Shaken to the Core (44 page)

When they reached the circular tent Lucy had described, resembling the lodges of Plains tribes Kate had once seen in a book, they stopped.

Kate turned toward Giuliana. There was so much she wanted to say before they entered the tent and were no longer alone, but her exhausted brain couldn’t come up with a single sentence.

Giuliana brushed her hand over Kate’s, as if she, too, was at a loss for words, and then quickly withdrew it. She wobbled and looked as if she barely had the strength to stay upright. Dark shadows smudged the puffy skin beneath her eyes.

Kate’s heart squeezed at the sight. The urge to take care of Giuliana immediately chased away part of her own exhaustion. She opened the flap and wrinkled her nose.
Ugh.
The inside of the tent smelled like dirty stockings, sweat, and damp wool. On any other day, she would have turned around and looked for another place to stay, but right now she was so tired that she didn’t care. Her nose would probably go numb in a second anyway. At least the canvas walls would keep out the cold wind and the rats.

She felt Giuliana hold on to the back of her shirtwaist as they entered.

The tent was high enough to stand with six feet to spare in the very middle, where an iron pole held up the canvas, spreading out at the base like a camera tripod. It looked big enough to hold a dozen people comfortably, but now Kate counted at least fifteen women in the tent.

Some of them were Kate’s and Giuliana’s age; others looked like spinsters twice as old. One silver-haired woman sat in a wheelchair, her face as lined as the shell of a walnut and just as tanned.

“They’re sending over more people?” a young woman with one black and one brown shoe said instead of offering a greeting. “Can’t you stay somewhere else? It’s already crowded in here.”

“Don’t listen to her.” Another woman swept her hand in invitation and dragged her blanket to the side. “There’s room next to me.”

“Thank you.” Kate gave her a grateful nod. When Giuliana put one of their blankets down in the vacated spot, she sank down on it and carefully placed her carrying case next to the canvas wall, where no one would stumble over it.

She’d meant to sit down only for a moment, rest her weary feet, but as soon as she sat, her body wanted to lie down. She felt like the automobile when they’d had to leave it behind; she was running out of gasoline, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Giuliana settled down cross-legged next to her. Her nostrils quivered as she tried unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn. Her eyelids drooped, and her chin sank onto her chest, but she forced it up and opened her eyes wide. After a few seconds, her eyes drifted closed again and the routine repeated.

Kate no longer cared that it wasn’t evening yet and that the other women might think them lazy. She let herself sink down and pulled Giuliana with her into a horizontal position. Her arm felt like dead weight as she reached out and pulled Giuliana’s blanket over them both. Her heavy eyelids sank down immediately.

The conversation of the women around them drifted over her like waves on a beach. With Giuliana’s warmth along her front, she finally gave in to her bone-deep exhaustion and allowed herself to succumb to sleep.

* * *

Giuliana felt as if she were drifting on the warm, gentle waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea, as she had as a child. Home. She was home.

Then sounds intruded—the noise of a rusty saw, interspersed with piglike snorts.

She opened her eyes. Blackness engulfed her. Help! She had sunk beneath the surface of the water and was drowning! She struggled and kicked out her legs.

Someone stirred against her back. “Giuliana?” Kate mumbled, her voice drunken with sleep.

Giuliana stilled. She wasn’t drowning. She was with Kate. The fog of sleep dissipated, and she sank back against Kate’s warm body behind her. The gentle lifting and falling of Kate’s chest must have been what had lulled her into that dream about drifting on waves in the cove back home.

When her eyes got used to the darkness, she could make out the shapes of the other women sleeping all around them. Without a warming fire, the temperature in the tent had dropped after sunset, so most of the women had cuddled up in pairs to share body heat. Just the old woman had nodded off alone, sitting up in her wheelchair. The rusty-saw-and-pig-snorts noises were loud snores escaping her wide-open mouth.

Giuliana rolled over, careful not to dislodge the blanket. Her sore muscles protested the movement, but she instantly forgot about the aches in her body as her knee brushed Kate’s.

They stared at each other in the near darkness. The tiny bit of light filtering in through the hole at the top of the tent reflected off the white in Kate’s eyes.

“How do you feel?” Kate whispered.

