Amelia breathed deep, looking out the window as the party came together on the lawn of the Randalls’ Malvern House. White tents and pavilions, which might have been exact matches to those from the Yorkshire party last October, were spread out across a much flatter lawn. House staff and borrowed servants from neighbouring estates bustled about in the dewy morning air, preparing. Amelia rested her hands on her belly to feel her own breathing. Steady. Controlled. She could do this.

It was a simple party thrown for a wonderful purpose, burdened with personal complications that she was resolved to weather, for the sake of her friend.

Francis Harcourt had written to report that his mother had recovered her illness and that he should like to see Elizabeth. Ever the proper gentleman: he did not ask for an invitation, but clearly implied his need for same.

Spoiling to renew their long-delayed courtship, Lizzie despaired of her inability to invite him to Uskweirs. But Lizzie being Lizzie, she enthusiastically turned obstacle into opportunity. If she could not ask him to Uskweirs, she could ask him to Malvern House, which came with the added benefit of his meeting her mother. And if he would meet her mother, she would like to meet his, and so an invitation to visit turned into an invitation to a garden party to celebrate the start of spring, and would not his mother like to accompany him?

All of which was well and good until Ashbourne came home from Parliament and took Amelia aside. After the Tory victory in November, Ashbourne’s position on a few key issues required careful politicking and alliances. If he (or, properly speaking, his wife) were to host a garden party during the current session of Parliament, he would have to invite some new allies—including the Duke of Suffolk.

Amelia’s father.

So both of her parents were here, one floor down and two doors over.

Both Ashbourne and Lizzie had made it perfectly clear that Amelia was not required to attend, either by the rules of hospitality or friendship. But it had also been clear that Elizabeth wanted her friend there when she met her suitor after so long a hiatus. And Amelia had not undergone everything in the past year just to be a coward.

Her last encounter with her brother, now some five months past, gave her both hope in her presentation as well as lessons learned. She could not trust the bustle of a party to keep her apart from her parents—especially with two of them here. So she had enlisted the help of her friends to arrange an introduction early in the day.

“Are you ready, my dear?” asked CeeCee from the bedroom door. The lady herself was of course the picture of poise, decked out in pale lavender silks and lace typically reserved for young ladies—not that CeeCee cared one whit about typical reservations.

“We’ll find out, shortly, won’t we?” Amelia answered, smoothing her frock over her bustle-embellished hips. She was wearing pale pink, almost white, the most unremarkable and unobjectionable gown she possessed in her narrow wardrobe. She had applied her cosmetics with as light a hand as she dared. At least her hair, she was certain from uncountable glances in the mirror, was perfect—finally long enough on its own to suffice without clipped-in curls.

CeeCee took her by the arm and together they marched downstairs and out to the solarium, which opened onto the lawns and the party. Elizabeth looked up from where she waited at the door. “My my, don’t you look amazing,” she said with a smile. “And you don’t look too bad either, CeeCee.”

“Are they out?”

Lizzie nodded. “Father has detained them on the outskirts of the party. I can’t tell if he’s keeping them there by talking politics or just by sheer force of hospitality.”

“And we’re sure this won’t make things difficult for him if it goes poorly?” Amelia asked, not for the first time.

CeeCee patted her arm. “We introduce you as my friend, who I brought along to the party, with no connection to the Randalls.” It wasn’t the first time she’d given the same answer, either. “But it won’t go poorly, dear; you look like nothing more than an attractive, empty-headed young lady hoping to find a rugged yet respectable man to whisk her away to a life of matrimonial drudgery—”

“Enough, enough!” Amelia couldn’t help but giggle. “Fine. Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war.”

“Are you calling me a bitch?” laughed CeeCee as she pushed open the greenhouse door. She kept Amelia’s attention diverted as they crossed the lawn so she did not have a chance to worry, and then they were stepping up to Ashbourne, her father, and her mother.

“CeeCee, I’ve been looking for you!” smiled Amelia’s mother. Her gaze transferred from her friend to Amelia where she hung on the lady’s arm. Her mother’s eyes flicked down and then back up Amelia’s body, taking in all of her presentation in half a second and, Amelia knew from long experience, forming a judgement of her entire character and probable family history. She raised her eyebrows and looked to CeeCee for an introduction.

