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The last few days have been so draining that when Ann arrives back at Shibden all she really wants to do is slip upstairs to lie down. But Marian greets them at the door like an excitable little puppy, innocently enquiring if all had gone well, and she doesn’t have the heart to ignore her, not when the Listers have always been so very kind.
“Yes,” she says, meeting Anne’s eye, “it went very well.”
Anne’s smile is a bolt to the heart, filled with gratitude, tinged with relief and disbelief, alive with joy.
Ann wants to bottle it forever. To take it out at will when things are difficult—because she knows the road ahead will be filled with hazardous bumps.
She will have to keep it in her memory, pray that it will always bring her fortitude in moments of doubt.
Marian is already sweeping her away, slipping her arm through hers in a sisterly fashion, leading her towards the dining room where Aunt Anne and Captain Lister are seated. Anne follows at a more sedate pace, a contrast to the way she usually barrels through with such confidence.
The atmosphere around the table isn’t quite settled. Aunt Anne in particular keeps shooting her looks, not unkind, never unkind, but almost as if she is analysing the situation. Ann can’t blame her. She has been absent for a week. Had treacherously considered, agonisingly, giving back the promise she had given to Anne.
Not once, in the whole week, had she wanted to remove the ring that Anne had slipped onto her finger and kissed with such tender, holy reverence.
They keep to safe topics, and Ann stays mostly quiet, though interjecting occasionally to show that she isn’t being difficult.
Normally she would sit with the family after dinner, perhaps with coffee or a hit or two of backgammon, but she doesn’t have the energy for that tonight. When it is polite to do so, she makes her excuses and takes herself upstairs.
Anne almost always retires later than she does, so it’s a surprise when the door creaks open halfway through her undressing. She says something curt to Eugenie in French—Ann still hasn’t mastered it yet—and the lady’s maid obediently retreats, though not without a huff, as though her mistress’ words are an inconvenience. For once Anne ignores the brazen insubordination, almost hitting Eugenie’s heels in her impatience to get the door closed behind her.
For a moment, there’s silence. Then Anne crosses the room to their bed, pulling at her cravat as she goes. “Well, I’ve said goodnight to Father and Marian. I’ll sit with Aunt for half an hour in a little while, but I thought I’d retire early tonight.”
“You’ve just sent Eugenie away,” Ann points out.
Anne dismisses this with an airy wave of her hand. “I’m quite sure I can conquer undressing myself.”
Anne could easily conquer the world if she wasn’t so restricted by its small-minded views. Ann can’t imagine a more extraordinary woman ever existing, not before, not in a thousand years to come.
“I’ll help you,” she offers, turning in her seat to regard her.
That raises a smile, the one that’s all white teeth and rakish charm, and Ann’s stomach flips. How could she have gone on living without that sight every day?
She clambers onto the bed behind her wife, fumbling with the tiny buttons that run down the straight line of her spine. When she’s parted the fabric, she moves to press soft kisses to the curve of her shoulder, hoping that Anne enjoys the sensation just as much as she does when her wife kisses her there. From the way that Anne sighs and tilts her head to give her better access, she does.
Emboldened, Ann returns her fingers to the ties on her corset, attempting to undo the intricate knots through touch alone, letting the ridge of her teeth graze Anne’s skin, hoping it comes across playful and inviting. The past couple of weeks have been exhausting, draining, and there is still so much that needs to be said, but all of that can wait for later, when things feel less topsy-turvy and fraught.
From the way that Anne’s arm moves around her so that her hand can find her golden curls, twining them through her fingers and using them as leverage to bring Ann’s mouth to her own over her shoulder, she seems to be on the same wavelength.
Ann can’t stop the breathy sound in the back of her throat when Anne’s tongue slips between her lips, her wife’s fingers tightening in her hair to the point of delicious discomfort.
