Chapter Nine

“I have a question, and you’re not allowed to mock me for it,” Samantha says, slowly stepping from stone to stone within the creek. As lovely as its gentle current was last night, it was even more peaceful tonight, and her toes gently curl against the slick moss and soft mud below. 

Esther shines in the moonlight, the beams of its light casting shadows all along her naked skin, so breathtakingly smooth in the evening air. Samantha finds the little goosebumps covering her skin, which surely cover her own as well, to be adorable. 

“Now I am quite excited to hear it,” Esther replies, turning to give Samantha her full attention. 

Samantha pauses, a little whisper of her pride inside bristling at admitting she was thinking about such things as what consumes her mind tonight. “Why do you believe in a God?” She asks at last. 

A smile takes hold of Esther’s face, smug and light, and her head rocks back to allow her eyes to gaze up into the night sky. “It’s working,” she mutters proudly. 

Samantha splashes her, giggling. “No mocking.” 

“Kinky sex with a nun?” Esther’s laugh rumbles through the stream. “That is what it took to pique your interest in theology?” 

“I should rather think it related to my interest in you, dear.” She purses her lips, and repeats, more sincerely than perhaps she would like. “Why do you?” 

“Well, it feels as natural to me as breathing. Am I to believe that all that is, is here by nothing more than an accident of nature?” 

“I was content with the idea all my life,” Samantha responds simply. 

Esther takes a moment to think, her slick legs slipping out of the water as she steps amongst the river stones, careful of her footing and surely enjoying the task of hunting for a safe place to stand. She reaches down and recovers a particularly round and smoothed pebble and considers it in the palm of her hand, then gently places it back down once satisfied with it. 

“I suppose I find it to be a fairly functional belief,” the Sister tells her. Her voice remains measured and active, as though she was being especially careful with her choice of words. “When my own capacity for something such as compassion is exhausted, I bolster myself with the knowledge that God may sustain me past my limits. It supplies my desire to do good with foundation.” 

Samantha crosses her arms and mulls over this for a second. She sits down on the bank of the river, gently moving a nearby towel over so that her bare bottom need not rest into the grassy edge. “If it is nothing more than functional,” she frowns, “then why must I believe?” 

Esther’s head lifts up to gaze upon her. “Must you?” 

“Society seems to believe so.”

“Society often misunderstands God for its own purposes,” she rebuts, donning the cool and practiced veneer of a woman of theology. Samantha had not often seen Esther in such a way, but she knows that whenever the Sister did engage in a discussion like this, she quickly grew more academic and perceiving. “The church, the Sisters,” she continues, “they give my life structure, invite me into a deeper sense of love.”

And, partially forming from the place of guilt inside of her chest for having led Esther to be with her, Samantha responds, “They would disapprove of this love.” 

“I’m coming to suspect they are wrong in so doing,” Esther asserts, and bashfully adds a moment later, “You have been quite… convincing to that end.” She looks cute as she brushes her hair back behind her round ear, and for a moment Samantha regards her the way one might admire a beautiful painting, elegant and masterful. “The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, kindness, and so on. I suppose that anything that promotes these convictions within yourself could rightly be considered God.” She then turns to face Samantha, smiling a little from the delight of sharing this side of herself with the woman. “What has stirred your interest?” 

Samantha debates lying to her, though mostly out of a feeling of mild embarrassment. “Sister Pullwater has offered me Minnerva’s position.” 

Esther bounces in place with excitement, clasping her hands together before her chest while her face beams. However, with a breath longer to reflect on its possible consequences, her enthusiasm tapers, and she exhales a simple and disrupted, “Oh.” 

“I’ve not come to any decision,” Samantha assures her.

“Are you looking for my advice?” 

“Desperately.” 

Esther tilts her head to the side. “I can’t make such a decision for you.” 

And Samantha nods, figuring that would be the case. It would have been easier for the Sister to solve the dilemma for her, but she’d never really thought Esther would give her a straightforward answer to the question. “But how do you feel upon hearing it?” 

Esther nods. “On the one hand, ecstatic. On the other… terrified.” 

“Tell me why.” 

“Oh, Samantha, it could be so good for you,” she sighs supportively. “You seem delighted in proximity to this life, and it appears to summon forth the best sides of you.” Esther pauses, and Samantha knows well the feeling that must be stuck in her throat. “And at the same time… we’d lose a great deal of privacy if you moved into the convent.” 

“Indeed,” Samantha agrees, mournfully adding, “As wondrous as this is, I’m not sure that I could survive on prayer retreats alone.” 

“Nor I,” Esther says quietly. She quickly shakes away the dread within her. “But it shouldn’t be enough to stop the decision in its tracks. If God has called you, I don’t want you to turn it away on my account.” 

Samantha rises and wades into the water once more, walking past Esther with an affectionate squeeze of her shoulder as she goes. “I don’t know how to know if He has,” she admits. Staring off into the dark and slumbering woods around them, enjoying the moonlight through the gaps in the trees, Samantha raises her hands to her hips and shakes her head. “Christ, I’m actually frightened of it all.” 

“Do you want it? Gut instinct, don’t think.” 

And her voice remains stagnant in her throat, her emotions frozen in their tracks. Samantha isn’t sure how to answer her, much less answer herself, and after a few frustrated breaths, all she can say is, “I can’t answer. I’m not sure.” She turns back to Esther with the moon in her eyes. “Please help. What should I do?”

