Chapter Eighteen
Jo
If it weren’t obvious all through the appointment, Jo knew for sure that Emily was upset when she agreed to take a hackney to Miss Withers’s instead of arguing the benefits of a bracing walk through town.
“What happened in there, exactly?” Jo asked as they clopped and jostled along through traffic. She’d have liked to use the excuse to settle an arm around Emily’s shoulders and whisper about the indulgences they could get up to once they made their required appearance at Miss Withers’s dinner table. But that steely, sharp quality had returned to the edges of Emily’s posture, and the distinctly untouchable air around her was back in full force. It was hard to believe she’d been snuggling up and kissing the back of Jo’s neck on the staircase not minutes before it all went sour. “Can you tell me?”
Emily did not look away from the window’s view of the passing street. “What happened in the appointment, you mean? When I took Miss Garcia into the room for her exam? Everything went fine.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jo said, unsure whether Emily was being obtuse on purpose. “You seem pissed off.”
The impolite word got her attention at least, if only for a moment before she looked back out the window.
“That,” Emily said, “is not the name of a state that I’m familiar with personally.”
Jo wasn’t sure she even knew what that meant. “Will you tell me what—?”
But she was cut off as the carriage jerked to a stop on Miss Withers’s street, and Emily grasped the doorhandle like a convict who’s spotted her chance to make a getaway.
Jo all but chased Emily up the steps to the Society House, where they were let in before she could make any headway in the confusing situation. What had she done wrong? And if whatever she’d done was so bad, why didn’t Emily just give the full force of her considerable wrath? Jo could take that well enough, but this? Emily speed-walking through the halls, giving clipped greetings to Miss Withers and the staff, heading for the staircase as if Jo were not behind her at all? This was confusing as hell, and Jo didn’t know what to do with it.
Emily’s steps were clipped and efficient as ever. By the time she got to the drawing room, Jo couldn’t bring herself to keep chasing. She did, at least, keep from shouting something along the lines of well,go on and fuck off then! which was a small victory that Miss Withers came to celebrate with her a moment later.
“Was it The Beast?” Miss Withers asked with a knowingly cocked brow, using the nickname that Jo gave for Paul to her friends who did not know him.
Jo’s mind raced back. Emily had gone quiet right around the time she was introduced to Paul. Sure, the unexpected encounter was awkward, but not outside of what she’d probably expect from a husband and wife who’d taken other lovers. They hadn’t argued or discussed anything personal, and against all odds he hadn’t said anything scandalous. In fact, he was as friendly as ever and far less scandalous than usual. He’d long been able to treat a woman as an equal, and hadn’t said anything that seemed to question Emily’s capabilities as a doctor. Absolutely on his best behavior, really, as he’d been more often than not since he’d found out he would be a father.
“Yeah, but he didn’t say anything iffy,” Jo said, putting her hat on the rack and giving it an anxious spin on its hook. “It’s not what I planned on, but it wasn’t a disaster, either. Or so I thought.”
Miss Withers looked at Jo as if she’d suggested inviting the bloke to dinner (and Miss Withers really didn’t like having blokes over for dinner).
“What?” Jo asked defensively.
“He didn’t have to say anything in particular,” Miss Withers said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “In fact, if he was less beastly than anticipated it might have made it worse.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you tell her what is going on between the two of you?” Miss Withers’s eyes widened at the way Jo’s nose wrinkled. “Jo, have you even told her you aren’t living there right now?”
“Well, not exactly,” Jo admitted.
Miss Withers shook her head grimly. She sat Jo down on the chaise, then went to pour some of the Irish whiskey she kept on the liquor cart mostly for Jo’s benefit. She handed it to Jo and sat down, waiting until Jo had taken a mystified sip of the burning liquid before speaking.
She patted Jo’s leg in a bracing way and said, “You’ve really bungled it, dear.”