The frenzy takes hold of them at the first brush of their tongues, and all attempts at finesse and seduction are forgotten in favour of following the fissures of pleasure that bloom. Already undressed, Ann continues fighting with the corset ties, no mean feat with Anne wriggling about in her attempts to relieve herself of her undergarments. At last, somehow, they manage to finish the job, and Ann lifts her arms up so that Anne can bring her silk nightgown up over her head and then off. She flings it over her shoulder without even looking, and Ann hears a thump as something is sent hurtling to the floor. Probably the dreary book Anne keeps insisting on reading aloud to her—it’s taking an age for her to slog through, because whenever Ann finds her concentration waning, which is often given that the subject matter is rocks, she takes it upon herself to coax Anne’s own attention away from the words on the page to a more interesting pastime. Which never takes long, because Anne’s mind always seems to be perpetually on the wonders beneath her petticoats.
Her convoluted thoughts stop as Anne’s mouth descends on the side of her neck. She sucks the skin gently into her mouth, her tongue darting out to taste her, and Ann shudders at the sensation, at the tingles that arrow straight down to her centre.
When Anne tries to lay her back, however, she somehow finds the will to resist, pushing at her own shoulders to keep her at bay. Anne’s eyes are as dark as coal, wild like the seas on a stormy night with the urgency of her passion.
“What’s wrong?” she pants. Her voice trembles like cracking glass.
“Nothing,” Ann says quickly, reaching up to cup her cheek, running her thumb along the sharp line of her cheekbone. “I just…Would you take your hair down? Please?” She still sometimes has trouble with being forthright about the things she desires, having spent so many years moulding herself to what other people want, but Anne has always made her feel safe and respected in that space. From their very first meeting she encouraged her to stand up for her own wishes, has taught her about self-confidence and autonomy. Shy, she adds, “I like your hair down.” Free from its severe curls and pins, where she can run her fingers through the silken waves, providing an anchor for her as her wife’s mouth and fingers coax her to such heights.
Anne blinks at her for a moment, then reluctantly sits back.
“If you insist,” she says huskily. “Though I hope you know you’ll be sending me off to say goodnight to my aunt in a debauched state. I won’t have the patience to make it presentable again.”
“She’s seen you covered head to toe in muck,” Ann teases. “I don’t think loose hair will shock her too much.” Though, of course, a little shiver of worry does run through her at the knowledge of what Aunt Anne might infer from the sight. She knows, of course, she surely must, as does Captain Lister, as Marian might or might not—Ann has never quite been able to work out whether Marian’s naivety at their living arrangements is simply kindness. Anne, much less kindly, calls it stupidity.
But there is knowing and knowing; Ann isn’t sure she’ll be able to look dear Aunt in the face again if she sends Anne off in a state of undress.
It’s not enough to stop her from reaching out to loosen her wife’s hair. She combs her fingers through those chestnut locks, smoothing out the kinks, pushing it behind the ear whose lobe she takes into her mouth with a teasing smile. Anne shudders, her fingers sliding with some urgency down Ann’s body. Ann knows the destination—needs it—and parts her thighs eagerly, her breath catching in her throat with anticipation. Anne’s fingers tease over her flesh and the cocky, jaunty grin she has come to love so much makes a reappearance now she is back to regaining the upper hand.
“Did you miss me?” she purrs, a rhetorical she clearly doesn’t expect an answer to, for all the answer she needs is right there for her to feel.
Ann flushes as her wife’s fingers graze the hot silk between her thighs. She doesn’t need to touch herself to know how wet she is down there. Anne’s effect on her is effortless; her muscles tighten, her core throbs in hot anticipation. All of the confusion and hurt melts away under her wife’s sure touch.
She’s missed her so much over the past week. She’s missed this, she can’t deny it: the way that her wife knows exactly how to touch her to coax her to the highest of heights. She could never hope to replicate the same sensations alone. A man could never succeed. She doesn’t even think another woman could. It’s only ever been Anne. Always Anne. Even through those confusing years growing from childhood to adulthood, the thought of Anne Lister had always lit a spark inside her, making confusing butterflies flutter in her stomach at the thought of her and that fleeting glimpse she’d had of her. Those intervening years she’d grown up with Catherine, her cousin giggling and swooning over the handsome men they would one day marry, Ann’s imagination, always so reliably fertile with her artistic flair, suddenly sterile and lost when it came to conjuring a face for the beautiful stranger who would one day be her husband.
Anne Lister’s face had been scored upon her very soul. The sharp, aristocratic cheekbones, the dark, forbidding brows, the handsome lines carved into her forehead and around her mouth, the beautiful, dark eyes that seemed to be able to see right into her soul. No one could ever compare to her.
