Instead she stepped close, so close she could feel the warmth coming from Molly’s skin. “Please,” she said, tentatively touching Molly’s shoulder.
“You don’t know the first thing about thieving.” Molly put her foot up on the chair and began rolling down one stocking, then the other. “You’d clomp around, get us sent to the gallows.”
“I’ve never clomped in my life, I’ll have you know.” If Alice had known she would be spending the midnight hours proving her criminal bona fides, she might have gone to bed earlier. She was unspeakably glad that she hadn’t. “I’m quite good at sneaking.” She had learned the value of silence early. Silence was safety. “Besides, you have a daughter. You can’t take that kind of risk.” Alice had nothing, and therefore nothing to lose.
Molly regarded Alice with narrowed eyes, one hand on her hip. “All right then.” Alice felt almost giddy. “But first, bed.” And with that, Molly dropped onto the bed and slid under the covers.
There was to be no kissing, then. Surely Alice could live with that. She wasn’t supposed to be kissing anybody anyway. Kissing was for other people. This was something she had known as a basic truth from her earliest days: so much of life was for other people. Love and safety, admiration and friendship—Alice had never had those things and hadn’t wasted much time bemoaning the fact.
But now she wanted those things too. She wanted cravat pins and kisses, things that were bright and warm and hers.
Then Molly reached an arm out and patted the bed beside her. “Come on then,” she said, her voice already heavy with sleep. Alice climbed into bed, resting her head on Molly’s outstretched arm, settling into the space by Molly’s side. They fit together like this.
Alice might have been astonished by the speed with which Molly fell asleep if she didn’t recall doing the same when her days had been filled with work. Alice wasn’t ready for sleep, though. Her nerves felt stretched out to the point where they vibrated with excitement. She was going to take back what was hers.
But first she pulled the quilt up to Molly’s chin so she wouldn’t get cold.
Chapter Six
A few years of living the life of a decent, law-abiding servant had left Molly unready for the rush of mingled excitement and fear she felt upon waking. It was still dark, and Alice was still asleep, pale hair even whiter in the moonlight. Once again, one of her arms had found its way to Molly’s waist as if it belonged there.
It had been a long time since Molly had wanted to touch someone so badly. It had been even longer since she wanted to be touched.
Christ, it was even longer since she had planned a robbery.
Last night she had only agreed to let Alice help in order to end the conversation. There was no possibility that a prim lady, a vicar’s spinster daughter, a girl who had never been anywhere or seen anything until Mrs. Wraxhall took her in, could be trusted to properly steal a diamond.
And yet. Molly had noticed how Alice crept about as if on cat’s paws, how she had a knack for entering and leaving a room without disturbing so much as the air around her. Her fingers were as nimble as any pickpocket’s. And she wanted this. Molly had seen the look in her eyes, that gleam of want. Tenpenny—and her father, the lout—had hurt her, and she wanted to get back some of what was hers. This was her chance to do, to take, to earn something for herself.
If Molly managed this robbery on her own, she’d be taking that chance away from Alice. Even if she then gave Alice the cravat pin—or, rather, the proceeds from the sale of the diamond, because she doubted Alice knew how to find a fence or even a pawn shop—it wasn’t the same as Alice taking it for herself.
Molly wondered whether she could teach Alice to pick a lock. Sighing, she rolled over.
Alice opened one eye, the other being hidden in the pillow. “What time is it?”
“Not yet dawn,” Molly whispered, turning her head to the side. “Go back to sleep.”
She didn’t shut her eyes though, and neither did Molly. They had spent the entire night pressed together, and now Molly felt achingly comfortable with the rise and fall of Alice’s chest, with the strands of silky moonshine hair that spread everywhere across the pillow, with the simple bodily fact of Alice’s closeness.
“Thank you for helping me last night,” Alice said in a sleepy voice. “With the gown and hair and everything. I felt...”
“Beautiful,” Molly interrupted. “You were beautiful.”
Alice’s gaze darted off to some dark corner of the room. “I was going to say that I felt like I belonged. Or at least that I didn’t stand out awkwardly. Thank you for that.”
Never had Alice heard such a fat lot of horse shite from an otherwise sensible woman. “God, I’ve never met one so keen on going unnoticed. You’d think you were one of those birds that looks like tree bark or what have you.” So quiet, so ready to assume an air of harmless nothingness when she was so much more than that. “And why would you want to blend in with the lot of them anyway?” She was worth twenty of them. Molly tried to find words that might show Alice what she meant. “Last night you shone. You always do.”
Alice returned her gaze to Molly, her eyes widening with surprise before narrowing skeptically. “I don’t—”
“And if you think I’m going to spend the time until dawn making you take a compliment you can guess again.” In the darkness, Molly heard Alice let out a puff of laughter that crushed whatever last bit of good judgment Molly had.
Ever so carefully, Molly shifted so she was leaning on one forearm, poised half over Alice.
Alice went still. Molly held her breath, waiting. Then Alice tilted her chin up so their lips were so close, nearly touching. “Oh?” It came out as a breath that Molly could feel on her own mouth.
And then when Molly finally dipped her head to bring her lips to Alice’s, she felt Alice rising up to meet her.
Molly had tumbled her fair share of men and a couple of girls too. She was no stranger to lust or even to the stray feelings that sometimes got tangled up in lust, like those bits of rubbish that got spun into otherwise serviceable yarn, and needed to be picked out and cast aside.
