Perhaps for that reason alone, Alice kept silent. What did it matter to her whether Mrs. Wraxhall carried on with every gentleman in East Anglia? She was a kind, charitable woman—witness Alice’s continued existence—and if fornication was what she required to sustain that level of good humor and generosity, then so be it.
“Some do,” Molly answered, as if Alice’s question had been anything other than rhetorical. “Others just gossip and gamble and ride horses, pretty much like they do every other day of the year. What’ll you do?”
Was she asking whether Alice intended to have an affair? “Not lift my skirts for some man,” she said before she could consider the wisdom of such a response. “No doubt there are dowagers in attendance who require their yarn to be balled up and children who need their dollies mended. Those tasks seem much less tedious to me than entertaining gentlemen.”
Molly let out a peal of laughter. “Oh Christ. You and me both. More trouble than they’re worth, the lot of them.”
Maybe the sound of Molly’s laughter was as intoxicating as Mrs. Wraxhall’s bubbly wine, because Alice found herself asking the worst possible question. “You must have thought otherwise at some point. With Katie’s father, I mean.”
Molly went still, holding a pincushion in midair, and too late Alice realized that Katie’s father might have been the kind of brute who took what he wanted without a thought to spare for anyone else. Alice had learned that lesson well.
“He promised me a silver locket,” Molly said, with a look that dared Alice to judge her.
“Did he deliver?”
“No. I blackmailed him, though.”
“Good,” Alice said, with more venom than she thought she possessed.
“Miss Stapleton,” Molly said, shaking her head in feigned admonishment.
Alice made a dismissive sound. “Did he give you enough so you can put a bit aside for Katie when she’s older? So she can...” Alice didn’t know what the children of servants and blackmailed gentlemen did when they came of age. “Learn a trade?” Alice’s own money had been put aside for her marriage, but as she had never married, her father had simply kept it. And now she’d never see it.
“Her money’s safe and I don’t need to touch it. My wages are enough to keep her at Mrs. Fitz’s and maybe send her to school in a few years.”
Alice felt a surge of—it couldn’t possibly be affection, but something near enough to it—towards this woman who had thought to properly set money aside for her daughter. “How lucky your daughter is to have a parent who looks out for her.”
Molly pursed her lips. “Not a lot of people would call the bastard daughter of a lightskirt lucky.”
Alice wanted to deny it, but Molly was right. “Many people would think the daughter of a reasonably prosperous clergyman was very lucky indeed. But I expect your Katie will never have a parent who harms her.” She spoke the words lightly, carefully, but Molly looked at her sharply all the same.
“I wonder what that’s like,” Molly said.
Alice was overwhelmed by this sudden sense of common feeling with a woman whose life had been so different from her own, but who had wound up in roughly the same place. Grasping for something more familiar, she noticed that one of Mrs. Wraxhall’s chemises had a hem that had come untacked. “If we’re to share a room, you might as well let me share some of the mending,” she said, reaching for the garment.
Quick as a bolt, Molly reached out and grabbed Alice’s hand, stopping her from taking the chemise. Alice’s first instinct was to snatch her hand back, but when Molly didn’t let go, instead she let herself enjoy the touch. It was mere friendliness, she told herself. It was all right to enjoy the warmth and the gentleness, and Molly wouldn’t have touched her if she didn’t want to. So she put her other hand over Molly’s, letting her fingers slip between the other woman’s. She kept her gaze there, at their interlocked fingers, not daring to look up at Molly’s face. The silence between them stretched out, neither of them moving. They were holding hands, and the only reason they were doing it was that they both wanted to. They wanted to touch one another. There was no escaping from that basic fact: Alice wanted, and was wanted in return.
Finally, she cleared her throat. “I’d like to help. I hate being idle.” That was the truth, and it felt strange to admit it—as if she were confessing to something more improper than a fondness for work. “And you know my stitchwork is good.”
Molly snorted. “It’s wasted on a hem.”
“But that’s what I like to do. Decent, simple work. I don’t need to adorn things. I like to do the kind of work that matters to people.” She missed it terribly. Her fingers itched to be useful. “The kind that helps the people I’m fond of.”
Molly regarded her for a moment, then tugged Alice’s hand so she had to come closer or let go. Alice stepped forward, and now their boots were almost touching, their hands clasped together. She stood perfectly still, staring fixedly at Molly’s shoulder.
“And you’re fond of Mrs. Wraxhall?” Alice didn’t need to look to know that Molly had that sly, crooked smile playing across her lips.
Alice was indeed very fond of Mrs. Wraxhall, so she nodded.
“And of me, too, aren’t you?”
Alice closed her eyes to avoid the temptation of looking at Molly’s mouth. She nodded again.
“Good,” Molly said, and it was little more than a breath. Alice could nearly feel it on her cheek.
Molly stepped back, and Alice let go of her hand. But as Alice sat in the chair by the window, avoiding looking at the too-familiar Norfolk countryside, her hands deftly restitching the fallen hem, she thought she could feel the echoes of that warm touch on her skin for the rest of the afternoon.
“I think,” Molly said, much later, “it’s high time I called you Alice.”
