Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

and by singing it out loud, together
we become a choir, a chorus
higher than hurt
louder than loneliness

Isabella’s victory over Harcourt-- a functional excision of his cruelty from her person, her daughter, her bank accounts-- comes with a scorched earth of loneliness.  She’s won her independence from him, to live free in a world that assigns little value to her regardless; her daughter, who knows her only as a stranger who abandoned her to governesses and schools since infancy; a house with a staff that was always kind to her but afraid of her brother.  It is a clear victory, of attrition or otherwise, but Isabella has had so few of them in her life that she’s at a loss of what to do with it.

The first morning in the house in St. James, she wakes in a bedroom she hasn’t slept in for years to a staff who still step soft around her and handle her gently, like she’s set to shatter at any moment from a look from Harcourt; and to Sophia, young and tall just like Isabella had once been before her brother ruined her, with nothing to say to her.  The breakfast table is laid for two, the spread familiar and exactly as always, and Isabella bypasses the sweet fruits that Harcourt favored automatically, and her hand pauses in midair.

“Sophia, would you like--” she starts, and then pauses and begins again.  “Do you prefer sweets with your breakfast?”

“I do not care for them,” Sophia says, polite and delicate and formal.

“Nor do I,” Isabella says, and something of a smile pulls at her lips.  “Your beastly uncle always insisted on having them at breakfast, ever since we were children.”

He is not here, though, and Isabella has his signature and the law on her side to secure her purse and Sophia’s safety.  It is a victory, and it is hers.

Victorious though she may be, a new wash of loneliness, distinct to the plague of fear and isolation forced on her by Harcourt, creeps into her life.  With her fortune in hand and Lydia Quigley committed, Isabella sends Sophia back to school at her request and with a small staff to serve as protection.  The news of Isabella’s severance from her brother’s life and open acceptance of her daughter had spread quickly through the beau monde, and where either might have seen her shunned, the two together leave her a pariah. A rich pariah, but a lonely one nonetheless.  

She busies herself with organizing her fortune from the boyish disarray Harcourt left it in, centralizing accounts and searching for a banker she can trust to handle investments.  It’s a slog of dull work, but it fills her days, and the practice of interviewing and negotiating with banking officials helps to bolster the confidence she’d found months earlier, dug out under years of conditioned fragility by Charlotte Wells’ lips and hands and determination.

Charlotte crosses her mind every day, her strong stride and gentle hands, the way she’d found a strength in Isabella that she herself hadn’t known was there, the way her shoulders had trembled under the weight of holding together her family in the wake of her mother’s death.  The house on Greek Street is hardly far from St. James and every morning when Isabella sets out for her day’s errands and meetings she stops herself from directing the carriage to Soho. Guilt weighs heavy like loneliness, and Isabella has too much of it to ever see Charlotte and her anger, her grief, her strength, again.  

It aches like a phantom limb, the way she hurt Charlotte, but Isabella made her choice, and she will live with it, lonely as it may be.

It’s well into summer after everything came to pass and Isabella has, if not the life she wanted, with Sophia’s love and forgiveness and Charlotte’s friendship to go with the freedom and security Isabella had gained, then at least a life she is content with.  She speaks most often with her staff, her concern for formality waning as months go by with her daughter at school and her friendships razed to the ground and no one else to speak to save for her banker. She takes to less formal meals and decreasing demands on the staff’s time, getting to know them instead as people instead of the silent spectators and pitiers to her long humiliation under her brother’s heel.  

London is sweltering and Isabella is cursing the heat as much as the layers of heavy skirts and corset she’s strapped into as she reviews the list of suggested investment properties her banker had sent over.  Now that she has the funds she’s unsure of what to do with them and how to use them to attach some form of lasting respectability to Sophia’s name, and property ownership had been the most efficient option. She has stacks of papers to review and she wants nothing more than to dunk her head in a bucket of ice to deal with the heat and is contemplating doing exactly that when one of the servants-- William, stodgy and silent and forever kind-- clears his throat from the door of the study.

“Miss Charlotte Wells to see you, my lady,” he says delicately, and very suddenly Charlotte sweeps into the room with a rustle of skirts and chin held high.

William shuts the doors silently behind him and Isabella is left with the walking specter of her guilt, staring her down with a sharp set to her mouth and bright eyes.

“Miss Wells,” Isabella says, at a loss for anything else to say, and she’s on her feet without meaning to, clasping her hands together to stop them from reaching for her.  

“Lady Isabella.”  It’s familiar, Charlotte’s voice, though there’s no dip of her eyes or chin in any illusion of formality or aristocratic respect, her gaze holding steady and sharp with Isabella’s.  

“Might I offer you--”

“You might not,” Charlotte says, mild and calm and without anger.  She steps closer and closer still, halving the distance between them.

Isabella winds her fingers more tightly together, still at a loss of how to speak to Charlotte, who’s standing easily in her study, the sharpest reminder of everything Isabella has missed in the past months.  Apologies and explanations build in her chest and bubble upward, ready to burst forth and beg for Charlotte’s forgiveness, but Isabella holds them in with a careful clench of her teeth together. Charlotte came to her, for some definitive purpose, and it is almost certainly not to hear Isabella speak to her guilt.

“It’s quite the stir you’ve caused.” One corner of her mouth lifts up, confident and sure, and Isabella’s stomach clenches at the sight.  “The heiress of Blayne, manipulating the marquess into releasing her fortune so that she might live in a house unattended with her bastard child.”