“Enid, may I introduce Miss Amelia Wright,” CeeCee obliged. “Amelia, this is Charles Sommerset, the Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Enid. One of my favourite friends.” She sniffed, and added playfully, “Enid, that is. I’ve never cared much for Charles.”

Amelia curtseyed. “A pleasure to make your acquaintances, your grace, milady.”

Her father gave her half a glance, less than half of a nod, and then went back to talking to Ashbourne. About as much as Amelia had ever got from him, she mused, no matter what she was wearing.

Enid Sommerset, on the other hand, took a step forward, her eyes falling on Amelia’s hand curled around CeeCee’s arm. Ah. Was she presenting as a rival to her mother’s best friendship? She dropped her hands to her sides. But her mother extended a hand to clasp, and Amelia’s now-free hand was available, so she did so. Her mother’s hands were always cold, but she put a gentle squeeze into the gesture that prevented it feeling like clasping a dead fish.

“Please tell me,” her mother said, not releasing her hand, “that you’re here to save me from all this talk about politics.”

“Charles, I’m stealing your wife again,” CeeCee declared, and pulled both Amelia and her mother away from the two politicians. She spared Amelia a glance to ensure she wasn’t panicking (she was, but only a little, and not enough to show on her face), and then they were off, floating across the lawn in the general direction of the punch bowl. Elizabeth trailed after, scanning the party hopefully.

“How do the two of you know each other?” her mother asked, and Amelia could not tell if she was making conversation or probing to see how much a threat she presented to the old friendship.

“Oh, I’ve known Amelia since she was a little girl,” CeeCee answered blithely. “I’ve been friendly with the family ever since coming to England.” Lizzie snorted softly, and then covered it by pretending to sneeze.

“Odd you’ve never mentioned them,” Mother mused. “Wright, though? Any relation to the Wrights of Cambridge?”

“It’s such a common name,” Amelia dissembled with a shake of her head. “There seems to be Wrights everywhere you look.”

“My youngest sister married a Professor Anthony Wright,” her mother explained, and then described her own cousin to her: “Charming man, although what he studies exactly eludes me at the moment. Some divinity something-or-other. A lively conversationalist, despite all that, and a good shot, if my husband’s word is to be believed.”

“About hunting, at least,” CeeCee muttered darkly, to her friend Enid’s visible amusement.

“My sister has been very happy in her marriage to an academic, though, despite our early doubts.” She looked sidelong at Amelia. “Do you have any marriage prospects, Miss Wright? Or is CeeCee touring you around for some other purpose?”

“I have no prospects,” Amelia answered with what she hoped was a lighthearted laugh. “Nor am I looking for any. I hope to become a governess.”

“Your hopes aren’t so desperate as that?” her mother all but gasped.

“But I rather like children,” Amelia tried to protest, and when she saw on her mother’s face that that was not going to work, she grabbed Lizzie and pulled her between them like a shield. “But Elizabeth has prospects!”

While the ladies cooed at the thought of love in the offing, Elizabeth hissed at her, “You villain! I will make you pay for this.” Somehow she was also grinning at the same time. Giddy.

Amelia kissed her cheek by way of apology, not for what she had done, but what she was about to do. “And he’s here today,” she told the ladies. “With his mother.”

“What are you possibly doing with us, child?” cried Amelia’s mother, and suddenly their quartet became a scouting party to locate the Harcourts for the lovesick girl.

It did not take long to find both of them, chatting with Elizabeth’s own mother under the tent where the string quartet were playing. CeeCee shooed Elizabeth forward while the three of them hung back, watching the ensuing conversation from just far enough away not to be rude.

Francis made introductions, hands were clasped, some humour was employed to alleviate the tension, and everyone was smiling. When the two lovers peeled off to take a turn around the party, the two mothers watched them go. On both their faces were displayed pride and hope, which, when they turned to make conversation with each other, they tried to convert into sentiment and nostalgia for young love.

“Neither wants to ruin their child’s chances by looking desperate,” Amelia’s mother observed.

“It’s a good match for them both,” CeeCee observed. “Harcourt needs a wife who knows how things are done in the circles where he’ll circulate once he inherits. Lizzie’s a fifth child, third daughter; marrying a man of title would be quite a victory.”

Amelia looked across the lawn at the two lovers, walking and laughing. “I have great hopes for them,” she admitted. “They’re both besotted.”

“Then let us hope other considerations do not rob them of their happiness,” her mother observed drily.