While Miss Withers felt that Jo could use the fortification before she went upstairs (“and perhaps a bit of food in your belly as well?”), the last thing Jo needed right now was to stop for a snacking session and then go up smelling of strong spirits. With a frustrated sigh, she climbed the staircase.
It was so tempting not to right this wrong she’d done. To take Emily’s bad reaction—which Jo thought was overblown, in spite of Miss Withers’s opinion—as proof that this whole thing was doomed anyway.
She found the door to Emily’s room still open a crack, like she’d been too frustrated to bother closing it properly. Jo nudged it another inch and peeked inside. Emily was brushing off her traveling dress like it had done her grievous wrong. The rest of her things were tidily—almost militaristically—laid out on the bed beside her open valise.
Maybe if Emily had been sitting and moping up here, Jo would have continued to think it wasn’t worth sorting this out. But Emily’s bottled-up energy, so fascinating and beautiful in its way, hissed out with every smack of bristles on wool, her hair frizzing like steam around her ears and forehead. The sight of it filled Jo with affection like nothing she’d ever experienced.
She couldn’t just let Emily walk away. She had to try.
Jo opened the door and leaned against the frame. “Going somewhere?”
Emily kept her eyes trained on her task. “I’ve had second thoughts about my continued presence here.” All that tight, buttoned-up-ness returned to her voice, like the delighted laughs and wanton gasps had all been some absinthe-fueled dream of Jo’s. “I should have stayed with my brother from the beginning. I apologize for my presumptuousness.”
“Emily, will you please talk to me about this?”
“About what?” Such crisp words, emphasized by harsh strokes of the brush.
“About how you’re panicking after meeting Paul?”
The poor dress took a swatting worthy of a flogging brothel. “I am not panicking after meeting Mr. Smith.”
“Oh,” Jo snapped, crossing her arms as her patience wore very thin. “Then I’ll just go then. Leave you to it. Never see you again.”
“Alright. Farewell.”
Jo groaned, hating to have her bluff called. “Emily!”
At last, Emily looked up, face closed off, but eyes shining. “I am not panicking after meeting ‘Paul,’ Jo, because I was never introduced to him in the first place.”
Jo blinked that in for a moment, anger starting to flare in her own chest. “Why are you being so rigid about these manners all of a sudden?”
“Manners aren’t the problem.”
“Then what the devil is the problem?”
“You!” she snarled, beating at the dress again. “You are the problem.”
“I don’t—”
“You let me make a complete” she smacked the skirt “bloody” another whack “fool of myself this morning.”
Jo had no idea what she was talking about. “A fool?”
“Threatening to drag you around to my silly events that you don’t care about,” she snapped. “Making you talk to my father like it mattered whether you got along. Imagining the lot of us traipsing about town like a family when you are clearly not interested in reciprocating.”
“Reciprocating?” said Jo. “And how exactly am I supposed to do that? I don’t have a family.”
“Then what, pray tell, do you call an entire bloody husband?”
“As I’ve told you before, I call him a technicality.”
“No, you don’t!”
Jealousy. Was that the thing spurring all this on? Bollocks, of course it was. That was why Jo preferred never to mention her husband at all, let alone let a lover meet him. She’d bungled it indeed.
“I have never, not for one day of my life, loved him like I—” Jo cut herself off, biting down hard on words that had obviously not come from her brain. “He doesn’t matter, Emily—”
“Since when, exactly, has that sort of love determined the value of a marriage?” Emily asked. “Of course he matters. If he didn’t matter, you’d either be lying to him like Tansy Wickersham or you’d have deserted him properly and run off on your own. Especially now that he’s got a baby on the way. Why on earth would you continue inserting yourself into the fate of his paramour and child if he didn’t matter to you?”
“I’m not even living there anymore,” Jo snapped, pointing toward the door, down the hall to the room she’d taken, where a small assortment of her things was still sitting in crates that Miss Withers covered with silk scarves to make them less of an eyesore. “I’m staying here.”
