The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,73

somehow—you introduce your friends to each other, and then they become friends, and you don’t get pulled apart. But a husband? There was . . . a sense of being watched, as if every word and gesture meant something different and particular than what I intended. As if all my eccentric behavior reflected on him, too. It froze me right up, and I could tell John noticed and felt hurt by it, and then he and Harry left—but the next time they came back it happened again, but worse. It was years before I was able to put words around what I felt was happening.”

“That you weren’t good at being a wife in name only?”

Penelope stared into the burning heart of the light trap. “That I don’t always know who I am supposed to be.”

Griffin, bless her, didn’t scoff. She turned this over, while moths blissfully flirted with the flame. Blades of grass stood out sharply in the flickering, ghostly night. “What about those lovers you mentioned? Was it different with them?” One corner of her mouth lifted. “You were very emphatic about having been fucked, Flood.”

The way her voice turned low and smoky on the word fucked—it made Penelope want to rub herself against it like a cat, and set up a thrumming heat low in her belly. “We were always discreet,” she said. And all women, was the thing she carefully didn’t say. “It didn’t feel like the same pressure, even when we were together amid larger, louder groups. Nobody knew, so we weren’t . . . considered in the same way.”

Griffin snorted. “Because nobody ever notices illicit love affairs.”

Penelope laughed in spite of herself. “There wasn’t much time for anyone to notice anything: they were all very brief liaisons. Maybe I only have trouble with long connections.” She sobered. “Maybe I’m just not the sort of person who inspires a lifetime’s worth of passion.”

“Rubbish,” said Griffin.

Her answer was swift, her voice was firm, and her certainty was palpable. Penelope went all over red, thrumming with the sweet shock of that single word. She was unspeakably glad the darkness and the flickering light would hide her reaction from the woman who’d caused it.

“You’ve been unlucky, that’s all,” Griffin went on. As though she weren’t tearing down the foundations of Penelope’s carefully built-up solitude. “You are extremely kindhearted and sweet, Flood—but you’re also observant and cautious, two things that aren’t often found in the kind of person who lets themselves get swept up in reckless love affairs. Especially where . . .” She paused for a moment. “Especially where there is good reason to be cautious.”

Penelope felt turned into a statue, stiff as marble and leached of color.

Griffin leaned forward. “Do you know what I think?”

Penelope shook her head.

Griffin’s eyes were bright with anger. “I think you let your brother and his beloved overwhelm you. I think you so wanted to help them, in whatever way you could, that you sacrificed your own happiness for theirs.”

Penelope shifted in her seat. “Marriage was never in my future.”

Griffin made a wordless noise rejecting this statement.

Penelope felt a flicker of temper, shoring up the unsteadiness of her voice. “Marriage as it is practiced in England is not made for women like me.”

Griffin openly scoffed at that. “Don’t be ridiculous, Flood: you are one of the sweetest, strongest, truest people I have ever met in my life. You worry about everyone’s happiness. You want the best for all your family, friends, and neighbors—even the ones you don’t like. And I don’t know if anyone’s told you this in a while, but you’re lovely to look at. On top of everything warm and wonderful about you, you are absolutely beautiful. I can’t imagine a single reason—”

“It’s because of women!” Penelope exploded.

It was a harsh cry, close to a shout, and it made Griffin rear back in her seat.

Cheeks burning, Penelope lowered her volume back to a whisper. Her voice was just one more shadow in the darkness. “All my life, I have only ever loved women. And I cannot marry a woman, under English law. So it didn’t seem to matter much if I married somebody else. For practical reasons.” She heaved a frustrated breath, furious to have lost control. “So.”

The silence stretched out, and Penelope’s nerves stretched with it.

Her mind helpfully offered up all the awful possibilities Griffin could say in response. The best Penelope could hope for was a new and permanent awkwardness: The less said the better, perhaps, or the terrible