The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,74

I suppose it’s none of my business, really.

The worst thing would be the unmistakable moment where a friend withdrew their friendship while you watched. To see a warm smile fall away, a bright eye turn cold, and to know there was no going back to how it had been before. Penelope had seen it happen half a dozen times in her life, and it never got any easier to bear.

She squared her shoulders and braced herself, as the other woman stared off into the distance. No doubt she was stunned by the truth Penelope had revealed. No doubt Penelope had now officially ruined everything.

“If you could . . .” Griffin asked slowly. “If you could have married any of the women you loved—would you have?”

It was as though she had asked the question in some language other than English: it took far too long for Penelope’s slow brain to chew through the question. She thought back over her past, with the usual twinge of self-chastisement. “They often went and married someone else instead,” she said at last. “Emma Koskinen, for example, after our brief summer passed.”

Griffin squeaked in surprise.

Penelope chuckled. “I imagine I should have felt more upset about that—but she and Timo were so much better suited, and he was so serious and fascinatingly Swedish, and I was twenty-one and blissfully gay. We all stayed friends, quite easily.” She stretched her legs out, crossing and uncrossing them at the ankles. “Friends have always been more valuable to me, anyway. I’ve never wept over losing a lover; I’ve always regretted losing a friend.” She kept her eyes very fearfully on the lanterns and added: “I should regret the loss of your friendship more than anything in the world, I think.”

She didn’t look around, not even when Griffin spoke in a voice so low and husky Penelope could practically feel it against her skin: “You’ll always have my friendship, Penelope Flood. There’s no question about that.”

Penelope blinked and blinked into the lantern light, determined not to cry.

Griffin cleared her throat and went on talking. “As for the question of Christmas, the answer’s quite simple.”

Now Penelope did glance over. “It is?”

“You’ll invite us to stay for the holiday, and I’ll be very charming to your husband, and if I see you becoming stiff or awkward or anything like that I’ll just turn to you and say, Maybe we need to check on the hive by the print-works, or some other such excuse, and you won’t have to be stuck.” She tilted her head. “If you think that might help.”

It was simple, when Griffin said it. Simple—but not small. Penelope felt hope rise up, a fountain overflowing its banks. “You’d do that for me?”

Griffin snorted, the sound bright and joyful in the darkness. “Of course. We’re friends, Flood.”

Could it really be that simple? Penelope had stewed in dread and guilt about this for the better part of a decade, but Griffin sounded so matter-of-fact about the whole thing. As if it was something she was happy to help fix.

For one warm, golden, glowing moment, Penelope basked in the hope that she wasn’t broken, that her secret flaws were overlookable, that she could throw open the welcoming doors of her heart and having something other than the cold wind answer.

“Besides,” Griffin added, “after the Wasp business, it will do us all good to get away from London for a little while.”

Golden hope vanished, smothered under shadowy wings. This wasn’t about Penelope, not in the way that she thought. She was only one of many things on Griffin’s mind.

She wanted to be so much more important to Agatha than that.

Realization would have knocked her legs from under her, if she weren’t already sitting down. Good lord, when had she gone and fallen in love with Agatha Griffin?

And how did she not realize earlier, when she might have properly nipped it in the bud? It was in full flower now, a dark, dangerous rose unfolding in the heart of her, petals climbing up her throat and threatening to spill from her lips.

She knocked down another moth, breathed in the scent of the dying year, and hoped winter would take pity and freeze that love all the way down to the root.

Chapter Seventeen

Before Agatha could contemplate Christmas, and having to be civil to the man whose wife she pined for, there was work to do: the Queen’s trial was coming to its conclusion.

The verdict, when it came, raced through the city like a fire: the Pains and