Emily’s face grew concerned. “Did they force you to leave?”
“No.”
“They implied it would be best, though?”
Jo squeezed her eyes shut guiltily. “No.”
“I know you enjoy a foray into the quaint these days, Joey. But your own home seems a lot better suited to you.” She glanced around at the flowery, frilly décor of the Orchid and Pearl bedroom. “I was thinking the moment I walked in how perfect that house was for you. Why leave?”
Why?Paul had asked her that too, the night she’d done it. Pointing round at the life they’d built, the shelves they’d filled, the safety and comfort they’d secured after so many years of struggle. She hadn’t been able to answer him, when he’d asked.
But when it came from Emily, it seemed, she couldn’t do anything but blurt it out fully:
“Because I don’t know what else to do,” she said, voice almost pleading. “You have to understand. I have been forced to start my life fresh over and over again. It’s all I know. Vanessa and this baby...they’re a new chapter. And...and the fact is... I’m not a good writer, Emily.”
The silliness of the words was reflected on Emily’s incredulous face. “I didn’t realize you wanted to be a writer.”
“That’s not what I mean. I just...” She laughed at herself. “I’m a bookseller. Bookbinder. Printer. I read a lot. I know a good story. I know that good stories don’t close every single chapter in one place, only to open the next in a whole other country, with whole other characters, and a new name for the hero while they’re at it. But that’s what I’ve done. I don’t want to leave the life I’ve made this time. I fucking love the shop. I’m comfortable in our house for now, and if I was going to leave it, I’d rather it be because I’d found something better, than because I had to run. And yes, I’m content with my marriage for what it is, even if it makes things complicated sometimes. I suppose that’s why I haven’t fully done it yet, why I can’t bring myself to actually move everything out and find a real room for myself. But I don’t know what else to do. That’s why...it’s why when he didn’t end up kicking me out; I had to do the job myself, alright? It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. But I couldn’t seem to help it.”
“What do you think will happen?” Emily asked. “If you stay and see how it goes, for as long as it seems to be working for you?”
“I’m afraid... I don’t know.” All of this felt foolish now that she was saying it aloud, but Emily looked so earnest and kind that she couldn’t help but go on. “It feels like whatever our life had been before would just...stick around, somehow, make it awkward, or—”
“Haunt you?” Emily provided. “Like the ghost of your old life would still be there?”
Jo brightened slightly at the aptness of her simile. “Exactly! Maybe you have more of a future in literature than I do.”
Based on the way her nose wrinkled, that was a little too decadent for poor Emily to even consider.
“And these ghosts of old lives,” she went on when she’d recovered from the notion. “Do they really not follow you? When you pack up and leave? Are you as free of them as you’d like to be?”
Jo shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “I’m stuck with them anyway. I just feel a bit better about them.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
“Why?” Jo asked rather sharply. The harshness of it might have scared someone else off, but not Emily.
“Because, Jo. It’s like I said.” She smoothed the wrinkles out of the union suit she’d been preparing for her suitcase a moment ago. “I want to expand our interactions beyond the page and our walks and the society house. Let you see something about how I am in the day-to-day matters. It is certainly a step in that direction, to spend a Sunday with your companion’s family. I thought you might want that too, but now I... I’m not sure if there’s room for me, among all your ghosts.”
Well, that made sense, didn’t it? No wonder Emily was disturbed to have been introduced to Jo’s husband—her family, in all its technical, uncommon glory—like it was nothing. Jo had treated the situation like there was nothing profound going on at all, while Emily was actively trying to make a real connection between her flight of fancy with Jo and the structures of her normal life. The problem wasn’t jealousy over Paul, or even their odd, convenient companionship; it was the way Jo had let her temporary anger with him cause her to introduce Emily like a professional outsider. A doctor. A person to work with and look up to.
Not at all like someone who mattered, being introduced to one of the most important people in Jo’s life.
