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Chapter Sixteen

in which sam relishes

My idea of good company [. . .] is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation. —Jane Austen, Persuasion

I apologized to Marigold first thing at breakfast, and she accepted it with grudging good grace in front of the audience of Finch, Eliza, and a scattering of younger Gales. She could hardly do otherwise with them watching. Things remained tense between us, and I spent the rest of the morning ingratiating myself to her, flattering her and being helpful, until her stiff-backed hurt melted away around dinner. Daisy rewarded me with more kisses that night.

And so the next few weeks passed.

There was something wonderful about a cozy, well-appointed life: not so luxurious that there were social responsibilities, not so close to poverty that there was scrabbling; with just enough servants to make anything happen when you wanted it to but not so many that it felt invasive.

Which left time for all the other lovely, domestic things—like taking tea or going on walks—that wove two lives into one. Kissing was as far as either Daisy or I were ready to go while still sharing a wall with her soon-to-be sister-in-law on one side and her mother and actual sister on the other. Honestly, I was in no rush. We had literally the rest of our lives together. What did it matter, then, when we got around to sex? Not that I didn’t want it—but I was content to let Daisy dictate our pace.

That didn’t mean Daisy and I didn’t take great comfort in retiring after dinner. Not so early, though, that I cut her off from the company of the other ladies. I’d learned my lesson and made a point of not sticking too close to Daisy’s side during the day. The more time she spent in her sister’s company, the less Marigold seemed likely to snap at me.

Where possible, Daisy and I spent the evenings mapping the inside of each other’s mouths, tasting and testing. I showed Daisy where to touch, where to tickle, where to pinch. She became more confident in pursuing her own pleasure, and giving me mine. I felt full to bursting that she trusted me enough, wanted this enough that she let me teach her, day by day, slowly.

I had fallen fast, and hard.

And we spoke. Oh , how we spoke.

We filled the air between us with the secrets, the confessions, the truths that we could never tell anyone else. I accepted Daisy for who she was, and did not condemn her for it, did not urge her instead to get married and stop being a burden on her family, the way everyone else in her life did. Daisy returned the favor by never calling me mad, never disbelieving my fantastical stories, never questioning my origin; letting me just be me .

I’d never been so honest about my fears and desires with anyone in my life. There were no stakes here, no ego, no one to judge me for what I did or did not want, for my yearnings and my frustrations, because here they meant nothing . It was freeing to be able to let go of societal expectations about life goals and milestones that I hadn’t even realized had been burdening me. Of course, the life I had now came freighted with new expectations, but somehow these seemed lighter to carry, because I hadn’t internalized them, didn’t wear them hooked into my bones.

Daisy told me about her family, her best friend in Marigold, about the loss of her father three years prior and their domino-like move from their father’s house in a middling-good part of Bath to less elegant accommodations, and how it had negatively affected Fenton’s marriage prospects until the ball where he’d met Eliza. About the devastating loss of Mr. Kempel and his family’s support. And how, without their father’s income, the Goodenoughs had crammed into a very small row house, living as cheaply as possible on the two elder women’s widow’s portions and Fenton’s modest inheritance. His naval wage did go in part to his family, but now that he was to be a married man, his first financial priority would have to be his own wife and children. Which was why Daisy’s family was keen for her to put herself out there on the marriage market, and to rent Finch’s former room to a lodger.

We did not speak of the book she was writing because she’d asked me to reveal nothing and I, to my shame, didn’t know enough to reveal anyway. But Daisy did ask me all about the people I knew from home. She was particularly interested in their general characters and verbal twitches, which she in turn recorded in the notebook pages she never shared with anyone.

I never dared to sneak a peek again, out of both respect and genuine fear that she would stab any hand that touched her pages with the little knife she used to sharpen her pencils and quills.

Three Sundays in a row the household tromped off to the nearby church to experience the thrill of hearing Eliza and Finch’s upcoming nuptials announced, with no impediment voiced from anyone in the congregation.

In between services, Eliza’s fabrics and trims began to come in. The gaggle of ladies at Swangale, sometimes joined by married women from the town, devoted ourselves to patterning, chalking, sewing, and trimming the soon-to-be Mrs. Goodenough’s linens, lingerie, and honeymoon wardrobe. Well. They sewed. I poured tea, fetched needles, handed out custard and fruit tarts, and generally made myself as useful and unobtrusive as possible.

The majority of the sewing circle conversation was held up by Marigold and Mrs. Goodenough relaying the gossip of Bath. So-and-so had broken their engagement to Mr. Two Thousand Pounds a Year, and someone’s son had joined the reserves, and someone else had commissioned a new dress in the Paris fashion, which was deemed terribly unpatriotic.

In between, I devoured all the history and society books I could get my hands on in preparation for my upcoming role in the little Goodenough school. While Marigold and I may have had a tense relationship, the prospect of being able to take on twice as many students and therefore bring in twice as much income was one that Marigold couldn’t afford to recant.

