“Well, this isn’t quite the reception I expected,” Andromeda muttered as she finished plaiting her hair into a single braid. She received no response, as she was quite alone in Mercy’s chamber.

She sat on the edge of Mercy’s bed and looked about the space. An old wooden desk with Mercy’s writing implements lined up neatly across the top of it. A wooden chair. A bureau for her clothing. There was no color, no decoration—nothing to reflect the vivid personality that had eventually come through in Mercy’s letters. That personality was nowhere to be found in Mercy herself, either, truth be told.

She told you she didn’t like surprises; you should have taken her at her word.

After the outburst in the parlor upon Andromeda’s arrival, Mercy had kept her distance, claiming a surplus of work. There had been no more worried looks or tender caresses. Andromeda had soaked in a hot bath to warm herself, eaten the meal she’d been given, and now lay in Mercy’s bed with a few warm bricks that had been brought by Sarah, another servant. The wind still blustered outside.

She had left against the advice of her family, but she’d had the solution to her problems in her bag and had thought she could beat the storm. She had been restless worrying that the building would be sold out from under her, that if she let even a moment pass, her opening would be blocked off forever. When the storm grew too dangerous to navigate, another opening had emerged.

Mercy.

Their exchanges had become warm, personal. Andromeda had assumed that Mercy would be pleased to see her. Instead she had been vexed, agitated, and on the brink of tears. Andromeda hadn’t given up, but she was starting to reconsider her choice to seek shelter at The Grange.

It grew late, and she was wondering if Mercy would sleep in the hallway rather than join her when the door pushed open with a quiet scrape against the jamb.

Andromeda kept her eyes closed, listening to the sway of Mercy’s skirts and the near-silent creak of the floorboards. Was she tiptoeing? In her own room? There was silence, and Andromeda opened her eyes.

Mercy stood beside the desk, holding a mug in her hands, and the scent of floral tea filled the air. She was staring at Andromeda. There was no tightness or prudery in that expression, no. It was open and unguarded and filled with such longing that Andromeda felt pinned by the weight of it. She had been worried she alone felt the intense desire, but to be looked at like that dispelled all doubt.

Mercy closed the door, then stepped forward and held out the cup. “I thought you were asleep,” she said.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Andromeda said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “I can pretend to be if you like, but I’m fairly awful at pretending to be something I’m not. You may have picked up on that.”

Mercy’s mouth formed something resembling a smile, but also not far from the face a person made before they were violently ill. Andromeda should have been put off by the fact that she couldn’t tell the difference, but she was ever optimistic.

“Here. You should take this. Something warm to keep away the chill.” Mercy handed over the cup, and then wrung her hands, the very picture of a fretful woman.

Andromeda thought of what her mother had told her during her visit when she’d finally admitted that her above-average levels of absentmindedness had been driven by infatuation.

“You’ve got no patience. Remember when you tried your hand at horse training? Scared the mares half to death and had the stallions ready to break down the fences. Go slow, my child. Rushing headlong into love means you might run right past the person you’re after.”

Her father had listened to this advice with a peculiar smile on his face that Mercy didn’t want to know the cause of.

Patience. Feh. Andromeda made a sound of annoyance and Mercy flinched. Perhaps her mother was right.

“Thank you.” Andromeda bought the warm glass to her lips and took a sip. “I’m about ready to burst from all of these warm drinks, but I appreciate them.”

Mercy’s gaze was still anxious, but annoyance crept in. “Well, I hope they prevent you from getting ill. Riding about in the wind and ice is dangerous. You must be careful, Andromeda.”

“Why?” She took another sip of tea and kept her gaze on Mercy. “Death comes for the prudent and the impetuous alike, you know.”

“Perhaps,” Mercy said. “But rushing into danger that might be avoided is foolish. There are worse things than death, Andromeda.”

“I know,” Andromeda said carefully. “That’s why we must make sure that we take our pleasure where we can. Life is hard, and then you die. Prudence is well and good, but there’ll be time for that in the afterlife, don’t you think?”

She kept her gaze locked on Mercy, who looked completely flustered.

Be patient.

“And thank you for allowing me to stay with you.”

“Yes.” Mercy’s reply was short. “You came here by chance and you didn’t want to put Mrs. Hamilton in a bind. I… It is fine.”

She turned her back, ending the conversation by dropping into the wooden chair before her desk.

Andromeda didn’t think it wise to reveal that it hadn’t been entirely chance, so she simply sipped her tea.

Mercy had taken up her quill and was studiously ignoring Andromeda.

“I’m more concerned that I put you in a bind,” Andromeda finally said. “I know that responding to my letters is one thing and having me show up on your doorstep is another.”

“It isn’t my doorstep on which you arrived,” Mercy said. The only sound was that of quill on parchment. She finished whatever it was she was writing and turned in her seat. She had that stiff, priggish look about her again.

“I wondered if my last letter displeased you. I know it was an odd thing to send.” She didn’t meet Andromeda’s gaze, and her expression was disconsolate.

“The letter about the toad that hopped into the soup pot when the Washingtons came for dinner? Why would that displease me?”

“I sent one after that,” Mercy said. She lifted her head and met Andromeda’s gaze.

“I’ve been away from the shop for a week now. The trip to my parents’ is long and it makes sense to visit for a few days. And I needed time to work out the details of something regarding the purchase of the boarding house.”