Charlotte raises an eyebrow at her and a smile grows on her face as she halves the distance between them again.

“What might I offer you, Miss Wells?”  Isabella asks, already cataloguing what she can offer in exchange for Charlotte’s forgiveness; the list begins and ends with money, her only other function as an entrance to high society introductions sacrificed already to her independence.

“Your time, perhaps.  And your company.” Charlotte steps closer still, enough that the diameter of her skirts encroaches on Isabella’s, the familiar charm that Isabella fell for so many months ago reaching further still past the illusion of formality that Isabelle clings to.  Charlotte smiles, simultaneously reserved and confident, and Isabella’s guilt wavers because at this proximity she can focus on little more than the way that she knows how Charlotte’s lips taste, how her body feels under Isabella’s hands, how her neck goes taut under Isabella’s lips.

“If it is money you require, then I can for once offer it freely.”

“It is not,” Charlotte says, playful and easy, and the smirk on her lips plays contrary to every shred of guilt threaded throughout Isabella.

“Charlotte, please.”  Isabella can manage little more than a whisper.  “Why are you here?”

“I came calling to see the Lady Fitz.”  Charlotte tilts her head diplomatically, even as her smile remains unchanged and calm.  “For she was a true friend to me and to my family, and I wished to see her again.”

“What game are you playing?”  Isabella steps back, hating the way her voice wavers and her chest aches in such proximity to Charlotte.  “If you demand recompense for my betrayal then I beg that you--”

“Isabella,” Charlotte says, soft and sad, her smile finally fading alongside the last trappings of formality between them.  She reaches out, hand open and careful and unthreatening, giving Isabella the opportunity to reject it; Isabella freezes and holds tense under the soft touch of Charlotte’s fingertips to her clenched hands.  “I didn’t come in anger or with demands, but because I care for you and I missed you.”

Her other hand joins the first, holding soft and easy to Isabella’s, and the ghostly ache of Isabella’s guilt redoubles under the kind touch.  

“I betrayed you,” Isabella says quietly.  “I undermined your hunt for justice and--”

“You saved your daughter from a monster,” Charlotte interrupts.  Her hands tighten around Isabella’s, familiar and warm, and Isabella wavers under the weight of uncertainty and guilt and the oppressive, godforsaken heat of summer that’s leaving her lightheaded as much as Charlotte’s presence is.  “I won't deny I was in some state of rage for a spell, but I understand your actions. You did no more or less than what my ma did when she gave herself to the law to save my sister. Who in good conscience could find offense in that?”

“I do.”  Isabella pulls her hands free from Charlotte’s, even as she wants little more than to fling herself into Charlotte’s arms, dignity be damned.  “I failed as a friend to you and your family and betrayed your confidence in me. Who in good conscience would not take offense as such?”

Charlotte sighs, her shoulders slumping under the weight of Isabella’s self-flagellation, and she steps back to give her more space and sets to wandering the study lazily.  She fills the silence easily, speaking of the struggles of business and the ways in which her young brother causes mischief within the house; her voice settles warm over Isabella’s sternum, offering comfort that she doesn’t want to enjoy as much as she does, and she sits carefully down onto one of the couches and lets her eyes slide shut as she listens mindlessly.

“You seek to buy property?”

The question draws Isabella’s eyes open and to where Charlotte stands by the desk, an embarrassed flush spreading up her neck.  

“Apologies, I do not mean to pry, I just--”  Charlotte lifts the first page of the reports carefully and offers it to Isabella.  “This is near half of Soho.”

“Sophia will require an inheritance of more than just finances to make her way,” Isabella says after a long moment.  “My name offers her nothing, but sufficient land ownership could lend a level of respectability that outweighs the shame of being my daughter.”

Charlotte sits at her side, hand falling firm and urgent on Isabella’s arm.  “You saved her from a horrible fate,” she says sharply. “We both know what your brother would have done to her.”

Isabella sucks in a breath that stabs at her lungs and the ache in her chest, closing her eyes and clenching her jaw against not just what Harcourt did to her, but the still-stark wounds that had decorated Charlotte’s body under her gowns and stays and shifts, the way she had pressed a hand to her ribs and the purpled remnants of Harcourt’s anger once her corset was unlaced, so similar to the way he had left her all of those years ago, covered in bruises and welts and damned forever to carry the shame he forced on her along with the child he left in her.

“I apologize,” Charlotte says, soft and quiet, her hand loosening on Isabella’s arm.  “I meant only to remind you that your daughter was saved from that fate by your actions, not to stir up old wounds.”

“I let him do as much to you,” Isabella says, and guilt, powerful motivator that is it, finally allows her to meet Charlotte’s eyes.  “He did so to many girls for his own perversion, but you tried to protect me and he hurt you to cause me pain. I protected Sophia, yes, but at what cost to you?  To the pain he caused your family?”

“It is not your crime,” Charlotte says, echoing words Isabella had said to her so often months ago.  She smiles, wry and affectionate, and her hand reaches for Isabella’s again. “You aren’t responsible for the abuses he perpetuated, on me or anyone else.”

“You offer a kindness in your words.”  Isabella’s hand stays slack in Charlotte’s, and she breathes carefully against the way she wants to wind her fingers through Charlotte’s and hold on tight.  “One that I fear I have yet to earn.”

“Isabella.” Charlotte’s voice creaks with some kind of worry, and Isabella breathes in deep.  “It’s forgiveness, and understanding, not kindness.” Her hand tightens on Isabella’s and she smiles wryly, casting her eyes down towards the grip she has.  “And a bit of selfishness, if I’m to be honest, as I was when I said that I missed you.”