My button-down became sleepwear, with the jeans and jacket destined to be forever hidden in the back of a drawer in case anyone was in need of a brother again in the future. My Converse remained my footwear of choice, the purple canvas and signature white rubber toe peeking out from under my hems when we went outdoors, and I wouldn’t give up my wool Basque hat for anything. The lapel pins and my wallet remained wrapped in the pink gingham handkerchief, zipped into the jacket pocket, relegated to the place of repressed memory.

Breakfast became my favorite part of the day. Breakfast was when everyone else was too hungover to be up early or had already headed out on morning visits, walks, or rides. Breakfast was when Daisy sat at the end of the table farthest from the door with her writing case, disheveled and cranky, just barely decent and loath to be disturbed by any except me, so long as I kept her teacup full and my mouth shut.

Freed for just four precious weeks from the social and domestic responsibilities that would have been a constant interruption in Bath by virtue of Sir Gale’s staff, Daisy hoarded every spare moment, working ravenously.

Daisy was rarely disturbed while she was writing . The word was spoken by everyone in the household with such a deliberate, almost spiritual hush I wondered if they somehow knew; if they all had precognition of what Daisy would someday become. As if they could touch the future as surely as I had touched the past.

This was the real authoress—the real Margaret Goodenough scrunched up paper, talked to herself, paced the room acting out scenes or hunched over her desk, nose smudged with pencil, muttered and cribbed dialogue from actual conversations, scribbled oblivious to anything else. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote. She worked for her genius. She suffered. She cared .

And it was my privilege alone to witness and support this Margaret Goodenough. I now knew she preferred wild berry preserves over clotted cream and just a very small dash of milk in her tea, that she wore more dark olive and plum than an unmarried woman ought, and stuck to muslin caps indoors to avoid having to brush out and style her hair every morning. She wrote between dawn and when the second person in the household woke, and always sat to breakfast with a wild grin and flushed cheeks.

It felt like I’d finally found my place in this world.

It was by her side.

And it was grand .

~

March came in like a lion, and we piled into the church first thing on a Saturday morning to hide from the weather and pay witness to a wedding exactly like every one I’d ever seen in every historical drama. Outside afterward, the breeze was brisk as we waved off the happy couple, the first promise of spring not quite strong enough to push off the lingering, tattered clouds of winter. The furled buds on the trees along the walk seemed to be shivering in their little verdant coats. Everyone hustled into the carriage to return to Swangale, hands punched into their coat pockets or muffs, shoulders hunched to protect their necks. The world smelled of approaching rain, tender new-growth grass, and the promise of renewal.

During my time with the Gales I had discovered that Daisy and I were the same age—twenty-four. She was two years older than Fenton, three years younger than Mary, and seven months my senior. But out under the clear sky, cheeks red with nip of the wind and her careless attempt at securing her hair up causing mischievous little tendrils to wriggle out of the back of her bonnet to dance in the wind, she looked ageless as a goddess. I wanted to kiss her on the steps of that little church, as well-wishers from the parish threw rice at the happy couple, and pretend it was for us.

I twined my hands behind my back and stayed out of the way.

The bride and groom left in Sir Gale’s open-aired carriage (the name for which I still hadn’t mastered; barouches, phaetons, traps, ugh, too many terms!) and took themselves off to Southampton, where Finch had rented a house. They’d live there in the months before his return to sea, on the hope that when he returned he’d be able to buy one of their own. Iris had also expressed a hope that it would soon be filled with the pitter-patter of little feet, and had promised Daisy to them as a nursemaid, if she hadn’t done her daughterly duty and been married herself by that time.

“Do you even like kids?” I whispered to Daisy later, after the elaborate wedding breakfast.

“I like them well enough, for they are fascinating storytellers, and I am apt to believe that I will adore nieces and nephews of my own quite well indeed.” Then her nose wrinkled. “What I do not like is my mother promising Finch my help by setting forth an ultimatum—marry or be the nursemaid. Neither of which am I prepared, nor willing, to undertake.”

“Not to mention how much it would cut into your writing time, which you already get precious little of.”

“Precisely!”

The morning after the wedding, while I did yoga in my nightdress (sweating off the decadent wines and gout-inducing foods we’d been indulging in at Sir Gale’s expense), Daisy packed for us. Or rather, re packed for me. Apparently rolling things into balls and jamming them into the bottom of the trunk was the incorrect way to do it. Daisy’s horror had been so palpable when she’d seen what I’d done that she had tipped out the whole trunk to start again. She was currently folding and laying our dresses into the bottom, and using gloves and stockings to cushion our accessories, bottles, books, and all the other feminine detritus that we had accumulated during our stay.

It was sensual, this intimate entwining of our lives; her bottles cushioned in my jeans, her hairbrush nestled against my pink gingham bundle. I secretly hoped her phial of perfume cracked midjourney, so it would seep into my clothes and I would get a burst of violets every time I dressed.

