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Mrs. Pegg screamed when Elfreda led Georgie into the kitchen.

In the firelight, Elfreda could see why. They were caked with mud from head to toe, and she was too.

“I’ll mop up these puddles,” she promised, looking down at the dirty water gathering by her ruined shoes. Georgie sidled up to the hearth, extending their arms.

“Who’s this?” demanded Mrs. Pegg. “A boggart from the rotten fens?”

“Georgie Redmayne.” Elfreda blotted her face with a rag, then stepped on it and swiped it back and forth on the floor. “From across the park.”

“How do you do,” said Georgie, through chattering teeth.

“Hmph.” Mrs. Pegg made a doubting noise.

“May I trouble you for a cup of tea?” they asked.

Still muttering about boggarts, Mrs. Pegg put the kettle on the hob and laid the tea things on the table.

“Not with those dirty hands,” she said when Elfreda reached for the milk jug. “You’re as sorry a sight as that one. What am I to do with you duckies? Always running into trouble. I was about to send Billy out to find you.”

“Billy?” Elfreda rounded the table and looked toward the larder. Mrs. Pegg’s grandnephew was sitting on the cabbage crate, nibbling a pickled egg.

“Off home with you, Billy.” Mrs. Pegg made a shooing motion. “Stop by the manor on the way. Tell them Miss Redmayne is staying the night.”

“Staying the night?” echoed Elfreda, just as Georgie said, “I can go, surely.”

Mrs. Pegg shot them her quelling look. “And belike catch your death. I’ll not hear it. A bath and then bed.”

Elfreda bathed first. She was dozing under the covers in her bed when Georgie opened the door to her chamber.

A creak. The glimmer of a candle.

She became fully alert. She became so alert she couldn’t move.

She became a scientific instrument designed to measure the effects and properties of Georgie Redmayne.

She was a barometer registering the precise degree to which Georgie’s presence changed the weight of the air in the room, and a telescope focusing on the galaxies hidden behind the sky blue of their eyes, and a thermometer with its sealed liquid expanding and contracting as Georgie…

hesitated uncomfortably on the threshold.

“Um,” they said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have…”

“Come in.” She sat up so quickly her vision sparkled at the edges.

Georgie was still hesitating. “Mrs. Pegg said there aren’t any rooms made up for guests.”

“There aren’t.” Her voice was unnaturally high.

“We haven’t had a guest since Aunt Susan.

Her room won’t do. Birds are roosting in the rafters.

” Did this necessitate explanation? “Broken window. Agnes. Papa’s armillary sphere.

” She was leaving out the connections, but there was no need to belabor the explanation.

Not when everything she said emerged with such an awkward squeak.

“It won’t do,” she repeated.

“Mrs. Pegg said I should sleep here. But if you’d prefer, I could go roost.”

Elfreda huffed a laugh, relaxing. “You’re too tired to climb up to the rafters. And sleeping below roosting birds is revolting.”

Georgie stepped into the room, glancing about with curiosity. There wasn’t much to see. The room was dim even by day, with dark oak-paneled walls, dark oak floors, bulky oak furniture casting perpetual shadows.

“Is that Mrs. Pegg’s?” she asked, and they looked down at their nightgown, too short and too wide.

“Yes,” they said. “She insisted. It was very generous, and also very intimidating. I’m relieved she no longer thinks I’m a swamp demon.”

They didn’t take another step.

Elfreda swallowed. “You’ll catch cold if you stand there.” She twitched the counterpane, flipping a corner back.

Their gaze filled with light. They crossed the room in three bounds, deposited the wildly flickering candle on the table, and swung themself up onto the bed.

They slid under the covers.

“Are those your feet?” Elfreda gasped. “You’re an ice demon. Is this what ice demons do? Drain their victims’ warmth with their toes?”

“With their fangs, please. A demon can’t attack with their toes. No one would take them seriously.” Georgie attacked. She felt their mouth on the crook of her neck, then the edges of their teeth.

“Your hair still smells like smoke,” she whispered. She’d scrubbed herself in the tub, washed her hair and wrung it out, and Georgie had too, but beneath the scent of soap, the scent of smoke lingered, the strange hot smoke of lightning strikes, and lightning too, and even thunder.

They lifted their head and lowered their mouth onto hers.

Warmth flowed into her.

“You wanted to do this,” she whispered, between kisses, “for years?”

They eased back, hands cradling her face. “Years.” They kissed her, one perfect, perfectly self-contained kiss, parted lips, warm glide of tongue. “And years.” They kissed her again, gossamer light, a kiss that was mostly heat and breath and made her ache for more. “And years.”