She pulls at Isabella’s hand gently, turning her palm upward and bending inappropriately close, by some defunct social standard that’s ingrained in Isabella even after she’s been disregarded by the same society that created it, and presses a kiss to the center of her palm.  Isabella lets out a breath without meaning too, loud and strained and disappearing into the room around them.

Charlotte takes her time to pull away and stand, stepping back politely, a picture of social nicety.  She drops her head minutely in some offer of formality and looks back up with a smile.

“If I may call again sometime soon?”

“I feel that I have nothing to offer if you should,” Isabella says before she can stop herself.  

Charlotte presses her lips together and inhales slowly.  “For my own personal edification, then.”

“I would not turn you away,” Isabella says, because she’s never had the ability to turn Charlotte away, any more than she’s had the ability to lie to her.  She folds her hands more appropriately into her lap and lifts her chin, clinging as best she can to formality, the distance it offers a crutch against the ache in her chest and the way her whole body reacts to Charlotte’s presence in her home.  

“Thank you, Lady Isabella,” Charlotte says.  She tilt her head once more and makes her way to the door, pausing to deposit something on the desk and glancing over her shoulder to smile, cheeky and charming as always. “For your time.”

She disappears through the doors, gliding out past William’s befuddlement at a guest opening doors on their own and leaving Isabella blinking after her, still frozen on the couch.  The front doors open and close, echoing through the hallways, before Isabella’s pulled herself out of her stupor and to her feet.

Sitting on the desk atop the stack of papers she’d been reviewing before Charlotte’s visit, glinting innocently in the summer sunlight, is the earring Isabella had given to Lydia Quigley for a moment alone to speak with Charlotte, months ago.

A familiar empty ache spreads through her stomach and up into her chest, and Isabella slumps down into the desk chair, dropping her head into her shaking hands and taking deep trembling breaths to steady herself against the force that is Charlotte Wells.

It’s another week before she sees Charlotte again.  It’s late in the evening when Isabella’s carriage pulls up to the house in St. James, a long afternoon of negotiating over property prices pressing against her temples, and she wants nothing more than to drink too much wine and go to sleep for three days.

Instead, she has William sweeping the doors open for her with his customary bow and a quiet “Miss Charlotte Wells waits in your study, my lady.”

Isabella draws to a halt, halfway down the hallway towards her rooms, a thrill of anxiety shaking her body out of its exhaustion momentarily.  She breathes carefully and nods towards William, who marches past smartly and opens the doors to the study. Charlotte stands slowly from her seat on one of the couches, closing the book she’d been reading and clasping her hands politely in front of her.

“Miss Wells,” Isabella says as the doors shut behind her.

“Lady Isabella,” Charlotte counters, smile familiar on her lips, easy and beckoning.  Isabella seats herself on the opposite couch, folding her hands in her lap.

“I apologize for the wait.  I was detained on an errand.”

“And I came unannounced,” Charlotte says.  She pulls absently at one thumb, a nervous tic Isabella had forgotten, and it draws her attention for a brief second.  “I was surprised that your daughter wasn’t here when I arrived, though.”

“Sophia returned to her school’s dormitories shortly after--” The words dry out on Isabella’s tongue, the truth that her daughter was only mildly interested in developing a relationship with her a dull pain living deep inside her ribcage.  “She has ties there, and friendships, and asked to continue living there.”

“Isabella,” Charlotte says softly, her hands unclasping and fingers flexing towards the other side of the room where Isabella sits.  “I assumed she would want to live with you.”

“As did I.”  Isabella sets a polite smile on her face and keeps her hands soft in her lap.  “Though I understand that she knows me only as an idea and has for her whole life.  After what happened, I understand her desire to return to the life she knew, and she is safe there.”

“Isabella,” Charlotte says again, and her voice aches so audibly that Isabella’s bones hurt.  

“May I ask why you called, Miss Wells?” Isabella says, brisk if not unkind.

“For your company,” Charlotte says, settling back into the easy smile and casual disregard for formality and allowing Isabella the grace of ignoring the gulf of loneliness she’d so briefly acknowledged.  “In whatever form you may find interest.”

“In whatever form,” Isabella echoes, and she smiles, small and brief and unintentional, the weight of loneliness and guilt wavering for a moment.  “How forward.”

“Maybe so.”  Charlotte moves slowly over towards Isabella’s seat on the couch and takes her own seat, far enough apart that there’s space between the cavernous edges of their skirts but close enough that Isabella could reach out for her hand if she so desired.

She does, so very much, and she winds her fingers together carefully instead.

“One might find your solicitations untoward.”

“One might,” Charlotte says with a hum.  “But I mean nothing of the sort. We could even play hazard, though I have it on mixed authority that you’re either a disaster or a genius at it.”

It surprises her enough that Isabella laughs aloud, which in turn surprises her even more, and draws a smile from Charlotte.  There’s a comfort to her re-entry to Isabella’s life, her quiet determination in the face of Isabella’s guilt warm and easy, a return to the trust that had grown between them so many months ago.  Even at the height of it all, with Harcourt closing in on Sophia and using Charlotte as a whipping post to punish Isabella’s rebellion, when fear and uncertainty had dominated her life more than it ever had, the moments she’d shared with Charlotte had offered a balm against the war they’d found themselves in.  The familiar comfort that Charlotte’s presence offers is intoxicating, almost enough to outweigh the overwhelming guilt that Isabella slogs through every day, and she reminds herself of her failures and the need to keep her distance from Charlotte, and--

“Would you join me for dinner?” Isabella says without meaning to.  A mistake, to be sure, but one she isn’t yet ready to give up on. She backpedals almost immediately, as soon as one corner of Charlotte’s mouth lifts at the request.  “Unless you must return to--”

“Pa and Nance are holding the house,” Charlotte says.  “They said Ma never took a night off and they’d throw me out for the day if they had to.”  She offers her hand to Isabella and tilts her head towards the doors. “Shall we?”