Jo gently took the folded garment out of Emily’s hands and put it into the valise. Then she put the whole thing on the floor so she’d have room to sit on the end of the bed. She patted the quilt beside her. Emily looked a bit skeptical, so Jo moved the rest of the unfolded clothes to the floor as well, clearing the bed entirely before she patted it again.
“Come on, Emily. There’s room for you,” she said, hoping it was clear she didn’t just mean space on the mattress. “I admit, we haven’t been at this long enough to know if it would be a comfortable fit. I don’t know if this is where you really want to be. But I do know there’s room. Plenty of room. An enormous empty space in my life, actually,” she added, so rapidly and unplanned that the uncomfortable words surprised even herself. “That’s what this baby is showing me. There’s an empty space. While Paul never occupied it, his shadow was at least near enough to obscure it, until he wandered a bit too far to the side in search of his own happiness, and couldn’t hide it from me any longer.”
Emily paused, then sat reluctantly next to Jo with her arms crossed and her gaze trained on the carpet. “That’s very poetic.”
“Like I said. I read a lot.” Jo shrugged. “Be careful with that, or next thing you know you’re thinking in metaphors and analyzing innocent people’s handwriting.”
“You never did tell me what you really saw in my handwriting,” Emily muttered to the rug. “I knew you were lying, at the time.”
“The real answer was inappropriate. I had to lie.”
“Not anymore,” Emily said. “Nothing you can say would be more inappropriate than the things we’ve done now.”
Sentiments like that could be poisoned with regret, but not this time. Emily’s voice was full of clear reverence for what they’d “done.”
“Low descenders indicate an amorous fixation,” Jo said quietly. “High ascenders, on the other hand, indicate a mental one.”
“What if someone has both?”
“That indicates to me that they’re probably pretty tired.”
Emily pursed her lips, not in irritation, but like she was trying to keep a smile off her face.
“What’s the situation with him, Jo?” she asked at last. “You say you’re happy enough, living with him.”
“Yes,” admitted Jo. “It’s a habit by now, though to be honest, it’s not something we’ve reassessed the joy of very recently. You can tell by the state of the shelves that we haven’t changed anything in a while. I lost that book I mentioned to you, the one with the remedies, because it’s been so long since we went through anything that I can’t seem to figure out where it wound up.”
“You’re certain you lost it, then?”
“I’m hoping it’s still on the shelves somewhere, and it’s just that neither of us has been able to spot it yet. They’re a mess, totally disorganized, as you might expect from bookmakers who never bothered getting any aspect of their lives sorted out properly.” She smiled sadly. “I’m not holding out a lot of hope, though. It wouldn’t be the first thing I’d managed to lose in life.”
“How’d you meet him?”
Irritation that they’d gotten back on the real subject coasted through Jo. She hated talking about this. There was something embarrassing about the fact that she’d married, that she’d not been as introspective and independent as someone like Miss Withers or even Emily herself in that regard. It was the image she cultivated, but that was really just a lie to cover up a truth that seemed inappropriate within the life she wanted to live.
But Emily wasn’t demanding that she destroy what she’d built simply because it wasn’t perfect. All she was asking for was a bit of space within it.
No one had ever shown any interest in taking Jo as she was. She’d never let a woman close for fear she’d find out about Paul, and the few who’d slipped past her defenses had let her know in no uncertain terms that she had to make a decision. And yet here was perhaps the first woman she’d ever met who seemed worth throwing it all away for, and she wasn’t demanding that.
She deserved the truth.
“Well,” Jo started slowly, trying to decide where to begin. Fuck it. Begin at the beginning, you bloody coward. “I got here, to London, when I was seventeen.”
“Why’d you come?”
