Chapter Twenty

in which sam inherits

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature. —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

For a long, silent moment, nobody moved.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking it was out of respect for the dead. They were all holding their breath, waiting to see if he’d ever take another. After a few moments of staring, I addressed the collected household:

“What a horror,” I said, loud, and slow, and clear. I had no idea where this plan of mine had come from, only that it’d arrived, fully formed, in the instant Lewis’s eyes had rolled up in his head. “What a tragedy, for my dearest Georgie and I to have returned from our walk, only to find a burglar in my bedroom. What screaming there was when the man set upon me, when he beat my darling husband back into the hall, when he fled down the stairs, tripping Georgie on his way. Such a repugnant coward, absconding with half my jewels and stealing my Georgie’s life along with them. How I wailed. How we mourned. And how quickly it was all over. There was nothing we could have done.”

I met the eyes of each and every servant, and one by one, each nodded their agreement to my story. In the front of the crowd, Marigold wrung her hands at her breast and shook, silent tears falling down sunken cheeks, her dark eyes rimmed red. But even she nodded when I turned my eyes to her.

To the nearest maid, I said, “Take Mrs. Kempel into the kitchen, get her some sugary tea. In fact, take everyone in the kitchen, crack a bottle of wine, soothe your nerves. Wait, not you—” I nabbed one of the hall boys by the arm. “You are not old enough to drink, boyo.”

“Am so!” he protested, as everyone shuffled off.

“All the same, off to the police with you. I need to report a crime.”

“Police?”

“The, um, the Bow Street Runners,” I said, dredging up the name from a misty memory of a historical mystery I’d once watched.

“Yes, my lady.” He shot off.

My next instructions were for Susan, who had remained by my side, out of the way of the pool of blood. “My bedroom, the jewels—pick pieces that are easy to break down and pawn.”

“Yes, my lady,” she said, skirting the vile thing on the ground to race upstairs.

“And you,” I said to the only servant who hadn’t met my eyes, hadn’t fled with the others, hadn’t nodded. The butler. I remembered him from my first visit to the house. I remembered his obedience. His collusion. Time to see if it was loyalty or something else. “Where did he keep his legal papers? Contracts, deeds, wills, things like that?”

“There is a strongbox in his study, my lady.”

“Can you open it?”

“I have the spare key.”

“Good. Leave it where it is for now, but I want you to go through his office and make me a list of everyone in his pocket. There had to have been more than just Captain Goodenough. I want everything he had on them, and if he had personal items or revealing documents, I want those too. And their addresses, so I can send it all back with letters ending their indenture.”

The butler, who until then had regarded me with resentful wariness, blinked three times, sucked in a lungful of air, and then burst into tears.

“All of us?” he sobbed.

Oh fuck, he’d been controlling the servants too? Well, of course he had, how else would he have been able to keep staff?

“All of you,” I promised. “And if you want, you’ll be released to find other positions with hefty bonuses and only the most glowing of character references.”

Before he could say more, there was a knock on the door.

He let in the hall boy and a huffing constable, red faced from running. The constable’s complexion promptly turned greenish as he came face to face with the gruesome tableau. With a shaking cry, I collapsed on the steps behind me, hands covering my face, and burst into tears that were only partially faked.

I’d had a traumatic day, okay?

Susan came barreling back down the stairs, all “My poor mistress,” and “Yes, ma’am,” and “Let me get you some brandy, Mrs. Lewis!”

And I clung to her, and buried my face in her neck, and wailed.

Okay, yeah, so maybe I was laying it on thick. But the shock and the realization had finally set in.

I had, effectively, committed murder.

I mean, was it premeditated?

No.

Did I mean to hurt Lewis?

Yes.

Did I regret it?

I didn’t know.

Susan got me up and into the bedroom, which certainly looked like it had been rifled—chair toppled, vanity ransacked, jewelry box overturned. I couldn’t have told the Runner whether or not anything was actually missing—I hadn’t owned the stuff long enough to know the catalog of its contents by heart—but Susan could. Obviously.

I sat on the end of the bed and dabbed my face with a handkerchief while the constable asked me questions about the burglar and the mark on my face. Susan clucked over me, saying how awful it was to watch the ruffian to lay hand on her mistress, how dare a gentlewoman be struck so, which sent the Runner into tizzies of indignation and boy, was I glad that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hadn’t been born yet.

More Runners showed up, tailed by an enterprising undertaker who asked if we’d hired anyone to furnish the funeral yet (wow, talk about ambulance chasers), and the next few hours became a blur of tears and brandy.