Esther’s face softens and she shrugs peaceably. “That which completes your soul.” 

“Isn’t that what love is for?” 

To Samantha’s mild frustration, Esther giggles. Seeing the furrowing brow on her, the Sister approaches, slow in her step to mind the slippery ground underfoot, and takes Samantha’s wrists into her hands. “How small you think, my love,” she chastises sweetly. “A soul cannot be completed by love. Not from humans, anyway.” 

“And God does?” 

“Yes,” she affirms. 

Samantha frowns once more. “But I don’t believe in a god.” 

“Even now?” Esther stretches her arms wide, taking Samantha’s with hers, and leans her head back to embrace the skies above. Her voice abounds with a sort of majesty in it as she continues, “Under the stars? Wading in this creek? Dreaming of what you’ll do to me once we step back inside?” She steps forward and meets Samantha’s eyes again. “This stirs no feeling of the divine within you?” 

While Esther’s closeness certainly stirs something in Samantha’s heart, she feels none of the accompanying divinity that the Sister relates. She searches and searches inside of herself only to come up short, and looks away dejectedly. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to know.” 

And Esther takes Samantha’s face between her palms, looking upon her sincerely and gently. “You don’t need to. That’s what belief is for.” She kisses Samantha’s forehead. “You find the good in the world and call it God.” A kiss upon her cheek. “You find the good in others and call it God.” A kiss upon her lips. “You find the good in yourself…” 

“... and call it God,” Samantha exhales, completing the triplet. They hover in one another’s space, the familiar and comforting smell of Esther’s breath filling her nostrils. 

“Prayer is just a state of awareness,” Esther instructs. “Hymns are just songs that bind people together. The robes are just a reminder that I am more than just my body.” 

And as she kisses Samantha again, unassailing, the former noblewoman feels that emptiness within her, the one which so often was only assayed by the exhortation of her vanity, presses forth. She feels it within her like the brooding of a prophecy, like the urgency of destiny, yet cannot help but grow weary of its constant failings to bring her peace. She looks down, a trickle of shame entering her being as she cannot meet Esther’s loving eyes. 

“I’ve never known who I am if not beautiful and desirable,” Samantha whispers. “It’s all I have ever been. It’s all anyone has ever expected of me.” 

And Esther leans in to force Samantha to look at her again. “Do you think I would stop desiring you if you were buried in a habit?” 

“Yes,” she admits. 

And once more, Esther laughs at the frailty of Samantha’s perspective. She embraces her, wrapping her arms across Samantha’s shoulders while her chest bounces against her with each chuckle. “Samantha, I would still desire you if all you were was an idea in my mind,” she affirms, kissing the side of her neck. “I take great joy in my fortune to have fallen for a woman more beautiful than I knew women could be, but you are so much more than that.” 

Samantha’s fingers claw against Esther’s shoulders, gripping in like Esther was the only person who could possibly confirm that she was, in this moment, a truly living being. “What am I?” 

“Interesting. Charming. Kind, though you sometimes like to pretend otherwise,” Esther says quickly, and after a breath, adds, “You hum when you’re happy. You’ve let yourself grow and change. You’re patient with the children, such that I could never imagine you as anything other than an excellent mother.” She squeezes a little tighter. “When we’re in the heat of passion, my body gives in to your touch, to be sure. But it is the look of care and concern in your eyes that my heart succumbs to. I’ve grown to love a woman who is in the halfways of the reformation of herself, and I can only scarcely process how much more I will grow to love her as she takes shape.” 

Samantha kisses her, resolved in the belief that if Esther felt she could be someone worth loving, then perhaps she just might be.

– – – 

The slow rise and fall, that was surely it. Mediative, comforting, warm - the familiar and strange delight in the scent of her breath. It was that Esther was breathing, no - sleeping. It was something you did when you trusted someone, sleeping. 

Samantha always slept poorly beside Revier. It wasn’t just his snoring, or his cumbersome and musky smell wafting all around her. It wasn’t just the mattress that was too billowing and soft, as was his preference, nor the scratchiness of his beloved duvet he insisted upon. No, it had been the sheer dismay at his side, the pit in her stomach when she looked at a man that was nothing more than a means to an end. It was wondering what he would do when he caught her; she was never so foolish as to believe she could never have been caught. 

It was the knowledge that he was a soldier. An officer, sure, there was a difference. He was not accustomed to the brutality of the sword, the thunder of a gun in his hands. He was a sailor in the same way that Samantha was a wife to a husband. When cannons fired at his command, it was not because he held the igniting flames in his palms. 

But death was his art, just as seduction and lies had been hers. He thought nothing of it, possibly even enjoyed the attention from superiors that it brought to him. She had always known this, sure, but it wasn’t until she’d seen the fire in his eyes when the truth of her was told to him, that she truly understood it. But the fear was there, even in bed. 

In Esther’s sleep there is a peace - gentle, entreating, fulfilling. She grips onto Samantha’s nightgown not because she is afraid of what the woman underneath her might be doing, but because she desires her closer, ever closer. Esther buries her head into Samantha’s chest like she wishes she could crawl inside it, has a force behind her pressure that is powerful and longing. 