As soon as breakfast was had, we were on our way. Marigold was wistful about returning to Bath instead of staying in Seasalter, but was also pragmatic about the parting. She’d given up on Sir Gale, but had flirted with nearly every other single man of acceptable fortune in the intervening weeks, to no avail.

As we traveled, Marigold distracted herself by regaling me with the history of Bath, its start as a pagan place of worship, the health benefits of the spa, and the social circles that it drew. Bath was a fashionable place to be ill, and I quietly resolved not to go anywhere near the swirling cesspools of brewing disease that had to be the public bathing rooms. I knew for a fact that there would be no chlorine, no water filters, and no bleach. As if I was going to sit in the same water as someone with open sores, or syphilis, or consumption. Perhaps the spring was magical, like the ancient Romans believed, after all; it would be the only explanation for why people who came to Bath didn’t get worse .

Kent and Bath were basically on opposite sides of the country. England wasn’t that wide when you took into account that the whole of the United Kingdom would be dwarfed in Ontario, my home province. Yet by carriage it took us the better part of the week, resting at inns when we came to them and sleeping crunched together in a single room to save money.

The world got greener the farther west we drove, and by the time we arrived, the forest climbing up the hills that cradled Bath was casting bright emerald shadows over the honey-yellow stone buildings. Bath was a marvel of uniformity, all long clean lines and straight thoroughfares. They all led up to the top of a hill to the Circus, a roundel where the most important homes faced one another across a circular park and through the branches of an ancient oak tree.

The driver turned away from that avenue, affording me just one quick glance of the mighty tree, and down to Shaftesbury Road. The house we stopped at was an end unit, just two stories high, with a tiny back garden enclosed by a thigh-high stone fence, dutifully scrubbed bow windows, and a cute pointed dormer above the second story. The whole row of houses was constructed of the same honey-yellow stone, each door painted a different color. Ours was a cheery, welcoming red.

A letter had been sent before we had hit the road, and so a serving man and a maid were prepared to meet us.

I was introduced to Miss Brown, who took care of the household chores like cleaning, laundry, and some of the more arduous food preparation like making preserves, baking the daily bread, going to the shops, and maintaining the little kitchen garden out back. Next was Mr. Stewart, the manservant who ran errands, hauled around heavy things like firewood, served at the table, and did the sorts of repairs and business that women couldn’t—or weren’t allowed—to do for themselves.

That was the entirety of the Goodenough household.

Daisy and Marigold split the remaining chores, such as managing the finances, repairing clothing, arranging the social calendar, and whatever else popped up during the day. Their mother concerned herself solely with the business of getting her children married, and according to Daisy, she did it with a gusto that kept her out at engagements, teas, salons, and shops at all hours. What free time Daisy had around her mother’s schemes she devoted to her writing, with the secret hope that her works might one day contribute to the household accounts. Marigold, as a widow herself, was less the target of her mother’s plans (though not wholly free of them), and thus had devoted her afternoons to tutoring to shore up their purses.

And now that I was here, the little schoolroom carved out of the formal back parlor could be filled in both the mornings and the afternoons.

As I helped Miss Brown lug the trunks up to the family bedrooms, I took in the sparse and shoddy furnishings, the cramped and narrow hallways, the rooms so tiny and so filled with cupboards and cases that they could only be described as “tight.” All the money they had, it seemed, went to keeping their wardrobes up to the level of outside expectations. I imagined they entertained very little, wanting as few people as possible to see the truth of their financial disgrace so plainly.

The lower floor comprised a study-slash-sitting room, which was the family’s main living space, a dining room, the back parlor, which had been converted into the schoolroom, and a kitchen with a tiny closet off the pantry for Miss Brown to sleep in. The upper floor was divided into four narrow bedrooms for the family, and a little suite in the attic for Mr. Stewart. The room I was renting was only large enough for a twin bed with a side table, a wardrobe, a small desk, and a triangular tiered washstand.

And the toilet? That was an outhouse attached to the wall out back, accessible only by going outside, or a chamber pot stored under the bed with a tight lid to keep down smells.

On our first night in Bath, to show that I planned to contribute to the household as much as possible, I scrounged together enough leftover beef, mustard, cheese, and bread to completely screw with the timeline and introduce the Goodenoughs to open-faced sandwich melts (which required careful use of the bread oven and a steady hand with the paddle).

I’d yet to have a good bowl of spaghetti anywhere, and my realization was followed by an immediate craving. Crap. I would have to learn how to make pasta.

After dinner the Goodenoughs went their separate ways, sick of each other’s company after being crammed together for so long, and Daisy and I had the minuscule study to ourselves.

Daisy crossed the room in three quick strides, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed me soundly.

“I’ve missed you too,” I said.

“How torturous! To be so close to you for days, to sleep in the same bed, and to be unable to touch you!”

“Hard agree,” I said, falling into her hungry mouth, kneading her waist. Then I groaned, and pushed her back a few steps, gently. “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, we gotta put on the brakes.”

“Mr. Stewart could look in on us at any moment,” Daisy agreed with a rueful smile.

