Forbidden Love (Sapphic Historical) Read Online Free Page A

course. Is she – are you together?” I blurted out then, knowing that if I didn’t ask now that the topic was at hand, I’d never be brave enough to chance it again.
     
    “Liz is married,” Helen said after a moment. “I know it ain’t right – I mean, isn’t ,” she corrected on a huff of laughter, and I smiled at her impressive mimic of my mother’s cut-glass accent whenever she’d correct Helen’s speech.
     
    “Is that why you haven’t married?” I murmured.
     
    “Never will, either,” Helen declared boldly, though she whispered as I had. “I love women and that’s that. I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?”
     
    “I daresay you have, but not for reasons you expect,” I muttered.
     
    “Well, what’s that supposed to mean?” I heard the scowl in her voice and laughed.
     
    “I – well, I am aware that there are women who like women…and men who like men,” I added.
     
    “Well I’ll be! That’s what they’re teaching you in the schoolroom, is it? There I was thinking you’d swoon at what you walked in on!”
     
    “I’ve seen a few paintings that would have succeeded in that job were I the swooning type,” I said dryly.
     
    “Dirty pictures, you mean?” Helen sounded quite interested.
     
    “I suppose you could call them that...”
     
    “Of women together?” she persisted. “Doing what?”
    “Hmm?”
     
    “ The paintings-”
     
    “Oh,” I opened my eyes to darkness, face feeling warm, stomach fluttery as I recalled the Gustave Courbet painting I’d seen in Paris a while ago of two women lying nude together, limbs entwined, on an unmade bed.
     
    I’d attended his salon with a friend of mine – we’d evaded our maids to make the trip to see the man’s scandalous paintings, his name famous around all of Europe. My friend had tittered in mortification at the paintings, but I’d been stunned at that particular one, hardly daring to believe that he’d been bold enough to paint such a thing – to paint what I’d fantasised about without quite releasing it. Suddenly, I hadn’t felt quite so alone in my secret desires. Since then, I’d seen a fair few erotic drawings of both men and women together though it was those depicting two women that I’d always paid special attention to.
     
    “Too shy to say, eh? Was they muff licking?”
     
    “Helen!” I groaned in mortification.
     
    “Well, no point beating about the bush, if you’ll pardon the pun,” she laughed.
     
    “As a matter of fact, I have seen such pictures,” I declared quietly, hoping to shock her at my inability to shy away from her goading. “They were quite beautiful.”
     
    I thought – and suddenly hoped – she hadn’t heard me, but eventually she spoke, sounding quite surprised despite her rejoinder:
     
    “Always the quiet ones, ain’t it?”
    ***
     
    “ I reckon it’ll just be us tonight,” Helen said as we trudged into the house, shutting the door on a street lined thickly with snow. “Our mothers will likely be staying up at Jones’ manor for the night with the other domestics – same with the older boys. We were lucky to get home before the worst of it started.”
     
    “What about young Simon and Harold?” I said, wiping snowflakes from my cheeks, and Helen flapped a hand.
     
    “Mrs Morris down the road looks after them in the daytime; it’s best we leave the toads there tonight since she has two young ones and they’ll be surly if we take them from their friends.”
     
    It was a little over a week since I’d walked in on Helen and her friend – and since I’d more or less revealed my desires to her – and the Moreland residence had been so busy since then with Christmas preparations underway that Helen and I had barely seen one another, waking early and coming home later than usual. Depending on the day, I found myself relieved over this one day but disappointed the next; I knew I’d be mortified to discuss my desires but at the same time, knowing there was