CeeCee found a passing plate of cordials and passed one to her friend. “Not everyone is as bullheaded as your son, Enid.”

And thank the heavens for that, Amelia thought but did not say. Since she was not supposed to know her own brother, she politely remained quiet.

But her mother was apparently content to air her dirty laundry in front of a new acquaintance. “My son Eustace made an… ill-considered match,” she told Amelia, “one that I counseled against, but he refused to listen. They were infatuated with each other at first, but…” She shrugged. “It apparently escaped the both of them that they were completely different people. And now he is unhappy, and his wife is unhappy, and his children are unhappy.”

“How terrible that must be,” was the best that Amelia could respond with. She remembered the fights over her brother’s courtship that raged through the family’s townhouse, which had completely failed to stop the rushed marriage. There was no small surprise when there was no child born within the first year; then after the honeymoon his new wife had been first aloof and then rather acerbic. Mother, never one to back down from a fight, had returned heat with fire, and everything had gone downhill from there. Amelia got herself her own cordial; this did not seem like a conversation for which she wanted to be sober.

“I wouldn’t mind so much if in his bungling of everything he hadn’t managed to turn her against me,” her mother went on. “Somehow I am the harridan who forced his hand, and she is loathe to let me so much as see my own grandchildren.”

“His spending doesn’t help matters,” CeeCee put it, rolling her eyes at Amelia over her mother’s head.

Enid Sommerset tossed her hands. “That’s men’s business, and I neither have nor want any part in it. Although I would rather prefer the men have their arguments at a lower volume.” She looked over at Amelia, as if suddenly remembering that she was there. “Perhaps your plans to be a governess and avoid marriage have some merit, after all, dear. You don’t have to deal with a husband and it’s not your children, it’s other people’s. If they’re terrible, you can always find other employment and start again with a fresh set.”

For all the absurdity of the statement, her mother’s eyes remained on Amelia, expecting some response. She smiled, but this did not dissuade the woman from waiting. Finally, somewhere between desperate and panicked, she blurted, “What of your other children? The rest of your set?”

CeeCee stared saucers at Amelia over her mother’s head, then waved her hands around her ears as if to say, “Whatever happens now is on your head, fool girl.”

“Oh, ‘youngest?’” her mother scoffed. “That’s how all the correspondence is signed, now. ‘Your youngest.’ And said correspondence comes from Iceland, of all places.”

Amelia clutched her glass of cordial and asked, “Iceland? Why Iceland?” as innocently as she could manage.

“Because ‘youngest’ has aspirations to scientific illustration? Or discovery? It’s all very muddled,” she spat, and then gestured with her empty glass. “The letters trade in vagueries as often as detail. As if I’m not clever enough to follow along. Which hurts, let me tell you. Because it was I, not a governess—no offense—who taught ‘youngest’ to read in the first place.”

Amelia looked down into her own glass. “That does sound… trying. I’m so sorry that… that your children are so difficult.” She spied CeeCee rolling her eyes at her.

“It’s my fault, anyway,” her mother groused, and traded her empty for a full glass from a passing tray. “I never should have turned the children over to their father. You’re supposed to, of course, when they get to a certain age. They go to school, they learn their place in life, which is always going to be away from you.” She sipped at her cordial. “They were so sweet when I had them, when they were young. But then Charles took them, and he broke them. The eldest got hard and flinty, which I suppose is what Charles wanted. And the youngest… youngest just wilted.”

This was not the childhood that Amelia remembered; not exactly. She remembered her mother in the nursery, in her deepest, fuzziest memories. And she never did have a governess, which the boys at school had always thought strange. But memories of her time with Mother as warm and caring… she could not recall it. All she could recall was her mother’s frown, the twitch of her lips signalling her distate and disappointment.

But was that then, or was it later? When she came home from school with poor marks and chiding letters from teachers and headmaster, when she could never tell any stories about her friends, when she had to be told to go ask to dance at a ball. Her mother scowling, frustrated that Amelia couldn’t just be the young man she was supposed to be.

The same scowl that sat on her mother’s face right now. But in this moment, her mother was not frustrated with her, with Amelia; her mother was frustrated with herself, for doing what everyone had told her that mothers are supposed to do.

Who had Mother been frustrated at, back then?

“I just hope,” her mother was saying, “that the climate in Iceland is invigorating. Perhaps that’s what youngest needs.”

