Chapter 5

5

Night fell; Andrew's work at the inn seemed to stretch endlessly. In reality, everyone in Wedgeford worked and the last person went home well before nine.

It was not late when he got into bed, but his mind would not stop. Nightmares of his younger brother promising to show up and make him an earl in a matter of days danced through his head. When he managed to rid himself of those, his mind turned to Lily, come back to Wedgeford after all these years away. Rest could not be found.

Like many other people, Andrew had a hallowed, time-honored method of getting his brain to quiet down. Masturbation was simple, pleasurable, and more effective than heated milk with honey. Any shame he'd ever had, any childhood fears based on horror stories about hair growing in untoward places… Those had been banished by familiarity.

Tonight, though, the process of masturbation felt different. There were things he often imagined while stroking himself, but today's reality had exceeded tonight's imagination.

He usually thought about Lily. He thought about the freckles on her cheeks, about the way they travelled down her neck to her chest. He thought about the time they'd had together.

Sometimes, he fantasized about her returning to Wedgeford. In his fantasies, Lily's return had always been more personally convenient for Andrew. Lily returned; he would run into her on the street, or she would come to the inn in search of him. Lily would say the sort of things she'd never thought about Andrew, like "I never stopped yearning for you," or "I can't forget the night we had together."

It had technically been an afternoon; in his imagination, she'd always called it a night, even though Lily tended to be precise to a fault. Sometimes, Andrew imagined her looking at him with hungry eyes and commenting on how his muscles had grown.

Andrew should have known that Lily would defy all possible prediction. He had never imagined Lily bounding up to him and announcing, "Andrew, you're an earl."

The truth of her interfered with his nighttime pleasure. He tried to replay one of his normal, preferred scenarios, but he kept thinking back to Lily talking about printing presses, or Lily telling him to go get his earldom.

After the third try, he realized the problem.

He was so used to thinking of Lily as an unreachable impossibility that he'd made up a version of her in his head.

It wouldn't work anymore, not now that she was here. The real Lily was better than the image Andrew had studiously maintained. He couldn't lust after that simulacrum when the actual Lily was so close by.

So, instead of trying to imagine things that would never, ever happen, he thought of what had happened.

He thought of how he had seen Lily that morning, light spangling around her like a halo. He thought of the shock that had run through him—that pained, delicious shock. Of the feeling of her fingers against his as she'd taken his hand to shake it.

He thought of the want he'd felt, the yearning to do more than touch her hand, but to crush her to him.

That was enough to get his blood flowing. Enough to find a deep well of yearning, for Lily in a simple brown travel gown, Lily turning to look at him, flushing as she spoke of a volume of poetry.

His imagination served up not images of Lily in wanton poses, but the vision of her sitting with him at the table, bickering about a story they'd both read in a magazine. He stroked himself to that: to the simple, domestic image of Lily being here, of Lily being his.

God, he wanted her. He wanted her so much. He could feel the pleasure traveling up his spine.

He could imagine rambling with her in the woods, of stopping to steal a kiss from her, of licking his name into her neck.

His hand moved swiftly against his cock. His want burned, needing, bursting in a final flash of pleasure, extinguished all too soon.

Afterward, after Andrew washed his hands and wiped himself off with a cloth, he lay back on his bed and stared up at the dark ceiling.

Being with Lily was a fantasy, as much as any of the others were. But it was a fantasy about Andrew as much as anything else.

What if Andrew were a different person? What if he truly belonged in Wedgeford, body and soul? What if he wasn't an interloper who might have to flee the country if he were discovered?

Whatever his little brother wanted, the earldom was in the hands of his brother's soon-to-be guardian. Mr. Sallet had run the estate for the current earl during his illness, and he would continue to do so still until Alan reached his majority.

Andrew's little brother might say he didn't want the earldom, but he was not in charge. Mr. Sallet was, and Andrew knew what that man had tried to do to his mother.

If Sallet found out Andrew existed, Andrew would be in danger. If Andrew was married, or rumored to be married? If he had so much as a sweetheart?

The man would not risk the chance that the earldom would fall to someone unworthy.

