Chapter Twenty-one

in which sam lives

My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire. —Jane Austen, Personal Letters

Marigold, Eliza, and Finch retired to their inn after supper, promising to look in on me again the next day. After that, the butler introduced himself as Mr. Graves and furnished me with the list I had requested, and Daisy and I worked until the wee hours of the morning making record of what was being returned or promised to whom. It was nearly dawn by the time we left the staggering pile of letters and packages to be hand delivered by Mr. Graves at an appropriate hour

Too exhausted for much more than a cuddle, Daisy and I poured ourselves into my bed around dawn, and I left a note pinned to the door for Susan to leave us alone until at least noon. On the bedside table sat that fucking copy of The Singular Joys of Marriage for a Lady. I took great “singular joy” in pitching it into the fire before rolling over to spoon my wife.

At three minutes past noon, Susan knocked to wake us, in order to usher me down to the morning parlor to meet my new solicitor. Daisy stayed behind, the slugabed, and purred promises to encourage me to return quickly while Susan helped me into a fine crepe gown of matte black and a sparkling set of jet jewelry likely worth ten times what Thom made in a year. And black leather boots. Not my purple Chucks, for once, because I was here. And I was staying. I was Margaret Goodenough’s Wealthy Widow, and it was time to start acting like it. Besides, purple wouldn’t send the right message in this pageant of mourning.

As she dressed me, Susan explained that I was expected to keep to my widow’s weeds for at least six months, out of respect. Only then could I start introducing purples and blues.

Lewis didn’t deserve the respect of widow’s weeds.

He didn’t deserve the wake, or the paid mourners, or the lavish grand parade of a funeral that the undertaker had hinted at. And he wouldn’t get it either. Lewis had no parents, no brothers, no children. No one to kick up a fuss if I shoved him in a cardboard box and a moldering hole, with the smallest grave marker a church would let me get away with.

I decided that I’d wear the plain wool dress Finch had bought me for Nelson’s funeral to Lewis’s. It felt appropriate that the first dress my late “husband” had seen me in would be the one I wore to bury the bastard.

Once I was downstairs in all my finery, the solicitor informed Mrs. Lewis that there would be no inquest to endure. The coroner had proclaimed the death accidental, and that “Mrs. Lewis” therefore had been declared legally a widow, and the official inheritor of the judge’s estate.

“That was quick,” I remarked as I sipped my coffee— coffee! Finally coffee! Bless Susan!

The solicitor tipped a nod to me and made noises about it being the least he could do for such a dear friend to him. And then he hinted that I could expect similar favors from many, many other well placed and grateful friends in the near future. It was only then that I recognized his name as one from the list that Mr. Graves had given me the night before.

How far in Lewis’s pocket had this guy been , I wondered, that he’s this grateful to be given the means to climb out of it?

Between us we hashed out the arrangements for the funeral (sadly, “throw him in the Thames” wasn’t an option), the estate in Lincolnshire (sell it lock, stock, and barrel to the first lordling to come along with a good head on his shoulders and compassion for his new tenants in his heart—with the proviso that the new owners send Daisy and me a tithe of fresh veg from the farms every season), the fine carriages and horses (sell), the art (sell), my late husband’s wardrobe (donate to a charitable institution for distribution among the poor), the furniture (we’d pick through it for what we wanted to keep and sell the rest), the Russell Square house (sell!), his shares in the publishing firm (keep!), and the staff (retain Susan, Mr. Graves, a chambermaid, and the cook, but only provided they were willing to move with us; gift the remainder with a shockingly handsome severance and glowing references).

The only exceptions were the family heirlooms—some pieces of furniture, some paintings, and some jewelry that Lewis had snatched up as his brother and father died. Apparently, Lewis had an estranged sister (good on her for going no-contact with him), and, at the solicitor’s suggestion, I arranged for the family jewels and heirlooms to go to her, and only her. They were to be placed in trust for her as her widow’s portion if she outlived her husband, and for her daughters if she didn’t.

The solicitor told me to expect to have a sheaf of papers legalizing our decisions to sign by the end of week. Then the whole sorry business would be put to bed and I would have access to the accounts.