Isabella hesitates, the distant ache of self-deprecation holding her hands in place, before unwinding her fingers and settling her hand delicately in Charlotte’s.  Her palm is as warm and soft as Isabella remembers and the slide of her skin against Isabella’s sends a shiver racing down Isabella’s spine.

A mistake, to be sure, but one she isn’t yet prepared to stop making.

Just before dawn starts to break, Isabella lays in her bed, curled under the sheets and watching as Charlotte works her way through dressing.

“Take my carriage,” Isabella says as Charlotte sets to curling her hair up on top of her head.

“I walked here.”  Charlotte raises an eyebrow, catching Isabella’s gaze in the mirror, and Isabella flushes under her scrutiny.  “It’s not far.”

“Please.”  Isabella sits up carefully, dragging the disheveled sheets with her as a shield.  Charlotte is the only person who’s seen her naked since she was an infant and this may not have been the first time, but Isabella still clings to the covers for comfort against her exposure.  “Allow me.”

Charlotte’s hand still in her hair, and she turns on stocking feet to level a stare at Isabella for an uncomfortably long moment.  “I wouldn’t accept payment then, and I won’t accept it now.”

“Please,” Isabella says again.  “I have more than I could possibly ever spend.”

Charlotte abandons her hair, hands settling sharply on her waist.  “I don't treat you as a cull, Isabella,” she says quietly. “Please don’t treat me as a purchase.”

It stabs as effectively into Isabella’s stomach as Charlotte had clearly expected, and she sighs and moves back to the bed, lifting a dressing gown off the chair and draping it over Isabella’s shoulders as she sits.  Her hands wrap around Isabella’s, and she presses a slow kiss to her knuckles, lips lingering warm and slow on her skin.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Charlotte says, holding tight to Isabella’s hands.  “There’s no debt to pay.”

“I will always owe you a debt,” Isabella counters, and her voice and determination waver because the weight of her betrayal will always live between them, night-long absences is judgment aside.  

“I’m not here to exact some revenge on you,” Charlotte says.  Sadness weighs at her voice and her hands tighten, almost enough to hurt.  “I wish you could believe it.”

“As do I,” Isabella mumbles, hands holding fast to Charlotte’s.  “This shouldn’t happen again,” she adds, just as Charlotte surges forwards to kiss her again, hands pulling free so they can hold gently to either side of her face.  Isabella melts into the kiss and the way Charlotte’s lips move against hers, holding fast to Charlotte’s wrists.  This won't carry on after Charlotte leaves the house, so Isabella can allows herself to have her just one more time.

Chapter Text

It carries on.

Summer fades into autumn and the air grows cold.  Isabella continues on with her dogged negotiations to buy up a collection of buildings throughout London, amending contract proposals to drive ongoing ownership and favorable tax rates as best she can.  She could hire an attorney to handle the whole mess, but the complexity grants her distraction and the opportunity to use the extensive tutoring she’d received as a child, and she welcomes it.

Sophia comes by once every two weeks to have dinner with her, a polite affair, and leaves shortly after each time.  Charlotte comes by once every two days, frequently enough that William rarely ever announces her anymore and instead sends her through to the study or library where Isabella is holed up alone.  She brings unsolicited, if not unwelcome, news from the house and how more girls have joined the ranks to keep up with growing demand, of Lucy and Jacob and little Kitty Lambert, who’s crawling now, and continues her own determined assault on Isabella’s guilt.

It’s a clear night, clear enough that the moon lights the room, and Charlotte has been asleep for hours.  She’s curled on her side, a pillow clutched to her chest, her hair spilling over the white of the sheets and moonlight fitting soft and cool over the clean lines of her back.  Isabella lays on her side as well, staring unashamedly at the shift of light on Charlotte’s back with every even breath she takes. Her hand reaches out of its own volition, fingertips stalling just short of Charlotte’s spine and the nearly-invisible nick of scar tissue just to one side, below her shoulder, that had been a distinctive welt from a silver-tipped cane the first time they shared a bed.  

Charlotte still carries the marks of Isabella’s shortcomings, on her body and in the gaping hole left in her family where Margaret Wells had once stood, let down by the justice system and Isabella’s failed machinations.  

Isabella pulls her hand back and tugs the blankets higher over her shoulders, burrowing down into them against the chill and not looking away from Charlotte.  Her mouth opens and she nearly spills everything out into the quiet of midnight-- that her daughter wants little to do with her, that she’s desperately lonely when Charlotte is away, that she still dreams about Harcourt’s abuse, that she’s sorry her influence wasn’t enough to save Margaret, that she’s sorry she traded away the chance to hold Harcourt to account, that she’s sorry, that she’s sorry, that she’s sorry, that she loves Charlotte so much she feels it in her bones every minute of every day-- but she pushes her lips together instead and holds it all inside.  If she keeps quiet and holds her breath against everything she wants to say, she can stretch the peace of the moment out, hold onto it for longer, Charlotte’s soft breathing and the smooth skin of her back holding time still and Isabella’s guilt at bay.