“Ran away,” said Jo as lightly as possible. “I was a bit of a hellion, as you might be able to imagine, and after my gran passed, my parents came to the conclusion that I was possessed by bad spirits. They’d never been what you’d call gentle sorts, but once that idea took hold, they turned on me. They’d see me cured of my demons whatever it took, and let’s just say the treatments suggested by the priest and some of the old women in town weren’t things I was terribly keen on.”
She let it fall like a joke, though of course, it wasn’t. Not at all. Emily seemed to understand that, because she did not laugh.
“So I ran off. I had big ideas about what London would be like, but discovered pretty quickly that my fantasy of working in some swanky city restaurant or theater was delusional. London was nowhere near the refuge I’d built it up to be; the spots I could afford were filthy, unwelcoming, and honestly frightening. I had no choice but to find the nearest Irish neighborhood and Catholic mission church. I tried the nun thing on. Didn’t work out so well; too many bad spirits still lingering within me, I suppose. Left and did what you do when you aren’t keen to make a living on your back in that situation: mended clothes badly for people fool enough to let me, sold some of the cosmetics from Gran’s book to the parish wives. But I had no bloody family. I had some helpers and boarders, but no friends. It was hell, but I couldn’t afford to get back home and undo my mistake—if it even was a mistake; it’s so hard to know for sure—so I was fucking stuck here, like it or not.
“And then I met a nice fellow—bit bookish, bit eccentric, bit older than me but not by too much—who printed all the church’s brochures and shit. He had a real trade that could support a family, he seemed intelligent, he treated me kindly and could make me laugh while he was at it, and you know what, Emily? You aren’t the only one who’s ever looked at her circumstances and seen one option looking a hell of a lot better than the rest.”
Emily continued staring at the floor, still quite slumped in comparison to her usual posture. “That all makes sense enough,” she admitted. “I’m curious to know how it became so significantly different from any other marriage.”
“Oh, fuck. I mean, we’re right out of one of those treatises on why women ought to stick to women’s work,” Jo said. “I asked him to train me on typesetting, and it’s been a slow descent into Satan’s clutches ever since.”
“Oh, stop it.” Emily snorted out a laugh, putting her fingers to her mouth like she resented her mirth very much.
“You think I’m kidding.” Jo moved the tiniest bit closer to Emily on the mattress. “I started working with him on the printing. I liked it so much, I decided I didn’t want any children, so I could keep doing it. I kept that from him for a couple years, until he finally caught on that I was doing whatever was necessary to keep it from happening. He had the legal right to absolutely ruin my life, divorce me, sue me, see me jailed. And he’s always wanted a child, so you’d think... But he agreed that if I wasn’t suited to motherhood, then it was for the best. He said we’d go on making books instead of babies, so long as I promised not to go behind his back like that again.”
She broke off, trying to assess Emily’s response—you really never knew with a bluestocking which way they’d go on all that. She didn’t look thrilled, but it was more pity than disapproval. Either way, she wasn’t running for the hills or launching into a lecture, which Jo counted as positive enough to keep going.
“The idea was such a massive deviation from all we’d ever known that it was hard not to question everything after that. It took a few years before we found ourselves throwing in with the literal decadents, but the fact is, we’re both fairly unconventional in our cores. It’s not like he seduced me into some wanton lifestyle; he was respectable when we married, and frankly, he had better intentions for the union than I did. We fell into our current life hand-in-hand.”
Emily nodded. “So he is like family, then.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Jo sighed, reluctant to admit it, but unable to deny it. “And not bad family, either, if I’m being honest. Do you remember, when you first came here, we discussed the missteps your father and brother make, even in spite of their convictions of equality?”
“I do, yes.”
“Well, I... I’m afraid I let you believe we were in the same boat when we weren’t. Paul’s never let his convictions blind him to the reality of my circumstance. The deck is stacked against me. Sure, there’s some higher truth that says it shouldn’t be like that, but the on-the-ground truth has its effect. He’s never taken advantage of that, or conveniently forgotten it. He’s been good to me. So, hard as it is right now, I do see him as my family, and by extension, Vanessa and their baby too. And I should have introduced you to him with the proper gravity of that. I just...”
