The thoughts arrived in Pat’s head on one another’s heels. She wanted to kiss Fen more than anything in the world and couldn’t make herself do it. An engaged woman; a new friend she might repel, which would be worse than anything; and even if Fen wasn’t repelled in principle, why would someone like her even think about angular, mannish Pat with her straight figure in a plain dress?

Fen’s brows angled in a little frown. “Pat?”

“Yes?” Her voice sounded rather feeble.

“You say such awfully lovely things to me.” Fen’s eyes were on hers, searching her face. “And I don’t think I’ve ever said anything complimentary to you.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m not fishing.” Were they, after all, merely engaging in girlish chatter of the sort Pat had never mastered but other women seemed to do by instinct?

“Of course you’re not,” Fen said. “You’ve never fished in your life except for trout, I expect. And I don’t think you think much of yourself, do you?”

Pat felt her face heat, with embarrassment or disappointment, she wasn’t sure which. “There’s not much to think of,” she muttered, gruffly.

Fen leaned forward, studying her face, then raised a brow. “Eye of the beholder,” she said, and kissed her.

It was a swift brush of lips on lips, which could conceivably have been a kiss between friends, because Fen didn’t repeat it, but she didn’t move her face back either. Pat froze, hopelessly wanting and locked in uncertainty, and then Fen kissed her again, still lightly but with much more deliberation, and Pat thought, with overwhelming relief, Right. Yes. This.

She lifted a hand, touching her fingertips to the soft, powdered skin of Fen’s rounded cheek. Fen gave a little whimpering noise that tingled through all sorts of places, and then they were kissing again, both of them this time, Pat’s lips moving by instinct, Fen’s warm and soft and tasting of brandy. Pat slid her hand down, meaning only to drop it to Fen’s hip, and discovered she’d miscalculated Fen’s bosom when she felt bare skin and a hard frill of lace under her fingers. Fen squeaked; Pat froze, ready to begin an apology, but Fen pressed her own hand over Pat’s, keeping it there, and she might in fact be dead now, or hallucinating, because this was heaven. She, plain Pat Merton, kissing the loveliest girl in the world, hand on her breast—

There were footsteps and male voices, outside the door.