Chapter Fourteen

in which sam yearns

There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison . . . —Jane Austen, Persuasion

The deep thud of furniture toppling alerted me to the fact that I was now sitting on the carpet, legs splayed out in front of me like a rag doll. For a wavering moment, I felt like I was under water again, out of breath, unsure which way was up, too saturated with my epiphany to bubble to the surface.

Beside me, the small table rocked back and forth as it settled on its side, bumping gently into my hip. Daisy had rescued her portable writing desk at least, and was clutching it to her chest.

“What just . . . ?”

“You swooned,” she said, with wary amusement, unsure if I was in the mood to laugh about it or not. “It was not at all as artful as I’ve read about. Nevertheless, I swear I shall not tell a soul that you were overcome by the magnificence of my prose.”

She set her case on the dining table. She reached down to help me up, and to my shame, I flinched.

Flinched, because that was Margaret Goodenough’s hand, Margaret Goodenough’s wordless offer of help, Margaret Goodenough’s teasing, and I was stupidly, moronically, speechlessly starstruck.

Margaret jerked back, confused by the rejection.

Well, yes , Margaret. And not Margaret. This was Daisy. This was my friend. This was my stupid little crush, with her kissable mouth and her mischievous dimples.

Daisy .

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” I gasped, lungs spasming with the shock of both the tumble and the revelation. “I’m fine.”

“You are very much not fine,” Margaret-freaking-Goodenough said. “Please, let me help you up.”

“I—” I licked my lips, nerves flaring. “Yeah? Yes. Please.”

As she was hauling me upright, Finch and Eliza blew into the room.

So not the first impression I had wanted to make.

“We heard a noise,” Finch announced, one hand hovering over his hip, though he was not wearing his sword or pistol just now. The other was entangled with Eliza’s.

Miss Gale had a pleasantly sweet face, plump curves, and unaffected black ringlets that made her English rose complexion all the more delicate. She had laugh lines around her hazel eyes, and a sort of fluttering calmness to her, like a butterfly who could flit away at any moment but had chosen to rest nearby, opening and closing its wings slowly.

“My fault,” I said, feeling utterly stupid. “I was too busy, uh, enjoying the view—” I gestured at the sunlight sparkling on the fresh snow in the garden. “Wasn’t watching where I was walking, smashed right into the table, what a klutz! Ha-ha!”

Daisy regarded my fibs with open curiosity but didn’t deny them.

“I am very glad that you are well, then, Miss Franklin,” Eliza said, detangling herself from Fenton. “As I was just on my way to make your acquaintance. Oh, your dress —”

I looked down. The inkpot, which Daisy had left open, had spilled down my front.

“Aw, shit.” I dove for the salt cellar. “Someone, sorry, help—just pour it on the stain—”

Eliza applied herself to the task as I held the front of my dress out. That “recording” look was back in Daisy’s gaze while she watched the crystals soak up the ink.

“Wherever did you learn this?” she asked.

“It’s how you get wine stains up. Figured it’d work for ink.”

“Come, let me hold that for you while you clean your hands. You should not like the stain to spread,” Daisy offered as Eliza worked, and crowded close. “Quick now, so we can get this to the laundry before my sister is the wiser.”

“That is Marigold’s dress?” Fenton asked, gawping with mischievous glee. “Oh, Miss Franklin, you are in trouble —”

“If you cannot help, dearest, then hush ,” Eliza scolded, and Finch immediately backed away with an apologetic pout.

Oh, I liked Eliza Gale.

“Right—” I fumbled with a napkin as Daisy and Eliza bent to their tasks, tongue-tied all over again because Margaret Goodenough had her hands resting on my thighs and I just, I just —

“I heard a crash, is all—Miss Franklin!” Marigold shrilled from the door, and we froze guiltily. “I specifically requested that you have a care with that dress!”

“I’m sorry. It was an accident. I’ll clean it myself, I’ll—”

“How selfish of you!” Marigold went on, pushing Fenton off when he tried to soothe her. “How thoughtless! It is ruined.”

“The stain will lift, sister,” Finch pleaded. “Peace, please.”

“It was an accident,” I repeated.

The twist of Marigold’s mouth made it clear she didn’t believe me. She turned on her heel and stomped away. Instead of cursing, I bit the inside of my cheek.

If Marigold didn’t have reason enough to hate me before, she absolutely did now.