The sheets rustle as Charlotte rolls over, moving closer to the center of the bed and pulling for the blankets and the warmth of Isabella’s body.

“What’s the time?” she mumbles, curling into Isabella’s side, lips brushing against the skin of her shoulder.

“Too early,” Isabella says softly.  She doesn’t protest when Charlotte’s hand curls around her arm and holds on, cheek pillowing against her shoulder, and turns her head just enough to press her lips to Charlotte’s hairline.  “Go back to sleep.”

I love you sits on the tip of her tongue, catching behind her teeth and burning against her chest.

“How goes the land hunt?”  

Charlotte rolls over onto her side and props her head on one hand, her free hand following the line from Isabella’s elbow to her shoulder and back again, lazy and unconscious.  

“I worry we’ll all be old and grey before it’s complete,” Isabella says, head lolling to one side to face Charlotte.  It’s halfway into a nearly weeklong stretch Charlotte’s spending at the house in St. James, her family chasing her out for a vacation after an exhausting fortnight that had left the house flush with funds to make up for the lack of sleep.  Miss Birch had all but deposited Charlotte into the house and Isabella’s arms, her eyes sharp but her smile fond as she left with a tip of her hat and nothing to say beyond “Don’t let her leave for a week .”  Charlotte had fallen asleep in Isabella’s bed almost immediately and slept straight through breakfast the next morning.

Isabella pauses and looks back up to the ceiling, eyes sliding shut under Charlotte’s touch.  “There’s a house on Greek Street for sale,” she says to the ceiling, not opening her eyes.

“The one next to ours,” Charlotte confirms.  Her palm skims along Isabella’s skin.

“I may include it in the purchase,” Isabella says eventually.  She opens her eyes and looks over to Charlotte, whose hand moves still along her arm even as one eyebrow lifts.

“Does the Lady Fitz plan to open a brothel of her own?” she says with delight, abandoning Isabella’s arm to instead pinch softly at her side.  “What a scandal that would be.”

“I thought you might wish to use it,” Isabella says hesitantly.  It cuts off Charlotte’s playfulness abruptly, and Isabella sits up, dragging the sheet with her and clutching it to her chest.  “I don’t mean to offend, or to imply your business requires my benevolence.”

“But?” Charlotte prompts.  She sits up as well, eyes guarded even as she doesn’t make any effort to cover herself as Isabella had.  

“You spoke of how your brother is growing quickly, as is young Kitty, and that Miss Cross and Miss Scanwell alike have taken to boarding in the house.”  Isabella does her best to hold onto a measure of dignity, even as she sits naked in bed with her hair spilling loose down her back and Charlotte’s touch still cooling on her skin.  “Additional space could be of use, and I could offer favorable terms.”

“Favorable terms,” Charlotte echoes, elbow going to her knee and chin propping in her hand.  She’s recently cut her hair short again, and Isabella’s pulse skips at the way it flops messily into her face.  She holds her ground as best she can, only wavering minutely under Charlotte’s regard, until Charlotte finally speaks again.  “Fanny’s spoken of wanting to leave the life. She doesn’t wish for Kitty to grow up as we did.”

Isabella bites back the instinct to wince, the one that rises every time Charlotte’s childhood and the way it was cut short, even before Isabella’s was, by the pursuits of men comes up.  Charlotte smiles at her, thin and sad, as she always does, and her free hand moves to wind together with Isabella’s.

“She said she’d start a boarding house for girls if she could,” Charlotte says.  Their fingers fit neatly together. “I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d never find the space nor the money for it without carrying on same as me.  But perhaps with some favorable terms she could.”

“If you think it best,” Isabella says, free hand curling around Charlotte’s wrist, thumb stroking across her pulse, the initiation of contact still rare for her even after so long, and Charlotte’s breath hitches audibly.  “Then I’ll ensure it is so.”

“So long as you promise you’re doing so for something other than guilt,” Charlotte says firmly.  Her palm presses easy against the line of Isabella’s jaw, directing her gaze up, and Isabella pushes her lips together and stays silent in the face of Charlotte’s huff of frustration.  “At what point will your guilt fade?”

“I don’t know that it will,” Isabella says softly.  “But using the fortune I bargained away that beastly man for to help you and your family and your girls does ease it in some small way.  Please allow me to do this.”

“You know I’d never stop you.”  Charlotte leans her forehead against Isabella’s temple, her breath coming slow and warm over Isabella’s cheek.  “I just wish you could see that no one but you holds any anger towards you. You've been forgiven a dozen times over.”

Isabella kisses her instead of responding aloud, holding fast to her wrist and holding fast to the cold familiar ache of guilt and the way it stabilizes her.

Snow coats the streets, grimy and darkened, in the week before Christmas, but Isabella finds her first good mood in months-- or, at the very least, her first good mood not borne of Charlotte Wells and her famed prowess-- when the property purchases are finally completed and she becomes owner of nearly thirty buildings throughout London.  She directs her banker and her carriage to Greek Street to retrieve the keys from the final property-- an errand ostensibly for nearly anybody else, but one Isabella decides whimsically, on the base of her good mood and the first slice of sunshine London’s see in days, to undertake herself.

“My lady, ” her banker says hesitantly.  “As the property records indicated, the neighboring building for this property is a house of ill--”

“I’m aware of the businesses in the area,” Isabella says with a polite smile.  “I’ve no concern for the matter, though if you would prefer not to venture to such an area, I would hardly hold it against you.”

