Work Text:
You cooled my mind that burned with longing.
—Sappho (Tr. Anne Carson)
Francesca set aside time to speak to her mother and Violet made time to listen.
"Everything you have told me about love is true when I am with her. I have tried to deny it, I have tried to repress it. I have shunned her and fought her and even tried to match her with some unworthy man, but I have ended up in the same postion—irrevocably in love with Michaela Stirling." Violet had witnessed the quicksilver attachment between the women the instant of its birth. It was its nature she hadn't recognized, misdirected by the sex of the participants.
"How did you know?" Violet could not contradict her daughter. She wouldn't, having learned during Francesca's first season that her experience in love was not the gold standard. Violet had been lucky with Edmund, so lucky in fact it wasn't any wonder it had ended in tragedy. Such joy must exist in limited quantities.
Francesca tapped her slippered toes on the floor as though unable to constrain her feelings to words. "I am in a funny sort of turmoil when we are together. I want to be away from her for fear of being too much and I cannot bear to be apart from her knowing she loves the too much I am. I want to stare into her eyes and hold her hands and listen to her voice and be in her arms. I want all of her smiles to be only mine. I think I could endure this too-loud world if she were my companion, the keeper of all my secrets."
"That is a tremendous amount to ask of one person." Violet had asked that and more. She did not think of only Edmund when she considered who she trusted to take her secrets to the grave.
"It is, Mama, but I think Michaela wants to be those things for me. I need only ask." Francesca's smile was blinding, her faith unshakable. She was everything she should be, a night-blooming jasmine thriving in the deepest hours of dusk. "I am getting there. She has been patient while she nursed her own grief. She is honourable to have left." There was a ghost of emotion in her eyes. "I was furious with her for going but now that I can put a name to all this...feeling, I understand. I might have ruined it then."
Fear was the first weapon of denial. Self-delusion the second. Violet thought guiltily of wearing delicate underthings in colours her dearest friend liked knowing there was no chance they would be seen, all because Agatha made her feel bold. She always said light blue brought out my eyes. Violet had told herself she was pleased when Marcus enjoyed it too.
Violet squeezed both her daughter's hands. "Love can be bruised and injured but when it is real? Ruin is impossible." But it could be abandoned. Such as when one wished for marriage that would never be granted. Or one had a sudden, irresistible impulse to relocate to the other side of the world. Brother and sister had left Violet in close succession; Violet found she only grieved the sister.
Francesca's relieved expression became resolute. "I will not take another husband. John was enough. I do not believe a finer man exists, and if he did I could not love him. I am not meant to love men, but I didn't realize I could love anyone else. Now that I know, I won't pretend, not even to keep you, Mama."
Violet brushed Francesca's hair behind her shoulders. Her introverted daughter had grown into a loving enigma of a woman who taught Violet something new every day.
"All I have ever wanted for any of you is for you to find the loves of your heart. I will not trade your happiness for social acceptance. Michaela seems an intelligent, lively young woman, and it is obvious how she adores you. The world would not be too much for you to ask: she would place it in your hands."
Francesca's rigid posture relaxed as a gleam entered her eyes. "Do you think so?"
"I have been the recipient of such love, I know it when I see it." She had seen it more often than she was prepared to accept it. Now she was forced to live completely without it. Her first love lay in the ground, and the second had consigned herself to the sea. She had only herself to blame for the second privation. Had she wanted Marcus for himself or for his proximity to the love she could not touch?
Francesca sighed. "It was real, what I felt for John. It was not like this, not a riptide but gentle current." Her brow wrinkled. "It was good." John had been a kindred spirit to Francesca, a still point where she could find companionship and acceptance and perhaps in another life, a family for them to share. "But I am not unhappy to spend the rest of my days loving Michaela. Even if we are in the Scottish Highlands all alone, I shall be perfectly content." Francesca looked forward to a loving future with warmth colouring her cheeks. "I enjoy the quiet and yet I love her sounds."
Violet recalled the staccato tap of Agatha's walking stick. Her throaty hums which conveyed entire volumes of meaning. Agatha's rare and uninhibited laugh. Her tranquil breathing when they were alone. The restlessness Violet combatted with ever more social engagements wasn't a simple matter of loneliness. Violet was trying to disguise her dear friend's silence and failing.
"Come hell or high water, we shall see the two of you settled together." Violet might not be able to wrangle Parliament but she had a card to play that was almost as effective.
"How?"