~

As soon as we were upstairs Daisy took the time to get herself up to the bare minimum standard of polite dress: hair in a knot, piled under a frilly muslin day cap, and a dress of serviceable fabric in a light gray that did glorious things for her eyes. Then she went to soothe Marigold’s temper and scrounge up another dress—her own clothes were just too slim cut to fit me—while Eliza helped me strip, then bustled away to the laundress. I was standing by the fire in my borrowed dressing gown—the ink had gone through to the chemise and stockings and they had been whisked away too—when Eliza returned with a soft rap on the doorframe.

“Miss Franklin?” she said. She held a small basket between her hands and was accompanied by this morning’s maid. “Miss Goodenough mentioned that you swooned. I thought, perhaps, if you’re feeling unwell, we could spend the morning here instead of in the parlor? I brought some embroidery.” She proffered the basket.

“That’s kind of you,” I said. “I don’t embroider, but don’t let that stop you.”

“Ah,” she said, with that same delicate yet calm gravitas I’d seen downstairs. “Something else, then. Do you play whist, Miss Franklin? Betty, leave the tea and bring the playing cards, please? And some breakfast, I don’t believe Miss Franklin had the opportunity to finish hers.”

Betty bobbed, left the tray on the chest at the foot of the bed, took away Eliza’s basket, and bustled out the door. Eliza picked up the small table by the fire—amateurishly but enthusiastically painted with vines, roses, and a wonky cherub—and placed it beside the rumpled bed. I slumped over and sat. She pulled up the vanity chair and with a deft hand poured the tea. I added a slice of lemon to mine.

“Are you fatigued from travel?” Eliza asked kindly. “Or, Finch tells me you had a terrible ordeal with an unsavory fellow in town. I imagine that would be quite taxing.”

“You imagine right. But it’s not that, it’s only stupidity,” I confessed, feeling the corners of my mouth pull down, my chin tremble, the heat build behind my eyes. Had I ever cried as much in my previous life? I didn’t think so. But then, I’d also had less to cry over. “I’m an idiot .”

“Please don’t berate yourself. Such accidents happen frequently, and I am certain that we are more than equipped to lift the stain.”

“I just keep messing up. I thought being here would be easy , and I—” I cut myself off with a sniffle and decided it would be best not to continue. I cast about for a handkerchief.

Eliza anticipated my need and handed me hers from her sleeve, gently embroidered in one corner with a stylized EG . I wondered if this was one of her feminine accomplishments. If so, it was a more elegant effort than the table.

“Worry not, Miss Franklin,” Eliza said. “You are a friend of the family I am about to join. That makes you my friend now. I shall endeavor to do all I can to ease your way.”

She was so nice . I was struck with a sudden, viscous desire to say sorry for fucking her fiancé. But it was cruel. It was unnecessary . What would Eliza do with the information, anyway? How would she react, but to assume my apology was instead a deliberate attempt to hurt her feelings? And what would happen to her if she jilted Fenton as a result?

And it wouldn’t make my life any easier. Fenton wouldn’t forgive me if I ruined his upcoming marriage, and he certainly wouldn’t return to me. And I’d be out on my ear faster than Marigold could snap her fingers.

An earlier version of me might have done it for the sheer pettiness, but there was something about Eliza Gale that made me want to take her under my wing and shelter her. I’d known her for a half a day and I already knew I’d keep her in the divorce if she and Fenton split up.

When Betty delivered the cards, Eliza laid them out and explained the game. I sipped and let her talk to cover the silence, grateful for her presence and the distraction it brought. She didn’t push or press, just let me be . It was refreshing.

When I was feeling warm from the tea, full from the nibbles, and settled from the easy companionship, I said, “Thank you.”

Eliza smiled calmly. “You’re very welcome.”

“Fenton is lucky to have you. I imagine having a partner so good at putting people at ease would be useful in the navy. All I ever did was make a scene, and I wasn’t even trying.”

I saw it there, in her eyes. Quick and repressed easily: envy that I had spent time out in the world on Fenton’s arm. And she’d had to stay here. My first impression had pegged Miss Eliza Gale as timid and sweet, but the more time I spent with her the more I saw a steel core under that corset. I could easily see her as one of those shockingly modern wives who joined her husband aboard ship.