Anne’s hot puff of breath against her ear makes her squirm.
“I missed you,” she purrs, all rakish charm, always so confident in her seductions—with good reason, Ann thinks distractedly, turning her head to capture her wife’s mouth in a staccato kiss that she frustratingly pulls away from. “I thought about you sometimes. Having you here, in our bed. Touching you right where you like it best, imagining the noises you make…”
Ann bites at her lip now to keep those very noises in check, squeezing her thighs together unbidden at the images Anne’s words create. Her wife’s imagination is fertile. She has no doubt that she’d conjured up many a wicked thing.
“I touched myself to those thoughts,” Anne breathes in her ear, and she goes hot all over. She can well imagine the sight now, for it’s one she has seen before, one that has driven her wild with desire. Anne’s eyes fixed on her, half-lidded and glazed with lust, those perfect white teeth biting into the bottom lip that Ann had so desperately wanted to take between her own teeth, those long, dextrous fingers playing so masterfully between her legs, coated in slick arousal…
And she cries out unbidden as those talented fingers part her folds and slip inside.
Anne’s grin is triumphant and smug.
“You always feel so good, my sweet little Adney,” she croons, brushing the tip of her nose against the shell of her ear. The hairs on the back of Ann’s neck tingle at the puff of her hot breath, the hoarse edge to her voice. And then she has no breath at all as Anne teases those digits in and out with torturous slowness, her thumb moving to seek out her nub. All she can do is dig her fingernails into her wife’s broad shoulder blades, so hard that if she had room for coherent thought she might worry about bringing blood.
But they have been apart for a week, and she has missed having her wife so close to her, and suddenly just having her fingers isn’t enough. She reaches between them, catching Anne’s wrist and stilling her movements.
Anne pulls back at once. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she reassures her, her breath catching in her throat. “It’s just…I want all of you.”
The words hang in the heated air between them. There is no mistaking her meaning. Anne’s eyes darken.
“I see,” she breathes, and the hoarse timber of her voice makes her tremble anew. “Well, I think that can be arranged. Why don’t you help me?”
Ann is only too eager to assist. As Anne withdraws, she feels the pang of disappointment, the aching yearning for lost sensation, but it’s replaced with a fevered enthusiasm as she hooks her fingers into Anne’s drawers. Together, they slide the garments over her hips and down her thighs. Anne twists away to discard them over the side of the bed, the rigid neatness abandoned in the face of passion. She leans down to kiss her, nudging her legs apart with her knee, and Ann complies eagerly, her hands moving to Anne’s hips to help guide her into position. Not that Anne needs the assistance. She knows all the best ways to bring Ann pleasure. She prefers not to think about how many other women there might have been, instead focuses on enjoying the result of that experience.
The first contact between their cores sends Ann’s head reeling back into the pillows, desperately trying to curtail the moan that wants to escape her throat. Anne stifles her own sound against her neck. Her hot breath puffs against her skin, and she moves just slightly to take her ear between her teeth. Ann keens again at the deliciously sinful sensation.
“Lord, you are so pretty,” Anne breathes. “Look at you, all flushed and needy. Just how I like you.”
Ann can’t form words. All coherency is lost to her completely when Anne begins to grind against her in earnest.
All she can do is arch up against her, match her rhythm, her arousal spiralling higher and higher out of her control as Anne’s heavy breathing speeds up in her ear, a delicious indication of how close to losing control Anne also is, the wet sounds of their passion only serving to spur them onwards.
She closes her eyes, but opens them again when she feels Anne’s finger and thumb against her chin, tilting her head back from where it had lolled on the pillow so that they’re staring into each other’s eyes once more. Ann reads a maelstrom of emotion in the beautiful dark depths of her wife’s, so intense that she almost can’t maintain it. Affection, arousal, a fierce altruism, all of it swirls there. She’s never been very good at masking how she feels.
“Stay with me, my darling,” Anne breathes, and Ann can do naught but obey, staring into her wife’s eyes, trying in vain to swallow the sounds of pleasure that want to escape her throat as their soaking centres slide against each other, and Anne twines the fingers of her right hand with her left, the band of the onyx ring rubbing between them, a reminder of all that they share, the significance of the promise that binds them together. It’s in moments like this that she can almost believe that what they’re doing isn’t wrong, for how could God have created them to fit so perfectly together if He hadn’t intended it to be so?