“No, my lady,” he hurries out.  “I would be honored to accompany you.”

Young Jacob and Mister North are outside the Greek Street house clearing the snow when the carriage pulls up.  Her banker looks uncomfortably out the window before stepping out of the carriage and offering his hand to Isabella, who steps down with a smile at his discomfort.  Mister North, she knows, is fully aware of the purchased house, and he barely blinks at her arrival, save for a disgruntled look at her uncomfortable banker.

“Are you lost, sir?” he says gruffly, only to flash a smile and wink at Isabella when the banker coughs loudly and looks to his shoes for a short moment.  “My lady.”

“We have come for--”

“New ownership, yeah, we heard as much,” Mister North says.  “Just in time for some Christmas cheer, even.”

Isabella holds back a laugh at her banker's discomfort and sweeps past him to the neighboring building.  Behind her, Mister North’s distinctive laugh follows the banker as he scrambles past her in an attempt to reach the door first.  It swings open as he lifts a hand to knock, revealing Charlotte and Fanny standing on the other side, keys in hand.

“Good evening, sir,” Charlotte says politely.  “The previous owner asked that we provide you with the keys to the building.”  She tilts her head diplomatically in Isabella’s direction, a familiar smile playing at her lips, and nudges her elbow into Fanny’s side until she dips awkwardly as well.  “My lady.”

“I thank you for the hospitality,” Isabella says, still holding back a smile of her own.  “Might we be able to tour the property?”

“Of course.”  Charlotte sweeps back from the door to allow them in.  “Miss Lambert, might you show the gentleman the the upper floors while I show the lady the parlor?”

“Of course,” Fanny echoes.  “Right this way, sir.” She all but manhandles him to the stairwell, cheerfully adding on a “ Have we met before?  You have a familiar face.”  

His spluttering denials, too vehement to be honest, trails behind him as Fanny hurries him up the stairs, and Charlotte barely lasts until their footsteps make it up two stories and she’s shut the front door before laughing brightly.

“ That’s you banker?” she half-whispers, delight written across her face.  “He’s here three times a week.”

“Clearly I must be overpaying him,” Isabella says, finally letting her smile break free.  She glances up the stairs where Fanny had disappeared, and then to the shuttered windows, before letting her hands fall to Charlotte’s waist and pulling her closer.  Charlotte leans up onto her toes and kisses her, warm and slow and home in the unheated empty building Isabella’s just purchased, their lips moving easily together.  

“Welcome to the debauchery of Greek Street, Lady Fitz,” she mumbles against Isabella’s lips, and pops up higher on her toes to kiss Isabella’s nose briefly.  

“I’ve taken the initiative of having contracts drawn up for the tenancy.”  Isabella’s hands stay tight on Charlotte’s waist, keeping her close. “For Miss Lambert to review at her leisure.”

“She’s liable to cry on you when she signs them,” Charlotte informs her.  “I think she’s yet to realize this is actually happening.”

“I would hope she adjusts quickly,” Isabella says.  “My apparently debaucherous banker can notarize them, should she want to sign today.”

“That quickly?”

“I thought she may wish to move in for Christmas,” Isabella says, almost bashfully, as if the extent to which she’s thought through the purchase and lease and establishment of the boarding house were something to hide.  Charlotte’s eyebrows raise and she leans back up on her toes to kiss Isabella again, languid and slow and heavy, heavy in a way she normally reserves for deep into the night in the house in St. James, when Isabella’s unguarded and aching for her already, and here, now, in the cold air of an empty house with Fanny Lambert upstairs, Isabella’s body wakes under the familiar touch.  Her heartbeat pushes heavy behind her sternum and I love you bubbles in her throat, and she kisses Charlotte back to keep herself quiet.

“You’re an extraordinary woman, Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam,” Charlotte says.  Her breath brushes against Isabella’s lips and draws a shiver up from the base of her spine, and Isabella’s eyes slide shut of their own accord.  “Fanny will be outright ecstatic.” One hand presses soft and intentional to the side of Isabella’s neck, fingertips skidding down along her throat to the line of her collarbone and ripping a full-body shudder through her, and she raises an eyebrow with a familiar smirk.  “Your man can walk back to his office from here, yes?”

“Yes,” Isabella breathes out, fingers flexing against the stiff barrier of Charlotte’s corset.  “I’m certain it would be a good moral exercise for him to do so, in fact.”

Charlotte presses another kiss to her mouth, teasing and fleeting, and all but lunges out the door with her hand held tight, Isabella’s height and longer stride all that saves her from stumbling after her.  

“Pa, would you tell Nance--”

“Off you go,” Mister North says with a wave of one hand.  “We can hold the house just fine without you.”

Charlotte clambors into the carriage behind Isabella, barely waiting for the door to shut and the blinds to be pulled before she yanks Isabella in by the bodice and kisses her absolutely filthily.  Isabella’s body reacts immediately and she clings to Charlotte’s arms.

“The driver,” she whispers, her concern petering off into a quiet groan when Charlotte’s lips move to her throat and hands to her skirts.

“Surely you can manage to stay quiet and dignified,” Charlotte says with a devilish smile, her hand working its way up Isabella’s skirts.  “Being a lady of your stature and upbringing, of course.”