“Not that I think that playing hostess is the only thing you’ll bring to the table, but perhaps he leaps before he thinks.” We both do , I thought. We’d have made each other worse if I’d managed to marry him. “I can tell, the way you play cards, you’re thinking ten steps ahead. He needs that balance. He needs you .”

The vaguely hostile hurt in her eyes didn’t fade but the lines around them relaxed, her expression still carefully neutral. She took the white-flag waving for what it was.

“Of course,” she said. “The men think they are the ones who decide whom to marry, but you and I know, Miss Franklin, that it really is us women who arrange it to their best advantage. Finch is in want of a steady hand.”

“You’re marrying into a loud and headstrong family,” I agreed.

“I am nothing if not patient, and even-keeled,” she said, and with a triumphant grin, collected the final trick of the whist match.

Good girl, I thought, matching her grin with a proud one of my own. You take what you deserve.

~

Fenton interrupted us to convey an invitation to Eliza from his mother, who was now awake and ready for visitors. Iris had brought the bride a gift of lace for her trousseau and wanted to discuss the best use of it.

As I was still in my pj’s, Fenton stood carefully outside the door. Eliza bid me adieu, and kissed him sweetly on her way past. Fenton lingered just long enough to tell me that he’d managed to sell my old smartphone for an obscene amount to some fascinated science kook in London.

“It was far more than I ever would have earned in prizes,” he said. “More than enough for my needs. I think perhaps you are very proud, Samantha, but I beg you to take this along with my deepest thanks.”

He held out a leather pouch that clinked softly when I accepted it.

“You know that I don’t know what this is worth,” I told him.

“It’s enough to purchase some clothing of your own, to pay for your share of the meals and carriages until the wedding, and for several months of your lodging with my sisters and mother. It will tide you over comfortably. I could give you more, if you desire.”

“This is enough. As soon as I start teaching, I’ll be self-sufficient.”

“It was your little device, after all.”

“It was a gift, Fenton. Shut up and accept it.”

He dimpled at me. “I do so enjoy your turns of phrase.”

I snorted. “Right. Now get out. I’m practically naked.”

“Lucky, then, that I have managed to winkle a spare dress out of Miss Gale’s lady’s maid,” Daisy said, appearing over Fenton’s shoulder. “You are dismissed, little bird.”

“Aye-aye, Commodore,” Fenton said, tossing off a rigid salute and marching away like a toy soldier.

“Our room has turned into a town square.” I stepped aside so Daisy could come in. “Feels like everyone’s dropped by today.”

“Nearly everyone,” Daisy said with a sarcastic twist. “The linendraper is downstairs; I could invite him up if you so desired.”

“I’ll pass,” I said, as I skimmed out of my dressing gown. “What’s a linendraper?”

Daisy gave me another one of those pinning-me-to-a-corkboard looks before shaking her head a little in disbelief. “A seller of cloth. Here is a chemise for you, quick now, turn and I shall tie off your stays and dress.”

The dress itself was taupe, made of a serviceable cotton and printed with a repeating pattern of dark-brown and mustard-yellow daffodils. She lingered at the nape of my neck, the soft skin inside my elbow, the vulnerable tops of my feet as she checked the length. I tensed to suppress a shiver.

She didn’t mean it like that.

No matter how much I wanted her to mean it like that.

“Are you much recovered from your queer turn?”

At some point I was going to have to stop finding people using the word queer that way funny. Today wasn’t that day, though, and I snorted.

Taking it to mean something deeper, Daisy gave the ties at the back of my dress one final tug and stepped away. When I turned to face her, she was staring out the window, stiff backed and pouting.

“Marg—Daisy? Are you okay?”

“Have I done something amiss?”

“What?”

Daisy gestured at her writing desk, which she had closed up into a case and tucked beside her trunk. “You have spent all morning behaving oddly around me, and I suspect it is due to that.”

“No!” I said. “I mean, yes, but no , no, there’s nothing wrong —”

She whirled to face me, fists clenched and fire in her eyes. “Then what , pray tell me, do you find so distasteful? You call my writing ‘good,’ and yet you are overcome with nerves from just a few paragraphs. I know it is not a ladylike pastime, and you say that you eschew such rigid roles in society, yet you behave as if my hobby offends you. You call me friend, but share secrets with my brother that you will not disclose to me. You find my proximity uncomfortable. You shrink from my touch. You disdain to share a bed with me, sleeping against the wall or on the farthest edge. Yet you stare at me when I speak as if I am a greater orator than any who yet lived. You bewilder me, Samantha Franklin!”