Andrew thought about his imagination, about what he yearned for with Lily. He wanted everything. Then he thought about what he could have: nothing. Slowly, carefully, he imagined packing all his yearning away, stuffing it into a box, and then closing the lid so that none of it could escape.

There was nothing to it. He was going to have to steal that log as swiftly as possible.

It was nine the next morning when the other girls came to call on Lily.

"Girls" wasn't the right word. First, they were accompanied by Mrs. Uchida, and Andrew's mother had a dusting of gray at her temples and a gravitas that would have left even the most brazen of elderly men unwilling to refer to her in such a disrespectfully youthful way.

Second, neither of the women flanking Mrs. Uchida could rightfully be called girls any longer, either. They'd both grown and married.

Seeing them—the mother of the man that Lily had slept with, flanked by his cousin and one of his best friends—was enough to make the fiercest heart quail. Lily stood on the doorstep feeling wildly inadequate and wondering whether they'd come to secretly throw her out.

"Welcome back!" Naomi was one of the only people in Wedgeford smaller than Lily. She beamed at Lily as if they'd been fast friends.

"We've come to welcome you!" Chloe chimed in. She was also smiling.

Everyone was smiling so much. What could it mean?

"That's very kind of you." Lily bit her lip in confusion. She and Naomi and Chloe had all grown up together. Naomi had been a bit younger than Lily; Chloe a bit older. But Chloe had always been inwardly focused, and Naomi and Chloe had been fast friends. Lily had felt something of an outsider to the two of them.

It had, as always, been Lily's fault. She could remember with painstaking clarity the day she'd first met Chloe. The other girl had been much taller than Lily at the time, and she'd seemed painfully serious and dedicated, carrying a little notebook with her everywhere. That had been before she adopted the omnipresent board clip that Lily had heard about in letters afterward.

When Chloe had explained what the notebook was for—tracking what she had to do in a day—Lily had said precisely what was on her mind. She would remember those words afterward with a deep shame, every time she caught a glimpse of Chloe. "Can't you simply remember what you have to do like everyone else?"

She hadn't meant it to sound like a tease or an accusation. She had simply been curious. But the boys had taken it up, and the next thing she knew, someone had stolen the notebook and Chloe had turned red and begun to cry.

Lily had watched with the sinking feeling that it was all her fault. Now the new girl would never like her.

To say that there had been an awkwardness between them ever since was an understatement.

Now Chloe was a duchess.

She did not look like a duchess. Lily even recognized the blue muslin gown she was wearing from before she'd left. She stood there, bearing a steaming bundle.

"Your Grace." Lily bowed, then remembered that women were supposed to curtsey. She tried to convert her bow into a curtsey and ended up almost tripping. "Mrs.… Liu, is it now?"

"None of that." Chloe shook her head briskly. "We're childhood friends. Please. Continue to call me Chloe."

"Oh, good," Lily gasped out, because are we friends? I had no idea! seemed an impolite thing to blurt out in response. "I was never going to remember to keep it up."

"Yes, and you must call me Naomi," said Naomi. "Is ‘Lily' still appropriate?"

"Oh, absolutely!"

Instead of being offended by the claim that Lily would forget Chloe's elevation, Chloe just smiled and held out her linen-wrapped bundle. She handed it to Lily. "Early spring scallion pancakes," she said. "I hope it's not too forward for me to bring them, but I figured you didn't have the essentials for breakfast yet."

"I had foraged some nettle earlier." Lily swallowed. "But…"

"I brought steamed egg." Naomi hefted her own package, a heavier dish, complete with cover. "It's probably a bit mixed by the walk, but it should taste good."

"Soup." Mrs. Uchida nodded at her own clay dish. "Something warming. You were always too cold."

"Thank you," Lily said in confusion. For a moment, the three of them stood there, standing awkwardly, looking at one another. There was an expectant look in Naomi's eyes, and she bounced lightly on her toes.

They had not actually been friends when Lily had left, she reminded herself. This was the kind of gesture that women often made simply for the sake of doing so. But… might it be some kind of overture? And was she supposed to offer something in return?