The fire burns hotter and hotter, and she can’t maintain eye contact any longer, losing herself to her own world where only Anne’s touch exists, the darkness behind her lids only heightening the pleasure she feels. She thinks if she stretches out her hand she’d touch Heaven with her fingertips, but they only come into contact with Anne’s sharp cheekbones, and isn’t that the same thing?
Then Anne shifts, moving her spare hand to change the angle of Ann’s thigh against her hip, bearing down against her with more urgency, and she sees stars. Mere seconds later she hears Anne’s own low, guttural sound of pleasure and after a few more tremulous undulations she slumps down over her, panting hard for breath, hot and sweaty and achingly reassuring against her. Ann winds her arms tighter around her, trembling herself from the intensity of what they’ve just shared, seeking to give her wife the same comfort that she is receiving.
“I love you,” she breathes. There was a time when she’d speak the words freely, frivolously. Now she finds herself more guarded, perhaps tempered by the things that she suspects passed between Anne and Mrs. Lawton. But no matter what happens, those words will always be the truth. She cannot deny them, and she thinks that after the week they’ve had, Anne needs the reassurance.
Anne presses a kiss to the side of her neck in response, pushing herself up on trembling limbs so that she can disentangle herself and collapse onto her side of the bed. For long moments, nothing else is exchanged, and the only sound that fills the slick air between them is the sound of their breathing evening out after the intensity of their passion.
She can’t deny it: she’s missed this. Anne’s warm, comforting presence by her side. Her hand reaching out to rest on her arm, her low, raspy voice asking if she’s all right.
The thought of losing it one day frightens her just as much as her anxiety that what they’re doing is wrong. For all of her fretting that they should part, the thought of no longer having Anne in her life is by far the more unbearable of the options: she remembers what Anne had said before, when she had been torn asunder by the turmoil of Mr. Ainsworth: “How can we go back to common friendship now?”
If she ever were to leave, that would be the end of their ties. And a life without Anne Lister is one that would be beyond lonely, cold. She knows what it’s like to have colour in her life, a bit of adventure, acceptance from others, love.
No, whenever she starts to feel low and disillusioned, she must try to push through it. And she must apologise when she is disagreeable and moody. She would expect the same from her wife, though Anne finds it much more difficult to swallow her pride and admit a mistake. But if she wants the same courtesy in turn, she must be seen to give it freely.
“I’m sorry,” she says now.
Anne cracks an eye open. “For what?”
“For what happened. Before.”
Her wife gives an airy shrug. “I understand. You made a huge commitment in agreeing to move into Shibden and taking the sacrament with me. We both understood that it wouldn’t always be easy. God saw fit to test us. I hope that we’ve made it out the other side.”
“No, I wasn’t talking about that.”
“Then what?”
She takes a deep breath. “In London.”
Silence follows her words. She daren’t look at her.
Anne clears her throat. “Ah, yes. That. Well, I thank you for saying it.”
“I mean it. For all of it. I hope you know that. I don’t think you’re ridiculous, whether that’s in what you look like or anything else. I was the one being ridiculous. Petty, ill-mannered. I was so disappointed in not being able to meet your London friends that I took it out on you.” And it was Anne’s fault that she had not been honest about her reach with her London friends, that she had allowed her to get carried away on her excitement and fantasies. But that was no excuse for her own poor behaviour, her cruelty. “That was childish of me. I always swore to myself that if I ever got cross I wouldn’t resort to petty name-calling. You told me that you know what people call you and say about you, and I told myself that I would never add to that.” She will never forget that night, on the eve of her departure to Scotland, holding Anne Lister in her arms and seeing for the first time the raw vulnerability that lay just beneath her skin, not impervious after all to the sharp daggered tongues of the people around them, but bleeding in dignified silence. The privilege of being allowed to see that side of her, when Anne had always striven to present herself as untouchable and impenetrable, was unmatched, and she had silently promised herself that she would never be one of those people who gave her another scar to hide. “And I can only say that I’m so, so sorry if I hurt your feelings. You hear enough horrible things from small-minded, jealous people, you shouldn’t have to hear them from me as well when you’re in your own home.”