I confused her ? Ha!

“Daisy, I don’t. Honestly, I don’t know how to explain it.” I scrubbed my hands through my hair, frustration and confusion sparking along the underside of my skin, an itch I didn’t know how to soothe.

“Please try,” Daisy begged, and the way she said it curled around my heart like a lover’s fingers. “I want . . . I do not know what I want, only that I cannot bear to lose your regard over my scribbling.”

“I swear you haven’t,” I promised. I held out my hands and she gripped them immediately. “It’s amazing , what you do. I know how fiercely you have to carve out and defend your time, your right to do it”— because I read it in a book two hundred years from now —“and I think it’s incredible.”

“Then why do you recoil?”

“Because I . . . because . . .”

Oh .

Oh fuck .

I was going to do it.

I was going to kiss Margaret Goodenough.

Daisy .

I slid my hands up her arms, cupped her shoulders, rolled up onto my tiptoes. Daisy’s mouth parted in confusion, then in surprise as I leaned closer and tilted my head, then in anticipation as she understood what I meant to do. Her tongue was a pink, wet flash against her bottom lip, her spun-gold lashes fluttered as we—

“Daisy!” Marigold called from the hall, harsh and sudden.

We startled apart, like cats doused with a surprise bucket of cold water. Though with less yowling.

“Make haste!” Marigold added when Daisy’s only reply was a frustrated grumble. “Miss Eliza seeks your opinion on the twill stuff!”

I threw my head back and laughed, because of course . Daisy’s annoyance broke like a wave upon the shore. She huffed a chuckle, more amused with my amusement than the interruption, but made for the door.

Okay, so we weren’t talking about it.

Cool, cool, cool.

I could do not talking about it.

Shit .

~

The draper, a skinny man with a wisp of gray hair like cotton fluff and arms that never stopped flapping, was well into a song-and-dance routine about the virtues of locally made machine loomed muslin when we entered the parlor. The group of ladies had multiplied and now also comprised Eliza’s two younger sisters and their governess, as well as her lady’s maid and a pair of lollygagging chambermaids who weren’t shooed out.

I decided that if I was going to spend the rest of my life around these people doing this sort of thing, maybe I should try to learn something useful. I sat amid the youngest Gales and amused them greatly by allowing them to educate me on the virtues of different fabrics and dyes, nodded over swatches, and learned that young ladies wore pastels while married women were privileged to the deeper, jewel-tone shades.

Which made me side-eye Marigold, as she was definitely sporting a pale-yellow dress today. Trying to look more marriageable for Sir Gale? Maybe.

It also explained the bolt of fabric Eliza chose for her wedding gown: a soft blush with an in-woven pattern of light-pink morning glories.

Fun fact, my dad chirruped. White wedding gowns were popularized by Queen Victoria. A woman whose parents weren’t even married yet.

The ladies were already discussing what sleeve design would flatter, how low the neckline could be for church, and how the dress could be altered again after the wedding for evening wear.

Right, yeah, that was a thing, apparently—there was no buying a five-figure princess poof then preserving it in a box for the next thirty years. Not even the minor gentry could afford to buy something and never wear it again. Environmentally crippling fast fashion hadn’t been invented yet.

“What do you think, Miss Samantha?” Eliza asked, looking at me deliberately but not unkindly. “You have been the lone companion of Fenton for these long months. Will he like it?”

I smiled, and gestured at the bolt unraveled on her lap.

“Miss Eliza, you could wear a burlap sack and he would still think you were an angel fallen from heaven.” The women around me tittered. “Having said that, your silk would be a lot more comfortable.”

Eliza’s smile grew into a more generous, more genuine version of itself.

“What is the wedding fashion where you come from, Miss Samantha?” one of the younger Miss Gales asked.

“Not all that different,” I confessed. “Usually less lace, a bit of a sleeker cut. Oh.” I took in the piles of ribbons and buttons and swatches. “Where’s your blue?”

“Blue?” Eliza echoed. “I do not wear blue. It does not flatter.”

“You can’t get married without blue,” I said. “It’s tradition.”

Daisy, who had been sat as far away as the cozy parlor allowed with her “recording” face on, leaned forward. “Whose?”

