Lucy tells Edmund to go to Clarissa

Lucy and Edmund sat in the observation lounge studying one another's faces as Sabrina and Annie exclaimed over the cloud-castles and other airships visible in the distance. The motors thrummed through the framework of the gondola.

Lucy spoke first. "Go to Clarissa," she said.

"But Lucy, I want to stay with you." Edmund said. "And Sabrina and Annie." He waved his hand across the lounge, then covered Lucy's hand with his.

Lucy mused at the compass of Edmund's regard. Edmund's lover and Edmund's daughters by his wife and herself...herself, not his prick-socket bastard girl anymore. Edmund's lover, it is, now.

"Go to her, Edmund," Lucy insisted, his personal name tasting like power in her mouth. "Seize the moment. Love her. Master her. Cover her. There will be time enough for us."

Edmund swallowed, but the bulge in his breeches signaled his salute to Lucy's intention.

"Find me here late tonight after Clarissa retires. Tell her you're going for a smoke, if you must," Lucy said.

The airship was very cautious of open flames, but filled with helium from the North American wells, the lifting gas was no hazard, and so there was a smoking lounge popular among the male passengers and the occasional daring woman.

Edmund squeezed her hand.

"Go to her," Lucy said.

Edmund nodded, assenting to Lucy's command, and left the salon.

Lucy collected Sabrina and Annie and took them to the dining lounge for a pot of tea and a plate of butter biscuits. She chatted with the fine young ladies, her daughter and Clarissa's, so near sisters in every way, Edmund's seed, just of age and on their way to a Swiss finishing school to put a bit of polish and poise on them before they entered Society. Lucy supposed she herself could benefit from a little practice in refined ways, to put off her servant's habits along with the apron.

"What must we call you, Annie?" Sabrina said, "Are you my cousin now?" Lord Jeremy's unsealed revelations would have to be explained or hidden. Or something.

"I'm still your poor relation, Sabrina," Annie said. "I look it. I sound it. Nobody would believe otherwise. It's mad, my mum's the mistress of the house now."

Sabrina shook her head. "Lady Annie," she said, and made a face.

Annie laughed. "Do it again, that was horrid!" she said. "I've never seen your mouth do THAT."

Sabrina liked Lucy as a servant, and her family had favoured her, but all this. Sabrina's world was on its ear. But she had her best friend with her and she'd be away while things settled however they would.

After a bit Lucy excused herself from the girls who by now were hanging on each other's words, claiming a visit to the WC.

"Be good," Lucy told them.

Clarissa and Edmund's cabin was on the way to her claimed destination. Like every furnishing on the airship, the partitions were thinly built. With no one else in the corridor, Lucy paused to listen at the door.