Andromeda could tell from the stiffness of the knock at the shop door that it was Mercy and not a customer. She could just imagine her standing there in her dour coat and hat, knocking like the undertaker come to collect a corpse—mostly because she had already seen Mercy approach the shop, raise her hand to knock, then turn on her heels and flee, twice in the previous two hours.

Mrs. Hamilton’s maid was pulled tight as the seams on a dress two sizes too small for its owner, and she didn’t seem particularly amenable to being let out. Andromeda didn’t know why, but from the moment she’d clapped eyes on Mercy, she’d wanted to take her shears to those taut seams, to snip them one by one until the woman could breathe again. She wouldn’t mind seeing Mercy breathless, too, but under much more pleasant circumstances.

Andromeda had always been game for a challenge; she’d been the bane of her parents’ and grandparents’ existence on their family farm, her ceaseless curiosity and energy getting her into constant scrapes. But now she had too much on her plate between managing the shop and pursuing her other business ventures to deal with an uptight wench like Mercy.

Uptight but in no way unresponsive…

Andromeda thought of the way Mercy had gasped and gone wide-eyed when she’d caught her by the chin. Andromeda shouldn’t have done it—it was uncouth, grabbing at a servant like a lascivious houseguest—but it had been pure instinct. Mercy was like a lovely, classic dress pattern tucked into a drawer, or a fine set of shears gone to rust. Andromeda was impulsive, but not wasteful, and something in the way the woman had looked at her screamed loneliness, which was the ultimate waste.

And the way Mercy had responded to that brief touch…she hadn’t pulled away, or been frightened or disgusted. Instead her eyes had blazed with a heat that her frosty tone could never ice over. Her lips had parted invitingly, and a shiver had gone through her. Mercy had liked Andromeda’s touch; more worrying was the fact Andromeda had liked that Mercy had liked it.

You have neither time for nor interest in dreary housemaids…which is why you’re wearing your best day dress and spent far too long oiling and plaiting your hair.

“Should you get that?” Tara asked. The girl was standing still as Andromeda poked pins into her dress, but leaned forward to peek at the front of the shop through the door of the fitting room. “Ouch!”

“Be still, now!” Andromeda said through lips pressed around several straight pins. She folded another bit of fabric down, pinned, then pulled the pins from where she clamped down on them and dropped them onto the floor.

There was another series of agitated knocks at the door.

“Change out of that and leave it on the chair there, and you can take Mrs. Kelley’s dress for mending to put toward the cost of your own,” Andromeda instructed, then walked into the storefront and pulled the curtain shut behind her. She ran her hand over her dress, giving a final tug at the sleeves and pull of the collar. She didn’t need a reflective surface to know the dress fit like a glove and highlighted her assets; her shop was popular for a reason.

When she unlatched the door, Mercy stood there, brown eyes wide beneath her fine brows, lush mouth pulled into a frown. Her skin was a light brown with undertones of orange and yellow; she’d be stunning in something warm and eye-catching instead of the drab dress of a scullery maid. Andromeda imagined dressing her in the finest fabrics, draping swaths of it over that curvaceous body first to see how the colors suited her…

A blush rose to Mercy’s cheeks and Andromeda realized she was staring, and not at all innocently.

“Hello. Pleasure to see you, Miss Mercy.”

“Hello,” Mercy said. Her voice trembled a bit, and she made a small hum of agitation that Andromeda found to be adorable. “My apologies for not coming earlier, but I was held up by some important matters.”

Andromeda considered teasing Mercy about running away instead of knocking earlier, but the woman was already tensed and ready to bolt. Instead, Andromeda moved aside and allowed her to enter.

Mercy squeezed by, pressing herself against the doorframe while lifting her head high, as if that was a completely normal way to enter an establishment. She avoided even the slightest brush of her coat against Andromeda’s dress, and exhaled once she was inside the shop, as though she’d bypassed a gauntlet.

A delicious, dangerous feeling swam up to Andromeda’s head. It was the victory of having her suspicion affirmed mixed with the heady possibilities that lay before her.