Thanks to Susan’s industrious back-door conversations with the downstairs staff of the other houses on Russell Square, the morning paper, which I took back upstairs with me, reported the tragedy kindly. The household was exonerated of any wrongdoing, and the new widow Lewis’s request for privacy to mourn, until such a time that she was ready to reenter society, would be honored. Of course, Mrs. Lewis was never going to apply to join Almack’s or host balls, or do any of the things the other fabulously wealthy high-society dames did after their husbands had been dispatched, but the people of London didn’t know that.

After Daisy and I had broken our fast on carraway-sprinkled Bath buns, I summoned the carriage. We dropped Daisy off at the inn to spend some time with her siblings. Coming out was hard, and I knew they’d need to talk, just the three of them, to ensure all was well. I had no doubt it would be, though. They loved each other too much to let it not be.

I continued on to Cheapside.

Anne, so pregnant now that it made me wince, answered the door. She waddled me into the little house and the receiving room with bitter manners. I’d broken Thom’s heart, after all, so I was persona non grata. But she couldn’t very well leave someone in as fine a dress as my matte crepe just standing on the doorstep, either, not with all her neighbors pressing their noses to the glass.

Joseph went to fetch Thomas from the bakery downstairs, and I took a few minutes to let them settle and to psych myself up for the conversation to come. I needn’t have worried so much.

They’d read the paper that morning.

My shopping basket was already packed with all my things and sitting by the door.

When Thom slipped up the back steps, Anne and Joseph left us to speak alone.

“I’m not entirely sure I believe the story as it was laid out, whole-cloth,” Thom said, in lieu of a hello. “You were genuinely frightened of him.”

“It’s complicated,” I admitted. I decided he deserved the truth. “He blackmailed me, Thomas. I didn’t want him to hurt you too.”

His eyebrows raised in shock. “You did it to protect me?”

“Among others.”

He looked down at his callused hands again.

“I don’t suppose you fancy having a baker for your second husband, then?” he asked as he straightened, aiming for a gentle humor that didn’t quite hit the mark.

“I don’t intend on having a second husband,” I said, as kindly as I could manage.

“And yet, there has always been somebody you loved,” he said softly. “Somebody who meant more to you than me.” Thomas hesitated, then leaned in to kiss my cheek gently. He quirked a sad smile. “I always had the feeling you were more attracted to my stability than me. I had hoped that you would have grown to love me.”

“I’m sure I would have,” I agreed gently. “And think of it this way: now you have the chance to meet someone who will genuinely love you for you.”

“Suppose so,” he said glumly.

I looked down at my hands, wound my fingers through my skirts as I searched for my words.

“I’m a selfish, selfish person, Thom. I’m not nice, I think. You deserve someone nice. I’ll visit you in Mevagissey once you’ve found her, I promise. Have some tea and scones at the little café you were dreaming about adding to the bakery.”

Thom huffed a laugh. “And how do you suppose I’ll afford that?”

I pulled a roll of banknotes out of my reticule and pressed them into his palm.

There’d been dozens of them hoarded in the strongbox, and while I still struggled with translating the value of currency in a meaningful way, I knew that it was a criminally large stash.

Thom gasped at the sheer size of the roll. “Samantha, you can’t buy my forgiveness—”

“This isn’t me buying you off,” I said. “This is a thank-you for your friendship when I needed a friend most.” I added a second roll to the first. “And this is to thank your brother and his family for their hospitality. And, er, maybe to hire Anne a midwife. One who washes her hands, eh?”

Thom bit his lip, but nodded and closed his fingers around the money. I returned the kiss on his cheek, and picked up my basket on the way out.

It was funny—now that I was here, I knew that Margaret Goodenough had named the insidiously witless Cooper in The Welshman’s Daughters after him. His name would for the rest of literary history stand in the company of the Wickhams and Willoughbys, Lintons and Lady Ashtons, Senator Palpatines, and Viktorias, and Prince Einons. It seemed a bit crap, but then, who except Daisy and me would know where the name came from?

By the time I returned to the house Susan had already begun the grim slog of sorting through the piles of letters and condolence cards that had begun to arrive, accepting the flowers sent our way, and reviewing the household accounts. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work alongside her.

As far as “first day of the rest of your life” could go, it had been a surprisingly good one.