And it’s peaceful. Painfully so. 

She’d never had the pleasure of a woman asleep in her bed before Peter’s cottage. For all her lovers, used and discarded, she had never allowed them to be in her own bed. For all her thoughts of whisking a girl away to the countryside, she never did, and despite the feeling inside of her which wished to abandon her husband for any woman who was blushing at her, she was not willing to give up the comforts of her life. 

The half of Esther’s body laying upon her tells her what a fool she must have been. 

Oh, it was impossible to sleep when watching the girl was so enrapturing. The curves of her cheeks, the curling frizz of her hair, the sweet incline of her back underneath the covers. She stays awake, witness to an honor like she had never been given access to before; like each of Esther’s breaths were laurels while the tug of her fingertips were medallions. 

But neither can she remain awake forever, and despite her unwilling attempts earlier this evening, Samantha cannot sleep. Midnight is likely gone and past, hopefully not by too much, and Esther has reached the depth of slumber where she does not move anymore. Samantha carefully adjusts underneath her, scooping the woman into her arms, and lifts Esther off of her. She rolls onto her side, glad to see that the Sister is a heavy sleeper, and tries to shut her eyes and will herself to unconsciousness. 

The night does not take her. 

And so, figuring Esther would not resent her too deeply for the intrusion, Samantha presses her lips to her forehead, gently rousing her. Those hazel eyes, which look dark and deep in the low light, blink open heavily, foggy until they slowly recognize her. 

“... yes, dear?” She mutters, smacking her lip and lifting her head. 

Samantha brushes the hair behind Esther’s ear, letting her fingertips drift slowly over her skin. “I was counting the hours until I could next tell you that I loved you, and found the wait unbearable.” 

“Samantha…” She says dozily, her mouth breaking open into a beaming grin, aided by the soft inhibitions of waking. She tilts her head back, grabbing hold of the former noblewoman’s hand and kissing it. “You sappy doll,” she accuses. “Come hold me.” 

And so she pulls Esther back into her chest, affectionately petting her hair. 

“I was sleeping so well,” the Sister’s voice rumbles into her collarbone. 

“Forgive me for interrupting it.” 

“Forgiven,” she yawns. “I was having a strange dream I likely would otherwise have forgotten if I slumbered on.” 

“What was it about?” 

Esther hums out a laugh, low and weary. “So, I was in the sanctuary of the church - St. Bartholomew’s - and it was dark and cold outside. I, I was going around and extinguishing all the candles, so I could go to sleep, putting them out one by one.” She pauses for a moment, lifting up and allowing her eyes to watch the wall, hunting for the disappearing memory of the dream in her mind. 

“I think I was using my fingers to do it, sticking them into my mouth after each one so they’d be wet and it wouldn’t burn,” she shakes her head, a little incredulous. “How gross, they’d have ash from the wicks. Regardless - that’s what I was doing.

“Meanwhile, you… you were behind me, relighting each one and begging, ‘No! No! Don’t go to sleep yet! It’s too early!’” She squeaks happily, giggling into the cotton gown underneath her. 

Samantha lets a puff of laughter leave her. “What then?” 

“You woke me up.” 

“Liar.” 

“Not in the slightest!” She leans back, feigning offense. “See how tired my eyes are?” She points to the gray circles under her lashes. “I could never have invented a story such as that whilst so sleepy.” 

Esther yawns, as though to prove her point, then buries her head back into Samantha’s chest, letting herself be wrapped back up into her arms. After a few breaths, the Sister asks, “Why are you up so late?” 

“I’ve been watching you, mostly,” Samantha admits. “And considering my decision.” 

“And?” 

“No clarity yet,” she shrugs, her head rolling against the pillow. 

“It’ll come,” Esther assures her, though Samantha isn’t sure. The former noblewoman feels a warm and telling poke against her leg, just at Esther’s hips, and already knows what the woman is going to say when she whispers, “Now that we’re both awake, you ought to kiss me.” 

Samantha lowers a hand down her abdomen, sliding it underneath them to run her fingers around the leather band on Esther’s leg. She enjoys the way it causes Esther to push into her a little more. “I think I just might,” she concludes. 

And then her mouth is upon Esther’s, gentle at first, only to be taunted into more force as Esther’s tongue sneaks between her teeth. She lets it explore her, eager and perhaps a little hasty, just as the Sister always was, before she slowly pushes the woman off of her and climbs over her. 

Hovering above Esther is a place Samantha is growing comfortable in, and she always enjoys the not-so-demure look that flashes across the Sister’s eyes each time she does. Her lips, then teeth, play with the space below Esther’s collarbone, unhurriedly sucking it in and adding yet another soft, purple bruise to join the others upon the girl from their sessions the last two days. 

“You’re quite covered in marks, dear,” she purrs. 

“Oh, aren’t they gorgeous?” 

“I ought to add a few more,” she replies, and Esther is already nodding. 

So Samantha's mouth works down her chest, selecting a particularly soft patch of skin that would be easy to hide underneath her robes, and allows her kisses to be long and sweetly forceful. The rest of her body lays down into Esther, her thigh slipping between Esther’s, and soon the woman’s breaths are growing strained. 

Esther places a hand on her back. “Would you move your leg forward slightly - oh, yes,” her head rolls back as Samantha grants her request. 