Violet's lips tilted in a smirk. "I think the Queen would love to hear an exciting new story."
Following her lengthy audience with the Queen, Violet asked to be let out at Hyde Park rather than at Number 5. Her dower house was a lovely residence, bearing fine gardens and rooms enough for Hyacinth, Gregory when not at Oxford, and Eloise, sundry guests, and a generous staff. Despite its amenities, there remained a just-inhabited newness that chafed against Violet's need for comfort. She had not lived at this address with Edmund. Agatha had not visited. Each room rang hollow of memories. What should have been a new beginning had the tenor of promises broken or unspoken, although her children appeared happy enough.
Violet's feet carried her through the afternoon crush at the Park. She acknowledged her peers and acquaintances by rote as they passed, letting a lifetime of manners substitute for her attention. She strolled a path she must have taken hundreds of times but this time alone.
She was convinced lately that she was recovering the essence of the young woman she once was. There was a heady freedom in laying aside duty to indulge the self. She ate sweets and spoiled her dinner. Some mornings she slept in. She sought out more daring modes of dress and tried out subtly tempting silhouettes. She danced at balls and befriended women on the fringes of society Agatha would have liked. She took promising debutantes without loving mothers under her wing as Agatha would have done. Her social circle widened, and it was only on seeing it grow that she realized the immensity of the space Agatha had occupied. Violet had missed her; she missed her even more today.
They had exchanged letters, lengthy missives about their respective travels and family events. The end of Violet's engagement to Marcus occupied only one line in seven pages. Agatha's response did not reference it, an omission that fairly shouted the woman's speculative interest. Agatha instead spoke of making a home for herself, reuniting with distant relatives she must have known as a child, and becoming guardian for her grandson Gareth St. Clair. Violet had laughed much reading Agatha's grumbling insistence that she had done all the child-rearing she meant to do with Simon. There was affection to be found in her recounting Gareth's adventurous nature, nonetheless.
The distance their letters must travel had forced an economy with words neither were accustomed to in writing. They spoke irregularly and only of what truly mattered. Every word carried a fortune in what was left unsaid. Violet wished her last letter had said more.
In a fit of twilight candor, she wrote that she regretted they weren't the type of friends to hug. She would like to know what holding Agatha was like in order to better envision it during their separation. Morning's first light had unveiled the strange intimacy of the admission. Violet had pinked, glancing anxiously about though she was alone in her bedchamber, nay in her home but for the domestic staff. She thought to burn the note, only to in the end tuck it down within the pages of her diary. It wasn't a crime, was it, to want to hold someone?
Violet's gloved hands tightened on the chain of her reticule. The need to take Agatha's hand set up inside her, a persistent ache she prodded like a sore tooth. She knew how it felt to hold her hand, she knew what she longed for in that. All the other curiosities were theoretical: She had not kissed lips as soft as her own, or softer perhaps. She had not nudged a cutglass jaw aside to scent amber perfume on a slender neck. She had not explored the topography of a woman's body beneath her clothes save her own. But she craved it, all of it with Agatha.
Violet took several deep breaths to calm the sultry flush rolling up her neck to her ears. Agatha was a world away, she was not nearby to be gazed upon and caressed. Violet could not sample the salty skin inside her wrist. She could not have what her body screamed for. It would not break her, for Violet had lived in the shade of such longing for years.
I am fortunate enough to keep the pleasure of her words in my life.
She could not hope for the future that awaited Francesca and Michaela if their stars aligned. This shadow of love would have to sustain her.
"Miss Hyacinth's season must be a quagmire to have removed the habitual geniality from your mien, Lady Bridgerton."
So occupied was Violet with her melancholy that she almost passed her friend by.
Violet spun on a heel. "Agatha?" She should not have uttered her name so breathlessly. Her wonderment was too plain.
Agatha raised a shrewd brow. "That is my name."
Violet fluttered, caught in the twist of dueling impulses. To embrace or to kiss. To inhale Agatha's scent like air or cup her cheeks.
"Lady Danbury, you are the most beautiful sight I've laid eyes on in weeks."
"Naturally," the woman quipped in typical fashion. She looked much the same yet also palpably changed. There was a looseness about her unseen in the past. This is a woman relieved of many burdens. It only rendered her richer in loveliness.
"What are you doing in Town?" She closed in on her friend, winding her reticule chain between her fingers. Inside, her heart beat a giddy tattoo.
