious sharpness to quiver straight to Maud’s clit, and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like the hell you are. By the time they got around to searching the crumpled sheets for the phallus, Maud was slick and warm and there was a glorious ache like a clenched fist below her navel. Two of Violet’s wet fingers still felt like a stretch, but a good one.

The phallus was a different sensation again.

“ Ow, ” said Maud. And then, “No, try again! I can do it.”

Violet puffed some hair out of her face, her expression halfway between laughing and exasperated. “I know you’re stubborn, Maud, but this isn’t some sort of heroic trial that you have to overcome. You don’t have to like everything, or even try everything.”

Nothing made Maud more stubborn than being reminded that she could back down from something. She planted her heels farther apart on the sheets. Everything else that Violet had suggested had been enjoyable thus far.

“I can do it,” she said again. “I want to know .”

“You are going to be an absolute terror at university, my girl,” said Violet.

Maud was suffused with fond warmth. Not even Robin had ever spoken of her future with such casual faith.

“All right,” said Violet. “Breathe. That’s it.”

She stroked a hand over Maud’s stomach, soothing and steadying, before lining up the phallus again. She leaned down and traced a slow circle with her tongue over Maud’s collarbone where the chemise had been pulled askew, and with that and the steam-bath warmth of affection, the muscles between Maud’s legs forgot to tense.

The pressure inside her went right past sharp and into something new. That hot ache twisted into acute pleasure. Maud’s next breath caught like wool on brambles.

“ There you are,” said Violet.

“Oh, can you—” But Maud didn’t need to do more than shift her hips and leave the sentence unfinished, because Violet knew exactly what she needed. She worked Maud’s clit in between slow movements of the phallus. She was gentle, and then she wasn’t, and Maud bit down on the side of her hand and closed her eyes, the muscles at the backs of her legs cramping as her release came charging out of the dark.

“There,” she panted afterwards, triumphant. She had sleepy midsummer winds beneath her skin. She was an entire weather system in the shape of a girl. “Oh, that was lovely . Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Violet, setting the phallus aside with a fastidious face.

“I did so want to try that. I can see—some of what the fuss is about.”

A pause. Violet’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve made a list, haven’t you? Off the back of Ross’s pornography. A list of things you want to try.”

“Yes.” She drew Violet down to kiss her again. Violet’s leg slid firm between her own and Violet’s hair smelled like sweat and flowers, and her mouth was soft and clever, and Maud could also see why some ingenious person had come up with a device that would allow for the phallus to be separated from, well. The rest of a man.

“You’ve got that thoughtful look again,” said Violet, drawing back. “Are you about to ask me something alarming?”

“No,” said Maud, which now wasn’t a lie.

Violet bit Maud’s lower lip, a slow drag of teeth. Maud shivered and found a tiny keening sound in her throat.

“You’re gorgeous when you come. Shall we try for another?”

Maud made a face in the negative. Everything down there was sensitive from Violet’s prolonged ministrations; not as bad as her ticklish sides, but certainly at a point where further attempts would be more painful than enjoyable.

Besides: “It’s your turn,” she said, sitting up. “How would you like it?” She sounded like someone proffering tea— Milk, madam? And how many sugars?

Violet fetched the collection of bedroom aides again. “Would you like to choose for me?”

Maud searched Violet’s face for clues as she ran her fingers over the collection, and was pleased with the flicker when she picked up her selection.

“I am going to need slick for that one,” Violet said. “There’s some petroleum jelly in the dresser. We can’t all carry olive oil around in a decadent little bottle like his lordship.”

Maud remembered Violet imbuing the golden-green oil that they’d used to reverse the sleeping charm on Ross. It hadn’t occurred to her at the time to question why Hawthorn had such a thing in his cabin in the first place.

“Perhaps they supply it to the parlour suites, like the decanters,” she said. “ All the amenities.”

The petroleum jelly warmed quickly on Maud’s fingers as she leaned back against the head of the bed, with Violet sitting snug between her legs. It took some wriggling to get the angle correct, but Maud quickly found a rhythm of exploration, dragging her fingers through the folds of Violet’s sex. With her other hand across Violet’s middle, Violet’s spine pressed gloriously against Maud’s front, she could feel every tense of muscle and hitch of breath. Violet hissed, encouraging, when Maud bent her fingers and pressed inside. It was so hot .

Violet’s heart beat against her fingertips. Maud paused to wonder at it.

She paused for long enough that Violet began to direct her: one finger at a time, faster than Maud would have thought comfortable, until Maud’s wrist began to ache with the angle.

“Like this?” she ventured, when Violet shifted and pressed the phallus into her hand. “Er—”

Violet used Maud’s splayed legs for support as she struggled upright. “No, you’re right, the angle’s no good. Here.”