“Our home, Adney,” Anne corrects her gently. “I wish you’d see it as such. It has always been my intention that you feel safe and comfortable here.”
“I do,” she rushes to placate her. “This is the first place I’ve truly felt safe. Your family feels more like a family than my own does. They have been beyond kind and welcoming to me, and you’ve done so much to make me feel comfortable. Which is why my behaviour is even more unwarranted.”
“You were cross. I understand.”
“No, don’t make excuses for me,” she says, determined to say her piece and admit to all of her failings. There might be things that Anne won’t—or cannot, for what it would do—admit to, but she values honesty in herself. If she can’t do that, then she can’t expect the same from others. Not that she wants it now—at this point, she thinks that it’s probably best that she doesn’t know the details of what happened during Anne’s visit to Lawton Hall, for her own sanity if nothing else. Anne had promised her that she wouldn’t leave her again, and she has to make peace with the fact that whatever transpired, she came back. She chose her.
Just as she chooses Anne now. Which means owning up to the ugly things too.
“And I should never have told you that I wanted you to shut up. That was beyond rude. I feel so ashamed of myself now. You’ve told me before how people have always tried to change you or stamp you into the mud like some insect, and I swore to myself that I would never do that to you because I’ve only ever wanted you to be yourself.”
“I know that,” Anne says quietly. “You’ve never asked me to dress differently.”
“It’s not about not asking you to dress differently. It’s about not expecting you to be any different to who you are. I fell in love with you exactly the way you are, Anne. The way you dress, the bull-headed determination, none of that has ever mattered to me. When I looked at you, I never saw any of the things that members of my tribe whispered about you. All I saw was the most incredible of women, a wonder fashioned by God before her time. You were made for a different time, I know it. A kinder time, filled with people who would see you as I do, who would not try to suffocate and stifle you but would let you be everything that you could be if people weren’t afraid.”
“It is a great tragedy that our time on earth is so brief, and that God chose us for this moment,” Anne acknowledges. “But I have to believe that this was His purpose for us, that He wanted us here for a reason, to cross paths with the people that we have and to find comfort and strength with each other. He made all of us, and must test us all, but He also ensured that we have love and strength to sustain us through our darkest times.”
Ann remains silent, contemplating the rich canvas above her head, not sure if she trusts herself to speak. She wonders, if they’d met in another time, if Anne Lister would still have chosen her above all others or, if the world was kinder and more accepting, Mariana Lawton would have assumed her place by Anne’s side for their time on this mortal coil. But she pushes the thought away. To think on it too much would only send her spiralling down into a miasma of anxiety and uncertainty, and it’s something she will never know the answer to. Perhaps, like all things relating to Mrs. Lawton, it’s best if she never does.
“I think you’re right,” she says at last. “About God intending for us to be in one another’s lives, I mean. I know I can be…difficult at times. I’m sorry about that, and I am trying to do better.”
“You mustn’t apologise,” Anne says at once. “We all have our own foibles. Even I know that I can be impossible to deal with sometimes. I do understand how difficult it can be to be seen with me when I’m…such an oddity.”
“You’re not an oddity,” Ann refutes fiercely. “I’ve never cared about that. I love you exactly as you are. I love everything about you. Your fearlessness, your zest for life, your confidence…all of those things have helped me become a better person too, don’t you see? My confidence has grown because you’ve encouraged me, tended to it. I can never repay you for that.”
“It’s not about repaying me, Adney. I don’t expect anything from you. We don’t have a transactional relationship. I would be offended if you thought it so.”
Ann closes her eyes, letting out a breath. “No, of course I don’t see it that way. I’m sorry, I’m not very good at articulating myself, not like you.”
“Stop apologising. And stop dragging yourself down. You have a gentle, generous spirit, which is more than can be said for a lot of people. And I do know that I’m as lucky to have you as you feel you are to have me. I don’t take it for granted, what you were forced to face to be here with me. And it humbles me that you loved me enough to defy what others think, and not to crumble to their demands. That you are prepared to face the world with me. I’ve spent my whole life longing for a companion, a wife.” She takes a deep breath, rubbing the heel of her hand over her eyes. “I cannot deny that at one time, I had hoped that that person would be Mrs. Lawton.” The words, though expected, still sting, but Anne is quick to rush on. “I held on to hope for far longer than I should have done, but the longer our relationship went on, the more I could see that it was you who was the right person for me.”