“Uh-huh. And I really want a wipe down before we start any hanky-panky. I feel gross from all those communal beds.”

“Hanky-panky,” Daisy said with a giggle. “What a delightful word!”

I couldn’t stop the stupid grin that spread across my face.

“Brandy, then,” Daisy decided, moving to a cracked and mismatched set on the sideboard, which in itself was out of place among the rest of the room’s decor. Wrong color wood. Family heirloom from the old house?

While she poured us each a tot, I perused the book-lined shelves of the study—a mix of what I assumed were Fenton’s naval texts, their father’s books on philosophy and Latin, finance and import law, Marigold’s and Iris’s etiquette books and fashion sketches, and Daisy’s gorgeously trashy novels.

There was a small, battered piano—not a grand, but not a full upright—against the wall opposite the fireplace. I wondered who among the Goodenoughs was the pianist. Maybe it was Fenton. Maybe it had been their father and no one had touched the dusty, miserable-looking thing since he’d died, and they were only holding on to it for sentiment.

“It is not, perhaps, what you expected?” Daisy asked softly, handing me a glass.

“No,” I admitted. I leaned back against the shelf, adoring the messy jumble of papers and tomes. “But I get it. Money’s tight and none of you are making any.”

“It is not embarrassing, but perhaps slightly uncomfortable, knowing how we used to live, which circles we have in the past been acquainted with. Never the Ton, but we were very respectable for a merchant’s family.” Daisy made a disparaging sound. “We should have moved house sooner but my mother would not hear of it. It ate into a great deal more of our savings than was wise.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, darling,” I said. “I really do understand.”

The student ghetto hadn’t been my favorite place to live either.

Daisy downed her brandy, set aside the glass for Miss Brown to deal with in the morning, and twined her fingers in mine.

“Come, Sam,” she said. “My mother and sister ought to be asleep by now. I desire that you take me upstairs and teach me how to hanky-panky.”

~

Winsome, watercolor spring gave way to verdant, ripe summer and life settled into a comfortable routine.

Days were filled with Iris’s friends dropping by for details of Finch’s nuptials, Marigold’s tromping around town to inform her pupils’ families that she was back, bickering over the syllabus ( yes , Marigold, I would be taking the time to discuss the horrors of colonialism and genocide when we discussed empires, whether you liked it or not), dedication to my morning yoga, my terrible attempts at making pasta (I wished I could pull up those video tutorials I’d only half paid attention to a lifetime ago), visits to the circulating library and the free art galleries, and walks through the town to browse shops in which none of us could afford to buy a thing in order to take in the latest fads and gossip.

Marigold and I traded off three-hour classes with rotating groups of children. They came and went based on their parent’s schedules, finances, and what subjects would best suit their future careers. These weren’t the boys going to Eton then onto Parliament, and these weren’t the girls destined for finishing schools and grand ballrooms. No, our little backroom school catered to the children of butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Marigold taught the littles their letters, and the girls their needlework, deportment, and household management. I taught the littles their numbers, and the boys enough history and geography to keep them from getting lost when they turned sixteen and headed off to give Napoleon what-for.

It was nice to have a job again, to have a purpose, a schedule, and meaning.

And it was so radically different from the previous high-stress, must-get-commission work I had hawking cell phones at a mall stand that it barely felt like work at all. I just got to ramble about things I found fascinating and quiz them on lakes and mountains. When Daisy wasn’t being dragged on the visiting rounds with her mother or escaping to take long walks along the leafy green avenues around town with me, she dutifully did her share of the household management: reviewing the accounts, adjusting the budget, working in the kitchen garden alongside Miss Brown, mending tears and lifting fallen hems, reworking old garments, making ink and poultices, and maintaining the never-ending mountain of letters that were business, pleasure, and family.

Where Marigold and Iris thrived on social interaction and were always flitting off in the evenings, Daisy and I preferred to stay in. Still, they managed to wheedle us into going out to common entertainments fairly often. We visited the Pump Room (no, thank you, I do not in fact want to drink water that smells like farts), went out for tea and Sally Lunn’s Bath buns, patronized the Assembly Rooms for music recitals, and once to a very crowded, very sweaty public ball where I hugged the wall and drank too much ratafia (sweet, herby, and dangerous), followed by my first experience with a monstrous Georgian-era hangover.

One particularly fine evening, we made our way to the Sydney Pleasure Gardens, which were opened just once a summer for nonmember lookie-loos like us. Daisy had a wonderful time dropping witty remarks in my ear about the petting zoo, little theme park rides, and the rumored lewd behavior of the toffs who used the grounds regularly for their scandalous liaisons.

On Sundays I went to church and tried not to fall asleep in the pew, because it made Daisy happy to go, and I liked making Daisy happy. After church I practiced my baking for tea time. Daisy carefully licked pastry crumbs off the fork tines, and I tried not to be a total pervert while watching her do it. We gossiped, played whist, and suffered Iris’s jovial attempts to play matchmaker at every turn. I began a needlepoint that had to be constantly picked apart and repaired by Marigold.