Her hot breath brushed over the shell of Giuliana’s ear, making her shiver.

“Cold?” Kate pulled her a little closer.

Giuliana was everything but cold, but since she didn’t know how to explain what she was feeling, she simply nodded.

Kate moved even closer. Their legs tangled, and Giuliana realized that their skirts must have slid up some time during the night.

A noticeable shiver went through Kate.

Giuliana suspected that it had nothing to do with feeling cold either. “Did you…” Her voice came out in a squeak, so she quietly cleared her throat and then tried again. “Did you feel like this before?”

The blanket rustled as Kate shook her head. “Never like this.”

“But similar?”

They had to whisper into each other’s ears not to wake the other women in the tent. With every word, Kate’s warm breath tickled Giuliana’s ear and neck. It was sweet torture.

Kate shuffled her feet. Her stocking-clad toes brushed Giuliana’s. Somehow, they must have managed to kick off their shoes while they’d slept—or the kind woman next to them had taken them off to make them more comfortable.

“Well, there’s been a girl or two that I found really beautiful,” Kate said in an even quieter whisper, as if embarrassed to admit it.

The thought of Kate casting admiring glances at other women made flashes of light dance before Giuliana’s eyes. Every muscle in her body stiffened. Up until now, she would have said the rumors about Siciliani being especially jealous were just that—mere rumors. Maybe not.

“What is it?” Kate whispered.

Giuliana gritted her teeth and shook her head.

“So you…you haven’t? Looked at other women…” Kate lowered her voice even more, until it was barely audible. “…that way?”

Again, Giuliana shook her head.
“I do not think so. I still do not understand it. I do not understand why I feel these things or why this”—she freed one hand from the blanket and gestured at their entwined legs—“feels right to my body. The Bible says it is not.”

Kate gulped audibly.
“Do you wish you wouldn’t feel like this?”

Did she? If not for the bond she shared with Kate, she
’d be on her own in this destroyed city. But it was more than not wanting to be lonely. No other friend, not even Lucy, could make her feel so safe, so at home. No, she couldn’t regret it, even if she didn’t understand it. “No,” she whispered. “And you?”

With only the slightest hesitation, Kate shook her head. “We haven’t known each other for very long, and most people think we shouldn’t even be friends, but…” She sucked in a long breath. “You became important to me in a very short time. Very important,” she added in an even quieter whisper. “I want us to be together, even once things go back to normal. If I were a man, I’d court you.”

The thought filled Giuliana with longing. All the young couples who could meet in the family’s parlor, row across Stow Lake, or stroll together arm in arm in bright daylight, without anyone thinking ill of them…They didn’t know how lucky they were. She and Kate would never be able to do any of those things.

“But you are not,” she said and regretted that fact for the very first time. “We are both women. How can this work?” She pointed back and forth between their bodies.

Kate went very still. The dim light gleamed on her wide eyes. “I…uh…I’m not sure. I haven’t…either…you know?”

No, Giuliana didn’t know. She had no clue what Kate was stammering about. “Eh, no.”

Kate scrubbed both palms over her face and then stopped abruptly, probably because it hurt her lightly burned cheeks. “I don’t know exactly how it all works, but…I know what I’d like to do,” she whispered.

“Yes?” Giuliana nodded for her to go on. She wanted to hear Kate’s vision of the future.

A quiet groan escaped Kate. “I can’t say it out loud.”

Was talking about any future they might have together really so horrible to Kate, even in the cover of darkness, when no one else could hear? Was Kate ashamed of her, a working-class woman who couldn’t even read and write? The thought sliced through her, cutting to the bone. She fisted her hands around the rough wool blanket. “Are you ashamed?”

“Aren’t you?” Kate whispered back. “Not even a little embarrassed? Is it normal for Sicilian women to talk about…this?”

“No.” There was no other future for a Sicilian girl but to marry and have children. Where she came from, even earning her own money and living on her own was unheard of for a woman. Planning a future with another female was definitely not done—yet it was exactly what Giuliana wanted. The thought shook her with the force of another earthquake. She fanned her fingers out against the ground to make sure that it wasn’t actually trembling.

“Giuliana?”