~

Three months later, a widow named Mrs. Samantha Lewis moved to a quaint stone house in Tintagel, Cornwall, with just enough rooms for two grown women, four servants, the entirety of a townhouse library, and a ginger kitten with a surprisingly on-pitch yowl named Beyoncé. The house was backed by a large rambling garden, and fronted by the sea. She was in the company of her companion and very good friend Ms. Margaret Goodenough, and no one cared to comment about the change in her marital status and surname because no one in Tintagel knew any different. She was husbandless and melded into the trusting, sedate community of the village, never to be seen in London or Bath again, and that was all right by me.

I’d spent so much time wondering why me , and what’s the point? and if time travel exists for a reason, what’s the reason? and here it was.

This house, this place, this woman.

That book.

This life.

If Fenton Goodenough had never found reason to stand up to his blackmailer, he would have been sucked into a smuggling operation that would have ended his naval career. As a result, Margaret “Daisy” Goodenough would have married Judge George Lewis. In doing so, she would never have held a pen again, save to make up meal lists and send insipid society invitations. And with Lewis’s violent predilections, it was entirely possible that she might never have lived long enough to do even that.

Margaret Goodenough would never have written The Welshman’s Daughters nor become a queer icon, nor would her work have inspired baby queers and activists like me, nor romantics like Dahl. No movies, no television shows, no “green gown” costume balls, or “pulling practice” Pride floats. An entire way of recognizing, internalizing, and speaking about ourselves as sapphic women would never have existed, and all of it , all of it, came down to the fact that the crew of the HMS Salacia hadn’t let me drown.

Fenton Goodenough had saved Samantha Jayne Franklin, and Mrs. Lewis had saved Margaret Goodenough. And hundreds of years later, Margaret Goodenough had saved Dahlia El Sayed, alongside thousands of other lonely, scared, closeted women who just needed to know that their love was valid.

Please, let me live, I had entreated, and I had. And because of that, so had 218 year’s worth of queer love.

Once it was clarified that Daisy and I had no intentions of returning to it, Marigold and Iris had given up the Bath house, and were now ensconced in a house in Southampton that was large enough for all four adults, as well as any wee ones that were on their way. Finch and Eliza had chosen to prolong their stay in London, presumably to give their family a chance to settle and to allow Iris to make all the fuss she wanted about decorating her first grandchild’s nursery as she pleased.

As I’d sold the Russell Square house (furniture, paintings of the wretched ancestors, and all), Finch and Eliza were taking advantage of my newly acquired, far less grand townhouse. I hadn’t wanted one but my solicitor had recommended it, and so I’d found a sagging, dowdy thing in a mostly respectable part of town, where two old maids could visit the amusements of the capital without having to be in the crush of it all. I’d given Eliza, who was heavily in her nesting phase, a budget to furnish it for the family’s use—including some rooms set aside for the children, in case any wee Goodenoughs wanted to come visit their aunties for the season, in a decade or two.

“Why did we stay in London so long?” I asked as the small carriage that my solicitor had also convinced me to keep approached Tintagel. “The air out here doesn’t smell .”

I pushed down the glass and stuck my nose out the window to prove my point.

“Of much more than the barnyard,” Daisy teased, shooting me a fond, long suffering look, and rested her hand on the top of my thigh. One of the nice things of private travel was I could slum around in my jeans.

Susan and the chambermaid, Molly, had gone ahead of us to supervise the cleaning and furnishing of the house. They’d brought along with them Miss Lawrence, who was delighted to move from a kitchen maid in Lewis’s oppressive house to head and only cook for two strange, joyful spinsters who called each other wife.

Daisy and I had agreed that if we had to be closeted in public, we refused to be in our own home. Lawrence had pinged my BiFi, so I figured she wouldn’t have a problem with it.

Mr. Graves traveled with us, my forgiveness of his debts and my proclamation that I wouldn’t pry into the reasons behind them having accidentally ensured his loyalty for life. It was like having our very own guard dog. He was traveling on the box with the driver and horses we’d leased for the journey, and jumped down to open the carriage door before we had even properly stopped at the garden gate.

“Welcome home, my lady,” he said, as we alighted on the charming gravel walk.

“Glad to be here,” I said, rubbing at the scar on my arm. Long travel made it ache, even now. “I am sick to death of inns.”

Daisy and I each went up to our own bedrooms (joined by a door between them, but separate because as much as I loved my wife, I knew we would both need space for our stubborn tempers) to change and wash off the road dirt. My room had been supplied with those things I’d picked to keep from the detritus of Lewis’s ostentatious and tasteless house—books and toiletries, the simpler gowns, furniture from the attic that looked well worn and well loved, the least ostentatious jewelry and hair things. I threw back the curtains and opened the windows to let in the crisp, early spring air.