On days when there were no plans, the four of us ladies crammed into the study. Marigold would plink on the dowdy, slightly out of tune piano while Iris amused herself with cards, or embroidery, or her correspondence, and Daisy hunched over her writing desk and edited what she’d written that morning. I devoted myself to my campaign of immersive study, devouring as many day-old newspapers as Mr. Stewart could beg from the neighbors.

Sometimes, feeling brave, Daisy would share some of her writing by reading it aloud. Marigold and Iris laughed or gasped in all the right places, and critiqued it gamely. Daisy looked to me, but I recused myself from commenting beyond a very basic “it’s great” or pointing out a continuity error. Daisy thought it was because I didn’t want to influence her as she wrote. Really, it was because, to my shame, I didn’t want to admit that I’d never read it. I couldn’t tell her that she was going to be published, do well, be famous enough that even two hundred years later everyone knew her name, and in the same breath confess that I had never seen the appeal of her work. (I was wrong; it was so appealing. I regretted never having picked it up. She was engaging as she read and lively when she explained plot snags. I loved the story all the more for hearing it from her own lips.)

Sometimes, when we were all getting along exceptionally well, we ladies just talked. Recent topics included Iris’s determination to refinish the dining room, the same way that Mrs. So-and-So had last month. Both Daisy and Marigold tried to be polite every time it was brought up, but I could see the discomfort. It wasn’t that they were embarrassed by their financial situation or that Mrs. Goodenough was obviously spending every penny they had to keep up appearances, but from trying to figure out how to say “absolutely not” to their own mother. Especially when she was used to quite a bit more luxury.

Whenever this happened, Iris switched topics and resumed the perennial questions about which play we would see next, when was best to promenade that week and what we would wear, and when I was going to Take The Waters?. Everyone in Bath was obsessed with discussing when everyone else in Bath would be Taking The Waters?. I would have given anything to soak away knotty muscles from hunching over students’ work and kitchen counters. But no power on earth was going to get me into The Waters. Let alone drink them. I gagged every time someone mentioned the healing power of drinking unfiltered water straight from a spring where sick people lounged around mostly naked.

And after bedtime, there were other preoccupations to fill our time. Soft, sweet lessons that stopped before they went too far, conscious as we both were of the many other people under this same roof, as Daisy slowly became used to listening to her body, and exploring mine.

And in every spare microsecond she could scrabble together, Daisy wrote, and wrote, and wrote .

~

I couldn’t use Daisy as my social crutch for the rest of my life, so one sunny morning when my entire class of rough and tumble boys decided adventure in the forests outside of town called louder than my lessons, I offered to do the daily shop for Miss Brown.

She handed over a purse and instructions to pick up a half dozen items, then pointed me to the shops with an admonishment not to linger in the rougher areas. I was pretty sure I could kick a street thug in the nuts and run if need be, but I appreciated her concern.

I took my time walking to the market, enjoying the scenery and memorizing the street names. I found the shops Miss Brown had indicated, a small dairy and cheese mongers where I got the milk, and then, next door to it, a cramped general store filled with barrels of wheats and grains, flours, powders, sugars, bundles of herbs, and little glass bottles of flavoring. The selection was overwhelming. I stood in the middle of the shop feeling ridiculously out of my league.

“Good morning . . .” a guy, maybe a few years younger than me, said with a quick glance at my bare left hand. “. . . miss. Is there anything in particular that you’re wanting?”

He was broad in the way of people who hauled things around for a living. He had a curling flop of ginger-blond hair and wore a white jacket buttoned tightly across his chest, with white stockings that covered part of his shoes and went up to his knees, disappearing behind the long hem of his coat. Practical outfit for this place, I decided, noting the powder that had gotten all over him.

“Flour.”

“Of course. What sort, miss?”

“Um?” I raised my eyebrows, feeling ridiculous. “The kind you make bread with, I guess?”

He laughed and said, “How much, miss?”

That I knew. “A pound.”

“Good then. Follow me, miss.”

He led me to the corner where barrels sat with the lids half on. He filled a paper bag expertly from a barrel he seemingly picked at random. I couldn’t tell the difference between the types of flours, but apparently he could.

“Anything else?”

I recited the remainder of the list, and he flitted around the shop twisting bags shut with a showy flourish, hopping up stepladders to fetch down tins, and handing me little samples to approve where possible. He checked the weight of each package, pronounced a price that meant nothing to me, and took the proper coins from my hand when I held the lot out to him to pick through.

“That was impressive.” I collected my bottles and packages in my arms. It wasn’t a lot, but it was awkward. I had assumed I’d get a shopping tote when I cashed out, more fool me.

“What is?” the guy asked.

“Weighing out a perfect pound on the first scoop. Good day.” I bobbed one of those ridiculous curtsies, and then stared at the door in dismay. How was I supposed to turn the knob with my hands full? Where was an automatic door when you needed one?

