Her ‘interview’ at the British Embassy in the Portuguese capital had been, as she had expected a job interview for the Imperial Intelligence Service. In itself, this was a little surreal: she had been working for the IIS all the time she was in Spain! Moving on past that little quirk she had discovered that back home in New England, the CSS – the Colonial Security Service – was to be wholly subsumed into the IIS, thus removing it from either the oversight, or the funding peccadillos of individual New England Crown Colonies. This change had not wholly recommended itself to her; she was at heart a proud daughter of the Crown Colony of Vermont first, and a New Englander second, and in any event, she had not decided if she even wanted to go
Thinking about it, it was not until she had left New England that she had recognised that she did not like living in a Commonwealth where individual colonial administrations honestly believed, that they had the right to legislate for its citizen’s sex lives.
She got it that if a woman slept with a man that she was not married to then she was, according to the prevailing sexual mores of the East Coast, de facto, a slut or a tart. That sucked but the notion that if she slept with another woman both parties could, theoretically be put in prison for it, and in practice sometimes dragged through the courts and the gutter press, had got really, really old since she had been in a relationship with Henrietta. Worse, back in New England, if she went anywhere near the woman that she loved she was placing Henrietta, and unthinkably, her family in huge peril of scandal; a thing she wished on nobody.
Which was where she started asking herself what she even meant by thinking she was ‘in love’ with somebody. It seemed to her that she was ‘addicted’ to Alonso, and ‘responsible’ for Henrietta. And that too, was a very peculiar way to look at things!
In hindsight she had been
Things had never been this complicated when she was living a life as carnally blameless as any cloistered nun. She had loved being a detective, right up to the moment she had acknowledged that she was burying herself in her work to stop herself worrying about how she had screwed up the rest of her life.
Anyway, the Imperial Intelligence Service wanted her to come on board ‘for real’, this time. That meant spending a while in England which probably was not going to work for Henrietta. Her mother was ill, of course, and although there was no family obligation or expectation for her to return to Philadelphia she wanted, needed to go back some time soon.
And that was before she even tried to figure out how to cope with the Pedro situation…
The boy had come running down the first floor landing laughing and calling ‘Mama Melody’ to welcome her back, and clung to her like she was the edge of a cliff. And, well, she had loved it. She had known the boy less than a month – some of which she had been away being a complete slut with Alonso – and he had missed her.
‘He asked where you were all the time,’ Henrietta had confessed.
Hen was devoted to the little rascal who seemed to get more confident, more precocious with every passing day.
Melody had been happy just to be back with Henrietta and last night had been gently, marvellously blissful; and with the women waking up this morning to discover that Pedro had inserted himself between them had been… perfect.
None of which made Melody feel any more settled that morning.