Uncertainty

Neither slept that night.

Pearl didn't sleep that night. Tenderly, so tenderly she held Zainab, barely trusting herself to feel the crackling potential just under her skin. She held the older woman to her breast, arms wrapped so tightly, so loosely, so certainly that Zainab could probably hear the patter of her heart like a timpano, but at least Zainab could not see the younger woman's face.

The ceiling here was smooth and clean and pale, and if that didn't make the entire situation just that much more difficult to bear Pearl didn't know what could. Her soul, which she was so used to sending far from her body was here, deep in her, listening and making suggestions she had never considered could ever come to pass. And yet here she was, and with the barest hint of a movement every touch, every glance, every waking dream could occur in a moment. Fingers longed to grip the arms they stroked, to leave a mark of her visitation. Her lips ached to lean down to the neck she could see outlined in soft moonlight and bring retaliatory gooseflesh. Stroking Zainab's back lightly, she marvelled at how everything had gone so incredibly, spectacularly wrong. Everything this summer had gone so wrong - so very very wrong. She should not be here, in Zainab's arms. Zainab was betrothed, she herself, married. And yet, in this one day she had managed to destroy the lives of so many with barely a thought.

Barely a thought. What was she thinking?

The scent of alcohol blended with that of Zainab and forced thought from her mind. All she knew was what she felt, and what she felt was so very muddled.

Their positioning hadn't been accidental: the last time Zainab had cried, her face had been so forcefully emotionless that Pearl had vowed never to look upon that sight again. With every exhale, Zainab breathed warm air upon Pearl's chest and the younger woman waited. She knew Zainab was awake, but she could not see her face. If she wanted - needed - to cry, she could do so knowing Pearl would not - could not - see her face.

Her reaction to the two was so different, she realised suddenly. With Zainab she wanted nothing more than to hold tight and weather through whatever tempest ensued until it blew out all at once and all that was left was the woman at its centre. One who maybe, maybe when the storm had passed would still be there, would not have run from her. With Albemarle, she wished to explore, slowly, gently, carefully, the person who had offered nothing but himself. She longed to feel their face with her fingertips, to gently draw nails across their back, to look at them through curtains of hair and feel what it was to be at peace. It was all she'd dreamed of since she was a child. Always, that belief:

When I grow up I shall marry my best friend.

​She had not meant to do any of the things she had done this day.

​The bell tower had been defaced to help Albemarle. She knew they wanted to help people. It's just who Albemarle was. Had always been. But to become a vicar? No, of course not. The influence she held over people told her that a flock might want to listen, but to listen was not to act. What he needed was the ability to act on their behalf to provide for them and for that...that was the job of a Baron. Ruin their chances of taking the cloth and they would be free to pursue other matters as well as help - for they would always help. Albemarle needed to continue the family line. He needed to provide an heir or what was the point of the influence? He needed a legacy. For that, they need a spouse.

​A grimace crossed her face as she considered the plan that had failed so utterly. Her eyes darted around the room, to the hearth, a desk, the wardrobe and she sighed softly, holding Zainab a little closer.

​She, Pearl, was married young. Nelson was a good match and one who wanted her. It was done. It was finished. She understood the role she was to play and played it magnificently. But then she hadn't. It was time to get back on track, do as any good wife and good friend would do. Turn away from temptation. Failing that, she was well placed to have the temptation turn from her. Turn it to Amelia...visiting for the summer. Ruin his chances of becoming a holy person, then turn him toward Amelia and let nature take its course.

But Amelia and Zainab...

​And then they had asked what more she wanted...

​And Nelson had been gone...

​How hard it was to keep from temptation when temptation was so very close.

​There was one thing keeping her from slipping a cool hand into Zainab's nightclothes - one thing keeping her from giving in entirely to the rebellious blood rushing through her body, telling her to touch, taste, suck, hold in ways she'd never been tempted to before.

​Love.

She loved them. All three.

She loved them.

Had God wept for joy or were they tears of laughter, for this seemed the perfect mockery. To be perfectly capable of loving all but her husband, and perfectly incapable of giving any of them what they wanted.

This should never have happened.

She'd vowed never to show her affection to either of them and in one day, one day she had managed to break that vow to pieces. She'd vowed to love and cherish and comfort her husband until death.

Had she died the day she was married, or was it yet another broken vow?

Was there a vow she could keep? Some stone unturned that she could raise and hurl to the glass house of her life?

If so, it need only present itself to her grasp and she would treat it the way she had treated everything else: with good intentions and remarkably poor outcomes.

Was even being here, refusing to leave Zainab be and remaining in the room, in bed with her worse? Every decision she had made this day was consistently worse than the former, and she marvelled at her ability to make yet worse ones. Was it worse for Zainab, jealous Zainab, to be in her arms? Was she hurting Zainab purely for being in her presence? Was it as painful to her as to Pearl? Was the heat as strong, the minute sense of every movement, the sharp pang of arousal as powerful? She had stayed to care for her friend and yet -  

"Show me what it was like when he kissed you."