By the time the Runners and the undertaker had cleared out, dusk had fallen. Someone had scrubbed the steps and removed the body. I was told it was customary for the dead to be washed, dressed, and laid out in their own home for final good-byes, but even the grim-faced butler didn’t want the old bastard hanging around and stinking up the place. He had bid the undertaker remove the master, to spare the mistress’s nerves.

Mistress.

Mistress of the house.

That was me now.

Never mind that we had never consummated the marriage, that I’d never said I do or signed the parish register, he’d made certain that in the eyes of society and the law I was his wife. And now I was his widow.

“Well, my lady,” Susan said as we saw the last Runner out the door. “That was quite well done, indeed. Now, if you don’t mind, you should eat something. Get up your strength for the trials to come.”

“That’s thoughtful of you, Susan,” I said, and meant it. “I’ll follow you to the kitchen, we can make sure everyone gets their fill there.”

“Oh no, my lady,” Susan said. “I mean, yes, I’ll ensure the household is looked after. But what I mean, ma’am, is that I took the liberty of requesting a light supper for you and your guests, to be served in the formal parlor.”

“Guests? What guests?”

“Mrs. Kempel’s family has arrived. They’re in the private dining room past the kitch—”

I was down the hall like a shot, skidding on the tiles still damp from cleaning, and through the crowded kitchen where the staff startled apart like a flock of pigeons, to the back parlor. Along with the corpse, it appeared that a handful of the servants had also vanished. I hoped they had thought to take as much portable wealth as they could stuff in their pockets. They bloody well deserved it.

I skidded over the threshold to the dining room and came to a sudden halt when just one person was there to greet me. She had her back to me but I knew the golden curl that tumbled out of her cap and danced along her nape as surely as I knew my own heartbeat. Then she turned around, and I was struck full force by the look of desperate relief in a beautiful pair of moonstone eyes.

“Daisy.” My voice crackled, tight and dry. The world, which had been shifting like ship’s decking under my feet since Lewis had appeared in the park, went still. Grounded. The vague burning ache that had lived behind my heart for months was quenched by the way her smile curled at the corner of her mouth.

“Sweet Pea,” she whispered back. She threw herself against me, and enveloped me in an embrace so fierce I toppled into the door, slamming it shut behind us.

Daisy buried her face against my neck and breathed deep. I turned my own face into the side of her head, inhaling the lingering perfume of her rosemary hair treatment, clutching hard at her back.

Something inside me swelled, something hot and wet pooling low in my stomach, my heart fluttering against my rib cage. Daisy pulled back, lifted a gloved hand, and ran the palm over my cheek, her thumb along my bottom lip.

Then she pinched my bruised cheek hard.

“Ow!” I pushed her away and cradled my smarting face. “What was that for?”

“I thought you were lost!” Daisy hissed at me, lashes spiking with tears. I had hoped that the sparkle had been tears of relief, but maybe they were anger. “I thought you . . . come upon the town!”

“Come a what now?”

“For heaven’s sake. You left with no money and I had no inclination of how you could have supported yourself if not for the, the worst of . . . my imagination ran rampant, Sam, and I was awake every night imagining horrible, wretched—”

“I’m already ‘ruined,’ Daisy,” I said, unable to help the ridiculous goofy grin that just being back in presence brought out. “You made a pretty thorough job of that.”

“I thought you a prostitute ,” she snapped, peevish with my attempt at lightness. “And not the well-kept kind! And when it came out that you had run away to London with the Cooper lad to be married . . . to believe that you had cast me aside with such speed!”

“I’m sorry.” I cupped her face in my hands, gazing into her face with all the earnest emotion I could muster. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“You left ,” Daisy said, chin wobbling, sweet rosebud mouth turning down, until she heaved a breath and broke into full-body sobs. “You left me. You left me .”

“I’m sorry, I should have—”

“Why didn’t you stay? Why didn’t you stay and fight with me? Fight for me?”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to,” I admitted, running my thumbs over her cheeks as she kneaded my waist like a kitten. “I thought I was doing what was best for you.”

“Who are you to decide that?”

“History says—”

“Oh dash your history!” Daisy cried, and mashed her mouth inelegantly but passionately against mine. She wept, and gasped, and kissed me over and over, fingers restless on my sides, my neck, gentle around the wound on my upper arm that still throbbed from Lewis’s cruelty. “A pox on history! I care nothing for legacies, or futures, nor the opinions of others. All that matters is that you make me happy, and I would like to return the favor, for the rest of my life.”

“I’m sorry. I want that too,” I said, sliding the words between her lips. “But—”

“But?”

“Why?” I asked, running my fingers through her hair.