Nothing lies before you but completing this interview and sending this woman on her way.

Mercy was attracted to her; Andromeda reminded herself that she needn’t do anything with this knowledge. It wasn’t a novelty, after all, nor was the fact that she was also attracted to Mercy. Still…Andromeda was intrigued.

“I’m just wrapping something up and then we can be off,” she said, shutting the door and heading behind the shop’s counter.

“Off?” Mercy’s question was faint, and Andromeda noticed she was looking about the shop with a kind of wonder. That pleased Andromeda. She’d gone to great lengths to change her little shop from the hovel it had been when she’d received the deed: sanding, burnishing, and staining the floors and beams and counters; hanging eye-catching fabrics and building lovely display cases; making sure the space was inviting and well stocked. Mercy was staring at a little wooden bird hung from a rafter with red ribbon that swayed to and fro. There was actual pleasure on her face.

“Do you like what you see?” Andromeda asked, and Mercy glanced at her sharply. Her expression went guarded and closed off again.

“It could use a bit of tidying,” she said. Her gaze went to the shelves of fabric, and now that Andromeda paid attention, they were stacked a bit haphazardly. Her receipts were scattered behind the register. Scraps of papers covered with sketches of dresses littered the shelves. While creation and presentation were her strong suits, tidiness was not. She’d grown up on a horse farm, and had learned that ideas of cleanliness were rather relative. The floor wasn’t covered with horse muck and flies weren’t swarming the shop, which was all many people could ask for.

“You would notice that, wouldn’t you?” Andromeda asked, not hiding her amusement.

“It’s my job,” Mercy replied.

“It’s your parry, more like,” Andromeda said, casually nudging a pile of papers with her thumb. She was amused by Mercy, but she was prideful. She also enjoyed seeing Mercy’s brows rise and the flush come to her cheeks as she watched the papers scatter and drift slowly to the floor. Mercy was quite lovely when she was piqued.

“Oh dear,” Andromeda said, then stepped around the mess. “To answer your question, we’re off to Lady Bess’s, across the street. We can talk there.”

Mercy’s gaze shifted to Andromeda; her mouth was pursed in that disagreeable manner that made Andromeda want to kiss some softness into her. “I agreed to come to this establishment to conduct Mrs. Hamilton’s business. I didn’t agree to go to a tavern of ill repute.”

Andromeda rubbed at her hands; her joints ached from doubling her workload the day before in order to leave time for the interview with Mercy. She wasn’t fastidious when it came to cleaning, but she was a woman who cared about her business and didn’t leave it to chance. “Well, I require sustenance,” Andromeda said. “Feel free to stay here and hold down the shop until I return.”

Tara came out from the back in her fraying muslin, carrying the dresses she’d take home to mend. She looked back and forth between the two women and handed Andromeda a few coins to pay toward her dress’s completion, then headed out.

Andromeda handed the coins to Mercy, who still stood resolutely in the shop. “Put those in the till, will you? And perhaps you can give the place a sweep and get started hemming Tara’s dress. I bet your basting stitch is exacting.”

Andromeda pulled on her coat, giving Mercy directions on things that needed doing in a whirlwind of words all the while. She didn’t let up for a moment, the words rushing out of her as they did when she was unsettled—which was quite something considering how quickly they already flowed when she was not. She had stepped through the door onto the square of clean ground in front of her shop when Mercy rushed out behind her.

“Feeling peckish after all?” Andromeda asked. “Really, perhaps you should eat more. Your dress is about a size too large and three years out of fashion. If you want, after we finish the interview, or after you sweep the shop, whichever you decide to do because really I don’t understand why you would pass up a chance for delicious—”

“Enough! Miss Stiel. You are—”

Andromeda turned to see Mercy standing with her eyes shut tightly and her hands gripping her satchel, as if she were contemplating using it as a cudgel. Andromeda had wound the poor woman a bit too tightly, it seemed.

“Infuriating?” Andromeda asked, gentling her tone. “Overconfident? Irksome?”