The correct answer struck right after. "Is there enough for all of us?" she finally asked, about four moments too late. "We could, um, eat together?"

This was the right thing to say; Naomi's look of expectation cleared into a grin. "Of course! And Mrs. Grimsley, too, if she wants to join."

The five women gathered in the kitchen at the table. There weren't enough chairs, so Lily fetched hers from the bedroom and Letta found her sewing stool. Everyone gathered around the table and dished out the steamed egg custard between them.

"Ohhh." Lily took a bite. "Naomi, I had forgotten how good your egg custard is."

Naomi smiled the polite and confident smile of someone who knew how excellent her cooking was.

"We would have been over yesterday," Chloe said, helping herself to a crisp pancake laden with tiny green dots, "but I had something of a label emergency."

" Something of one!" Naomi snorted. "Imagine her entire board clip with nothing but LABELS printed on it."

Lily tore a piece from the scallion pancake. It was hot and flakey, dotted with little green circles from perfectly cut scallion.

"It's true," Chloe said mournfully. "My hands still ache from stamping."

"And still you made scallion pancakes. So much rolling." Lily put a piece in her mouth. "Mmm. It's so good." A thought occurred to her. "Wait. Unless a servant made it?"

Chloe waved a hand. "Cooking is hardly work. Besides, it's a ploy." She pushed a little container of sauce across the table. "Have some Wedgeford Brown."

Lily frowned at it.

"When I first came to Wedgeford," Letta said, "the food was a revelation. I don't know why we eat porridge all the time, when there are such options to be had."

"Go ahead," Chloe urged. "Try it."

Lily dabbed the scallion pancake in the sauce and took a bite. Something vinegary and savory, redolent of soy and sweetness, burst on her tongue.

"Oh." Lily shut her eyes to enjoy the flavors. "Chloe. Your father's sauce has been perfectly refined."

"I know," Chloe said with a little smile. "It is my duty to inflict it on all the residents of Wedgeford. It is named after the village, after all."

"We didn't just come here to bring food," Chloe said. "We came because we, ah…" She glanced at Naomi.

"We have an informal agreement," Naomi said. "We want to make sure that the women in Wedgeford have prospects. We women are the ones that hold Wedgeford together, after all. We have to take care of each other."

Lily paused, mid-chew. When she'd left, they'd all been children. Now, of course, they were both married and responsible adults. No wonder they'd come over. This wasn't an overture at friendliness; it was just duty, to make sure that Lily didn't end up languishing on the parish.

Of course it wasn't friendship. People often didn't mean what they said. "Childhood friends" probably meant that they had sat in the same classroom and nodded at one another occasionally. It didn't imply any real closeness of feeling.

Lily felt her heart sink. "I do have plans for income. But thank you for coming. That's very kind of you." She ripped off another piece of scallion pancake. It should have tasted like dust, but no. It was just as good as the first bite.

"That's good." Mrs. Uchida gave her a gentle smile.

Had Lily made another mistake? Had they come here to offer her employment? Was she offending by refusing? The conversation felt blighted. Lily had likely done something wrong.

For a moment, they ate in silence. This was the part where Lily, if she'd been trained to be a proper woman, would know how to start the conversation. She would ask questions about…about…

What sort of questions was one supposed to ask?

Beside her, Letta Grimsley spoke. "What did you mean, Naomi, when you mentioned a label emergency?"

Like that. That was a good conversation starter. How was it so easy for everyone else?

Chloe cleared her throat. "Just a bit of work to be done yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Naomi turned to her in disbelief. "You had a label emergency for the last week running! You resolved your label emergency yesterday at eleven at night, and then only because I was there with you! You had my husband stamping labels!"

"I had my husband stamping labels, too," Chloe said. "But at least I asked for help!"

Naomi turned to Lily, as if this made sense to her. "It is true. At least she asked for help. We do have to give Chloe that much credit."

"Do we?" Lily breathed.

Chloe made a little face at that. Perhaps that had been the wrong thing to say, too.