The nun grinds her hips along Samantha’s thigh, up and down as a few humming moans rumble around in her chest and throat. 

“Your endurance is impressive,” Samantha tells her. “I’ve quite lost count of the number of times today.” 

“If… if each were a currency, I could take you to the market,” Esther giggles. 

And Samantha smiles as she increases both her speed and force, enjoying how Esther’s fingers grip tighter into her back. “So difficult to tire out,” she utters, “and just as challenging to grow tired of.” She brings her lips back to Esther’s mouth. “You’re so beautiful.” 

It doesn’t take much longer for Esther’s breath to give out, sighing into the room as a small wet spot covers the front of her nightgown and makes it stick to Samantha’s thigh. Samantha continues kissing her as Esther’s eyes remain shut tightly and the feeling pulses through her, and she revels in just how comfortable it is to be intertwined with her like this. 

She strokes a hand across Esther’s cheek, until a little while later the woman is asking, “What about you?” 

Samantha shakes her head, her lips upturned graciously. “I quite enjoy just watching you. The little contortions of your face are adorable, and it gives me great pride to know that I have caused them.” 

“That was lovely,” she concludes in agreement. Soon after, they are resting in one another’s arms, cuddling like the night could go on forever and the dawn would never come. Esther’s lips brush against her jaw. “It has somehow reminded me of my first time.” 

“Oh?” She perks up. “Do tell.” 

Esther nods. “His name was Michael. We were fifteen - well, I was. I think he was seventeen or eighteen. He was sweet, a bit awkward though.” 

Samantha tries to picture Esther at fifteen, young and naïve and scandalous, and finds the image amusing as the woman continues. “Not many of the boys showed interest in me because of my rebirth, but Michael,” an amused puff of air leaves her mouth, “bless him, I’m not sure he was aware most women possessed different parts than I. Poor guy, I think he believed all of mankind possessed a cock.” 

Samantha giggles with her. “So he was inexperienced as well?” 

“I always suspected there was something between him and Charlie that both would take to their graves,” she shrugs, then rolls her eyes. “You know how boys are.” She smirks and continues. “Michael loved dry rubbing, though I’m such an easy lay I never stayed dry for long. He was of the mind that so long as nothing was inserted, it wasn’t a sin, but I didn’t care much then. He was willing to touch me and that’s all I wanted.” 

“How did it end?” She was curious, wondering why the girl was so uncontent in her adolescence. 

“I ended it,” Esther replies simply. “He was so tame and respectable in how he fucked me. I was still figuring out how to tell a person, ‘harder,’ and it felt like he viewed my body like a porcelain doll.” She pauses, pursing her lips and letting them grin mischievously. “For a time, he had been the only one offering to kiss me, so I had remained. Until Cynthia came to town, that is.” 

Samantha nods, impressed. “And all the while you were skinny-dipping with Rebecca, smitten with her.” 

“I craved anyone who gave me attention,” Esther confirms. “Half the reason I’m in the church is that I needed someone to give my life to, especially, well…” She lifts her shoulders and drops them, uncommitted to the sentence. “As I’ve said,” she says instead, “I don’t wish to hold the reins of my life. I just wish to give them to someone whom I may nestle my head against and feel safe.” 

Samantha enjoys the way Esther then kisses her chest lightly. Letting her hand drift down to the woman’s bottom, patting it lightly to remind her of all the spanks she had given it the day before, she teases, “So I share your crop with God?” 

And, muttering weakly, perhaps returning to the throws of sleep, Esther whispers, “If you wanted it to yourself I would give it to you.” 

And something unsettling churns in Samantha’s stomach - the sort of reaction one has by impulse and which resists any attempt to fight it. It was a feeling of dread, perhaps, of past and of memory, of a time long ago bleeding into the present in such a way that one may not escape it. 

When Samantha replies, her voice is level, tight. “Pardon? Are you saying-,” 

Esther interrupts to repeat herself. “If you asked me to hang up my robes and escape to the countryside with you, I would not hesitate.” 

Samantha cannot hide the feeling within herself now. Her body grows stiff and tense. 

– – – 

Please. 

I cannot help this, Samantha. It is simply what things are. It is the truth, upsetting, to be sure, but plain and simple. 

But they won’t have to see me. I’ll stay away, at home, so long as I may still be with you when the night comes, that is all I would need-

If I do not appeal to the respectability of class, I shall never find entry into my family. In their eyes, you are, and always will be, inferior company. 

Cordelia, please. 

I’ve already made up my mind. I cannot remain in this place-

But you’d need a maidservant, wouldn’t you? A chambermaid? Anything. 

It’ll be easier if we just accept this cannot last. 

If the courtship is successful, you will need servants in your home. That could be-

Samantha. 

I’d do it for you. Sell myself into a contract. I could be by your side all the while. 

Say something. 

Please, I love you. 

Cordelia. 

Cordelia? 

– – – 

Samantha rises from the bed, ashamed, as she has always been, to recall the tone of her voice that day. Even in memory, trapped in the walls of her head and played only when she hated herself, she could not tolerate it. That feeling of emptiness that was encroaching, the desperation to not be left behind, that fear that without Cordelia she was nothing. 

The rejection, the termination of their love, had forged her. It had taken the raw ore of her body and turned it into a saber - cool steel. 

