Hester(65)

When Nat has run out of words, I stand and put my hand on his shoulders. He runs his hand along my waist and up to my bosom. He plays at pinching me, and when I don’t pull back, he does it again—just hard enough for the shock of both pain and desire.

This time when he takes me, my cries match his. My body clenches, and he presses his hand against my mouth, then pulls back and stares at me. I see in his face that it is as I knew it would be. I am something new in this new world, too.





TWENTY-ONE





I make a new plug to keep away a child. Beeswax. Honey. Fennel seed. I read in Edward’s book that pennyroyal is useful in ridding the body of what’s not wanted, and so I grind torn pennyroyal leaves into the mixture with mortar and pestle until I can form a farthing-size coin thick enough to stay in place.

When I lick a bit of the mixture from the pestle it’s sweet and fragrant, a small garden inside me.



* * *



HE COMES FOUR nights in a row and stays until just before dawn. We follow Scott’s young Catherine Glover to a hiding place where she’s nearly ravaged, and I finish two new sets of gloves for Felicity while he sleeps beside me.

The gloves sit on my table where Charlotte’s intimate whites lay in pieces only last week—purity and lust existing side by side just as they might in a woman’s heart.

“You’ve surpassed yourself.” Nat holds his open palm over my gloves the way he holds his hand over me in the dark—an inch away, aching to touch. “I must have a pair for the banquet. My uncle has agreed, and I can pay you directly.”

“I’ll sew whatever you ask, but you have to buy them from Felicity. I’ve given her my word.” I know my bleeding is on its way for I am jittery and filled with a tense expectancy. “You know I can’t risk my position at the shop until I’m sure I can secure my name,” I add.

“Then make a leopard,” he says. “For power and courage.”

Because he has asked me, I put aside the shawl and work the new gloves in a torrent of inspiration—a noble beast surrounded by small bouquets of scarlet hawthorn. Two nights hence, when he puts them on, they’re perfect.

On the right hand is a paw, an eye, an ear, the jaw. On the left hand is the other eye, the whiskers, the curl of the leopard’s tail. At his wrist, just where the pulse beats, there is a small posy of hawthorn flowers and beneath it, hidden inside the inner seam, a tiny scarlet A.

“A tincture of hawthorn will revive a failing heart,” I tell him, putting a finger on the flowers. “But too much of it will kill a man.”

He looks up at me with a strange expression.

“Is that the magic you’ve used to enchant me?”

He smiles, but I’m startled.

“I have no magic.”

“Oh, but I think you do.” There’s a glint in his eye and a hard edge to his words. He puts a hand to my wrist and runs it up my arm, then kisses me. He tugs lightly at my hair.

“You can’t give them to Felicity,” he says. “I must have them. I must have your magic.”

I want nothing more than to put my mark on him and send him into the world with my breath in every thread, and this is what I tell him. But I cannot take the chance that Felicity will cut me loose. I must be wise in this.

“You cannot have them, Nat.” I pull him to me and bite on the tip of his ear. “These are for Felicity, and you must buy them from her.”



* * *



ABIGAIL LOOKS AT me longer than usual when I enter the shop.

“Have you changed your hair?”

“I washed it.”

She squints at me, and it’s all I can do not to check myself in the looking glass.

“You look very pretty.”

“I used eggs whipped to a froth,” I say. “I’ll bring you some if you’d like to try it.”

“Why the fuss? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you have a secret beau.”

I toss my head and give a gay little laugh that I’ve learned from her.

“I rather think that you must have a beau, Abigail.”

“I do.” She is animated as she tells me about a shoemaker in Lynn who has been seeking her out after Sunday meeting. “He’s shy and handsome and full of compliments and small talk about the sermon or the weather—this week he admired my gloves. He asked where he might find something as fine for his sister or mother, and I told him the gloves we have at Felicity’s shop are far finer.”

In addition to everything else to stitch and sew, I must make my dress for the banquet. I ask Abigail what she’ll be wearing, and when the shop is slow and Felicity is gone, she insists I try red and pink fabrics—although I say they will be hideous with my hair—then laughs when she sees that I am right.

“Blue will be your color.” She holds up a pale blue, a navy blue, a bit of teal blue-green. “You’ll need a clear blue, darker than robin’s egg.”

I decide on a blue that matches the hue of the sea. I don’t have money for fine silk, but perhaps when Mrs. Silas has paid me for the petticoats and layette, I will.

“You’ll look as fine and rich as any lady in a dress decorated with your own embroidery,” Abigail says. “As long as the work doesn’t give away the secret about your gloves.”