“Ours,” I said with a shrug. “I thought it would be yours, too, but I guess not. It’s for luck. The bride is supposed to wear ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.’”

“I see,” Daisy said, one finger on the handle of her teacup, pushing it in a circle around her saucer. “The dress will be new.”

“You may borrow the amber crucifix that Fenton gave me,” Marigold offered magnanimously, clutching Eliza’s hand in a sisterly way.

Now everyone was grinning, thinking hard.

“Something old,” Eliza said tentatively. “What of the veil that was my mother’s?”

“That’ll do,” I said. “And blue?”

Eliza protested softly. “It is still not flattering.”

“That’s easy, then,” I said. “Put one little blue flower in the middle of your bouquet. A spray of forget-me-nots, if you have them. It’s what my mother did.”

“Tell us?” Daisy implored, and I realized with a heart-shuddering jolt that if I really was to live with the Goodenoughs, that this was probably going to be a refrain I heard often from the authoress.

“It was in my mom’s bouquet,” I said. “A silk flower from her own mother’s bouquet, surrounded by the new, fresh, real flowers, a pretty silver stickpin borrowed from her sister, and a blue ribbon to hold it together. She, uh,”—I had to pause to clear my throat, which had grown tight again—“she saved her mom’s silk flower and dried some flowers from her bouquet for when it was my turn.”

Don’t think about how they’ll never walk you down an aisle.

Eliza sighed. “How romantic.”

“Yeah.” I brushed at the corner of my eyes, disguising the maneuver by pushing back a piece of hair that had fallen forward. My parents had been stupid-face in love, too, the same way Eliza and Fenton were.

Conversation moved on from me, so I made an excuse out of fetching myself a cup of fizzy mineral water from the ever-present sideboard of snacks to compose myself. ( How did these people stay hydrated? I’d sworn off plain water, but I’d yet to find any either.)

I helped myself to the only other seat in Daisy’s corner, and she offered me a wry smile. We watched the rest of the fabric-choosing session in silence, the crackling tension of what had nearly happened upstairs thick between us, like taffy filled with Pop Rocks.

As the draper finalized Eliza’s order and began to pack his samples away, and the other ladies’ conversation surged excitedly, Daisy murmured: “I expect that the process of ordering clothes is unfamiliar to you?”

“Yeah.” I did a double take. “Why would you expect that?”

Daisy offered me another of those inscrutable looks. “You are often confused about the value of coinage, you do not know how to order up a room or a meal, nor are you versed in bargaining for goods. I suspect that you did not engage with commerce often.”

“I did my own shopping,” I protested. “I just didn’t do it like this.”

“How did you do it?”

By delivery app .

“Order sheets,” I said. “You make a list of what you want, the list is delivered to the merchant, a delivery person provides your order, and then you pay off your credits at the end of the month in one big lump sum.”

“That sounds incautious,” Daisy said. “I imagine it lands those not scrupulous with their accounts to debtor’s prison.”

“Collections agencies are a special kind of hell, yeah,” I agreed.

What happens to student loans when someone dies? Will my parents have to pay them off? That’s cruel, making parents pay for their dead child’s education.

“This guy goes away with the order, then what?”

“He will deliver the fabric to Miss Eliza’s dressmaker and Sir Gale will settle the account. Then a visit will be paid to the modiste to decide upon the style, based on the fashion plates. The wedding shall be a month from this coming Sunday, so the visit will need to happen in the next day or two.”

“A month ,” I repeated. “We’ll be here for a month?”

Daisy gave me the side-eye. “The announcement must be read each week in church for a minimum of three weeks, to allow those who may object to the union to speak up. All weddings must have the banns read.”

“Mine didn’t.”

Daisy grimaced. “A special license allows for more immediacy.”

“Can’t they get one of those, then?”

“They are granted only by favor of the archbishop himself, and only to those who are of the correct rank.” She rubbed her thumb and finger together in the timeless gesture for loaded . “Besides that, the full month gives the dressmaker, as well as us here, enough time to complete Miss Eliza’s trousseau, and for my brother and Sir Gale to finalize the marriage contract.”

“Just saying now, I will not be doing any of the sewing. Not if it’s something that Eliza actually wants to wear.”

Daisy found this confession charming.

“But we should go to town today ,” one of the younger Gale daughters complained loudly enough to interrupt our tête-à-tête. “The new ribbons came in yesterday and the shop will be picked over!”

