Chapter 7
“Lucy?” A soft voice followed by a knock on her door interrupted her dream of Damien. Lucy rolled over and felt a small ache between her legs. It wasn’t a dream.
Her eyes snapped open.
The voice on the other side of the door spoke up again. “Lucy? Are you alright? I just wanted to check on you. Sorry if I’m overstepping—”
“No. You’re alright. I’m fine.” She pushed herself to an upright position. Hands feeling around the mattress even though she could clearly see that Damien had left. Rightly so. But then why did it feel so wrong?
“Are you hungry? I can have some food brought up to you.”
She was about to answer that she would get dressed and meet Mirabelle downstairs, when she realized that she already had clothes on.
Damien must have done that at some point.
Her fingers rubbed over her chemise. How could she have been so misinformed about pleasure?
She couldn’t admit it, would not admit it, but she hadn’t known her own mind.
She only knew what she knew, but she certainly did not know what she didn’t know.
And now she knew. And she couldn’t not know it.
And oh! Life was a big beautiful mess, wasn’t it?
Her heart was abounding in emotion. Flooded. To perfection. Was that a thing? It should be.
“Lucy?”
Oh. Right. “I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes, Mirabelle. Perhaps we can go for tea?” Tea? How would she go about her day acting normal as if everything in her life hadn’t just shifted? Collapsed? Arisen?
“I’d love that.” Lucy could hear the smile in her friend’s voice, and for a minute the shifting, collapsing, and arising were forgotten.
Eleven minutes later, Lucy strolled into the parlor to find her friend.
“Shall we?” It was remarkable how normal a person could act despite their entire world flipping upside down.
Last night had been everything more than Lucy could have ever imagined.
The pleasure she experienced had not been selfish, as she had been led to believe it was.
Rather, it was selfless. No. That wasn’t quite right either, now was it?
It was entwined. Where one started and the other ended was unclear.
It was a wrapping of selves to become one.
To become tethered. And how did one go about unwrapping and untethering?
And remarking those boundaries of where one ended and one began?
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Mirabelle asked a few minutes into their walk. The Velvet Box was in sight, and tea was calling her name.
“I’m fine,” Lucy kicked up a little cloud of dust on the dirt road. “How’s everyone from the fire? I didn’t see you afterward.”
Mirabelle heaved out a sigh. “I’m sorry about that. I was tending to a few minor injuries. Everyone seems to be fine, but the jewelry shop needs to be rebuilt. Poor Mr. Linton.”
“Who’s Mr. Linton?”
“The owner of the jewelry shop.”
Lucy scrunched up her face as she asked, “I thought it was called Mr. Duke’s?”
“It is.”
But before Lucy could comment, her eyes snagged on a very familiar face. A hauntingly familiar face. A face that reminded her of the devil she had just slept with. Her heart lurched as she swallowed the rocks in her throat.
And as she watched the familiar face enter The Velvet Box, she hurried her steps because somehow she knew—she just knew—who that woman was meeting.
“Lucy, slow down.”
But there was no stopping this storm.
She blew into the tea shop and was utterly unsurprised to see the lady sit down at a table with none other than the duke himself, Damien.
And she should have expected the next move, yet somehow she hadn’t.
So when Damien’s hand caressed the woman’s, and his lips brushed her cheek, her heart really shouldn’t have stopped in place.
It should have kept right on pumping. Blood.
Because that’s what the body needed. Blood.
Oxygen. Food. But in this moment she had nothing she needed.
And everything she didn’t think she wanted was being ripped out from under her.
If she had been the impulsive kind, she might have shouted something. She might have burst into tears. But no…she did nothing of the sort. She jutted her chin out, turned on her heel, and left.
The only thing she felt guilty about was poor Mirabelle who had no clue what was going on.
And she didn’t have the heart, or the words, to tell her.
Her own heart was a smooshed up mess, smothered, stomped on, laying decimate somewhere near the realm of her feet.
And words? Those were all locked up in her mind.
Fighting each other. Scrambling around. Some crawling to get out.
Others punching another in the face. It was pure anarchy.
And that’s why as she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, she didn’t cry.
She didn’t move. She didn’t even hardly think.
Just to remind herself that this was exactly what she wanted.
Right? She didn’t really ever intend on leaving Mirabelle.
This was her home. Her future. Spinsterhood.
A sisterhood of spinsterhood in a spinster’s cove.
It was lovely. Just lovely. A manless future full of dreams.
This was what she wanted.
All the passion and pleasure and none of the commitment. She had been raised by her mother. Men didn’t stick around. Well, that wasn’t true. The only men that did stick around stuck to everything. And by everything she meant women. And by all of this she meant that men weren’t loyal.
So what had she learned? Nothing new.
Except…
Her fingers drummed on the coverlet. Yes. If she was going to learn anything, she was going to write it down. That was the whole point of this, to write.
So she did. She wrote down every last sordid detail until she couldn’t write another word. And it was done. And then she did lie down. And she did cry.