By The Sea, Book One: Tess by Antoinette Stockenberg

to be
replacing me, and then I'll have all the time in the world."
    "Don't talk nonsense, Mag. We would have
heard."
    "Well, it's not as though anyone else has
ever been given warning," retorted Maggie, and she threw herself
face down on the bed.
    Tess sat alongside her sister and rubbed
small circles into her lower back. "Mag, this is the merest
anthill, and here you go making a mountain out of it. Couldn't the
girl have been a friend of Bridget's from another house?"
    "No," Maggie answered in a blanket-muffled
voice, "or Bridget would've sworn me not to tell. No one's allowed.
You know that," she added wearily.
    "True enough—but on the other hand, Mrs.
Bracken just spoke to me not half an hour ago and told me she was
quite satisfied with your work."
    If the remark were less than half true, was
that a mortal sin?
    Maggie rolled over onto her side. "Is that
really true?"
    "Would I lie?" Definitely a mortal sin.
    Maggie rolled the rest of the way onto her
back and sighed. "'I feel better, then."
    "Good."
    "Oh! Have you been given the night
off? Some of the chambermaids have, and the groom, and some of the
footmen and the under-cook and the scullery maid. It's very odd.
The house will be quiet tonight. Well? Have you?"
    Obviously Maggie hadn't heard about the
ball.
    "Ehh ... the truth is, I'm still working on
the lace appliqué. Another half-truth; another sin.
    "Can't it wait? I have only one underskirt
to iron. It shouldn't take me more than three or four hours, and
then I'm sure I'll be let go for the night."
    "No ... no. Miss Cornelia specifically asked
for the gown to be finished as soon as possible." Each lie spawned
another.
    "Can you work on it here?"
    "No. The light is better in her dressing
room." That was at least technically true. "I'm sorry, Mag," she
said when she saw the look of disappointment on her sister's face.
But she had to go to this ball. No matter what, she had to go. It
was as simple as that.
    Tess changed the subject. "Come now; time
for Fellows Syrup and cod liver oil."
    "I'd nearly forgotten why I was here,"
Maggie admitted, but she looked at her sister strangely as she took
her medicine with less then her usual grace.

Chapter 9
     
    For this Tess lied: so that for two or three
hours she might have an opportunity—no guarantee, just a chance—to
be waltzed around a floor in the arms of a man with whom she could
not possibly have a future. So far she had not even allowed herself
the luxury of pronouncing his name, and yet this was the man who
was quickly becoming her obsession.
    "Edward." She whispered the name, shocked by
the intimacy of it. "Edward, please …."
    What it was she was pleading for, she had no
idea. In an age when girls were very, very innocent or very, very
knowledgeable, Tess was a curious mixture of both. On the one hand,
Tess had never shared a romantic moment of any kind with anyone in
her entire young life. On the other hand, she did understand the
mechanics and the consequences of sex: the stableboy who had
fondled her at twelve had also, at about the same time, impregnated
one of the housemaids at the Meller estate. Although the girl was
sent away, she returned, utterly destitute, at the end of her term
and threw herself at the mercy of Lady Meller.
    The baby was born on the estate but its
mother died. Young Tess, who had been sent to the midwife during
the delivery with extra towels, had managed to be in the room at
the moment when the two souls were delivered, one (as Midwife
McCrenna later decreed) to "eternal perdition." The mother had died
just before her baby was born, and in the panicky moments when the
baby was being eased the rest of the way into the world, no one
bothered with the young, wide-eyed girl who was hanging back in the
shadows. The last, heartrending screams of the mother and the
bloodied result of her labor had frightened Tess into a state of
permanent virtue.
    Almost permanent. In the last two weeks the
memory of that traumatic childbirth had not so