"I was summoned. I saw you and, well, I couldn't help interceding. Your unhappiness is like the sun refusing to shine." Agatha inspected the tip of her cane. "The weather here is dreadful enough."
Violet's laughter caught in her throat. Here was Agatha, beautifully bronzed by the sun, adorned in only the most current fashions as was her custom, and smiling at Violet. She had dreamed of this and not understood why.
"I was just to see the Queen, but our meeting was cut short by an urgent request for an audience. Your doing, I assume?" Violet confirmed. "If I had known you were the interruption, I'd have stayed to greet you."
Violet thought it likely she would have cried. Whenever her emotions were at their most heightened, she had a tendency to well up, and seeing Agatha, touching Agatha would have placed her on a thin, delicate limb.
"It's lucky we both had the idea to come here. I wouldn't have wanted to miss you more than I already have." To distract from her flaring cheeks, Violet offered her arm which Agatha was only too pleased to accept.
"I have missed you as well, my dear Violet."
Violet worried she must look terribly enamoured of the woman on her arm.
Contrary to their verbose epistolary exchanges, now that they were side by side, it seemed there was less to say. Agatha placed a high premium on retaining the high ground and so declined to speak first. Violet dared not. She couldn't trust her words wouldn't unmask the newfound depths of her attachment.
Before the pall over their conversation had the chance to grow awkward, the Ton at the Park realized Lady Danbury had made her triumphant return. Of a sudden, their intimate ramble gained a procession of hangers-on, all keen to inform Agatha how very dearly her presence had been missed the last two seasons.
"The Viscountesses Bridgerton throw lovely balls but none can equal the panache of your fêtes, Lady Danbury," gushed a society mama Violet did not know by name but would not be forgetting in the near future.
"I only wish I had been able to attend these balls personally. I have the utmost faith in both esteemed ladies to keep the Ton and the Queen entertained." Agatha smoothed over the social hiccup neatly, patting Violet's hand at the close. "Perhaps next year."
"I would be happy to hand over the reins to you." What with Eloise on the shelf, Gregory at university, and newly-out Hyacinth more excited to dance than court, Violet had rather lost her taste for the social scene.
"I think not, my dear. I am to be a simple guest, there to observe, drink, and dance."
"You could never be a simple guest to me."
Agatha regarded Violet with a peculiar knowing. "Likewise."
They managed to extricate themselves from Agatha's admirers to resume their patter in the direction of the parked carriages. They rediscovered their rhythm, exchanging soft-spoken jests about the London denizens who had stopped just short of pleading for Agatha's permanent return.
"How fortunate to be so well-loved," Violet said.
Agatha harrumphed with a verve only accessible to those who dined casually with monarchs. "Well-loved or useful?"
Violet jostled their shoulders together. "It's possible to be both, Agatha."
"I am not a woman people love." She levied her chin in defiance as though such a belief was commonplace, not tragedy.
"My family loves and fears you in roughly equal measure. You are mistaken."
Another canny look unpeeled another layer of Violet's self-defense.
"Is there something you wish to tell me, Violet Bridgerton?"
Violet blinked rapidly when her nerve deserted her. She traced the bumps of Agatha's knuckles, thinking how fine they might feel to kiss.
"Many things, only I cannot seem to put order to my thoughts. I am too happy." To say nothing of being nauseous from fear and want. With Violet to guide her feet, Agatha was free to subject Violet to her penetrating focus, unimpeded.
"Had I known the reception I would receive, I'd have arranged to surprise you sooner."
She sounded deeply smug. She liked that Violet was agog. Agatha preferred having the upper hand; it was a position from which she derived much success. Dear to her Violet might be, but Agatha would not allow Violet to grow apathetic to the wonder of her. Agatha needn't worry after the impossible.
Once Violet permitted herself her eagerness, she found she could not stop talking to Agatha. Each anecdote she had held back for being too pedestrian, every petty observation her children would see as beneath her, all of it came spilling forth. There was a dam compromised inside her.
"You will forgive my gregariousness, I hope."
"I forgive it easily. I have missed your nervous rambles."
Violet blushed. "Am I so transparent?"
"I know you quite well, dearest Violet. What's troubling you?"
"I am ever aware of the ticking clock which dictates I must give up your attention. I find I do not wish to let you go."
"You must set me loose to attend Her Majesty sooner or later."
"I am envious of your devotion to her."
"Have I been any less attentive to you?"