She reached out and brushed her fingertips down Mercy’s arm. It didn’t matter that there were layers of fabric between her glove and Mercy’s skin; she needed to touch her. Again.

A tremble went through the agitated woman, then she opened her eyes and fixed Andromeda with a frustrated glare. “Yes. Yes. And yes.”

She really was lovely; Andromeda would have to find another way to bring the color to her cheeks and this brightness to her eyes.

“Anything else?” Andromeda asked.

Mercy’s gaze swept over Andromeda’s face and down her body and back up again, and Andromeda was shocked to feel her own face flush. There was something in that glance that she recognized: desire. Brief but blatant and not at all fitting with Mercy’s prudish demeanor.

Heat and a heady sense of anticipation slipped over Andromeda’s body like the finest silk. She wanted to see that look again, to fall into it and explore the delightful paths it might lead to.

Mercy opened her mouth, then shut it, shook her head. “Quite a character,” she added to the list. She dropped the coins into Andromeda’s hand and stood to the side as Andromeda locked the door to the shop.

“My words get away from me sometimes,” Andromeda said. “My mother often said she could gentle the wildest horse but never stood a chance with me.”

There was a spark of curiosity in Mercy’s eyes, but the woman wouldn’t be drawn into casual conversation so easily.

“I’m just not used to such a…lively personality,” Mercy said, falling into step beside Andromeda.

Andromeda could tell she wasn’t trying to insult her this time, so she didn’t push back.

Lady Bess’s Tavern was packed with the working class of the neighborhood: men, mostly, of all races, American-born and foreigner both. Carpenters, coopers, cordwainers, and more were all crammed around rough wooden tables, talking loudly as they broke bread and raised their glasses of ale.

Andromeda strode through the crowd, tipping her hat and clapping men on the back as her skirts brushed their tables. Most of the men were regulars, and she inquired about children, shops, horses, and whatever applicable bit of information she possessed about them. She responded effusively to good news and gave condolences on the bad.

She saw Mr. Porter having a pint and waved at him. He grudgingly lifted his glass in her direction. She could have hoped for a better response from the man she was staking her future business plans on, but it was a start.

When she finally made it to her usual table, she’d worked up a thirst and an appetite.

She directed Mercy, who had gone round-eyed and stiff again, into a chair, then caught Bess’s eye across the room and held up two fingers before sprawling into her own seat.

“This crowd is rather boisterous,” Mercy said, drawing herself up straighter. “And rough-looking.”

Andromeda laughed. “How long have you been tucked away uptown that you consider this rough-looking? We’ll come back around midnight and I’ll show you rough.”

Mercy blushed and Andromeda grinned, because she hadn’t even been trying that time.

“I’m no stranger to this area,” Mercy said. “My family lived in one of the cellar apartments over on Gold.” Her face had gone tight and proper again, all the softness of her flush gone.

Andromeda knew how terrible those cellars were: overcrowded, moldering from the damp, and often ravaged by outbreaks of disease. They were usually let out to Negroes while the houses above were rented by whites. Though she loved the city, she’d grown up in the open air of the country, surrounded by horses and trees and blue sky. She couldn’t imagine how restrictive such a childhood had been. Perhaps that explained Mercy’s demeanor.

“After my parents died of yellow fever, I was sent to an orphanage,” Mercy continued. “So I know more than a bit about how rough things can get in this neighborhood, thank you.”

Or perhaps that explained it.

Andromeda felt a sudden strong tenderness for Mercy as she thought of her own family and tried to imagine what her life would have been like without them. What did loss do to a person? She was lucky enough not to know. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Mercy replied bluntly. “It was better for my parents to pass together; they would have been desperately unhappy without one another. And I did fine for myself.”

Her feigned indifference said otherwise.

Andromeda felt that tenderness again. She wanted to take Mercy’s hand, to give her comfort. She restrained herself. “That you did. I’m sure your parents would be proud of you.”

“For being a housemaid? Perhaps.”