She wonders if Anne had still harboured that flickering hope when she had proposed to her, if Anne’s words are just to placate her, but pushes it away. It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is the fact that Anne is still here, upholding her promise. Whatever might have happened at Lawton Hall, she does believe her wife when she says that that time is gone, that a line has been drawn and they are going to try to move forward as friends, if they can.
Anne shifts closer, moving to tenderly smooth a tangled tendril of hair out of her face. Her fingers, coarse yet gentle, feel so good against her skin, and she can’t help but close her eyes, immersing herself in the sensation.
“No one else has ever been this brave, Adney. Mrs. Lawton never was,” she says softly. “And I promise that I will always remember that. It means more to me than you could ever know.”
She takes a moment to scrutinise her wife’s face. Those dark eyes bore into hers. The lines around her mouth are pinched with earnestness, and beneath all those layers of bravado and confidence, Ann can sense that the same scared young girl is still trapped in there, afraid of more rejection and loneliness.
They can put an end to that this night.
It can be another new beginning, for the both of them. She just has to choose to take it.
She reaches out and cups Anne’s face, leaning in to brush their lips together.
An affirmation. An agreement.
“I never want to be without you,” Ann breathes at last, blinking away the tears that spring treacherously to her eyes. “I know it won’t always be easy for us, but I’m willing to keep trying, no matter what.”
“And so am I, Adney,” Anne says, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder. “I didn’t ask you to be my wife on a whim. I didn’t ask you because it was convenient, or because there was no one else. I know the path we’ve chosen to take is never going to be easy. But we chose to take it together, and that makes it easier. I’m sure that as long as we have each other and we keep in step, we have nothing more to fear.”
“You might have to wait for me sometimes,” Ann says softly. “Sometimes I might stumble.”
“I’ll be here to catch you,” Anne promises. “Now let’s both agree to do better in future, hmm? I shall try to be more open with you, and not to give you false promises.” She reaches out, taps playfully at her nose. “And I shall try not to be impossible in future, though it’s a habit of a lifetime and will be difficult to break.”
Ann nods, giving a tremulous smile. “All right.”
“Now, how about we lie here for a short while just so I can regain my wits to visit my aunt? It’s been a long day, and I’m exhausted.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time trying to rip up trees with your men,” Ann scolds, but she doesn’t mean it; being outdoors, working with her hands, is something that Anne loves, and she would never want to deprive her of that joy.
Anne laughs, collapsing onto her side and reaching out to snug Ann back against her. “Duly noted, dear wife.”
Ann goes willingly, reaching for her hand and bringing it to her lips, pressing kisses to the knuckles, which are scratched and coarse from her work. “I love you.”
Anne doesn’t return the sentiment, but the kiss she leans over to press to her mouth is tender and full of soft emotion that speaks volumes in what her words could not. They fall silent then, finding comfort in each other’s arms.
Ann feels better for the discussion, for admitting to her faults and apologising. It’s not in her nature to be cruel; the thought of it leaves her with a sour anxiety at the back of her throat. She even feels better with the allusions to Anne’s relationship with Mrs. Lawton. She knows that she’ll never be able to compete with Mrs. Lawton, but in some ways perhaps she bests her. Anne is here with her, despite everything. And from what she’s gathered, Mrs. Lawton is prone to turns of coldness and callousness; she can’t ever imagine herself not feeling these kindling coals of adoration for Anne. She knows that as long as she lives, there could never be anyone else for her. It’s always been Anne. And if she is Anne’s last? Then that’s worth just as much.
She closes her eyes, listening to the sound of Anne’s breathing behind her, the soft rise and fall of her breasts against her back. They’ve both done things to hurt each other, said things they don’t mean in order to wound. But Anne is right: no one is perfect, and neither is a relationship. They will hurt each other again, it’s inevitable. What’s important is that they find their way back to each other, apologise, learn how to communicate better. Heal.
And Anne was also right when she said that they were both still there.
No matter how perilous the road gets in the future, Ann has faith that they will both still walk it side-by-side.
Together.