She broke off, distressed by the direction of her thoughts. After a moment, she felt a soft nudge from beside her as Emily put her hand between them on the mattress, palm up. Still a bit nervous, Jo put hers on top, lacing their fingers.
“Just what?”
“I don’t know if they feel the same way about me now,” Jo admitted in a whisper. “I feel like I’m about to be out on my arse again when this baby comes. He won’t divorce me, maybe. Won’t see trouble brought against me. He’s proven that before, and it was shitty of me to assume the worst of him now. But that doesn’t mean he’ll want to stay friends. Or business partners. Or let me and my odd little posse hold his baby when it comes.” She chuckled, thinking of Charlie, who asked about the situation every time she saw him. “I’m afraid it will change him. It wasn’t you I was trying to distance myself from in that introduction, Emily. It was him. As I said, if I’m going to have to start over again, I’d rather do it on my own terms.”
Emily gave her a bracing squeeze, her grip always so much stronger and more comforting than the delicate structure of her hand suggested. “They didn’t seem keen to cut you out of their lives when I was there today. And even if I’m wrong about that, you’re not a helpless runaway now, are you? Obviously, you’re already perfectly capable of living independently. In terms of company and support, you have your friends here at The Orchid and Pearl. Noah and the others at David’s club. Me.”
The last word was quiet and sweet, trying its best to touch something very soft and vulnerable in Jo’s core. Something she couldn’t quite unguard enough yet, but wished she could. Wondered if maybe, with enough effort, it would be possible.
“Do I really?” Jo asked. She knew she wouldn’t fully believe it, even if it was said again. But still. She wanted to hear it.
“You do, yes,” Emily said, leaning in to murmur the words in Jo’s ear, so close and warm that it sent an instant shiver through her. “While I doubt the loneliness will be as severe as you suspect, I am happily here to do any number of things that might ease it.”
God, how could someone so put together be so relentlessly alluring? Jo turned her head to press a hungry kiss to those oft-pursed lips, letting the responsive softness of them start easing things already. There was something about kissing Emily Clarke that was unlike anything else she’d experienced. She was clearly not practiced in the art, but she didn’t let that stop her from bringing obvious passion to it, and she took silent direction very, very well. Jo had never been to a fancy ball where couples partook in fashionable dances, but she imagined that kissing Emily was like leading a dance with the most beautiful woman in the room, who paid such close, intimate attention to the poses and pressures of her partner that no one watching would ever guess she knew only half the steps.
Having undoubtedly bungled things, Jo was exquisitely grateful to get the chance to do this again, to lower Emily to the bed, lying atop her to kiss and undress and find all sorts of lovely frictions in the places they collided. As her terribly reasonable number of layers found their way to the floor, the intoxicating scent of her strengthened, lavender water and crisp cotton and the swirling perfume of feminine passion.
While there was heat in the power of keeping her clothes on while another woman’s knickers and camisoles were unceremoniously discarded, Jo was in no state to resist when Emily began to unwrap her as well. The world of velvet softness their bodies would make of this bed with covers atop and nothing between them was too sweet a temptation to pass up. Every unnatural scrap that covered them, from stockings and garters to hairpins, was left forgotten on the cold floor as they nestled into that perfect cocoon of comfort and pleasure.
Finally, Jo was able to do what she’d taken to dreaming of when she read Emily’s letters. She took her time touching her unlikely lover, not just with her hungry hands but with the slide of intertwined legs, the crush of bared breasts, the explorations of her tongue as she vanished into the searing space under the covers to spread Emily wide and taste her properly.