Chloe was an absolute mystery to Lily: so deeply organized, with her life laid out on the sheet of paper she attached to her board clip. She knew precisely what she was doing and where she was going. Lily, as a child, had felt something complicated she couldn't identify at the time. She had never known how to approach Chloe and say what she was thinking. Lily was naturally blunt, and never as easily, gracefully feminine as Naomi and Chloe.

Worse than that: Chloe had always made Lily feel inadequate. Before Chloe arrived in Wedgeford, Lily had thought her own deficiencies were because she was raised by her grandfather. Of course Lily didn't know how to put on the performance of femininity that the other girls did; she hadn't the education from her mother. Of course Lily was bad at reading a situation and understanding what was called for. Her parents had perished when she was seven.

Then Chloe had arrived in Wedgeford, and all Lily's self-justifications were revealed to be falsehoods. Chloe had been raised by her father—had no memory of her mother at all—and still she knew how to be a woman, how to start conversations and make food and sew a straight line and take care of other people and look painfully elegant without spending a fortune. All the things that Lily had known she did not understand, Chloe knew innately.

It had become perfectly obvious that the problem was not with how Lily had been raised. Lily was herself the problem, and she didn't know where to start fixing.

But Chloe continued on, as if they were friends having a normal conversation. "I really cannot be blamed here. I hired John Lowe to stamp labels for this month's supply of sauce, but he, ah."

"Decamped," Naomi put in, "without notice, taking all the money Chloe had paid him in advance. At the last moment, and not a label in sight, and no sign of the woodcut she'd been using to stamp her labels."

"Do be fair. We don't know why he left. But… He was not to be found." Chloe pressed her lips together. "So, it has been a bit of a scramble."

"You're stamping labels yourself. By hand." Lily stared at her. "Aren't you a duchess now?" The moment the words were out of her mouth, she winced. Too direct; she wasn't supposed to be so blunt.

But neither of the other women seemed to mind. "Technically, yes." Chloe waved a hand. "And some people have suggested I get the labels printed instead of hand-stamping them, but I wanted to keep the entire project in Wedgeford, as much as possible…"

"When she says ‘some people'," Naomi said, leaning over and pretending to whisper, "she means me, her husband, her cousin… Everyone except her father, who is as stubborn as Chloe herself."

"I am not stubborn." Chloe folded her arms. "I am extremely open to suggestions that align with my moral beliefs."

"I stand corrected." Naomi twinkled across the table at her. "She's not stubborn. She'll do anything, so long as it aligns with her own intransigent values."

They were teasing each other, Lily realized. She'd never been good at understanding the line between good-natured teasing and talk that smacked more of a mean spirit. It was probably best that she not try to engage with it.

"The great label fiasco is behind us," Chloe cleared her throat. "We need not speak of it again."

Lily bit her lip. She wasn't sure if she should say something, lest it turn out wrong, but… "Do you really not want to speak of it?"

Chloe looked at her.

"Because if we could speak for just a little longer, I might tell you that I could print from a woodcut, if you don't mind me shaving it to fit in the press." Lily tapped her fingers against the table nervously. "But woodcuts won't last if you're printing a great many labels. The initial cost would be higher, but I could take a stereotype mold from your woodcut, and then we could make a printing plate from that whenever the old one starts to wear out."

This was met with shocked looks.

"You're getting a printing press?" Naomi seemed almost taken aback. "Where will you put it?"

"Oh, not one of the large ones! It's a quarter-medium foot-powered Gordon jobber press, that…" No, they didn't want to hear details about her press. Nobody ever wanted to hear details about her press. "Did Andy not tell you that?"

"No, he…" Her jaw set for a moment. "He is trying to avoid talking about you to me, if you must know the truth."

Lily's heart sank further. "Is he."

"He's afraid I'll tease him," Naomi said. "He's probably right."

"About me? What reason would you have to tease him about me?"

Naomi and Chloe exchanged longer glances. Mrs. Uchida, who had sat at the table without adding much, coughed delicately into a linen.

"Back to your printing press." Chloe leaned forward. "You told me you had a plan for income. Is this it?"