“Is there something else you’d prefer to be?” Andromeda asked. She thought it a simple question, but Mercy closed up like a clam pulled from the mud along the Hudson.

“You didn’t say how long you’ve been with the Hamiltons,” Andromeda prodded, trying another tack. Mercy let out a breath of relief, seemingly pleased to no longer have to talk about her family or aspirations.

“I’ve been there, oh, ten years now.”

“Ten years?” Andromeda raised her brows. “You hardly ever hear of someone sticking with a family for that long these days, and especially at a home so removed from everything. Most girls I know stay for a year or two and then move on. I get to hear customers complain as much, too. They simply can’t imagine why these headstrong girls don’t want to stay and empty their chamber pots.”

Mercy lifted a shoulder. “It’s quiet there. Being away from the city isn’t such a bad thing.”

Mercy’s expression pinched at that last bit, pricking Andromeda’s curiosity even more. Mercy was like an intricate puzzle with clockwork parts; Andromeda kept thinking she had her figured out, then a piece would shift and she’d be right back where she started.

“I thought it would be temporary when I took the job. It doesn’t feel like ten years have gone by. I started around the time Mrs. Hamilton returned to The Grange after…certain personal matters had been resolved,” Mercy said. She opened her bag and took out her pot of ink and quill and folio, placing each item down reluctantly, as if she hated to subject them to such a lowly resting place.

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “After Mrs. Hamilton cleared a path through that heap of debt she was left with after Hamilton’s death, you mean?” A server placed two mugs of ale on the table and Andromeda took one up, taking two swift gulps of the bitter brew.

“A good servant doesn’t discuss the private matters of their employer,” Mercy said. She lifted her mug, sniffed, and placed it back down, and Andromeda felt another little chip at the flint of her annoyance and her intrigue.

So much for easier topics. Why was this woman so persnickety? And why did Andromeda so enjoy baiting her?

“Private?” Andromeda laughed. “Hamilton’s business was all over Front Street, quite literally. In the form of a pamphlet. There’s still a copy behind the bar, if you’d like to see it.”

“Speaking of the dearly departed Hamilton, why don’t we get this interview over with?” Mercy dipped her quill into the inkpot and then looked up, and Andromeda saw the same change in demeanor that she’d adopted that day in Eliza Hamilton’s parlor.

“Parapet, cannonball, strong grandfather…” Mercy offered up when Andromeda didn’t answer. “You know, the story I came here to collect.”

Andromeda glanced at the way Mercy gripped her quill, the way she suddenly seemed a bit more in control of things. “Would I be wrong to venture that annotating Colonel Hamilton’s life isn’t the only thing you use that for?”

Mercy didn’t answer, just stared across the table at Andromeda.

Andromeda had once found a tomcat in the family stable while mucking. She’d knelt down and held out her hand, waiting. The cat had hissed, glared at her, yowled in warning. Eventually, it had decided she was safe to approach, and its deep purr had vibrated through her hand as it rubbed itself against her, desperate for affection. Mercy seemed ready to hiss if Andromeda continued her line of questioning, but Mercy had also leaned into Andromeda’s touch during that first meeting, before she’d remembered herself.

“It’s just…” Andromeda tempered her words; Mercy was already prepared to bolt into the figurative underbrush. “When I take hold of a threaded needle, or work my shears through a fresh piece of fabric, it’s not just work to me. There’s something in me that, I guess you could say it sings, when I have a needle in my hand. I thought I saw a bit of that in you.”

“You were mistaken,” Mercy said in her clipped tone. “The majority of my writing is about Colonel Hamilton in preparation for his biography. As if he didn’t churn out enough words about himself in his lifetime.” She took a sip of her ale. “Mrs. Hamilton is continuing his grand tradition and I’m simply doing as she says, a pawn in a love story that should have been buried with the man instead of memorialized.”