Here was Violet lying back with one of the pillows under her hips, Maud kneeling between her legs.

“Are—are you sure?” Maud adjusted her grip on the flared base. The erotic literature’s laissez-faire attitude to being penetrated by pricks—glass, human, satyr, often multiple —took on rather a different cast once you’d felt with your own fingers the tightness of where the thing was meant to go.

Violet grinned, sharp as a needle. There were pink splotches on the side of her neck, and her hair was untidy and her stomach creased with effort. Maud wanted to look at her forever. “I’m sure.”

Maud still took it slowly, a careful half inch at a time, and stopped at once when Violet made a high, frustrated sound. When she looked anxiously up, however, Violet had slashes of colour in her cheeks and her lips were parted.

“Are you trying to kill me?” Violet said, ragged. “Very well—full marks for erotic torture. I’m sure the Dark Duke would be proud.”

Maud flushed. “Faster?”

“For the love of God, yes .”

Maud took a deep breath and pushed. Watching the phallus disappear inside Violet made her own cunt clench in wistful sympathy. Her breath jolted out like a carriage over cobbles.

Violet was giving a steady stream of yes, like that . One of her legs bent in an aborted jerk, as if she wanted to wrap it around Maud’s back.

“Should have packed—a bloody harness. Gnh . There’s something for your list. I’d love to see that on you.” Violet’s head had been tipped back. Now her eyes met Maud’s, hot and dark. “You could fuck me on my hands and knees. Goes deeper that way. Shit, ” as Maud, losing her coordination with the sheer confused rush of arousal, shoved the phallus harder and deeper than she’d meant to.

Violet was getting closer; Maud already knew enough to translate the rapid hitches of her breath and the shake of her knees. Maud gathered up her courage and shifted herself so that she could fasten her mouth just above where Violet was stretched around the phallus. An arpeggio thrill of the new, the forbidden, danced within her. All she could smell was Violet, and salt water.

“Shit, shit, ” snarled Violet, and quivered hard under Maud’s tongue as her hips bucked and shook and kept shaking.

Maud pulled back and watched her, and had never felt hungrier or more accomplished in her life.

The brown hair was a mermaid tangle as Maud laid her legs across Violet’s lap, her face close enough that Violet could have counted her freckles if the light were better. Maud’s smile was fond and satisfied and shy. Violet gave her a smile in return and ignored the sensation of fingerprints being laid in the soft wax of her chest.

“I really think girls should be told that bodies can do this before it comes up in relation to wedding nights,” said Maud.

“Perhaps you should give a lecture at that Women’s Society of yours. A live reading from Mysteries of the Red Dew .”

Maud laughed. “It’s so much fun . I can see why people do rash, ill-advised things to have it. Not that I need another excuse to make rash decisions.”

“Yes,” Violet agreed. “It’s fun.”

“Have you ever…” Maud rolled her temple on the head of the bed, her gaze steady on Violet’s face. “Have you ever had someone that you wanted for more than just fun?”

All of Violet’s sleepy enjoyment screwed itself up like newspaper: something to stain the fingers, or start a fire. She felt her face change. She pushed Maud’s legs back onto Maud’s side of the bed and spoke before she could catch herself.

“If you’d like another lesson in what’s proper to say after fucking someone, here it is. A question like that is what’ll show you up for a naive virgin.”

Silence. Maud went red.

Violet silently cursed herself and waited for the tears, but they didn’t come.

“I beg your pardon,” said Maud, each word a chip of polished stone. “I wasn’t hurling myself at you. I was asking you a question, which is what friends do. To know one another better.”

“You know more than enough of me to be getting on with.”

“Oh—oh, that’s—nonsense.” Maud climbed right off the bed, as if there wasn’t space on it for the both of them and her annoyance. “That’s complete nonsense, Violet.”

“I beg your pardon?” Part of Violet tried to protest that this was still salvageable, if they took the time to calm down, but the colder and angrier part had a hand on its shoulder: I have this. Stay back, and stay safe.

“Do you think I haven’t noticed, that I don’t know anything about you?”

“That’s not true.”

“You know what I’m afraid of, and who I love, and what I want to do with my life. You know about Robin, and my parents.” Maud had been counting off on fingers; now she flung that hand down as if discarding a poorly cradled spell. “I don’t know anything about your family. I don’t know what you want to do in England, with all your new wealth. I don’t know what you were running from in the first place that drove you all the way to America, and why you’re so determined to create further scandal on the way back. I don’t know anything real . You talk and talk and all you’ve given me is—stories. Sparkle.”

The words caught in Violet’s throat were: You weren’t supposed to notice.

