All is quiet, to Lucy's relief

Lucy turned the lever of the Ladies' and pushed it slightly open, sighing to see that she was alone. Just early enough, she thought. Time for a quick wash-up before another ladies' maid came tiptoeing in.

The Ladies' in the airship had the peculiar appointments of a facility that needed to be light enough to carry, sturdy enough to endure frequent use and scrubbing, and fine enough to flatter the rich passengers. The wan luminosity of Geissler tubes shone from behind gilded mesh screens. The basins of sink, bidet, and convenience were small, and crafted, she supposed, of silvery-grey aluminium, strong and light, but adorned with flower-garland patterns stamped into the metal. The modesty partitions around the fixtures appeared to be of stiff, heavily waxed paperboard printed with roses and violets, anchored in metal frames.

Lucy shivered at the recollection that she was now one among the passengers proper, in riches and birth, if not class. No longer a servant, but Lucy, Lady Downs, for all that she had been sleeping in a little storeroom. And after today's landing, she had been promised a cabin. Lucy wondered if that would make Clarissa more discreet. But after today, she would be missing Annie, and she would be in the strangest intimacy with Edmund and Clarissa. Lucy passed her fingertips in front of her nose. Clarissa. Fierce irritation warred with animal attraction. She shook her head and suppressed the hiss she felt poised upon her tongue.

Snapping back to the moment, Lucy hastened to wash herself and purge Clarissa's perfume, liquor, and sexual musk. High-class wanton, she thought again. Was Lucy's only virtue over Clarissa that she was modest and discreet? As she straddled the bidet, soaped and rinsed, she recalled her face in the mirror in the solicitors' office WC, masked with lust as Edmund covered her, pumping his manhood into her from behind, after she had confessed her desire, before he had pledged herself her lover.

The scanty flow of the fixtures in the airship Ladies' room lengthened even the sketchy toilet she was making in this predawn hour, and by the time she had brushed out her hair and pinned it up, someone was coming in the door.