CHAPTER SEVEN #4
Constance and another woman – Leah, she assumed – were both bent over the cutting table, deep in conversation.
Their backs were to both the bedroom door and the front door, which had been left ajar.
It was perhaps ten steps between the two – she could make it if she moved quickly and quietly.
It was that, or attempt to climb out the bedroom window, and that would only draw attention from people in the street.
Besides, she was used to making herself as quiet as possible – and with the stakes this high, she couldn't afford to do anything less.
She eased the door open just wide enough to slip through the crack, then paused to see if Constance or Leah had taken note.
Neither had. Moving as swiftly and as silently as she could, she crossed the floor in six great steps – she'd miscalculated, but then, she hadn't accounted for the length of her stride – and then through the front door.
The first shock of the day's cold air against her face was bracing – enough to dispel some of the panicked fog that filled her head.
She permitted herself one glance over her shoulder at the door – it stood still, a sight unsuited to her own turmoil – before turning away and walking at a pace that could only barely escape being called a run.
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It was not the first time Constance had been obliged to shoo away an interloper while the woman she'd been dallying with hid in the next room. It was, however, the first time she had returned to the room to find that the woman had vanished.
She stood in the bedroom doorway, blinking.
She hadn't been that long with Leah, so far as she could tell – only long enough to show her the wool they were using for her wedding kirtle, and to assure her that they were making good time in having it finished for the wedding itself.
She certainly hadn't noticed Isabel slipping past them, which she rather thought she should have.
Feeling foolish, she knelt to look under the bed, Isabel wasn't there – she hadn't really thought she would be – but she was at a loss as to where else she would, or could, have gone.
There was only one other possible place in the house, though she found it an even unlikelier spot than under the bed.
Still, she turned and went out and up the stairs.
Perhaps she'd gone up to make certain Leah wouldn't see her?
The situation was hardly as dire as all that – if Leah had seen her, it would have been easy enough to explain away, and few people thought to be suspicious of two women anyway – but Isabel, being (from all Constance could tell) new at this, might not realize.
The first flush of passion having passed, she was starting to notice a distinct sensation of guilt nagging at her.
Not for kissing Isabel – she couldn't regret that – but for not ensuring beforehand that she wasn't so anxious and unprepared that she would spook and run at the slightest provocation.
If that was what she'd done, it was likely she wasn't ready for what Constance wanted to offer her, no matter how eagerly she had returned the kiss.
Constance should have known to look for that; and, realizing it now, she ought to let Isabel go and not bring the matter up again. And yet . . .
Peter's door was ajar, and she could see him sitting up in bed. As she'd expected, there was no one else present. Still, she pushed the door the rest of the way open and went in. "Have you seen Isabel?"
Peter gave her the baffled look that her question deserved. "Why in the world would I have seen Isabel?"
Constance felt her shoulders slump slightly.
It wasn't as if she'd expected a different answer, but that hardly blunted the disappointment she felt.
"We were downstairs, in the bedroom, when Leah came visiting and I had to step out and speak with her.
When I went back in, she was gone. I thought she may have come up here. "
Peter's face took on a look Constance was intimately familiar with and had always deeply disliked: wry and sly and knowing all at once.
He directed at Jack more often than he did at her, and over the past year, she hadn't seen it at all.
For all the circumstances left her bereft, she couldn't help a small surge of satisfaction at that.
A Peter who felt well enough to tease was a Peter who was recovering.
"And what," he said, "was it that required you both to be in the bedroom? Have you moved the cutting table there, for sleeping as well as working on?"
She dropped down onto the foot of the bed. "Don't needle."
"Needling is my trade," he said, "or it was.
" When she looked up at him, he made another expression she hadn't seen in a long time – an ironic twist of the mouth accompanied by a quirked eyebrow - and she laughed a little in spite of herself.
"Are you ready to take it up again? I thought you'd given it up. "
"Which one?" He held a hand out, flexing his fingers.
"The finer points are lost to me, I think.
But I still have my tongue and my wits, so I suppose I may yet ply a trade as a jester.
" She laughed at that as well, and after a moment, he joined in.
The sound was rusty, which made sense; she hadn't heard him laugh in months.
Well, if nothing else about her misadventure bore fruit, at least it seemed to have helped Peter recover some of his good cheer.
When their laughter died down, he fixed her with another, less familiar look – one of faint concern. "And how long have the two of you been tarrying in your bedroom? By my count, you've only known the woman a month."
"And you think it too hasty?" she replied. "Just because you and Jack had a decade to choose each other doesn't mean everyone is willing to wait so long."
His look of concern was still there, but a faint softness had crept in around his eyes.
"Jack and I chose each other when we met," he said, "it only took us longer to understand what it meant.
And is that what the two of you have done?
Chosen each other? Forgive me, but I've never known such a choice to involve one sneaking out the door while the other's back is turned. "
She thought of asking him not to needle her again, but decided against it. Trying to discourage Peter only ever served to goad him further. "I might remind you of when I had to hide you under my bed to keep Matilda from finding you in Jack's."
"But Jack knew where I was," he said, "and why I was there. It seems you can't say the same." Despite his words, his tone was not unkind. "So I ask again, how long have the two of you been keeping company? Because if this has happened before –"
"It hasn't," she said with a sigh. "This was the first time.
And perhaps I ought to have – prepared her better.
It wasn't planned." And that was all she intended to tell Peter; old friends though they may have been, there were still some things she would not share with him or with Jack.
It felt like a breach of trust, laying Isabel bare before a man she hardly knew.
Not for the first time, she wished she counted more women as friends who she could confide in about her love affairs – but the fact that they were women always seemed to preclude it.
Women who did not share her inclinations, in her experience, would draw away from her if they knew; they always thought she wanted them, and it did no good explaining that they were mistaken.
"Ah," was all Peter said to that. After a moment of apparent rumination, he added, "I've only spoken to her briefly, but she seems – strong-minded. I wouldn't have thought it of her."
Constance thought of the look on Isabel's face when she'd heard Leah in the other room, pale and drawn and shocked.
She thought of things Isabel had said in passing about her history – how she had clawed her way up from an orphaned peasant girl to a merchant's wife.
That was no small thing. But there was something else, something just outside Constance's reach.
Something that had hardened the carapace around Isabel's heart, made her appear cold and reluctant when Constance had first offered her a hand in friendship.
It made no sense, and she knew there had to be pieces of the puzzle she was missing that would explain it.
Something Isabel hadn't told her, that Constance would doubtless have to coax out of her in order to understand.
"She is," she said at last, "but matters are – complicated. I'll have to ask her when I see her next." She gave Peter a small, wry smile. "You've no notion how lucky you are to have known Jack from childhood. Nothing he does can surprise you."
"You'd be surprised yourself," Peter said. "And there are disadvantages as well as advantages. But I take your meaning." He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment before adding, "on that subject – when Jack comes home, ought he know of this?"
"Not now," Constance said. "Not yet, anyhow.
Let me talk to Isabel first." Jack and Isabel had met only briefly, and, depending on what Isabel had to say, that might end up being the only time.
But Constance still wanted the chance to introduce them properly on her terms. If – and this was a hope she would not speak aloud to anyone, not yet – if Isabel were to stay past the end of the tailoring job, if she were to become a permanent fixture in their lives, then she wanted Jack's impression of her to be a good one.
"I won't," Peter said, and patted her knee. Constance looked at him and smiled, and knew he took her meaning. Sometimes, she thought, for all that she and Peter were husband and wife in nothing but name, they still understood each other better than most married couples could ever hope to.
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