“You have the confounding habit of esteeming yourself quite highly in one moment and then expressing your certainty that you fall short of every mark of a good person and amiable friend in the next. I do wish you would do me the courtesy of believing me when I tell you that you are enough to make me happy. I’m beginning to be insulted by your lack of faith in my ability to know my mind and happiness.”

I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “Yeah, okay, but you’re still Margaret Goodenough and I’m . . . not .”

“Not?”

“ Good enough.”

Daisy reared back, pushing hard against my chest to stare down at me, agog.

“You daft creature. Not good enough?”

“Repeating my question isn’t an answer, babe,” I murmured.

“Because you are as infuriating as you are fascinating. You were a puzzle at first, yes, I will admit that my first stirrings of attachment came from the thrill of unraveling your mysteries.” She pecked a kiss off my lips and went on. “Then I suppose it was merely proximity and convenience—I’d never met another woman who desired her own sex before, and I wanted you simply because I might be able to have you. I thought I was not destined for love, yet you, you loved me so quickly and so fiercely that I came to understand that what I mistook for a divine flaw was instead a sublime blessing. But beyond that . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Samantha.” She tipped herself forward, pressing me back into the door with the weight of her adoration. “You are clever, and kind, and encouraging. Your laughter fills a room and your anger at injustice causes my breast to surge with pride. You have rectified something within me which I thought irreparable. You cradled my broken heart in your tender hands and showed me that what I thought was shattered glass were, in truth, diamonds. You have healed me in a place where I did not know I was wounded. Oh, my love, don’t weep—”

“M’not,” I snuffled, literally moved to tears. Heat prickled along my cheeks. “I just . . . you’ve, uh, you’ve healed me too. I mean, with the . . . you really think I’m enough?”

“Yes.”

“And that I’m not too much?” I burbled. “I know I can come on too strong, and I’m opinionated, and soapboxy, and—”

Obnoxious , the voice that was Dahlia’s sneered.

“And my perfect match,” Daisy chuckled, gentle and adoring, and cupped my face in her hands. She arched her thumbs gently across my wet cheeks, brushing away the tears. “Where I am cerebral, you shall draw me with your passion. Where you are ornery, I shall gentle you.”

I wrapped my arms around her wrists, not to pull her hands away, but to keep them there. Forever, if I could. “Sounds nice,” I said, the bland word not at all consuming enough for the blossoming nebula of hope flaring behind my breastbone. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“Oh, my Sweet Pea, how can you doubt that I love you when just being near you gives me breath, and fighting with you fills me with fire, and defending you grounds me, and loving you cradles me in the sweetest waters? When your face fills my imagination when I close my eyes, and I hear only your heartbeat in the pauses between my own?”

Shit. That’s what I get for falling for a writer .

“I missed you, Daisy.”

“I missed you so much, Samantha Franklin.”

“Lewis,” I corrected, and Daisy startled, eyes wide with understanding and despair. “Mrs. Lewis,” I repeated, with a wry, self-deprecating thinning of my lips. “Widowed, of course.”

“You are free of him!” Daisy said with slowly expanding delight. She stepped back to allow me space with a handkerchief she produced from her sleeve. It smelled wonderfully of violets. “Your new circumstances are to be envied. You are released by the expectations of society, just as you wished! You now wield all the liberty and power of a wealthy widow.”

Her phrasing struck my insides like lightning. Every short hair stood at attention, goose bumps racing up my spine, my scalp shivering. I pushed her to arm’s length, swallowed hard against my shock, and in a small voice, entreated her: “Say that again.”

“Your circumstance is to be envied?”

“No, the bit at the end. The—”

“You are a wealthy widow.”

“No,” I breathed. My grin stretched so wide I thought it might split my heart in two. But that was okay—half of it was Daisy’s anyway. It’d just make it easier to give it to her. “I’m the wealthy widow.”

“I do not understand the significance of emphasizing the definitive article—”

I dragged her back in for a joyous, messy kiss.

“Sweet Pea.” Daisy laughed, reeling away when we both came up for air. “What are you—”

“All this time!” I crowed, turning us in a circle, punching the air in glee. “All this time I thought I was standing between you and your destiny, and it turns out I am your destiny!”

“Your opinion of yourself is certainly high!” Daisy teased.

I reeled her back in. “Margaret Goodenough was supported for the entirety of her creative career by a patron known only as the Wealthy Widow. All the history books say so. Nobody knew who she was, nobody could trace her origins, or family, or lineage. She just appeared in the authoress’s life one day and made her publishing dreams come true.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Daisy asked, wonder spilling across her expression. “Mary told us everything about horrible Lewis, and my contract.”