It was that feeling which brought out the worst of her, had turned her into the monster that told everyone Cordelia’s dark secret, had destroyed the courtship her lifelong friend had so painstakingly crafted. It placed her into Revier’s field of view, made her the person who wanted - needed - to take everything Cordelia had wanted and claim it for herself. It made Katherine hate her like she did not believe Katherine was capable of hating.

The hours and hours she had spent, helping Cordelia craft her manners, all became her arsenal. The kindness of her heart and care of her words suddenly became asp and adder, smoke and mirror, blade and scabbard. When she danced with Revier at a ball, nameless and landless, known only and permitted only for the beauty of her form, she thought of that feeling. 

When she made vows to him at an altar, knowing how deeply Cordelia would hate her for it, she thought of that feeling. 

And when Annette had made the same request of her, to allow herself to be bound to Samantha with a contract and a collar, she thought of that feeling. 

And Esther… 

“Excuse me,” Samantha chokes, drifting from the bedside and away into the living room. She places herself down upon one of the reading chairs, hardly minding the darkness of the room around her, and drops her face into her palms. 

Esther, poor girl, gives her a few moments of solitude before joining her. Her feet approach, weightless and timid in her step, and she drops to her knees at Samantha’s side. “Have I done something wrong?” 

A pause. “No, dear.” 

Even behind her hands, Samantha can feel Esther’s furrowed brow. “Strangely,” the woman muses, gentle and careful with her tone, “I don’t believe you.” 

Samantha shakes her head, trying not to continue letting that contemptible impulse within her take hold. 

She hated herself for that feeling. That feeling which told her that all she had been was nothing. She hated it then, and hates it now. The pity of it, the desperation of it…

“Sit,” she sighs, trying to expel the weighted air from her lungs. She waits for Esther to obey, pulling over an ottoman and sitting down onto it, just a foot away. “My first love was named Cordelia.” 

Esther purses her lips. “The woman whose home you’re staying in.” 

Samantha nods, beginning her story. “My mother was her mother’s collar, but Cordelia and I were raised as dear friends, just as our mothers were actually friends. Some even thought we were cousins.” She thinks briefly of Susanna and Katherine’s friendship, wondrous and deep, and then again of how sorely Katherine despised her now.

She sucks in another breath, feeling a tightness in her chest and a nervous warmth in her limbs. “She first kissed me when I was sixteen, a year after my mother had passed, and I loved her like all I was belonged to her. It was everything to me.

“As Cordelia grew older…” She pauses, but forces herself to continue. “She became obsessed with gaining the approval of her illegitimate father. Her mother, Katherine, had been his mistress. Cordelia wanted to sidestep being a bastard, and to figure out how to become gentry, and she very nearly did it. 

“Cordelia had a courtship in order, was gaining invitations to balls, was on the way. But,” Samantha halts on the word, considering its turn for a moment. “But she grew concerned about what people would think if her dearest friend was some poor girl whose mother had been a servant, a collar. She told me things needed to end between us, and, desperate for her love, I offered to sell myself into a contract to her, binding us together for years.” 

“And so you-,”

“Listen, please,” Samantha croaks. Another deep breath, and she ignores the trembling in her hands. Was it embarrassment? Anger? “I have hated myself for that offer the whole of my life. I was, in that moment, nothing. I possessed nothing, believed in nothing, desired nothing but her uninterrupted attention - that which she would never give me. To say I became a shell of a person for her would be to give me too much credit.” 

“And so,” Esther says carefully, her voice level and measured, “you think of me as becoming nothing in your hands, because of what I have said?” 

Samantha thinks of Annette, making the very same offer to her earlier this year, and how bitterly she’d rejected her. She hangs her head low. “I have thought such a pitiable thing in the past.” 

Esther rises from her seat, crossing the room with a heaviness in her step that had not been there when she entered. Her hands are at her hips, thinking, and her face looks pale and fraught. Samantha can’t read it, can hardly feel anything but the hatred of herself mucking about in her gut. 

When Esther speaks at last, her voice is tight. Cold. Fearful. “The highest expression of my love is pitiable to you?” 

Samantha looks at her, unable to respond amidst the swirling shame inside of herself, and again despises everything that made her the woman she is, the woman she so pitifully thought Esther could remove from her. 

“If you were a man,” Esther continues, her voice working up steam, “this giving away of myself would be encouraged - nay, demanded.” Her brow furrows. “It is pitiable to you?” Anger, unfamiliar to Samantha when set upon Esther’s face, bubbles up into her tone. “For a woman who desires to love me, I quite suddenly feel an absence.” 

Cordelia, please. 

Esther ought not give all of herself away to me, she feels her insides cry out. I shall only learn to hate her for it, just as I have learned to hate myself. 

And, unable to think of anything greater to say, Samantha mutters, “I am no man, Esther, and we are not betrothed.” She hates herself for it.

“Is it so wretched I want that?” The flash of anger crashes forth suddenly, and then Esther’s arms are over her chest as she glares at Samantha. 

Esther taps her foot impatiently, then speaks again with a frown in her eyes, “‘Esther,’” she puts on a character, speaking with her voice a little lower, gruffer, pretending to be a man, “‘How I adore your lovely face. Oh, to steal you away and marry you! Alas, I wish my heirs to be my flesh and blood, and you cannot give me such a thing.’” 