"I worked in a book bindery in Hong Kong for most of my absence. I can do some book repair, some printing—leaflets, pamphlets, and labels, if you like."

"If I like!" Chloe looked struck. "I'd love it. Tell me how much you'll charge."

Lily winced. "I don't know. How many labels do you need?"

"A thousand a month, this year. Next year, we'll probably need three thousand."

"Good God." Lily stared at her. "You were stamping thousands of labels by hand? The sauce business must be doing extremely well."

"It is." Chloe nodded firmly. "We're delighted. But…" She fixed Lily with a look.

"I know," Lily said. "Wedgeford doesn't have much call for leaflets and book repair. I'd planned to advertise in some of the surrounding villages, of course."

"Of course." There was still a hint of disbelief.

"I have a plan beyond that." This was Lily's first time speaking her plan aloud; she had to sound certain, so they'd believe her dreams were possible. "A few leaflets and the like won't be enough. I intend to print some smaller volumes of poetry." It wasn't impossible to print small books on a quarter-medium jobber press; just tedious.

It was how the business in Hong Kong had thrived for so long, despite the fact that more than half their custom had been technically illegal. Nobody expected a small printing business to be producing books .

"Very Wedgeford stuff," Lily said, not wanting to get into her plan to crack open the possibility of global, universal suffrage with poetry. "The kind that people might buy at the Trials. The material is already planned for the first volume. I'm going to make it work." She stared down at her hands. "I will make it work."

"Of course," Chloe said. "You'll provide me an estimate for the labels?"

"I shall."

The breakfast continued. Lily did her best to answer questions, and at the end, Naomi and Chloe took their leave. Strangely, Mrs. Uchida stayed a moment. She straightened chairs, aligning them perfectly so they were precisely distant from each other, before going to the door.

Lily accompanied her. "Thank you for the soup. It was delicious."

"Lily." Mrs. Uchida took her hands and looked up into her eyes. "I have something to say to you."

Lily felt her breath stop in her lungs. Did Mrs. Uchida know what she and Andrew had done all those years before? Was Lily about to be warned off?

"Letta told me what you did for her," Mrs. Uchida said instead.

"Oh?" Lily blinked. "That?" It had been a small thing, really. Half the women she'd met had awful husbands. "It was nothing, really. Anyone would have done the same."

Mrs. Uchida pursed her lips. "My experience suggests it is different. I know it is unfair to ask a favor of you so quickly."

"Of course." Lily felt puzzled. "Anything."

"My son, Andrew." She glanced at Lily, then quickly looked away. "He is not good at speaking his mind."

"Andrew?" Lily gaped. "But he's always talking."

"I know." Mrs. Uchida shook her head ruefully. "He is not always saying what he means."

Some people who came to Wedgeford made assumptions about Mrs. Uchida because she was small and very, very beautiful. They thought her delicate. Lily knew differently: she had a spine of steel.

"The favor I ask is this: please be patient with him. Someday he will tell you everything."

Lily blinked. "I can't imagine Andrew withholding anything."

"Start imagining," Mrs. Uchida said dryly.

"Of course," Lily agreed in confusion. "If there's something he needs… He's the best person I know. I would never be impatient with him." She stopped, considering this. "Never more impatient than normal, I suppose."

Mrs. Uchida nodded. "When I heard about Letta, about what you'd done for her, I thought… ‘ah, it's too bad I never had a daughter. If I had, I would want her to be like Lily.'"

"Like me?" Lily couldn't help but feel incredibly touched by that. Mrs. Uchida had never given idle compliments, and this one felt near to Lily's heart. The idea that she could be like a daughter to anyone… "It wasn't just me, you know. There was a whole group of us."

"That makes it more admirable, not less." Mrs. Uchida smiled. "Now I'm sure you have much to do. I'll leave."

She did, walking away at a swift pace, bearing the empty clay pot. Lily watched her go in disbelieving silence. Chloe and Naomi, she could understand—they'd had a duty to pay a call on someone they'd grown alongside. But what Mrs. Uchida had said just now? Pride? In a daughter? Women didn't talk about Lily that way.