She’d been going about this wrong. She should have been feeding Maud scraps of herself, seducing her with sweet mouthfuls of truth into believing that they were growing close—she should have done the dance of intimacy, keeping herself in the lead and safe inches of space between them.

Instead she’d been so intent on withholding, so wary of the way Maud made her feel, that she’d let them become snarled together. She’d left gaps so large they were visible.

Maud went on, “And yet you were angry when I withheld things about Robin’s visions. That’s not fair.”

“Withholding information about me is different from keeping private things that have nothing to do with you .”

“You think I’m too young and silly. You think you can’t trust me with anything important, but I promise, you can .”

If she wanted to manipulate a protest out of Violet, she was going to be disappointed. Violet didn’t fall for self-deprecation anymore. Especially not from Maud, who could wrap the world around her fingers like a cradling string.

Violet got out of the bed and joined her. Maud looked as though she’d dearly like to have more cabin space to retreat into, but didn’t. There was only a bit of empty wall, and then a pile of Mrs. Navenby’s hatboxes.

Violet said, “Do you know who keeps telling you that you can trust them, over and over again? People who are going to screw you over .”

“Is… is that what you think of me?”

Some of the green-eyed anger cracked, showing a river of raw distress beneath. Violet sighed and tilted Maud’s face up with two fingers.

All right. All right then. Like this.

“What do I think? I like you, Maud. I think you’re beautiful, and I admire your daring, and God knows if it weren’t for the rest of this mess then I’d keep you in bed for the entire voyage, seeing how many different ways I can make you cry out.”

A cautious hint of a dimple began to struggle into existence in Maud’s flushed face. Violet leaned down and kissed it, once. She kept her voice sweet and low.

“But I only met you three days ago. I don’t owe you anything, just because you’re fucking me in an act of pointless rebellion against your awful dead parents, or because you’re on a guilt-driven magical crusade to make yourself feel better about failing your brother.”

Maud made a wordless, strangled noise and shoved . It was clumsy, and Violet had been expecting something like it; she went with the push, taking two controlled steps back.

Maud’s hand was at her mouth. There were the tears, standing stark and yet unfallen.

Violet’s mouth curled into a smile that Cleopatra would have been proud of.

“You see?” she said. “That’s what happens when you show your soft parts to people you barely know. Now—don’t you want the sparkling, amusing Violet back?”

“ No, ” bit out Maud. “Not if she’s nothing but an act .”

The lateness of the hour, the coolness of the air against her bare skin, and her own impatience with this bull-headed naiveté rocked Violet all at once. She looked at Maud: that impossible temptation of a figure, those eyes gone huge and cold as emeralds with hurt.

“A person is an act, Maud. A person is a theatre. You change the set dressing depending on the season. The real parts are the parts that aren’t meant to be seen.”

“I don’t believe you. I think that’s a pretty image, but a—a load of horse droppings.”

Maud was wrong. Violet’s tired mind groped for a quote or a speech that would sum up how wrong she was, and came up empty except for a fairy tale that she used to tell her sisters: a lost princess who made a friend for herself out of gathered bones and her own blood. The princess stopped every person who wanted to use a tollgate and gathered from them a single secret in payment, until she had a companion whole and entire.

That’s what people are, Violet wanted to scream. Blood and bones and secrets.

“I’m tired of talking about this,” she said. “Go to bed.”

She turned away. She was surprised enough by Maud’s hand gripping her arm that she didn’t resist when Maud pulled her close and turned her. Violet’s heel slipped off the edge of the rug and her head struck the wall, hard enough to sting.

“I don’t believe you,” Maud said again. It was a plea. She was trying to fix this, trying to reverse it, to make everything fun and laughter again; it was right there on her transparent, wet-eyed face. She held Violet’s arm as if she wanted to get her fingers beneath Violet’s skin. As if all of Violet were an illusion-mask that could be wrenched away.

Violet tried to move. Maud’s grip tightened. Signals in Violet’s body, anger and closeness and the pain at the back of her head, wove themselves tight to produce a stab of abrupt, violent desire like a thorn sinking into the palm.

She managed, “Then don’t believe me. That doesn’t make me wrong.”

“Violet Debenham, you are infuriating —” and Violet wondered for a strange hot moment if she were about to be shaken, or if Maud intended to rake her prim little nails across Violet’s face, but the surge of Maud against her was—was Maud’s mouth finding hers in a crush of lips. Violet’s head hit the wall again. That hurt, but she didn’t care. It was a fierce boiling kettle of a kiss.

“I’m so angry with you,” Maud panted, “and I want you so much .”

Violet could have told her that there was no need to sound so bewildered—that this was a vastly common problem, in fact—but she didn’t have a chance to reply. Maud had a proprietary hand in the hair behind Violet’s neck, and she bit down on Violet’s lip.

