It might have been nearly a decade since she had been here last, but as she had already discovered, so much hadn’t changed. That included the schedule the servants kept for maintaining the house when company was here. Which meant she knew the best to go in order to be alone with her thoughts, and that was the one thing she needed most desperately at the moment. She had hoped it would be enough to be around other people, greet the familiar faces, and feel like the adult she supposedly was. But the memories wouldn’t leave her alone.
Ellen was here. In this house. Catherine hadn’t seen her yet, but it only took a few discrete questions to confirm that she was still working here. In fact, she had risen all the way to the status of cook, which was impressive but unsurprising. She had always been dedicated. And she’d loved to cook. Too many nights to count had seen Catherine sneaking down to the kitchens, hoping to get a glass of warm milk or something to help her sleep because she had spent the last two hours tossing and turning, only to find that Ellen was already there, waiting for her with it ready. They would talk until Catherine grew sleepy. Sometimes, she would give the girl a snack to try and settle her, eyes twinkling as if she was committing some indiscretion by feeding this upstairs guest in the dead of night.
Eventually, those frequent late night milk and snack breaks morphed into something more. It was Ellen who knew about the long hours she spent perfecting every aspect of being an accomplished young woman, just as she was the one who knew that sometimes Catherine’s panic over every mistake could keep her shaking until the early hours of the morning. Ellen knew that Catherine’s favorite way to relax was to sew and embroider, and before long, she would sneak some of the servant’s mending to Catherine so she could do it as they spoke. It satisfied her to think she could lighten the load a little for all of the hard working servants, and that she could do something useful with her time for once.
By the time she’d become a teenager, Ellen had already become her best friend in the world, despite all the reasons it should never work. For a woman who spent every other waking moment stressing over how to be ‘the perfect lady’, this exceptionally close relationship was the only sign of the rebellion that was already brewing in her heart.
Then came that fateful night, right before the start of the Season. Catherine had been talking about how baffled she was by some of her agemates and how much time they spent talking about marriage. They would giggle over some man, tease each other over imaginary sweethearts, swoon and fan themselves as if this was something real they were reacting to. A few times, she even saw some of them blushing over the comments, as if this was something that really mattered to them. Of course, Catherine did her best to act the same. After all, maybe it was something you acted out until the feelings genuinely started to develop. She would talk herself into infatuation after infatuation, but all of them faded soon enough, and it wasn’t hard to look back and think that she hadn’t felt much. But she enjoyed these moments of closeness and connection with her female friends. So she tried to make that enough.
It was only to Ellen that she confided the secret growing fear. What if the other women did actually feel what they said they felt, and they weren’t just pretending? If that was the case, why didn’t Catherine?
Was she as broken as she’d always feared?
There had been a curious light in the woman’s eyes at that statement, but Catherine hadn’t understood it. Not exactly. She was too busy trying to be bright and interesting, someone Ellen could see as an adult and an equal instead of the child she had helped to comfort and take care of for so long. It was if this time, Catherine didn’t think she could just be the friend Ellen remembered when she left, but as if she needed to impress her in some way so she would still be friendly and interested by the time Catherine could come back again – after all, they had no way to communicate in between visits. Not without attracting unnecessary attention which would crash back on Ellen even as it left Catherine with the kind of parental scrutiny she had spent her life trying to avoid.
Then there was a moment. A moment when they were looking at each other, and it felt like something shifted inside Catherine. Maybe she moved first, maybe Ellen did, or maybe it was something mutual, but after a moment, their lips met. And it was perfect. It felt like a sun rising inside her to fill her body with a gentle warmth, an unquestionable rightness. It was the answer to a question she hadn’t even known she was asking. Time spilled out slowly as they gently explored each other’s lips. Catherine would have been willing to stay there forever, but the sound of a door slamming in the distance had both of them jerking away from each other. And back to reality.
Soon after, her family left the hall and she hasn’t been back since. But that kiss with Ellen had done more than open her eyes to new feelings about the woman she had grown up around, it had opened her eyes to the other women around her as well. Suddenly it didn’t feel as innocent when she watched another woman’s laugh and couldn’t resist a smile. She couldn’t hide from herself that small warmth when she held another woman’s hand. And no matter how desperately she tried to recapture that feeling with the suitors that paraded themselves in front of her, it just wasn’t there.
As she walked through the castle, there was a part of her that ached incessantly to see Ellen again. To talk with her, and recapture a little of that special bond that had sustained her for so long. To know that on one of her sleepless nights when her thoughts wouldn’t stop circling, she could go downstairs and talk about anything and everything that was on her mind with the one person who never seemed to judge her for her mistakes. The one person who had made her feel like she was enough, even if she wasn’t perfect. The one person who’s kiss she hadn’t been able to stop dreaming about, no matter how much time had passed, and wondering with something approaching an unholy hunger what it would be like to kiss her again.
The other part of her was terrified to see Ellen again. Ellen was the one person who could make her want things other than what she had, and also imagine that they might be possible. She was the kind of person who could hear Catherine talk wistfully about wanting to go out into the garden and spin wild circles in the night air until she was so dizzy she could fall asleep and push her into doing it. She could make Catherine laugh until her sides ached, even as they tried desperately to muffle themselves so no one else would catch them. She would ask hard questions about what Catherine wanted out of life, not for her family, but for herself. As a child, Catherine hadn’t had any answers. She had even fewer now.
Because there was a small treacherous part of herself that wanted to follow in Elizabeth’s footsteps. A part of her that wanted to be able to say to the world ‘Damn your expectations and damn your judgements, I’m going to do what’s right for me.’ A part of her that wanted to look at herself in the mirror, and feel like enough. For once. A part of her that didn’t want to worry about being the perfect lady, and instead wanted to find out what it was like to be happy. Happy not for a brief stolen moment, but for a lifetime.
Of course, it was completely impossible. She was a Bakesley. She was a woman. She had no income of her own, and she would need to rely on her husband to support her into her old age, and potentially support her sister if Elizabeth didn’t marry or inherit the Hudson estate. Her parents expected her to make a satisfactory marriage and prove to the world that they had raised their daughter well, even if she couldn’t be the son they had actually wanted. All of which meant that any sort of rebellion in general, and pining over the soft lips of a woman in particular, were completely out of the question.
All of her wishes needed to stay safely locked in her heart. Now more than ever.