“Fun fact,” I said, reaching into my stays to pull out a bundle of fold-worn papers. “Did you know that when a man with the controlling shares of a business dies with no issue and no heirs the shares pass into the trust of his widow for his future children?”

“But you’re not pregnant,” Daisy gasped, reaching for the contract. I let her take it, watching proudly as she unfolded it with trembling fingers.

“Something that no one else needs to know until I’ve figured out how to exert full control.”

“Oh, Sam! My book—” She slipped the contract back into my stays, using the excuse to feel me up deliciously. “I’ve worked so dedicatedly on it, I’ve improved it immensely, everyone has said so. I wrote a new scene the night we fought. The night you—”

Left .

“I’ve carried it with me, the first draft of the scene I wrote for you, every day since,” she said, turning away to where her reticule and bonnet sat on a chair. “Will you read it?”

“Of course.”

She retrieved a folded square of paper and flicked it open for me.

I read it aloud: “‘And, with infinite patience and tenderness, Jane reached for Mariana’s hand, pressed between her palms the fingers of her very dear friend, and kissed her not on the cheek, but on the soft sweet bud of her . . .’ Oh, Daisy, this is—” I cleared my suddenly tight throat, blinked back the heat prickling at the back of my eyes, giving this paragraph the dignity it deserved; the weight of the history it was about to make.

“Go on,” Daisy urged, back ramrod straight, hands balled in her skirts, waiting. Hoping.

I swallowed hard, throat clicking, blood fizzing.

“‘And kissed not her cheek, but the soft sweet bud of her mouth.’”

My heart flittered like a dove behind my ribs, my breath coming fast.

One of the most famous kisses in the history of English literature and here I was, someone who’d nearly failed grade twelve lit, reading it aloud for the first time.

Ever.

I didn’t fuck it up , I thought, the realization rushing through me like a tidal wave, leaving me breathless with shock and nauseated with how quickly relief unspooled every tight-wound anxiety I clutched.

“Good news,” I warbled around the mass of feels clogging my throat.

“Oh?”

“Your publisher loves it.”

Daisy threw back her head and laughed, her whole body shaking with delight.

I folded up the page and slipped it into my stays beside the contract.

“I’m so proud of you,” I told her, fair choking with it. “You finished it and you submitted it. I was afraid that I’d made you hate it. Why did you keep going?”

“Because I thought it would bring you back to me.”

“What?”

“I thought that if I could finish my revisions, if I could find a publisher, if it was displayed in a bookshop window and you were to walk by it one day, you would see it, see my name on the cover, think of me, perhaps even miss me, perhaps even return to me.”

I kissed her then, hoping she could read all the gratitude and pride I felt for her in it. I thought she might have, because when we parted she licked her kiss-swollen lips and sighed. “I love you.”

“I love you ,” I replied, at once. My heart flipped over in my chest, beating like a jackrabbit behind my ribs. I was just ass-over-tits, disgustingly, inescapably in love. I was fucked with it. And I couldn’t be happier.

“If I could,” she said softly, words a choked croak, her palms sweating in my hands, “I would ask you something, my love.”

“Ask me anyway,” I dared her.

Apparently deciding to go the full nine yards, she dropped onto one knee.

“Marry me,” she whispered. “Spend the rest of your life with me, Sweet Pea. Please.”

I always thought it looked silly, the way people covered their mouths as soon as they were proposed to. Yet I caught myself clapping my palm across my face, mostly to keep back the squeal of surprise and delight.

My past was dead.

This past was all there was.

And I planned to grab it with both hands.

“Yes,” I blurted, hiccupping the words. The room was shimmering, dancing, and I realized it was because I was looking down at Daisy through tears. “I love you,” I said again.

“Then kiss me,” Daisy growled, tugging herself up. The rough demand of it made my knees turn to jelly, but luckily she was there to catch me. “Kiss me.”

I obliged.

“Shall we have a wedding night?” Daisy asked when we’d paused for breath, her gaze heated under the lace of her golden lashes. It staggered me, as if she’d hit me directly in the sternum.

“Heck, yeah. Now?”

Daisy laughed. “After supper. I’m not sure how much longer Marigold can delay Finch and Eliza in the garden.”

“Tease,” I accused.

“I am the one who proposed,” she pointed out. “I am, as you are wont to say, ‘a sure thing.’”

I lifted her left hand and pressed my mouth to her bare ring finger.

“My wife,” she murmured. “I will buy you a ring with the sale of my first book.”

A thumping on the door behind me interrupted what I was going to say next, and from the other side of the door, Finch bellowed, “Are you quite finished?”

“Finch, dear!” Eliza scolded him.