Isabella slaps an undignified hand over her mouth to muffle the sounds Charlotte draws out of her for the brief carriage ride to St. James, her whole body trembling and flushed by the time they pull up in front of the house.  She whips past William and the rest of her staff as quickly as possible and slams the door to her rooms behind them as soon as Charlotte’s skirts clear the threshold.

“Perhaps I should buy property more often,” Isabella says later, rolling onto her side and resting a hand on Charlotte’s stomach under the blankets.  Exhaustion weighs at her eyelids, the long day of finalizing the purchase followed by Charlotte’s enthusiasm leaving her ready to sleep for days, but she resists the temptation, holding herself awake enough to luxuriate in the shift of Charlotte’s abdomen with each breath, the flush to her cheeks, the way she smiles sleepy and warm at Isabella.  “If this is to be my reward for doing so.”

“Would that make me the most valuable harlot in all of London?”  Charlotte’s hand covers Isabella’s on her stomach, thumb working lazily over the back of her hand.  

“Surely one would never make the mistake of assuming you were anything but already,” Isabella drawls, following it up with a delicate yawn.  Charlotte laughs quietly in to the waning daylight in Isabella’s rooms and shuffles closer on the bed, arm slinging across Isabella’s stomach and lips landing on her shoulder.  

“Lucy would, should she have an opportunity,” she remarks, lips still brushing against Isabella’s skin.  “She’s in quite the high demand.”

“Perhaps so,” Isabella says sleepily.  “But if my eavesdropping on the ostensibly well-to-do men throughout this whole process holds any truth, then it’s still Charlotte Wells they all speak of.”

“You flatter me, Lady Isabella,” Charlotte says with a smile against the skin of Isabella’s shoulder, jaunty and casual, and Isabella runs a hand along her arm lazily, settling deeper into the warmth of the bed and Charlotte’s hold, warm and safe and comfortable.

“Isabella,” Charlotte says, long after the last edges of sunlight have faded from the room and when Isabella’s well on her way to a deep and satisfying sleep.  

Isabella hums sleepily, not opening her eyes, too content in Charlotte’s embrace and halfway to sleep to find her voice, prepared for Charlotte to speak softly into the darkened room as she so often does, of the complexities of running the house, of her worry for the girls, of her uncertainty in carrying on the success her mother had striven for.  

Instead, though, Charlotte remains quiet, her lips pressed against Isabella’s skin and posture stiffening slowly, breaths measured and brittle, and worry-- familiar but distant, burrowed deep in Isabella’s stomach-- drags Isabella to wakefulness, and she rolls over onto her elbow to face Charlotte and the crease in her brow.

“You look troubled,” she says softly, and almost reaches for the familiar line of Charlotte’s arm, only to hesitate, hand hovering an inch shy from Charlotte’s sharpened posture.

“I have something that I should like to tell you.”  Charlotte pulls herself up to sitting, taking the blankets with her, and Isabella follows suit, arranging the blankets to cover the both of them.  Charlotte folds her arms across her stomach, defensive and uncertain, and her breath wavers audibly in the quiet of the house.

“If there’s anything you feel I should know, then please,” Isabella says, holding her hands together carefully in her lap, uncertainty growing out of the worry deep in her stomach.  

“My mother,” Charlotte says quietly, shaking, uncertain.  “We received a letter.” Her hands twist together, and Isabella’s shoulders tilt towards her, reaching always and wishing to hold, to comfort, to protect and love and never let go.  “She was spared by Hunt. He sent her to the colonies instead of executing her.”

Isabella pulls back sharply, hands falling limp onto the blankets and eyes wide, because Charlotte’s dark eyes are uncertain and staring at her, her voice wavering and unsteady as she speaks of her mother being alive .

“Charlotte,” Isabella says softly.  “Are you certain?”

“We are.”  Charlotte bites down at her lower lip, her hand reaching and then pulling back.  “We’ve known the whole time.”

The worry and uncertainty in Isabella’s belly twists around itself into something hollow and dark, because Margaret Wells has been alive this whole time and Charlotte has been in Isabella’s bed almost every night and known-- of her mother’s fate, of Isabella’s guilt, of the irrevocable connection between the two-- and said nothing.

“Isabella, please, let me speak,” Charlotte says urgently.  She finally closes the distance, her hands curling around Isabella’s firmly, skin warm and familiar, and Isaballa shudders under her touch but refuses her body’s instinct to recoil.  “I wished to tell you the first time I came calling, I promise. But I worried that you might--”

“That I might be filled with guilt and self-loathing?” Isabella says, sharp enough that Charlotte flinches.  It almost feels like a victory, somehow, even now after so long, to speak firmly for herself.

“That you may consider that I called to ask you to save her,” Charlotte says, her voice cracking.  “You saddle yourself with so much guilt, Isabella, after everything that happened. I could hardly try to convince you not to while also adding to the burden.”

Her hand presses to Isabella’s cheek, soft and careful and familiar, so familiar, and for a brief moment Isabella is still frightened, still subject to her brother’s perversion, still clawing desperately for traction and safety with little more than clandestine moments with Charlotte Wells to sustain her.  

“I worried that you may think I only came to you for wanting your help,” Charlotte says, strength and determination solidifying in her words as she stares unblinking at Isabella and challenges the weight of self-loathing pressing against Isabella’s shoulders.  

“Why wouldn’t you have?” Isabella says, softly, uncertainly, shrinking under all the ways she’s failed Charlotte, over and over again.  

“My mother will find her way home,” Charlotte says firmly.  “We know that she’s alive. She’s written to us. We will find a way to bring her home, I truly believe that.  But it is not your burden to carry the fate of my whole family, and I wished to spare you the guilt that I knew you would hold onto.”  