Before Amelia could respond, Lizzie and Francis all but skipped back under the shade of the pavilion and made a beeline towards her.

“Can we borrow Miss Wright for a minute?” Francis asked as he slipped his arm into hers.

“Or a little more than that,” Lizzie amended, with a wink towards CeeCee.

When Amelia looked back to her mother, the lady merely waved her off. “Go with your friends. Be young and happy. It was a pleasure meeting you, dear.”

“For me, as well,” she managed before her friends dragged her away. When they were out of earshot, she said, “So that was… strange.”

“All of CeeCee’s friends are strange,” Lizzie said quickly, and lifted significant eyebrows at her. Distracted, it took Amelia a moment to remember that she still had to watch what she said around Francis. She nodded to her friend, who grinned, then added, “…although I like to think that I’m the strangest.”

Amelia giggled, and the three of them bantered back and forth for a few minutes before she became aware that their little trio were not wandering the party, but striking a very determined course across it. She looked from Elizabeth to Francis and back. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” was the only answer she got, but they were quickly approaching a closed-sided tent. Serving staff with empty trays went in; servers with full trays came out. But her friends directed her towards neither entrance nor exit, but around the side. “And here we are!”

Amelia gasped. There, standing in the shade on the far side of the tent, was none other than Theresa Chesterley. The lady was back in her waistcoat and breeches, these in deep purple; in her hand was a slim volume, and on her face an uncertain smile. “I hope you like surprises,” she said as she stepped forward.

“You’re out!” was all that Amelia could think to say. “But I thought—” She meant to say something articulate, like, “But I thought your scheduled release date was still two weeks hence.” Instead, all her words collided inside her mouth and failed to make it past her lips.

“I may have pulled some strings,” Lizzie crowed, undampered by false modesty. “By which I mean Father pulled some strings, but still. There you go, Amelia. And there you go, Miss Chesty. And now here we go, Francis, away from here.”

The two of them moved to go, and Amelia reached out to clasp Lizzie’s forearm, to squeeze her thank yous since her mouth wasn’t working. Her friend squeezed back her your welcome, and then dragged her beau away. Amelia turned, breath hitching, to face Theresa Chesterley.

The lady advanced on her with slow steps, looking up and down the length of her. As she drank Amelia in, the uncertainty in her smile slowly turned into delight. Hot blood rushed to Amelia’s cheeks, a detail that did not go unnoticed by Theresa. Delight turned into triumph.

“I brought you a book,” she said, lifting it demonstrably and then letting it fall into the grass. “But first, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to do.”

She had stepped close enough that Amelia could feel the lady’s breath on her collarbone. Theresa’s left hand came to rest on Amelia’s side and then slid around to the small of her back. Her right, recently divested of the book, brushed Amelia’s curls aside to graze along her jawline and then further back. Her fingertips finally nestled into the hair above the nape of Amelias neck.

Theresa pulled gently, and Amelia melted.

She lost track of where any particular part of her body was, outside of her lips. Most of the rest of her was pressed up against Theresa, soft skin and quilted cotton against warm wool and generous curves. What was she supposed to do with her hands, what was she doing with her hands? They flopped and flailed and clutched at the backs of Theresa’s shoulders before finally stilling, as if realizing how futile their quest was, because Theresa was holding her in her arms and wasn’t letting go. And their lips—

Theresa had drawn Amelia’s lips down to her own, tasted along their length with the pointed tip of her tongue, and pressed gently, insistently. She opened her lips and Amelia’s parted in unthinking sympathy. Theresa’s tongue teased her wider and then her lips closed around Amelia’s bottom lip; caressed, sucked, pulled.

Amelia squealed. Her knees had suddenly turned to water and she held onto Theresa for dear life.

Her lover broke the kiss with a chuckle, shifting her grip on Amelia to favor stability over caresses. She tipped her head back and considered Amelia’s face for a moment (Amelia thought; her eyes weren’t doing a very good job focusing). Finally she nodded, once, satisfied.

“If anybody comes around the corner of the tent,” Theresa said a moment later, “we’re going to pretend that you’re drunk on punch and I have to hold you upright.”

“Close enough to the truth,” Amelia breathed, marshalling her legs and spine to a very poor rendition of the posture Cordelia had drilled into her. With a final contented sigh, she squeezed Theresa’s upper arm and straightened herself. She looked down at the ground, struggling for something to say. “Um. You mentioned a book?”

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