She wouldn’t bore Mercy with the details of the intricacies of a printing press. On second thought, Mercy would likely love to hear such boring intricacies. But there’d be time for that later.

“You didn’t receive it!” The smile that news caused to grace her face was different from the smiles Andromeda had seen at the Grove; she hadn’t even borne witness to half of Mercy’s beauty, it seemed. The woman’s shoulders dropped and her head tipped back a bit in relief, and the slight give in her made Andromeda want to toss the tea aside and kiss her.

Patience. She sipped again, knowing the warmth couldn’t match that of Mercy’s mouth. She hoped she’d be able to prove herself right, and soon.

“Thank heavens,” Mercy said. “I would have been rather embarrassed had you read it. I shouldn’t have sent it.” Her shoulders drew up again.

Andromeda pulled back the reins on the swell of anticipation that had begun to gallop in her blood. “Oh. Was it a letter telling me to desist?”

Andromeda was already debating whether to press her case or just let Mercy be.

“No! No.” Mercy shook her head. “It was just…something silly.”

Andromeda gave a sigh of relief. “I’m a seamstress, Mercy. While I will critique your clothing, your words are safe from me. I’d be happy to get ten pages of silliness from you. A hundred.”

Mercy stared at Andromeda, her brown eyes luminous in the candlelight. “I know. It’s just…I didn’t want to disappoint you. And I was convinced I had.”

There it was again: that inclination of the head that made Andromeda itch to reach out and stroke her. Mercy had grown up in cellars and orphanages; how did she come through all that with this kind of fragility? Andromeda thought of Mercy’s rigid uprightness.

Ah. That’s how.

“I won’t say that you could never disappoint me, but it would take much more effort than posting a silly letter.”

Mercy glanced up and Andromeda smiled. It was like getting a thread through the eye of a needle, finding the right smile for that moment: not too eager, not too aggressive.

Gentle.

Mercy leaned forward a bit and Andromeda knew she had succeeded. “As luck would have it, I’m here now. Whatever it was you wanted to say can be said to my face.”

Mercy stood abruptly; the thread had slipped past the eye of the needle, it seemed.

“I should prepare for bed,” she said.

Andromeda finished her tea and passed over the cup, then flopped back on the bed and rolled onto her side. She heard Mercy groping around for what seemed like much too long. “Need help with your buttons?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

“I have two perfectly good hands that c—”

“Andromeda.” The word had the same near-hysterical tone as when she’d stormed out of the shop, and later in the coach. Andromeda quieted.

There was the sound of Mercy blowing a puff of air between her lips, and then darkness descended upon the room. Then there was a creak in the floorboard and the shift of the mattress as Mercy climbed onto it. She lay down stiffly and Andromeda imagined her lying in repose with her arms crossed over her chest, like one of the antiquities she’d seen a sketch of. It hadn’t struck her as the most comfortable position.

There was no talking for a long moment, and Andromeda supposed Mercy had fallen asleep, tired from the work of her day.

“How go things with the purchase of the building?” Mercy asked. Her words were benign, but she was only a few inches away and Andromeda could feel the heat of her. It seeped through the ticking of the mattress, spread through the rough sheets. Perhaps Mercy was always this warm, but Andromeda had touched her several times. Even when Mercy had taken her hands in that odd, moving attempt to warm them, she had not produced this kind of heat. What had she been thinking of in that long silence, before asking her question?

Andromeda turned onto her side facing Mercy, closing a bit of the space between them in the process. She could see nothing in the darkness, but she could feel the shape of Mercy before her.

God, if she burns like this from a distance…

“I am still having trouble with the sale. It seems the proprietor doesn’t approve of selling to an unmarried woman, never mind that I earn more than many men.”

“Have you no intention of being married?” Mercy asked. It was asked in a polite tone, as if she didn’t particularly care to hear the answer.

“No, though I suppose many women have no such intention and become wives all the same.” Andromeda hated the silence that followed her words, mostly because of the thing she hadn’t said. She felt uncertain and it made her uncomfortable, so she did exactly what she’d been chastised for her entire life: she rushed headlong toward what frightened her.

“Actually, I’ve had my mind set on one person in particular, of late, but I’m still unsure of how I’ll be received. I’m reaching rather far above my station, you see.”

“Oh.” There was a shift, and despite the total darkness, Andromeda knew Mercy had turned her back to her. Rejection barreled into her. She knew not every woman was open to being wooed by another of their sex, particularly one who had invited herself into her bed, but she had thought Mercy felt something…

A kind of panic filled her. How was it that she had planned on doing the wooing but was now the one bereft at being set aside?

“I hope he is not foolish enough to reject you,” Mercy finally said in a rough voice. “I think any man would be lucky to have you.”

Andromeda’s ability to be gentle had reached its end. Her hand shot forward in the dark, landing on the bare skin of Mercy’s arm. That soft skin beneath her palm sent a charge through her, but she ignored it.

“He?” she asked.

“The man you desire. The one above your station.”

Andromeda couldn’t see her, and couldn’t imagine what expression she was making because she hadn’t heard this wavering, weak tone before. She hadn’t had time to learn it yet; she barely knew Mercy, which made what she did next all the madder.

“You really are a fool,” Andromeda said. And when she heard a soft gasp of surprise, she angled her mouth toward it and didn’t stop until Mercy’s warm lips were pressed against hers.