Andromeda had heard Mercy frosty and prim and judgmental, but there was anger in her words now. She thought of the way Mercy’s brows had drawn behind Mrs. Hamilton’s back every time the widow went on a tear about her departed husband, of Mercy’s lips pressed tightly together in judgment. One wouldn’t notice unless they had been paying attention to Mercy’s every move, but then, Andromeda hadn’t been able to do otherwise.

The serving woman appeared and placed two large plates of mutton and carrots before them, nearly nudging the small inkpot off of the table. Mercy scowled and grabbed it, corking it and placing it in her bag along with the paper and quill.

“I can’t work like this,” she said, gesturing toward the large plate.

Andromeda took up her utensils. “Then it seems you’ll have to eat.”

Mercy sighed dramatically, but didn’t fight Andromeda for once. She began to eat, and wasn’t able to hide her surprise at how good the food was. She seemed content to eat in silence, but the lack of conversation made Andromeda feel itchy.

“Does it really bother you?” Andromeda asked. “Your mistress’s lingering affection for her husband? I think it’s quite romantic.”

Mercy had taken up a bit of mutton, but paused with the fork en route to her mouth. The telltale brows drew together. “Who says I’m bothered?”

“You, actually. You’re not very good at hiding your opinions.” This elicited a dainty snort from her companion. “During my interview, I caught sight of a lovely vein at your temple that showed itself every time she said ‘my Hamilton.’ Ah, there it is!’

Mercy lowered her fork.

“He wasn’t hers though,” Mercy said. The words had some force behind them, despite her supposed lack of botheredness. “Anyone who’s read the pamphlet you spoke of is keenly aware of that. Anyone who’s skimmed his letters with John Laurens could guess at that, too. He hurt and humiliated her while he lived, and she’s still giving every bit of herself to him all these years after his death.”

Andromeda wondered if Mercy realized she was cutting her mutton into smaller and smaller pieces as she spoke.

“Come now, Mercy. She loved him. And was loved by him.”

“He had a fine way of showing it,” Mercy said, finally getting a bit of the food onto her fork. “After all that, after she forgave him for humiliating her, for dashing their family’s hopes, for Philip, he went and got himself killed! He left for his duel without even giving her the truth of his destination or a chance to stop his foolish plan. In the end, his pride was worth more to him than her undying affection. And yet she persists.”

When Mercy looked up, her eyes were bright, and she chewed just a bit ferociously.

Mercy spoke of love as if it was muck she had to clean out of fine lace. Intriguing. Andromeda had loved before, and she didn’t doubt its power. She had her grandparents and her parents as models of conjugal bliss and the work that went into it.

“Are you bothered by the fact that he hurt her or that she has forgiven him for it?” Andromeda asked. She shouldn’t have cared either way, but it seemed her curiosity grew with each inadvertent revelation instead of diminishing.

“I’m bothered that people use love as an excuse to spend their lives pining away or devoted to some sainted memory. Love is impractical and unrealistic, and indulging it to such a degree is unsavory.”

There was that lovely pique again. Mercy’s nostrils flared and her fist was tight around her fork, but her eyes…her eyes flashed with challenge, like a lighthouse beckoning to a ship that must cross stormy seas to reach it.

An idea began to form in Andromeda’s mind, like the outline of a pattern she just had to create. A scandalous, ill-advised pattern that should never see the light of day. Her favorite kind, if she were being honest.

“You’re telling me that you don’t believe in love?” Andromeda asked.

Mercy pursed her lips. “Look around this room. How many people do you think have found everlasting love?”

She jerked her chin toward a man pulling a bawdy woman into his lap.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Andromeda retorted. “I’m asking if you, Mercy, believe in love.”

Just say yes.

“Of course not,” Mercy said and stabbed a carrot on her plate. “It isn’t worth the bother.”

Oh hell.

The pattern in Andromeda’s head took on a form that she couldn’t resist—oddly enough, it was precisely Mercy’s measure. Andromeda would have consigned it to the mental trash heap where she placed ideas that weren’t meant to be, but she had the nagging feeling that it just might be her most beautiful creation ever.

She smiled at Mercy. Lord above, but Andromeda did love a challenge.