And before Samantha can speak, Esther has dropped that character and placed another upon herself, her voice light and feminine. “‘Oh, Esther, how your laugh warms my heart, and brightens my day. If only - if only you were once-born, still a man, and we might be together. Your spirit would be the same, would it not? Simply dressed in a man’s form, yes?’”

And then she drops that character as well and shouts from her own voice, leaving Samantha to wonder when someone had said such contemptible things to her. “Christ, even the church nearly wouldn’t accept my commitment! Sister Pullwater had to fight to secure my place in a convent!” 

Esther shakes her head, pacing back and forth. “Am I so detestable that even you cannot find it in yourself to desire all of me?” She marches on before Samantha can even think to reply. “I gave myself to God and cut these feelings out of my chest because I was convinced I would be nothing but repulsive in the eyes of any lover I could acquire. A thrill for them, sure, but never someone to love. I’ve carried the guilt of praying to God like he wasn’t my consolation prize.” 

“I did not mean to say-,”

“No, no I am not quite finished, dear,” Esther glowers. Her voice grows softer, more pained and full of longing than fury. “Do you understand what power you have over me? There are those who believe the accident of my first birth to be prophecy - that to be born male is to be condemned to it. I have often felt like a pale imitation of womanhood, a lower than second class sex, desired by men of fetish and women of comfortable experiment, but never for love.

“But you… Samantha, you are my once-born goddess,” Esther is crying, tears which burrowed behind her eyes now trickling forth. “You are the perfection of woman, and if you see it fit to give me your attention, you, who only desires beautiful women, do you see what that must do to me?” 

And then she falls to her knees, almost as though praying to Samantha. “I would eat the scraps from your hands, crawl on my hands and knees for miles, sustain myself on nothing more than desperation, just to see your breathtaking eyes call me ‘beautiful girl.’

“If you do not mean to accept my love and hold it for a long time,” she pleads, “then tell me now, and give me the peace to shut myself away again.” Her hands fumble with the clasps of the leather belt around her thigh, ripping it off of herself and holding it out towards Samantha. “If you do not wish to love me as I am, then do it - prove you are still the cruel, heartless woman of status I took a chance upon.” 

For a horrible moment, Samantha feels herself teeter upon that wicked crest of possibility. It was the sort of breath between two people that foretold anything could come of this moment, any scenario containing equal probability. She might scream. She might cry. She might gnash her teeth and race off to the woods. She might fall to her knees and pray. 

The loathing pulls against the scale. 

There was that terror, existential yet proximitous, that not only would Esther be willing to carve herself open and be filled with nothing more than whatever Samantha deigns to place within her, but that Samantha would only know how to place evil within. 

It was a fear of desecration. 

To taint a nun, to pull her from the path of purity and righteousness, to reveal to her that she possesses the same lusts, the same needs, the same burning as all else does - such a task was fun, erotic even. To have watched Esther fluster and argue within herself, torn up over her commitments to her creed on the one hand, and her depraved longing for Samantha for the other, it was beautiful in its way. It was adorable. And the way Esther kisses her is full of that emotion. 

But, love, that horrible feeling, that must surely rot her from within. Love was a thing that Samantha had previously denied because she believed it to be the source of all corruption within the world - admittedly an ideology borne from what love stole from her. Her love for Cordelia, and its subsequent betrayal, had snatched from Samantha the hopes that perhaps she was destined to be good. The denial of it, the rejection of it, confirmed that in her dwelt a violence that could emerge quickly if ever coaxed. 

To lust for Esther, and to stoke hers in return, was in Samantha’s eyes harmless. But to have loved her… 

Surely that was an act of wickedness. For now, just as Cordelia had watched Samantha’s fury, and just as Annette had seen her vitriol, and just as countless other women had watched her cast them aside - Esther lay within her sights like a carcass upon an altar, ready to be carved open. A sacrifice to the goddess of her self-hatred. 

And so, within her spirit, Samantha feels as though a knife has been placed between her palms. Heavy. Wide. Like a butcher’s blade. And there before her, upon the table, was the livestock. And it was living. Breathing. 

To love her would be to slaughter her. 

When Annette had said to Samantha, What if I traded my contract to you?, she had been handed the knife, just like now. She stared into the poor girl’s eyes, smitten and longing, and saw how lonely she was. God, they were pitiful, in the ways in which a calf must be when born; barely even standing, covered in the bile of birth, so ripe for the harm of the world. She could have said: yes, my dear, for you know I may love you. And then Annette would have been hers to keep. To carve open. 

Samantha had not the strength to slaughter her. So she cut her free, wounding her so that she might never come back. 

And Esther… 

With those wide, brown pupils in the night, she looked very much the doe-eyed sacrifice. Upon her knees, how easy it would be for Samantha to plunge the knife into her, to tell her: My dear, empty yourself. Give me all of you. Leave nothing behind. 

And likewise, it would be easy to scare her, to hurt her, to promote within her such a pain that she would never make the mistake of offering herself to Samantha ever again. In a way, that felt like a kindness, for Samantha felt wicked for even considering the woman in such a way as she was now doing. 

“Say something,” the sister pleads, still looking up at her. She was begging for the knife. 