“How did you know?” She kissed them.

“It was something I felt. And hoped would go away.”

She withdrew far enough to peer into their eyes. “Why?”

“You didn’t feel the same. The more I thought of you, the less you seemed to think of me, and the worse. Call it self-preservation.”

Her skin rippled with gooseflesh. “That’s not why you stopped coming to Twynham?” As soon as she said it, she blushed, waiting for them to mock her presumption.

“In part.”

Their toes weren’t cold anymore. Her feet were between their feet, her knee between their knees. Their hand moved lazily through her damp hair, then drifted down, stroking from her temple to her jaw.

“But how did you know that you could kiss girls at all?” She was blushing so hotly Georgie could probably detect it with their finger, which was now tracing small circles high on her cheekbone. “I’d never read or heard or seen anything to make me think that kissing wasn’t just for…”

“Princes and princesses?” They sounded droll. “Husbands and wives? I didn’t know. But I knew myself. I knew that certain girls made me feel certain things. So I gave it a try.”

“With whom?”

“Jane.”

“Which? Never mind.” She ducked her head, nestling her face against their throat. “Did you have your wicked way with her?”

“No.” They laughed. “It was only kissing. We were twelve.”

“But since then?”

“Nothing with Jane.”

There had been others, then, in London. She wondered if it was jealousy, this ache in her chest, or simply longing.

“Have you ever been in love?” She whispered it into their skin.

Their throat moved.

“I’m sorry.” She rolled away, onto her back. “It seems I’m trying to pry out all your secrets today.”

They gathered her to them, settling her head on their shoulder, hooking her leg beneath the knee and drawing it across their thighs.

“If I were to fall in love with someone, I’d rather not keep it secret.” Their hand was stroking again through her hair.

The gentle, rhythmic touch made her hazy and limp. She curved her arm around them, curled fingers tucked below their ear, knuckles grazing the lobe.

I can’t marry you.

She could hear Georgie saying it, by the fishing pond, and remembered how, even then, she’d gone dizzy and hot when they came near to her, when they slanted her that look from beneath their lashes.

She buried her face in their shoulder’s hollow. “Neither could you announce it with a banns.”

“True enough.” They were sardonic. “But if you’re wealthy, and landed, and no one has a prick, you and your love can do most anything else.”

She suspected her face was red. She was very aware, suddenly, of what she had between her own thighs, the sensitive flesh spread to accommodate the press of their hip.

“I see,” she said faintly.

“You can retire to the same bed, every night. There’s not a thief-taker who can drag you out, like at the molly house. However wicked your ways.” There was a smile in their voice as they said this last.

“The Ladies.” She was squeaking again and had to clear her throat. “The Ladies in Llangollen. The ones Miss Poskitt mentioned. You want to live like them.”

“When I’m that old, perhaps.” They gave a shrug. “I’m in no rush to rusticate. I envision a life of variety, occasion and adventure, big crowds, long voyages.”

Her face was cooling. The coarse fabric bunched beneath her cheek had begun to itch. “And your love is along with you?”

“Or I’m along with her.”

She tried not to imagine Georgie rowing a boat on a loch in the Orkneys, chattering gaily as they ferried her between cairns. They had something else in mind, of course.

Rain tapped on the roof tiles.

It was late. She was sore, beyond exhausted, incapable of teasing out her emotions. Her muscles hurt, but the feel of Georgie under her, and against her, was like a coating of honey on the nerves, dulling discomfort, tempting her with sweet urges.

“We should sleep,” she mumbled, alarmed into wakefulness by the alternate suggestion that had nearly escaped her lips. A plea for something wickeder.

“Mm.” Their chest rose and fell on a deep breath. A hand settled heavily on her leg.

She was on the brink of drifting off, draped over them, when they spoke again, their voice soft.

“My mother and father were among the visitors to the Ladies’ cottage, before I was born.

Mother said they rode very well and showed her particular favor.

” The hand lazing through Elfreda’s hair paused and cupped her head more tightly.

“I’ve often wondered if that visit planted the seed of doubt, for her, about her decision to marry. ”

Elfreda’s eyes opened.

Their heart was beating hard beneath her.

“There is a secret,” they murmured. “It’s not dark, rather the opposite. But it casts a strange shadow on my life all the same.”

“Georgie,” she whispered, in case they thought she was asleep, in case they were drowsing, unguarded, confessing to something in the night they’d regret in the morning. “You don’t have to say anything else.”