“I’m about to lock up for lunch.” He came around the counter. “Let me escort you home.”

“I don’t need help,” I snapped, embarrassed, and then mad at myself for being embarrassed.

He stopped and crossed his hands over his chest. “Then by all means, miss, please do open the door,” he challenged, but his tone was light, his smile soft. He wasn’t making fun, just pointing out the flaw in my logic.

Damn it .

“Okay.” I sighed, then I added, “Yes, all right,” when I remembered he didn’t know what that meant.

He arched a confused eyebrow at me, but took the acquiescence in the spirit it was offered. I waited as he locked the cash drawer and lowered the curtains, stripped off his powder-covered jacket to reveal a white shirt and breeches. He put on a black jacket from a back room, worn and made of common material, but tidy. Then he was opening the door, locking it behind us, and taking half the shopping from me, balancing it easily under his left arm. The right, he offered to me.

I wound my left hand obligingly around his elbow.

We walked, and he let me direct our path with nothing more than an easy tug.

“I’ve not seen you before, miss,” he said. “Are you newly arrived?”

I delayed my answer, taking the time to peruse the hats on display at a milliner’s. It was too warm to wear my beret, but I hadn’t yet acquired a bonnet.

I considered the coins jingling in my purse, then put the thought away. They weren’t mine to spend on a stupid hat, even if I did buy only the most basic and tried to trim it myself. The money belonged to the Goodenoughs, meant for groceries. And while I did still have a few coins left from Fenton’s sale of my phone, spending them on a hat seemed frivolous, no matter how much I hated the way people stared at me for the lack.

Look at me, being socially conscious and trying to fit in.

“I am,” I answered as we moved on. “I’m still not quite acclimated to running errands, as you can see.” There, that sounded like a suitably Regencyish sentence , I thought, proud of myself.

“From where do you come? Only, you’ve an accent.”

“No I don’t,” I said, immediately and with perfect deadpan.

He stopped walking, studied my mock-serious face, and burst into laughter.

“I was born a mermaid, you know,” I said. “But I gave up that life for the chance to be a wench on a pirate barge. I had a parrot and I used to tell Blackbeard to scrub behind his ears. I was the most adept swordsman on the seven seas.” He howled louder. “But then the dastardly Stede Bonnet bested me in a sword fight. So I was sent to land to learn how to be a lady.”

Further embellishments to my ridiculous tale carried us all the way to the Goodenough’s servant’s entrance, and the guy didn’t stop laughing the whole way.

“Thank you. For, you know, your help.”

“You are very much welcome, Miss . . . ?”

“Franklin.”

“Thomas Cooper, at your service.” He bowed low and handed me my packages. “Welcome to land, Miss Franklin. As a note, here we generally use baskets to carry our shopping, for our purchases cannot float in dry air.” He knocked on the door for me, bowed again, and was gone back down the hill.

~

When I returned, Daisy was still hunched over the desk, scribbling. I intercepted Miss Brown on her way to serve tea, trading my booty for her tray. I doctored Daisy’s cup the way she liked it and placed it gently beside her elbow. The clink of the saucer startled her enough to look up, and she smiled brightly to see me.

“Is it that time already?” she asked, stretching her arms above her head and shrugging. I heard the telltale crack and winced. Her setup was definitely not ergonomic.

After a quick glance to make sure we were alone, I bent down and pressed a quick kiss against her mouth. “Welcome back,” I whispered.

“I did not go anywhere.”

“You fell into the page. It’s adorable, the way you scrunch up when you’re absorbed.”

“I am serious, consumed, transported by my prose. Not scrunched and adorable,” Daisy whinged playfully.

“You should get a higher chair,” I said. “It would be easier on your back.”

Daisy only sipped her tea. We both knew it was a ridiculous suggestion; the with what money? was left unsaid.

“Let me, then.” I circled behind her.

God help me, I found little curls escaping at the nape of her neck endearing.

I pushed in hard along her trapezius with my thumb and Daisy let forth a groan so low and genuine that I snorted. Adjusting my grip, I did it again and was rewarded this time with a sigh.

“What have you been doing to yourself?”

I worked my way across her shoulder, down the side of the shoulder blade, across to the opposite side and up again, finishing with her neck and then a quick, light kiss to that sweet little curl that was teasing me.

By the time I’d finished, Daisy was slumped forward with the most blissed-out face I’d ever seen. Her cheek was pillowed on her arm, eyes closed and lacking that little downward curve in the center of her eyebrows. She opened her eyes when I tapped her nose lightly.

“Feel better?” I asked.

“Infinitely. Your time is filled with wondrous magics, to be sure,” she teased quietly.

“That’s an old technique. Ancient Egyptians old. It’s just that you people don’t touch each other.”

Daisy floated to the sofa. I sat in the plush chair to the side of it.

“I hold my sister’s hand when we walk,” Daisy said at length, but it wasn’t really a protest. “I hold the arms of the gentlemen with whom I promenade. I dance.”