Violet was angry as well. Far too angry, now, to listen to the tiny voice cautioning calm. She clenched a hand around the lace trim of Maud’s chemise, where it dipped over the swell of her breasts, and yanked.

Buttons popped; fabric tore. The chemise still hung from Maud’s shoulders, but it gaped open in front.

“ Oh, ” said Maud, indignant, and then made a noise that not even runes could represent, as Violet got a hand down between them and dragged her fingers demandingly through Maud’s still-slick folds.

She was aware of what she was doing, and that it wasn’t fair. Maud had refused to be pushed with one kind of words. Violet had reams of words, for every purpose, and now she would try another. Her free hand splayed firm over Maud’s spine, keeping her in place. Maud rose onto her toes and writhed like a furious cat, but she wasn’t pulling away.

“You want to know something true about me? What I want ?” Violet twisted her fingers. “I want to work you open until I can fit my whole hand inside.”

Maud choked. Her weight shifted as if her knees had actually buckled. Violet tasted satisfaction like cold wine.

“Perhaps I am rebelling,” Maud managed. “Perhaps I—I like the idea that if my mother saw me right now, like this, she’d be horrified.” She moved as she spoke, but she was only turning until her back was to Violet’s front. She brought Violet’s free hand to her chest, beneath the ruined chemise, and Violet took hold of what she was offered. “It’s as good a reason as any.”

Violet found a cry of denial in her mouth and swallowed it savagely. She’d fucked people herself on flimsier pretexts, and only sometimes regretted it. Guarding Maud’s motives, Maud’s heart, was none of Violet’s damned business.

So Violet let the wall take most of their weight; Violet pressed that glorious breast in her hand and used the other to frig Maud in the way that she most liked it herself: hard and merciless and thorough.

This, too, was something true. If you showed someone your desires, then they could use them against you like any other soft and trembling underbelly. But if Violet didn’t let any words out to trace the shape of what she was doing, perhaps she could slip it past the both of them.

Maud’s second release was quieter. She soaked Violet’s hand. She smelled of skin and sugar and some humid summer mixture of turned earth and wet city pavements. Her hair brushed Violet’s neck as she pulled away.

Violet wiped her hand on her own chemise.

Maud’s lower lip showed the dents of biting. She looked at Violet and Violet looked back. It was the place where a kiss would go: the reconciliation, the missing epilogue to a story.

Neither of them moved.

Violet tried to identify at least one of her current emotions. Somewhere in the mire was victory, and somewhere guilt, and somewhere was a black well of syrupy terror that she fastened a lid on, tight, as she breathed herself back into awareness of her heartbeat.

Fucking didn’t fix anything. It never had. But it could shut people up for a while—even Maud Blyth.

Maud said, “I think I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight after all. To protect the locket.”

“Good idea,” said Violet.

Neither of them moved.

Then Maud made a low, aggravated sound and practically stomped into the adjoining bedroom. Violet, changing into her own nightgown at last, could hear the angry slap of Maud’s feet on the floor. When Maud emerged again she was brushing her hair with furious strokes, and she spoke as if continuing an argument she’d been having inside her head.

“You knew that would hurt me, what you said. You didn’t care. Were you doing the same thing as Hawthorn and trying to scare me off?”

Violet shrugged.

“You’re the one who pointed out it just made me more stubborn.”

“Yes,” said Violet. “I miscalculated.”

Maud pointed the hairbrush at her like a gun. “It shouldn’t be about calculation. I don’t understand you. Aren’t you worried that if you never give anyone anything real… you’re going to end up entirely on your own? And I’m still talking about friends, ” she snapped.

“I don’t need you to be worried!” Violet snapped back. “I am fine being alone. We don’t all need to insert ourselves into other people’s business to give our lives meaning.”

Maud flinched. “You see? You’re doing it again.”

Violet wanted this to be done. She laid down each word with the diction she’d learned to toss innuendo to the highest row of the stalls. “Listen to me. I am happy not relying on anyone else. I won’t be forced to be small. I won’t be taken advantage of. I am perfectly fine .”

With her long-sleeved nightgown and her hair brushed to gleaming waves, her face small and pale within it, Maud looked like a doll in a shop window. A magical toy! Cries real tears! thought Violet viciously.

“Do you know who I think keeps saying that they’re fine? Over and over?” Maud’s shoulders set. Some instinct in Violet pricked its ears and said: You’ve miscalculated again.

Maud said, “People who are desperately scared, and awfully sad, and too small to admit it.”

And she turned around and left Violet in the larger room, with the larger bed, and with a feeling like a metal spike between her ribs.