A Great and Terrible Beauty

His fingertips are a whisper on my skin. A thumb inches toward my breast, traces circles over and around. Move my mouth to the salty skin of his neck. Feel my thighs moved apart by a knee. Something inside me falls away. It's as if I've stopped breathing for a moment. I'm hollowed out. Searching.



The warm fingers trail down, hesitate, then brush past a part of me I don't understand yet, a place I haven't let myself explore.



"Wait" I whisper.



He doesn't hear or won't listen. The fingers, strong and sure and not entirely unwanted, are back, the whole of his palm cupped against me. I want to run. I want to stay. I want both things at once. His mouth finds mine. I'm pinned to the earth by his choice. I could just float here, lose myself inside him and come out reborn as someone else. The thumb on my breast rubs my skin into a delicious rawness, as if I've never truly walked in my skin before. My whole body strains up to meet the pressure of him. His choice could be mine. He could swallow me up, if I just let go. Let go. Let go. Let go . No.



My hands slide up against the slick skin of his chest and push him back. He falls away. His weight gone feels like a limb missing and the need to pull him back is nearly over' powering. There's a fine glisten of sweat on his brow as he blinks in his sleep-state, confused and groggy. He's asleep again, just as I found him. A dark angel just out of reach.



It's a dream, only a dream. That's what I tell myself when I wake up, gasping, in my own bed in my own room with Ann snoring contentedly a few feet away.



It's only a dream.



But it felt so real. I put my fingers to my lips. They're not swollen with kissing. I'm still whole. Pure. A useful commodity. Kartik is miles away, lost in sleep that does not involve me. That part of me I haven't explored aches, though, and I have to lie on my side with my knees clamped together to stop it.



It's only a dream.



But most frightening of all is how much I wish it weren't.



CHAPTER TWENTY



Dr. Thomas has pronounced Pippa fully recovered, and as it's Sunday and church has been dispensed with, we have the afternoon to luxuriate as we wish. We're down by the water, casting the last petals of late-summer flowers onto the calm surface. Ann has stayed behind to practice her aria for Assembly Daythe day when our families will descend upon Spence and see what marvels of womanhood we're becoming.



I toss a handful of crumbling wildflowers. They sit on the lake like a blight before the breeze whips them out toward the deep middle. They settle, take on more and more water till they finally go under in silence. Across the lake, a few of the younger girls sit on a blanket, talking and eating plums, happy to ignore us as we ignore them.



Pippa is lying in the rowboat. She can't remember anything before her seizure, for which I'm grateful. She's horribly embarrassed by her loss of control, by what she might have said or done.



"Did I make any vulgar noises?" she asks.



"No," I assure her.



"Not at all," Felicity adds.



Pippa's shoulders relax against the bow. Seconds later, a new worry has them knotted up again. "I didn't soil myself, did I?" She can barely say this.



"No, no!" Felicity and I say in a tumble.



"It's shameful, isn't it? My affliction."



Felicity laces tiny flowers together into a crown. "It's no more shameful than having a mother who's a paid consort."



"I'm sorry, Felicity. I shouldn't have said that. Will you forgive me?"



"There's nothing to forgive. It's only truth."



"Truth," Pippa scoffs. "Mother says I can't ever let anyone know about my seizures. She says if I feel one coming on, I should say I have a headache and excuse myself." Her laugh is bitter. "She thinks I should be able to control it."



Her words pull me down like an anchor. I want so desperately to tell her I understand. To tell my secret. I clear my throat. The wind changes. It blows the petals back against my hair. I can feel the moment slipping away. It sinks under the surface of things, hidden from the light.



Pippa changes the subject. "On a cheerier note, Mother said that she and Father have a wonderful surprise for me. I do hope it's a new corset. The boning in this one practically impales me with each breath. Ye gods!"



"Perhaps you shouldn't eat so many toffees," Felicity says. Pippa is too tired to be truly outraged. She offers a show of hurt. "I'm not fat! I'm not! My waist is a tidy sixteen and a half inches."



Pippa's waist is wasp-thin, as men are rumored to prefer waists. Our corsets bind and bend us to this fashionable taste, even though it makes us short of breath and sometimes ill from the pressure. I haven't a clue how large or small my waist is. I'm not delicate in the slightest, and I have shoulders like a boy's. I find the whole conversation tedious.