A Throne for Sisters

She kissed his hands, then pulled him closer.

“And that’s why I don’t just want to sleep in the room next door.”

They kissed again then, and there was far more passion in this attempt than there had been in the previous one. Perhaps part of that was that Sophia had far more confidence that she knew what to do now. Perhaps part of it was that Sebastian didn’t feel as though he had to hold back.

They clung to each other, kissing as their hands started to explore one another. Sophia felt a moment of nervousness then, and Sebastian looked at her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “It’s just… I haven’t – ”

“I understand,” Sebastian said. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, though.”

Sophia kissed him again. “I’m not.”

Somehow, between them, they made their way across the floor of the reception room without ever letting go of one another. Sophia fumbled with the stays of her dress, then gasped as Sebastian started to undo them for her.

He pushed open the door to one of the rooms there, and Sophia got a glimpse of a four-poster bed in blue silk before Sebastian lifted her, laying her down on it as gently as a feather.

“Yes?” he asked.

Sophia smiled up at him. “Yes, Sebastian. Very much yes.”

***

Afterward, Sophia lay in the dark, curled against Sebastian and listening to his breathing as he slept. She could feel the press of his muscles against her back there, and the movement as he shifted in his sleep made her want to wake him and start everything they’d finished again.

She didn’t, though, even though everything that had gone before had been more beautiful, more pleasurable, just… more, than she could have ever imagined. She wanted to take everything she could now, but the truth was that Sophia hoped that there would be time enough not to have to. She hoped that there would be a dozen more nights like this, a hundred.

A lifetime’s worth.

She felt the weight of his arm draped over her in sleep, and right then, Sophia felt as though she had everything she could ever have wanted.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The morning came, and when it did, Kate wasn’t sure that she’d ever worked so hard in her life. Not on any of the orphanage’s wheels or chores, certainly not since. The strangest part of it was that she was happier than she’d ever been too. Happy to be doing this work, pounding metal and working the bellows.

It helped that Thomas was a patient teacher. Where they’d beaten her at the orphanage, he corrected Kate by showing her better ways to do things and reminding her when she forgot.

“We need to draw out the metal more,” he said. “With a scythe blade, it needs to be thin and sharp. It needs slicing, not impact.”

Kate nodded, helping to hold the billet in place while he struck it, then pumping the bellows to get the flames to the correct temperature. There was so much to learn around the forge, so many little subtleties that went beyond simply heating metal and hitting it. Already today, she’d learned about the art of welding metal together in the forge, about the scale that formed with too much work on iron, and about judging the difference between good iron and bad.

“I want to cover the back half of the blade with clay when we harden it,” Thomas said, “because…?”

“Because that will mean it cools slower than the edge?” Kate guessed.

“Very good,” Thomas said. “That will mean that the edge is harder, while the rest is less brittle. You’re doing well, Kate.”

Kate wasn’t sure that she’d ever had anyone encourage her before. In her life to date, there had only been punishments when she’d done something wrong.

Some lessons were easier than others. Metalwork required patience that Kate hadn’t built up. She always wanted to do the next thing, when sometimes the only thing to do was wait while metal heated up or cooled down.

“There are things you can’t rush,” Thomas said. “You have time, Kate. Savor your life, don’t wish away the moments.”

Kate did her best, but even so, it wasn’t easy. Now that she’d found something she enjoyed doing, she didn’t want to waste a moment of it. There were plenty of wasted moments, though, mostly spent looking through the forge or the shed nearby for things they needed. Despite Thomas’s obvious talents as a smith, organization clearly wasn’t one of them.

“I’ll go and fetch lunch for us,” Thomas said. “Winifred has been making bread. Don’t try to forge anything yourself while I’m gone.”

He left for the house, and Kate found herself chafing under the weight of his instruction. If he hadn’t told her not to do it, she probably would have jumped up and started working on a knife or a section of wrought iron. Probably a knife, because Kate could see the usefulness of that in a way that she couldn’t with a decorative bracket or a gate bar.

She couldn’t just stand still, though, couldn’t just rest, in spite of the heat and the closeness of the forge. In the absence of anything better to do, Kate found herself starting to reorganize things. The tongs made no sense in a random tangle of ironwork, so Kate hung them up on a hook. The sections of metal made no sense in a rough pile that made no distinction between brass and iron, hard steel and mild.

Kate started to sort through it all, arranging it into neat stacks. She set the tools in places that seemed to make sense, based on where Thomas would probably need them. From the forge, she went over to the shed, with its barrels and its stacks, setting everything into place, trying to bring some kind of order to the chaos of it all.

It took a while, but Kate could see how to do it. She pictured herself moving through the shed and the forge, picking things up as she needed them. Then she simply put things where they needed to be in order to make that work. She swept the floor, tidying away the fragments of metal that had fallen there, and the sand that had spilled from casting in brass and bronze.

“You look as though you’ve been busy,” Thomas said as he came back.

In that moment, fear crept into Kate’s heart. What if she’d done the wrong thing? What if he punished her for it? What if he told her to leave, and Kate found herself having to find her way on the streets of Ashton again? She wasn’t sure that she could go back to that, so soon after having found a place in which to be safe.

“You aren’t angry, are you?” Kate asked.

“Angry?” Thomas said with a laugh. “I’ve been meaning to organize this place for years. Winifred keeps telling me to do it, but what with one thing and another… well, I’ve never gotten around to it. It looks as though you’ve done a good job, too.”

Thomas handed her half a loaf then, stuffed with cheese and ham. It was more food than Kate was used to being given in the orphanage, and certainly more than she’d managed to steal for herself on the streets. She wanted to think that there had been a time as a child when she had been well fed and cared for, but the truth was that Kate couldn’t remember it. It was hard to believe that it could possibly all be for her.

Even so, Kate ate, because she wasn’t going to let food go to waste. Especially not since she was starving after working the forge so long. She devoured the bread at a speed that made Thomas raise an eyebrow.

“I hadn’t realized you were that hungry, or we’d have stopped sooner.”

Kate wiped her mouth, realized that she probably didn’t look very civilized right then, and didn’t care. That was something that her sister might have worried about, but it wasn’t something for her to be concerned with.

She looked around, and found herself hoping that Sophia had found something as good as this for herself. Kate wasn’t sure if this would last forever, because she couldn’t imagine anything lasting forever right then, but if it did, she wouldn’t mind. This was as close to perfect as she could have hoped for.

When she was done with her lunch, it seemed that Thomas had more lessons for her.

“You want to know about weapons more than the rest of it, don’t you?” he asked.

Kate nodded.

“Before you can forge them, you need to know about the differences between them. Come with me.”

He led the way to the shed, leading Kate inside. Thanks to her reorganization, it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. Kate was actually a little proud of that.

“There aren’t just swords and daggers and axes,” he said, lifting blade blanks and a couple of wooden blades that obviously served as models. “A rapier isn’t a broadsword. An offhand blade catcher isn’t a stiletto. You need to learn the differences in their balance and their weight, the way they’re meant to be used and the places where they’re meant to be strong.”

“I want to learn all of that,” Kate assured him. She wanted nothing more than that.