Samantha swallows, and for a moment considers it. Considers giving her what she wants and taking everything that was within her and having it for herself. She could make Esther anything she wished to be. Why join the Sister’s when she could simply steal the poor girl away from them? 

“Please,” Esther chokes. 

So she considers the other possibility. A loud noise. A few harsh words. A proof of the cruelty within her, and Esther would be gone, would be spared from the altar. 

“Please.” 

– – – 

She was crying and couldn’t explain to Katherine why. It was a different sort of tear than she had shed when her mother died, and Katherine Jones had known it. Perhaps she knew heartbreak when she saw it. 

She had asked Samantha what was wrong, but to tell Katherine would be to admit what had been going on with her and Cordelia directly under her nose. That was impossible. 

So too, was it impossible to think of what might come to pass if Cordelia returned home that night to see her like this. Cordelia was supposed to be out courting, or rather, allowing herself to be courted, and if all was well she would likely not be staying in this home for very long. 

So Katherine asked what was wrong again, and Samantha learned what it meant to take up the knife. It was first plunged deep into her own chest, excavating out that feeling of nothingness which was so intolerable. 

And then she had stopped crying, told Katherine that it was about her mother when it really wasn’t. She clutched the handle tighter in her hands and shook away the blood, a horrible plan forming within her mind, and left the home.

Left the home ready to let Cordelia taste the knife as well. 

– – – 

Samantha’s hands are shaking. She swallows a breath and wonders, pitifully, if there really was an accounting for all her actions to come in the next life. Would St. Peter watch her carefully now, chisel in hand, ready to enter her sins into the ledger of her life? Was it more evil to love Esther or to send her away?  

And then Samantha feels tired. She is neither young nor old, yet in this moment she feels very old indeed. Old enough, and weary. It is the sort of exhaustion that comes from a pattern repeating, one in which the completion was obvious and inevitable, and one in which the conclusion was painful. 

The weariness gives way to the recollection of Esther in bed beside her, gives way to the look in the Sister’s eyes when she beheld Samantha. She looks at Samantha like she truly believes the former noblewoman was not destined only for the wielding of blades and the curses of hatred. What had Esther said the night of Judith’s birthday? 

I feel as though I saw you today. 

You see me very nearly everyday, that was Samantha’s reply. 

Actually saw you. You weren’t acting, you weren’t pretending to be someone else. You were just… you.

Then, just now, when Esther dared Samantha to reject her, she accused Samantha of being the cruel woman all along. Which was the pretending? Which was the actuality? 

And Samantha has something very near an epiphany. It sounds so stupid in her mind to consider it, to painfully clear that it almost feels as though it is nothing. 

That, perhaps, change was possible. 

Everyone said such a thing. It was nothing new or revelatory, nor was it wisdom borne out from an ancient source. It was simple. Human. But what overcomes her is not the exposition of the idea, the introduction of it into her mind; she is overpowered by the sudden internalization of it. Simon had said there are many ways to know things, but that some only come to pass through the teacher of experience. 

So, Samantha attempts something she has never attempted before. A third thing, between death or distance. 

She kneels down to Esther, swallowing back the tears which have now begun streaming along her cheeks, and takes the collar from her. She takes it like there was now no place for a knife in her hands. She exhales, blowing the air out through tight lips, and leans forward. 

She wraps the collar around the Sister’s neck, not for any purpose of establishing power, or control, but for the desire to show Esther that she had heard her; that she had known what the woman’s desires were. And after the buckle has clasped, she brings Esther into her arms and tightens them sweetly. 

“I am not leaving you, beautiful girl,” she whispers into Esther’s ear, and soon after they are both weeping. Perhaps it was simply the exhaustion of the night. Esther buries her face into the crook of Samantha’s neck, while Samantha’s arm holds her head like it was something precious and delicate. 

Samantha leans back and brings Esther into her body, sitting her back into the chair behind her for support. She waits for the right words, waits for Esther to steady herself with the relief of not being abandoned, and says: 

“If I have learned one thing amongst the gentry, it is this - I have perfected the art of using and discarding people.” 

She takes a careful breath before continuing. “It was a skill first taught to me by the accident of Cordelia, yet I have practiced it for a full decade before I met you. And know this: when I wield such a dagger, it is wielded only from a place of remorse and of the hatred of myself for wielding it.” 

Her hands pull through Esther’s hair, and she kisses the woman’s head. “I do not wish you to taste that blade, yet I cannot bring myself to spare you from my love. Please, for your sake, if you mean to accept my love, do not give up all of yourself to me. For it is precisely those parts which do not belong to me which I love the most.” Another kiss upon her head. “It is the woman who is unafraid to challenge me, to break apart my foolishness, who I have come to adore more than anyone else in this world.” 

She waits for Esther to speak. It takes a few moments, but the Sister eventually removes herself from her place at Samantha’s neck, and she rises, wiping the wetness from her eyes and cheeks. “You worried I would cease to be me?” 

Samantha nods, a little sad about it. “You have, as of yet, demonstrated no limits, sexually or otherwise. At times I fear you would become anything I wished you to become, and that if you did not wish it too, that I could force you to become it.” She closes her eyes, unable to look at the innocence of her. “I fear I could do extraordinary harm to you, and that you would thank me for it. I fear my love is rotten, rancid. I couldn’t live with myself if I caused such ruin to you.” 