"You have not," she acknowledged, embarrassed at herself. "My feelings are irrational, fueled by childish greed." She forced herself not to look to Agatha for censure. Her heart could not bear to find it just now. "These years without you have been grueling. There is no one so clever as you in all the Ton. No one's conversation compares. No one is remotely as fashionable. No one is as cutting or as funny. You are incomparable and my life is much diminished for being without your society." She petted Agatha's hand as though the small action could adequately express what her heart only knew.
Agatha thought for a long moment. "I did not know you were so fond of me."
Violet exhaled something that may have been laughter were it less tinged with anguish. Violet did not feel in moderation; she was either indifferent or drowning.
"Agatha, I want nothing more than to whisk you to my dower house and smother you in kisses. I am much past fondness."
Agatha for once seemed taken aback. "Your feelings have evolved in my absence."
"No, they have merely crystallized into longing." Violet held her stomach. "I am choking on all I swallow back."
"What more do you want with me?"
Violet brought them to a halt. She wanted to gaze upon Agatha's eyes and Agatha's lips and Agatha's entirety without risking to trip.
Agatha drew a sharp breath. Her intent was understood.
"To say more publicly would be to incite scandal."
Agatha's hand tightened under hers. "Then, show me to your new home."
Violet dismissed Mrs Wilson and the other servants once tea and sandwiches had been laid out for the two of them.
"I take my tea somewhat differently these days," Agatha informed Violet while watching her prepare it in the old way.
"You'll have to teach me what pleases you." Violet pressed her thigh firmly against Agatha's. "I want only to please you."
Agatha took a beat, sipping her strong tea in nostalgic contemplation. Their eyes clashed in heated mutual consideration over the gilded rims of their teacups.
"Tell me, is it me you long for or an intimate partner who won't expose you to scandal?"
"You, I want you." In Violet, there was no hesitation. Certainty chimed inside her like a church bell. "Even if you will only permit me one night of your attention, I would treasure it for the rest of my life."
Agatha perceived her eager anticipation at once. Her smile teased.
"Violet Bridgerton, I shall give you as many nights of me as you can handle and teach you to take more."
Violet pulsed at her core. "Tell me I can kiss you."
"I do recall something about being smothered..."
Violet stole Agatha's teacup, tossing back the last mouthful in a steaming gulp and abandoning it on the tea tray beside her own. Agatha laid in wait, her full lips quirked in sardonic amusement. Violet swallowed the laughter waiting to spill forth. She cupped Agatha's chin, angling her mouth to glide silkily against hers. The sensation was exquisite torture. She had not known lips could be this soft.
Agatha grasped her wrist where Violet's pulse betrayed her, drumming a reveille under her skin. Agatha caught the seam of Violet's lower lip gently on her teeth and licked the stinging flesh. Violet fell into her, fusing their mouths together as if Agatha were the first fresh water Violet had drunk in shipwrecked days.
They were as close as it was possible to be without stripping off clothes. Agatha urged her nearer and Violet obeyed. She tickled the delicate skin in back of Agatha's neck, found her boldness rewarded by a shudder reverberating through her. She rubbed circles behind Agatha's ears. Agatha's eyes were little but dark portals ringed in the loveliest brown. Violet had made them so.
"You have become dangerous," she declared, a husky-voiced wreck beached on Violet's invitation. Good that they should both become rudderless, unmoored in this storm.
Violet nudged their noses together, an offering to tenderness before passion reclaimed them. "I will show you how dangerous I can be."
Agatha challenged her at her word: Violet's lips were sieged upon, her mouth explored and singularly claimed. The play of tongue to the tip of tongue brought Violet surging, needy, against the woman who was in her heart already her lover.
Plush lips dipped down to bless Violet's jaw and bobbing throat. Violet saw stars. She craved fire. Her hands sought curves she had only felt on herself and gloried to meet their deliciousness on another.
Agatha and Violet were flush together but for their skirts that feigned to keep them apart. The satisfying weight of Agatha's clothed breast filling her hand made Violet all the more eager to feel all of her naked in her sheets. She wanted this, she wanted them.
“Let me show you my new rooms.” Largely recreated from Violet's former lodgings, there was naught to distinguish them but what they were about to do.
Agatha wiped her lip colour from Violet's mouth. “Are they impressive?”
Violet coaxed Agatha up from the settee. The house would not remain unoccupied forever.
“No, but the bed is.”
If Mrs Wilson noticed the ladies' refreshments were untouched on her return, she held her peace. After all, there were many more enjoyable ways for a lady to take her tea.