Her other hand pulls free and pushes against Isabella’s cheek, framing her face and holding firm.  “I wanted to protect you, after all you’ve suffered.”

“Then why tell me now?”  Isabella laughs, humorless and wet, and sits limp in Charlotte’s hold.  “You no longer worry for my protection?”

“Because I hate lying to you,” Charlotte says too loudly, enough that they both flinch, enough that it bounces off of the stone walls and hardwood floors.  “Because I tell you everything, and I trust you, and I--”

She sucks in a sharp breath, jaw setting firm.

“My pa, he reads her letter every night before he sleeps,” she says quietly.  Her thumbs work across Isabella’s cheekbones, perhaps intentionally or perhaps not, and Isabella’s posture gives under the movement against her will, her body responding to Charlotte’s touch automatically.  “He tries to hide it, how much he wishes for her to still be here, for Jacob’s sake. But he tells me, sometimes, what he’s lost. He knew her, better than anyone, and understood her, and trusted her.”

Charlotte pauses and breathes in, deep and careful, and Isabella’s fingers clench around themselves instead of reaching for her, instead of anchoring to her, instead of holding tight because Charlotte is in pain every time she speaks of the fractures in her family and it cracks Isabella’s chest.

“He’s always telling me to hold onto what I have.  To Lucy and Jacob and Nance. To you .”

Isabella’s lungs deflate abruptly, the weight to Charlotte’s tone and her words, her implications, her dark eyes and trembling jaw, drawing the air from her chest.

“Charlotte,” she says, shaking and uncertain, so uncertain, so unbalanced in a way she hasn’t been around Charlotte in months and months of shared breakfasts and late nights, lazy mornings and brazen disregards for propriety every time Charlotte called at St. James.

“I had to tell you about Ma,” Charlotte plows on, hands still pressing to Isabella’s cheeks, and Isabella’s hands finally break free to curl around Charlotte’s wrists.  “Because I couldn’t stand to be untrue, not to you, not in any way. You’re too important for me to have any secrets from you.”

“Charlotte,” Isabella says again, hands tight around her wrists, her voice cracking.  The room very nearly spins around her, vertigo dizzying and blurring the shadows because the weight on her shoulders, the twist in her belly, the cracks deep behind her sternum, all vanish abruptly and leave her weightless and falling, grasping for the anchor that is Charlotte’s hands on her cheeks.  “I love you quite madly.”

Charlotte’s hands go slack and fall from their hold on Isabella, falling to her lap and taking Isabella’s with them, and Isabella’s breath stutters in her chest for the briefest of moments at the dumbstruck set to Charlotte’s mouth before Charlotte surges forward to kiss her, warm and messy and frantic and so wholly unlike her.  Isabella topples back with Charlotte’s momentum but holds fast to her shoulders as she goes, unwilling to let go now that she’s burst out with something she’s held so close for so long.

“I’ve always said there’s no love for harlots like me,” Charlotte mumbles against Isabella’s mouth, the words escaping in short staccato bursts between sloppy, frenzied, filthy kisses that Isabella feels down in her toes and the tips of her fingers.  “But you always prove me wrong about everything, Lady Fitz.”

Hands follow familiar pathways along Isabella’s body, laddering down her ribcage and brushing past her hip, and Isabella’s back arches into Charlotte’s touch.  There’s a charge to the air, late in the night, different now than earlier when they had barely made it into the house from the carriage; something warmer and heavier to the way Charlotte’s lips move from Isabella’s collarbone to throat to jaw, hands moving expertly against her and lips pressing I love you into her skin, burning hot and powerful in her chest.

“I’ll stay here forever if you ask,” Charlotte says once Isabella’s heartbeat has slowed, a hand pressed softly over her heart.  “Pa and Nance can run the house without me.”

Isabella drags her head over to the side to find Charlotte in her unfocused gaze, lit softly by the edges of moonlight reaching through the clouds covering London.  

“You belong with your family,” Isabella says eventually.  “And the girls at the house. They need you.”

“I need you,” Charlotte counters.

“You have me,” Isabella says.  She drags one arm, loose and boneless with exhaustion, up enough to capture the hand pressed to her sternum and pull until she can kiss Charlotte’s knuckles.  “You have me as long as you want me, and even then for longer, but not at the expense of everything and everyone you care for.”

Charlotte pulls in a wavering breath and presses her forehead to Isabella’s shoulder, hiding her face and breathing shakily against Isabella’s skin.  

“Is this what it is,” she says, words muffled and uncertain, barely audible from where they disappear into the bed and Isabella’s shoulder.  “To be happy?”

Isabella is quiet, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, Charlotte’s knuckles still pressed to her lips.  “Perhaps it is,” she says, and she presses another kiss to Charlotte’s hand and rolls over, presses close to Charlotte and pulls her closer.  “I believe it might be.”

She lays awake for long minutes, well after Charlotte drifts off to sleep wrapped as much around Isabella as is physically possible, holding tight, anchoring herself in the absence of the longstanding weight of guilt and the certainty that she could never love Charlotte as she wanted, unabashed and honest, self-loathing vanishing and leaving her lighter than she’s ever felt.

She traces a hand down the familiar line of Charlotte’s spine and smiles into the dark, holding the harlot she fell in love with, free from her brother and her guilt and the suffocating weight of expectation, ready to live her life as she pleases and with whom she pleases.  

It is a victory, and it is hers.