“Oh, dancing,” I teased. “Where we touch fingertip to fingertip and nothing else. Through gloves .”

Daisy sat forward, intrigued now. “What else ought to touch? Dancing is merely a form of allowing a couple to converse privately while still in public.”

“Dancing is sex,” I said with a bounce of my eyebrows, deliberately crude. Daisy reacted exactly as I hoped she would, a delicious red flush climbing up her neck to settle like a flag on her nose. “Two bodies moving in rhythm.”

“I do not know what sort of dancing you’re referring to,” Daisy said, part haughty, part horrified, but mostly intrigued.

“Waltzing.” I drew out the vowel, remembering how scandalized Fenton had been. “Chest to chest, swaying in time, close enough to whisper. Or the tango—whipping around in circles, legs getting tangled up as the aggressor chases their prey with their hips.”

Daisy went redder.

“The world will become very . . . free,” Daisy said, and there was a hint of a question in the observation, and perhaps also a hint of disapproval.

“That’s the point.” I shrugged. “So long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, who cares what happens behind closed doors?”

Daisy regarded me with that thoughtful “recording” face, and gestured for me to go on.

“I don’t need my father’s approval to get married, and I don’t have to marry someone if I don’t want to. If I would rather just have intercourse instead, I can.”

“And the resultant children?”

“Prophylactics,” I said. “Sheaths that go over the penis so men can’t impregnate a woman. Or medicines that block pregnancy until you decide to go off them. I’m sure you have similar teas, and sheaths, and potions now.”

“One does not talk of it, but yes.” Daisy chewed on her bottom lip. “And what does the church say?”

“Some faiths are against it, some don’t care.” I shrugged. “I’m not a church person, so it doesn’t really have any bearing on my choices.”

“Not a . . . ?” Daisy asked, startled. “Well.”

“C’mon,” I groaned. “You can’t tell me there aren’t people who would rather sleep in on Sunday, even in 1806.”

That wry smile crawled into the corner of Daisy’s mouth, and I leaned forward and pecked it. She was smiling genuinely when I pulled back, fingers curled happily in her skirts.

“The church is not so respected then? Not so powerful?” Daisy asked.

“A much larger group of people don’t take religion as seriously as now,” I said, “including me. There’s been a lot of atrocities carried out in the name of a supposed perpetually forgiving God. It makes it hard to invest your trust in an institution when humans use it as an excuse to harm each other for being different.”

“Different . . .” she asked, picking at her nails, suddenly shy. Or thoughtful. I wasn’t sure which.

“Let me ask you this, then: If God loves all his children, why do humans kill each other for worshiping him differently? Why are Africans enslaved and indigenous people put on display in circuses? If God made everyone in his image, then why are sodomites evil instead of just accepted as being one more variation on the theme? Where I come from—”

Daisy rose to her feet. “Enough,” she hissed. She was shaking with sudden, surprising anger.

“Whoa, wait—” I stood too. “What’s happening here?”

“Sam, I am quite attached to you, fascinated by what you have told me of the days yet to come,” she said, genuinely agitated. “But your smug superiority is exasperating.”

“Sorry,” I said, hands up, don’t shoot . “Religion is just not a big deal to me.”

“Well, it is a ‘big deal’ in this household,” Daisy snapped. “So mind your tongue.”

“Mind my . . . ?” I echoed, something behind my sternum going hot and squirmy. I wasn’t sure if it was shame, or anger, or what. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t like being told what to do, how to think, how to behave . Never had. And, yeah, I knew there were things I would have to bend on in order to get along in life here, but I wasn’t going to shut up, sit down, turn off my brain, and be a good little girl. Not by a long shot. “I’m not gonna stop being who I am. I suppress enough, I won’t let this tragedy rewrite me.”

“Tragedy?” Daisy gasped. She rocked back on her heels, like I’d slapped her. “You think—?”

But that hot squirmy thing flared into a full-sized rage.

“What, you think I fucking asked for this?” I snarled. “You think I don’t miss my home, my culture, my friends and family? You think I’m happy ?”

Daisy sucked in a horrified breath, opened her mouth to snap back, then closed it with a huff. She stalked out of the room so stiffly that I wondered at how quickly those knots in her back had returned.

She didn’t slam the door behind her, but only because she was too well raised to do so.

I waited a beat.

Two.

She didn’t come back.

Fuck.

“Stop being a mouthy know-it-all,” I scolded myself.

I wasn’t in 2024 anymore, and my way wasn’t the only way; it wasn’t the right er way simply because it was mine .

Unsure where Daisy had gone, I decided a peace offering tea tray would be in order either way, and set the kettle to boil. Miss Brown had clearly heard the shouting but refrained from commenting, keeping her attention on peeling potatoes. While I waited I popped into the back garden with the kitchen scissors and snipped the sweetest, most voluptuous dusty-pink rose blossom I could find amid the ornamental hedges.