“Honestly, Olive,” Eliza scolded, but she was smiling. “A single day won’t make a difference.”

“I will confess I am quite stiff from the carriage ride, and those awful beds at the inn,” Iris said, with no indication of said confessed stiffness. “A visit to town sounds just the thing, and the day is bright! Marigold, Daisy?”

“Of course, Mother,” Marigold said, standing and brushing down her dress.

Daisy shot me a meaningful look that made it clear that she intended to dawdle well behind the clucking younger women.

And so it was that the whole of the female host donned thick stockings and spencer jackets, winter bonnets, scarves, and muffs, and ventured out into the freshly fallen snow. A big open sleigh with skis instead of wheels, drawn by two massive farm horses, was pulled around to the front door, and we piled in. Hidden under the lap blanket, bold as brass, Daisy laid her gloved fingers over mine and didn’t move them until we reached town twenty minutes later.

I don’t think I exhaled once the entire trip.

~

The town, when we arrived, was far quainter than I had expected. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped for—towering Victorian brownstones? Tumbledown medieval cottages? A combination of both? But the town was paved, and the buildings of the high street aligned in a military procession toward a church on one end and a square with shops on the other.

We dismounted in front of the church, and Iris bustled importantly to the dressmaker’s at the far end from where she’d had the driver drop us off. She spent the whole walk loudly and excitedly discussing the upcoming nuptials. Less for our benefit and more to rub it in with the other folks about town on their own errands.

I adored Iris’s vicious enthusiasm.

I kept falling to the back of the group on purpose, hoping Daisy would linger with me, but one or another of our companions kept her wrapped up in conversation the whole walk down the high street.

Finally, the youngest girls broke off, herded by their governess, to stop by the grocer’s for boiled candies. Eliza, Marigold, and Iris headed directly into the dressmaker’s, which was thankfully too tight to contain all of us. Daisy and I peeled away to keep walking.

Thinking I’d finally have my chance, Daisy took one look at me once we were alone, turned bright red, and ducked into a consignment store. The proprietress was too attentive to give us the privacy I longed for, so I busied myself with selecting a sleep shirt, a dowdy men’s dressing gown in dark green, and three secondhand dresses, all to be delivered to the house. One was a day dress in a cream and dusty-rose roller-pattern of sweet pea blossoms on a fabric Daisy called calico, which complimented my cranberry spencer. One was pale-blue muslin, good for informal evenings. And the last was something darn near slinky, in the closest thing to a deep purple that Daisy would let me get away with, intended for proper dinner parties.

They were each stripped of their expensive lace and ribbon, which would have been kept back by the original owners to use on new dresses, but I didn’t mind. Lace always made me feel like a two-year-old being dressed up for a pageant. I also picked up a rectangle of plain white muslin for a fichu—one of those neck scarf things that was superficially supposed to make the deliberate plunge of the Regency-era neckline more modest.

From there Daisy hustled us to the trim store, which was crowded with massive chests made up of hundreds of little drawers of buttons, lace, flounces, silk flowers, feathers, and anything else a lady might need to bedeck herself. I marveled at the intensity of some of the colors, not at all the insipid sepias or watercolors I’d expected. The cloth was just as vibrant in 1806 as in 2024. Considerably less neon, though.

After checking in with her sister in the shop next door, Daisy found me staring at the ribbons lined up on their spools on the shelf.

“It’s funny,” I said, instead of asking the questions that felt like they were burning my tongue the longer they went unspoken. “I’ve never been a girlie girl.”

Daisy snorted, a distinctly indelicate yet endearing mode of conveying disbelief that I was pretty sure she had picked up from me. “Oh?”

“One of those girls who spends all their money on lipsticks, curls their hair, and has a collection of perfumes. But standing here, now, I can’t help but covet all the pretty things. It’s freaking me out a little.”

“Women are naturally competitive creatures,” Daisy allowed. “Your field of competition has changed, but not the game, Samantha. We regard each other as potential rivals for our livings and for our husbands. Even those who have no desire to play.”

“Doesn’t matter, I don’t know the rules anyway,” I said, and heroically did not add a quip about cheating. That felt a little too on the nose.

Daisy sighed, and began inspecting the spool in front of her with a studiously expressionless face.

“Nor I,” she confessed, voice deep with sorrowful yearning. “I fear I never have.”