When she was growing up, they'd sometimes mutter things like "If you were my daughter, I'd?—"

The suggestions about how to manage Lily had often involved punishments, or possibly education. Never pride.

"I just did what anyone would do," she whispered to Mrs. Uchida's receding back. The breeze caught her words, carrying them away.

"Delivery!" Came the shout from the front of the inn.

Andrew knew the courier who typically brought heavy items from Dover; he took the route whenever it was offered because he'd discovered the inn's food.

He poked his head out of the back room. "Ho, Mitchell. How are you this noontime?"

"Very well, very well." The man stretched, arching his back. "Delivery for Bei. Lily Bei. And it's a heavy one. It'll have to be brought in the cart."

"Ah, that'll be the press, then. I'll show you where she is and help you place it."

The man gave him a surprised look. Usually, Naomi took the task of showing him where to bring his deliveries.

"I've never seen a press," Andrew told him. "I'm curious."

And so that was how he conducted the man and his oilcloth-covered wagon through Wedgeford. The moment the cart came into view, Lily dashed out, as if she'd been waiting at the window.

She was wearing a light brown ku, and the cart driver goggled for a moment at the sight of a woman in trousers, even wide-legged ones paired with a loose, embroidered blouse that came to her knees. Lily seemed not to notice his attention.

"It's here!" She vibrated with excitement.

"Very nice to see you again, Lily," Andrew said. "How is your day going?"

She turned to him, giving him a full blast of exhilarated sunshine. "Andy, my printing press is here!"

She swayed from foot to foot in excitement as she signed whatever the man gave her, then helped untie the wagon's oilcloth covering, to reveal a collection of disassembled machinery.

To Andrew's eye, it looked like a rubbish heap: old, obviously used pieces of machinery, tarnished over time and stained black. It also didn't make any sense. He'd imagined what a press would look like: some kind of machine. It would be heavy and clanky and come with a big box of type. This seemed like enough material to make up seven separate things. For instance, there were at least three tables. And that thing near the edge looked more like a furnace than a table.

But Lily just let out a long sigh, clasping her hands in front of her. "What a beauty." She sounded exactly the way the horse-mad lads spoke when a fine stallion came to the inn.

Andrew had always known he would not marry—an earldom lurking in one's blood did that to a man. But if Lily had ever looked at him the way she did that printing press, it would have been a close call. At least, though, when the boys sighed over a stallion Andrew understood what they meant.

"Isn't that…" Andrew tried to figure out a nice way to say it. "Isn't that thing there just a table, disassembled?"

"Oh, no." Lily shook her head. "It's not just a table. That's a beating table."

"It's a what?" He blinked.

"It's for beating," she repeated herself, as if the problem was that he hadn't heard her, instead of not understanding what on earth beating had to do with printing anything. "It's how you make the stereotype molds! First, you need paper, moistened and pasted together with stereotype paste. Then, you?—"

The driver cleared his throat. "Where should I deliver this?"

"Oh." Lily colored. "My apologies. I was distracted."

Distracted. Distracted by…what had she said? Stereotype molds, which apparently needed to be flogged.

If someone had asked him to list the reasons he liked Lily, he would have…

Well, technically he would have laughed and put them off, because his liking was nobody's business but his own. But the thing he most liked about her was how little artifice she had. If she wanted to do a thing, she said so, and she did it. If she liked a thing, she didn't pretend to be indifferent. If she was bored, she would not pretend to attend to what was happening.

Andrew had always held one secret close to his core, embedded deeply in his reality. He was never what anyone believed. And so he appreciated outright honesty, because he could never attain it. Lily was too bright to suppress who she was.

"You know what to do with all this?" the man asked uneasily.

"Oh, yes." She nodded vigorously. "When I purchased it in London, the man disassembled the press in front of me. I took extensive notes. It shouldn't be difficult at all to put back together, I should think, once we get everything into the shed."

"Need any help?" Andrew asked.

"I doubt it. But if you'd like to lend a hand, it shouldn't take more than twenty minutes."