“So,” Samantha continues, pausing to allow her words to find her fully formed, “if I am to feel safety in the love of you, I need to know that you will keep some of yourself pure of me. Keep that part locked away, tucked somewhere so far away that I could not hope to reach it.” 

Esther considers her for a moment, the band around her neck tugging as she moves. It would be temporary, sure, returned to her leg before they return to Bellchester; but for now, she knows it allows Esther to feel as though she has given herself away, as she desires. 

“A qualm first, and then my agreement,” Esther begins. Her hands find their way to Samantha’s shoulders as she moves to sit above Samantha’s lap, straddling her. “First, my dear…” She pauses, remaining steady. “It pains me to hear that you believe your love to be poison, for I experience it as nothing of the sort. I think that you must have the wrong idea of yourself entirely - at least as I know you. You are neither vicious nor terrible, corrupting nor controlling. Just as I have experienced a giving of myself to you, so, too, have you given yourself to me. And sweetly.

“I have said before, Samantha, that I believe you to be kind and sincere. It worries me, in fact, that you do not respect me enough to believe it when I tell you such things about yourself.” Esther tilts her head to the side, the look in her eyes so soft and welcoming that Samantha can’t meet it. 

“Our first night together,” Samantha whispers, staring off at the floor, “you told me you wished for me to ruin your life. I fear that I may. I told you I would.” 

To Samantha’s surprise, Esther giggles, that gentle and pattering sound she so loves. “Darling, I assumed that was theater. I was caught up in the desperation of you. You ought not to take me too seriously when I am aching for you.” 

“Now,” Esther continues, “for my agreement.” She sits back onto her heels, and a little onto Samantha’s legs. She places her hands atop one another, laid onto her chest. “I resolve to you, with all the conviction I may muster, and with all the understanding of what it means to your peace of mind and feeling of safety… I resolve never to give away that which gives me my distinction in your eyes. I shall keep a part of myself safe from you.” 

Samantha doesn’t fight the tears trickling out from between her lashes. She nods, then nods again to confirm she had heard her. She swallows through her dry mouth, feels the anxiety and angst in her chest waiver just enough for some other feeling to creep through. 

A weight lifts from her shoulders as she feels her form trust Esther’s words. There would be no need for knife, nor flight. Esther would not lose herself, and Samantha would not allow resent for herself back into her care for the woman. 

She sits forward and takes Esther’s hands into her own, rubbing her thumbs across the backs of them. “Then,” she leans in, her breath crossing into Esther’s space, “I resolve not to treat your love like it is not the sweetest gift I have ever been given.” 

Esther’s mouth is upon hers, her hands in Samantha’s hair. Her chest puffs with stifled laughs, giddy with the enthusiasm and relief that Esther kisses her with. She’s smiling when the kiss ends, and so too is Esther, so strongly that her cheeks begin to complain from the effort. 

“And,” Samantha adds, a little jokingly, “This I promise you. If I am to be like a goddess in your eyes, then I shall be a benevolent one.” 

“Perhaps I should not raise you to such a pedestal,” Esther admits. 

“Perhaps not.” 

Esther takes a deep breath, free from the fears that any conflict between them would tear their love asunder. Samantha is likewise relieved that no such permanent damage is dealt between them; marvels at the possibility that they might be better off as a result of a fight. She wonders at that. She’d never known a fight which did not simply bring more poison into her heart. 

So, Esther takes her to the bed, this time scooping Samantha up into her arms and bringing her head to lay on the Sister’s chest. This time it is Samantha digging her fingernails into the folds of Esther’s gown, holding onto her like she could not possibly be close enough. And this time, it is Samantha who feels herself drift away into sleep, knowing Esther’s eyes were studying her, delighted. 

– — – 

And when Samantha wakes in the morning, the answer is there. Change was in the air, she’d done something last night which she never thought possible - come to a place of conflict with a woman she cared for and walked away with her. Why not encourage such change further? Why not foster it? Promote it? 

“I’ve come to a decision,” she informs Esther as the woman wakes. 

“Oh?” 

With a bubbling warmth in her chest, Samantha excitedly whispers, “I’m going to be a nun.” 

Ms.Appropriately

In the last year, I've somehow written something in the range of 700-800 pages. It's kind of insane to me. But it has been such a rewarding experience to see my writing grow in this time, from the first chapter I wrote of my work "Devotia," which kickstarted my return to writing, to this latest chapter of "The Now Former Lady Deveroux," it it almost unfathomable to me that I am the same writer.

The Now Former Lady is a quiet work, not as flashy or interested in action as Devotia or Baker and Jones are. It feels softer, reflective. And somehow I've walked away from this latest chapter feeling like it is possibly the best chapter I have ever written. It's not the most dramatic, nor the most sensuous, but it is the one I am proudest of. It is the chapter that has fully convinced me that perhaps, perhaps, I may actually be getting pretty good at writing. It's a beautiful feeling.

We've got two more chapters to go in The Now Former Lady, plus an epilogue, and I thank you for taking this journey with me. Thank you for being witness to me falling back in love with a hobby that I had almost given up on, years ago. They'll be plenty more to come of my works, that's for sure.

And yes, a sequel to Baker and Jones is in the works - the mystery slowly taking shape...