Zainab's whisper was a caress on her bosom and Pearl's already flooded mind exploded with responses and questions and fantasies and dreams and fears. The space between heartbeats became the canvas of her soul, unrolling on and on into the universe as she tried to process what was said.​

Her mind fled back in time to that morning, waking and asking if there was a letter from Zainab (she had stopped asking whether Nelson had written weeks ago - the response was consistent and it had been months). Dressing for the day, she had seen again the piles of letters she hadn't sent Nelson, the letters she had received from her mother reminding her to care for her soul, the charred remains of her thoughts on what had transpired the week prior at Amelia's party and looked herself in the mirror.

In that mirror she had seen the face of a woman disappearing inside herself in her own home. She had seen loneliness and heartbreak and aeons of loss. The face in the mirror was old and sad and empty. She hadn't slept, she'd barely eaten, had kept commitments but not planned further ones

the tedium of living the life of another woman was wearing her down and she would soon die of it. Her hands remembered the way Albemarle had touched her - not the feel of skin, but the strongly held care. The trust. Her heart had fluttered in its cage as they -  the one who had shown her that feeling was not forbidden - reinforced the cage in which she sat. The gilded cage of care was still a cage.

She couldn't bear what she saw in the mirror. How was she to live this way? At least when Zainab was here there was someone she could trust to speak with candour if not with passion. But Zainab was gone, and Albemarle was closing.

But not closed. So she had put on her jacket and gone into the morning to speak with him. Persuade them of a better course of actions.

Follow the plan.

And after? A different woman walked into the house. She'd forgotten Zainab - for Zainab had gone...gone to...fuck...

And Nelson? Gone. Fucking or otherwise. She didn't know. Though deep down, very deep down, she cared. She cared an awful lot and she wasn't sure why. But it didn't matter. He wasn't there and Albemarle was as they had been her whole life and that alone was bliss. That he loved her - that he was willing to renounce everything he'd worked for...

"Show me what it was like when he kissed you."

​Glorious. New. Different. Alive. How to express what she had felt. Almost as though she'd taken ill - as though words would no longer fit in her mouth or else dribble down her chin like so much wine, bold and deep and rich. She had been terrified of his reaction when she kissed him the first time. The second? When they kissed her back? In the space between heartbeats her mouth opened to try to describe what had happened, but

​"Show me."

​Breathed, it sounded carnal and raw and desperate and empty and all encompassing at once. It sounded like a woman desperate to feel, and if Pearl had so much love in her she was full to bursting, so full her mother had seen it - even Grahnt had seen what Nelson had - the undisguised longing for their touch, the whisper of a promise of unfettered lust, unadulterated and most certainly sinful in this tightly bound society...the sensation that she was willing to throw away all to grasp greedily and gulp to the last adulterous drop...

​If she had so much, should she not share it with one she loved?

​Or should she withhold the feeling she shared with Albemarle in hopes of tempting new ones from Zainab? Her invitation to stay the night had been ambiguous to say the least - perhaps she would reject Pearl's affection anyway - affection so freely offered in spirit but in flesh?

​She could admit to herself if not to any other that she had been hoping to pass time alone with Albemarle this evening - so much so that she had spoken out of turn and her mother had...

​But her body even now betrayed her, welling with a cloudy musk that she was certain would cut through the dark - for in absence of light, did not the other senses grow sharper? Did not the skin take on a different hue, the blood pump more purposefully, the sound of the breath tell stories words could not?

​Knowing, now, of Zainab's affection for Albemarle, her love for this unknown other, she almost wished she had spoken of all this sooner. Months ago, in the rain, a droplet had run down Zainab's cheek and Pearl had longed to kiss that cheek, drink that rain and go in search of more. Zainab had removed her boots, her jacket - oh to have removed more! Knowing what she knew now, her mouth would have chased every drop down to the last, only to rejoin the others before the fire and warm them all by any means available to her.

​Oh! To return to that day, when things felt simpler.

​Perhaps that was why candour was so discouraged - candour led to pleasure, and pleasure led to the breakdown of reason. Chaos reigned when pleasure arrived.  

​But was that a bad thing? What did she have left, anyway? Everything of this day had been chaotic, so why not more? More, her body urged, and she lifted a hand to caress the dear, dear face resting upon her. More, her body nudged, and the fingers of the other tightened slightly. She looked down at the head on her chest, fingers stroking a face, lightly brushing hair back and away from where it had fallen. Her fingertips were on fire as they grazed down Zainab's neck, a whisper on skin, exploring softness she hadn't explored before.

​Was this what Zainab needed? Was it really what she wanted?

And where would it lead? What consequences could come from this?