A thump and a clack from upstairs gave me a direction to follow once the tray was laid with cups, the pot, milk, lemon, and last week’s wonky attempt at baking chocolate chip cookies two centuries too early. I found Daisy in her bedroom, furiously throwing open wardrobe doors and trunk lids, slapping piles of notes and papers onto the top of her travel desk.

Slipping inside and without a word, I set the tray down on the chest at the foot of her bed. She stared at it, fury giving way to tenderness, then plucked the bloom from the tiny empty flavoring bottle I’d recycled to stand in for a bud vase. She pressed the petals to her chin, thoughtful, then raised her eyes to me.

“I didn’t mean to—” I started at the same time she said, “I am ashamed of—”

We both stopped, and Daisy tugged me down to sit on the mattress next to her. We kept a good inch of space between us because the door was open. But she laid her hands on the blanket and I copied, touching her pinkie with mine in apology.

“I was being a self-righteous bitch,” I said.

“And I an intolerant and selfish friend,” Daisy said. She looked down at our hands, biting her lip, and I was startled to see her eyelashes spiking with tears again.

“Daisy—”

“Of course you miss your homeland,” she blurted hastily. “How callous of me to not consider—”

“You don’t have to—”

“But I must apologize, my dear heart,” she said desperately, turning to face me so we were nose to nose. She leaned forward just enough to catch herself doing it, then back hastily. “How awful to answer each of my childish demands to hear more of your life and to never be able to express how much you have lost.

And yup, now I was crying too.

“Shit,” I sniffled, pressing my arm across my eyes, hiding my face in my elbow.

“Is there no way to go back?” Daisy asked, resting a gentle hand on my arm, not pushing it away, not grasping, only filled with tender understanding. It made me cry harder.

“No,” I forced out. “Not—not that I can—I don’t know. I don’t know . I don’t think so.”

With a glance at the door to make sure we weren’t in danger, Daisy wrapped me in a firm hug. “I am here for you,” she whispered into my ear. “You may tell me anything and I will strive to be understanding and accepting. You are, of course, free to form your own opinions.”

“Without condemning yours,” I added, shamed. I risked pressing a kiss under her ear. “And, Daisy, I don’t regret being here. With you . It is terrifyingly easy to love you.”

“Though not perhaps so bluntly, I was thinking the same about you, in this moment,” Daisy confessed, face flushing a sweet pink. “How easily all the small, wounded parts of me were filled with the balm of your affection when I had never intended on allowing myself any form of attachment at all.”

“I get what you mean. It’s like we’re puzzle pieces that just clicked together.” I risked running my palm up her neck, across the side of her cheek. “It’s weird but like . . . I have never fallen so quickly before. So effortlessly . Like I was made for you.”

“You were made for me, Samantha Franklin,” Daisy said simply. “The Lord God our Creator has fashioned you specifically for me. Whether you believe in Him or not, I do, and I have begun to believe that He made you for me. The Lilith to my Eve.”

“Now who’s being blasphemous?” I snorted. “Don’t I get a say in it?”

“No,” Daisy said playfully, kissing the tip of my nose. “You shall just have to lump it.”

“Oh nooo,” I said, with woo-woo hand flaps. “The most important queer writer in history is in love with me. Whatever will I do?”

Daisy’s expression switched over to her “recording” face so fast I nearly missed it.

Oh, shit, Sammie-bear. Watch your mouth, don’t go destroying the space-time continuum with your sarcasm, I thought.

“What? What did I say?” I hedged.

But she dismissed it with a little headshake.

Whew, crisis averted.

“On the topic of your dolor, please do believe me when I tell you that I was not cognizant of it,” she said slowly, separating to wind the rose into the ribbon of her cap. I didn’t think twice about leaning close to secure it for her. “I did not think of how difficult it must be for you, to have been forced to leave everything that defined you behind, to lose everyone you loved through no choice of your own, and end up in a place where the unspoken rules of society do not match your own. Where you are restrained by practices that you find barbaric.”

“ Barbaric is a bit harsh,” I said, and I was surprised to have to stop and clear my throat. “ Antiquated , maybe.”

I grinned with theatrical self-depreciation and was relieved to see Daisy match it.

“You are in a new place where everyone means well but does not understand,” she said softly. “So I will endeavor to remember that your upbringing did not match mine.”

“Thanks. And I’ll do my best not to pass judgment on things that are different. I just . . . I think this would be easier if I could have, you know, said good-bye. Made it final.” I huffed. “I couldn’t if I wanted to, anyway.”

Daisy fetched her writing case.

“You dictate, I will transcribe,” she said.

“There’s no way to deliver this letter,” I protested.

“There are two hundred and eighteen years to devise a way,” she rejoined. “I’m sure it can be done. Come.”

“I guess that if nothing else, it could end up in a museum.” I had the sudden premonition that I would spend the rest of my life being bossed around by Daisy. I was totally okay with that. “With a gold plaque that reads: a letter addressed to mr. and mrs. franklin of toronto, in the year 2024; margaret goodenough’s only attempt at science fiction.”

Daisy looked up at me sharply, decided I was joking, and laughed.

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