“What? I’m hungry, Edelweiss,” he whined theatrically. “Our supper is locked in there with them—”

I wrenched the door open so quickly that Finch near tumbled into the room. He caught himself on the jamb and immediately looked me up and down. Ensuring I was unharmed. His gaze then lingered on my kiss-red mouth, my messy hair, and he smirked.

“Edelweiss?” I scoffed. “It’s actually longer than Eliza, how is that a nickname? You Goodenoughs and your—oof.”

Finch wrapped me in a hug tight enough that my feet came clear off the floor.

“Put her down, dearest,” Eliza tutted, bustling past us to go straight for the buffet on the side table. “Come eat.”

My eyes caught on the balloon of her belly under her dress, just barely noticeable when she was in profile to us, and she caught me looking. She smiled, and I offered her an impressed head-tip back. Girl knew what she wanted and didn’t waste time. I could admire that about my new sister-in-law.

Marigold followed them in, drawn and shaken, and Daisy took her under an arm and fussed until we were seated at the small table with our plates and wine.

“I wanted to thank you, Samantha,” Eliza said, laying her hand on Finch’s. In the glint of the candlelight her wedding band winked gold.

“For?” I asked. Not to be obtuse or to fish for compliments, but because I wasn’t sure what was known by whom.

“Exonerating Finch,” Elizabeth said. “And for helping him settle his debts and escape Lewis when he had . . . had . . .”

“I rather threw you to the wolf,” Finch said, staring down at his lap, shamed.

“But you pulled me back out of his jaws when it mattered,” I pointed out. “So I forgive you.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, and smiled ruefully. “I am happy to see you well, and returned to us . . . Mrs. Lewis,” he offered.

“I am happy to be returned, Captain Goodenough,” I replied, smiling gently.

“Yes. Yes, of course, Mrs. Lewis. Only I am so confused about . . .” Marigold trailed off and slumped back into her chair, defeated by her own nerves and the dictates of polite society. She hiccupped a sob and turned her head away, pressing her palm to her mouth.

“Finch has told her everything,” Daisy said, reaching around to rub her sister’s back soothingly. “About the airplane, about the future . . .”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s fine. That’s great, actually. I’m glad I don’t have to hide that from you. Are we telling Iris too?”

“No!” both Finch and Daisy shouted in harmony.

Eliza and I laughed, but Marigold looked determined to say something. “Samantha—”

“I forgive you,” I said quickly, saving her the mortification. “You were mad, you were protecting Daisy. I get it. I mean, it was a shitty thing to do, but I understand why .”

“It was for her sake and hers alone I acted,” Marigold sniffled. Then she sat up, firming her resolve. “And I want her to remain happy, Mrs. Lewis. By any means necessary.”

“You don’t have to make me sound like a terrorist.” I couldn’t help my smirk at her surprised gust of laughter.

“I will endeavor to do my best,” Marigold said. “To behave as a sister, and friend, ought.”

“Thank you. And,” I added, with a glance at Daisy. She dipped her chin to give her consent. I laid my hand over hers on the tabletop, a mirror to Eliza and Finch. “You better get used to this. I’m not going anywhere. Not ever again.”

With an expression that dared her siblings to comment, Daisy took up my hand, and kissed the back of it.

“It’s true?” Eliza asked with compassionate curiosity.

“It is. Samantha is my wife, and I am hers,” Daisy said determinately, despite the shake in her voice.

“I want there to be no tension between any of us,” I entreated. “I love your sister, Marigold, Finch. I’d like to love you all like a sister-in-law.”

“We are . . . what’s that word you used, Sweet Pea? Ah, yes, sapphic. Lesbian. Of Lesbos,” Daisy mused, chewing on the term. “How delightful, to be known by the pen of another authoress. Sappho of Lesbos.”

“I guess that makes me Samantha of Toronto,” I teased. “And you, Margaret of London?”

“Heavens no.”

“Of Southampton?” Fenton asked, but with no real hope in his voice.

“No.”

“And not of Bath?” Marigold added.

“Decidedly not. Perhaps Margaret and Samantha of Tintagel. I’ve heard life is calm there, the coast ruggedly picturesque, and the village quite without nosey, gossiping crowds.”

“Boggle,” I laughed. At Daisy’s raised eyebrow I said, “I’ll explain later.”

“And you will retire there, together . . . as wives?” Marigold said, struggling with it, but, I think, ultimately just happy to see Daisy happy. “As lesbians.”

“Well, Daisy’s a lesbian,” I said, shooting them playful finger-guns. “I am, as someone once put it, obnoxiously bi.”

Of course, then I had to explain what that meant.