Emily gasped and squirmed like a perfectly naughty dream, her hands tangling and tugging at Jo’s unbound hair, hips lifting in time with Jo’s mouth. She wasn’t a talkative one, but she communicated in her way, through moans and movements and ever-increasing slickness that let Jo know what was to her liking. The lovemaking was peaceful and focused, and when she finally cried out in her crisis, clutching Jo’s head lovingly tight, it was like there was no world at all outside these deliciously suffocating blankets.
Jo might have refused reciprocation again, still a bit worried this might all fizzle to nothing at any moment, but with Emily’s taste on her lips and the sound of her pleasure echoing through her mind, she didn’t have the strength for it. Emily dragged her back up toward the pillows, kissing her mouth, worshiping at her curves, stroking between her legs with obvious enthusiasm. Jo was too tightly wound do to anything but encourage it, helping Emily get the pressure and angles right until she was writhing against Emily’s fingers, chasing down her release to this madness...
At last, Emily spoke in words, a delicious whisper felt as much as heard: “That’s it. That’s it, Joey, come for me, will you?”
It was the only thing there was to do at that point. Jo’s pleasure peaked and she clenched around Emily over and over, hard and tight like her body intended to never let this poor woman go free.
That notion, of course, was the madness of pleasure talking. But as the cuddly haze of their satisfaction waned, their bodies finally aware once more of things like the chill of the room and their lateness at the dinner table, there remained a greediness in Jo’s limbs. She wanted to hold Emily here for another few minutes, hours, days. To remain in this blissful feeling of warmth and oneness with this delightful person she should never even have met in the first place.
And she managed, for a while, kissing and caressing until Jo’s own stomach growled too loud to be ignored.
“Come on then,” said Emily sweetly, kissing Jo between her eyes. “You know we must make sure to evenly indulge our appetites, isn’t that right?”
With a reluctant sigh, Jo reached over the bed for her undervest, the intimacy of that private joke softening the disappointment of having to move.
“You’re right,” she said, slipping the vest over her head. “But you’d best eat a lot, in that case. Because if you think I’m finished with you tonight, my love, you are sorely mistaken.”
The next morning, Jo awoke to small, steady hands shaking her into consciousness. It confused her, this wakeful state. It didn’t seem indicated by the weakness of the sun behind the curtains.
“Come on,” said Emily. As Jo opened her bleary eyes, she saw that Emily was no longer under the covers with her, but standing at the bedside in her navy skirt and jacket set that did wonders for the color of her eyes. “We can’t dally much longer if we’re going to have time this morning.”
“Time for what?” Jo croaked, pulling the quilt over her head.
Emily tugged the linens down, gave her a practical peck on the head, and said, “Time enough for me to check those disorganized shelves you mentioned myself. For your grandmother’s book. It’s likely I have a sharper eye than you or Mr. Smith. I think I ought to take a look before you give up hope entirely.” Content that Jo was awake enough to be getting on with, she turned to the vanity and began undoing the braid Jo had put in for her the night before, briefly crowned with that beautiful, haloish tumble of hair before she started twisting it up into its usual knot. She met Jo’s eyes in the mirror. “While we’re there, perhaps you could try again with our introduction? And also, perhaps, it would be a good time for you to begin healing the rift that’s grown between the two of you?”
It was kind of Emily to give Jo another chance, more so that she gave two shits whether Jo and Paul resolved their differences. It might even have been saintly if it had come a little later in the day.
“At this hour?” said Jo on the cusp of a yawn. “I guarantee you Paul won’t be awake yet.”
“We’ll stop and get him a bun or something to soften the blow,” Emily said, poking pins against the top of her head. “One early morning won’t kill anyone, not even a decadent.”
She paused in the brutal arrangement of her hair when she caught Jo’s groggy smile in the mirror. She turned around, a quirked brow questioning.
“Thank you,” Jo said. “It’s kind of you to give me a second chance, even if you’re going about it a bit aggressively.”
Emily turned back to the mirror and pushed in the last of her pins. “You did the same for me, didn’t you? I think it’s as good a time as any for all necessary reciprocation to be honored.”