“We need to speak about it. I want to know what we will do.” Would Kate want her to go back to working as the Winthrops’ maid and pretend they were nothing more than a lady and her hired help? Giuliana wasn’t sure she could do that. She had embarked on an uncertain future once, when she’d come to Merica, but she’d been barely more than a child back then. Now she was an adult and wanted to steer her own fate.

A gulp came from Kate.
“Well, I…I suppose…I’d want to start with a kiss.”

The thought made Giuliana feel warm all over. But as nice as it was, how was a kiss supposed to help them set up a future for themselves? Maybe she was still too exhausted to think clearly and see where Kate was going with this, so she waved at her to continue.

“And then I’d unbutton your shirtwaist and put my lips on…Oh Lord, Giuliana, do I really have to say it?” Kate covered her face with her hands and peeked through her spread fingers.

Giuliana blinked at her. What was she
…? Then the penny dropped. “Oh.” She snapped her mouth shut and opened it again, like a sardine that had been plucked from the water. “You think I wanted to speak about…?”

“Um, you didn’t?”

“No! I asked about our future. About how to stay together.”

“Oh. And I thought you…Gosh.” Kate pulled up the blanket until just the crown of her head peeked out. She groaned into the wool.

A smile played around Giuliana’s lips. She lifted one corner of the blanket and ducked beneath it so she was face-to-face with Kate. “But…this other thing…” she whispered into Kate’s ear. “What you spoke about…”

Kate lay without moving. “Yes?”

“I think I would like it.”

“You…you would?”

Giuliana nodded, her mouth too dry for a verbal answer. The thought of Kate unbuttoning her shirtwaist and putting her mouth on her skin
…
Madonna.
The temperature beneath the blanket seemed to spike.

They stared at each other, but it was too dark to make out Kate
’s expression, so Kate probably couldn’t see hers either. Well, there was another way to assure Kate that she hadn’t appalled her. Beneath the cover of the blanket, Giuliana searched Kate’s mouth with her own.

Their lips met in a kiss, at first tender and hesitant. Then Kate’s arms came up and pulled her closer, and Giuliana’s fingers tangled in Kate’s hair. The kiss deepened. The perfect combination of gentle and firm made Giuliana’s head spin.

Kate’s tongue, warm and velvet soft, brushed over Giuliana’s bottom lip.

Guided by an instinct Giuliana didn’t fully understand, she opened her mouth. The first tentative stroke of Kate’s tongue along hers sent a wash of goose bumps down her body. Her blood turned into liquid fire. A gasp escaped her—or maybe it had been a moan.

The snoring on the other side of the blanket stopped.

With her fingers still buried in Kate’s hair, Giuliana froze. Her heart beat so loudly that she was sure everyone in the tent could hear it. Diu miu! She hadn’t thought about the risk they were taking until now. As soon as her lips had touched Kate’s, all thinking had stopped.

Slowly, careful not to make the blanket rustle, she rolled over until she was facing away from Kate and peeked out from under their cover.

Nothing moved in the darkness.

After a second, a snort came from the old woman in the wheelchair, and then she started snoring again.

Giuliana blew out a breath. She rolled over, peeked at Kate, and thought Kate was looking back at her. Her lips still tingled. Beneath the blanket, she searched for Kate’s hand and squeezed it but didn’t dare steal another kiss.

Kate leaned over her.

Was she trying to kiss her again? Out here, in the open? Giuliana’s heartbeat sped up with a mix of anticipation and fear.

But Kate only leaned close to her ear and whispered, “About what you were asking before…I mean, what you were
really
asking. I don’t have all the details worked out yet, but I don’t care as long as we’re together. Maybe we could wait until the ferries allow luggage again and then head to Belvedere to stay in the summer house for a while.”

A summer house on an island sounded nice. She imagined it might be a bit like being back in Sicily. But when she thought of who else would be there, the dream crumbled. With Kate’s parents around, they would slip right back into their old roles. “Your parents think I am the maid.”

“You’d be so much more to me,” Kate said in a fierce whisper. “I won’t let them order you around or treat you as if you were any less than them.”

“Kate…” Giuliana sighed. “Your parents do not like you to be my friend. If they find out that we are…” She paused. Was there a name for what they were…what they might be to each other?