Below me, the kitchen garden, already ringed with lavender and dotted with broccoli shoots, threw up scents of chlorophyll, herbs, and the good, clean earth. Past that, a wild tangle of neglected roses half obscured a bench set against the low stone wall that divided our garden from the rolling cliff-top meadows.

Soon enough there was a tap at the adjoining door. Daisy didn’t even wait for confirmation that it was unlocked, just walked through and closed it behind her.

She came to stand beside me, golden hair loose and blowing gently around her shoulders. She held her chin high, and every line of her body was relaxed, content. I hooked an arm around her waist to draw her against my side.

“Happy?” I asked. “Do you like the house? The town?”

“ You make me happy, Sweet Pea,” Daisy said. “And, as you like to say, fuck the rest of it.”

The word had existed for centuries, but Daisy rarely used it.

“That is way, way hotter than it has any right to be,” I said.

I herded her in the vicinity of the bed.

“Say it again,” I murmured into her mouth.

She fell backward on the bed, twisting at the same time so she landed on top. She straddled my thighs and ran her hands down my sides, dipped at the waist, reversed direction and skimmed them up to grasp my breasts, skimmed sweetly over the scar under my arm. She leaned down, dimpling smugly.

“Fuck,” she whispered into my ear, her breath warm and shiver inducing.

We were very, very late for afternoon tea.

~

After supper Daisy and I retired to the deep leather chairs of the library with a bottle of wine, two earthenware cups, and a woolen pom-pom on a string to amuse the kitten. Candles flickered merrily in the mirrored sconces around the room and the fire had settled into glowing red embers in the grate.

“I have something for you,” I said, as Daisy poured for us. “A housewarming gift.”

Daisy handed me a cup with a sweet, chaste kiss. “That is kind, but I need nothing more than you, here. My truest friend. My confidant. My editor and my sounding board. My lover.”

“Too bad,” I replied, as she settled into her seat. “I’ve already wrapped it so you have to take it, now.”

“Then I beg you allow me to present you with my gift first,” Daisy said, digging into her stays to produce a small black box. “I promised you I would make this purchase with the money from my first book and, well . . .”

I took the box, hands shaking only a little as I flicked open the filigree lock and tipped open the top. There were two rings inside, identical save for the size. Thin gold bands carved with little curlicues resolved themselves into a design of interwoven stems and leaves. A cluster of small pearls with a yellow stone in the center was meant to be a daisy, and tucked in beside it, flat purple gems were arranged in the shape of a pea blossom.

“They’re beautiful,” I said, and fell in love with my wife all over again. “Put it on me?”

“Only if you put mine on me,” Daisy said, sitting forward to do just that.

It felt like I should solemnize the moment she pushed the ring over the knuckle of my right ring finger, but I decided that everything Daisy was saying with her eyes were vows enough. I set the box aside, and Beyoncé immediately leaped onto the arm of my chair to bat it into a corner, and scampered after it.

From under my own chair, I retrieved a small, rectangular package wrapped in ocean-blue chintz fabric patterned with seashells. “Here.”

“What is it?” Daisy said, sitting up.

“Just open it,” I urged gently but firmly. “Trust me. You’ll like this.”

Glaring at me playfully, Daisy plucked at the knot. She pushed the fabric away, revealing a rich emerald-green leather cover embossed with a gilt frame of decorative waves.

“Sweet Pea?” Daisy said slowly, eyebrows climbing upward in her disbelief and slowly dawning comprehension. “What is . . . ?” Her words dried up and her eyes widened in awe when she turned the little book on its side to read the gold lettering on the spine.

“Oh!” Daisy breathed, and then suddenly she was trembling, face hidden in her hands, the book laying in her lap.

I crossed the hearth to snug up next to her in her chair, wrapping an arm around her waist, and resting my chin against her shoulder. Her hair tickled my cheek when I pressed my lips against her ear and whispered:

“Congratulations, babe. That’s the very first copy of The Welshman’s Daughters to come off the press.”

Margaret picked up the book and reverently placed it on the side table. She threw herself at me, and made it very, very clear how overwhelmingly pleased with my gift she was. I definitely returned the favor.

An hour or so later, while we were lying on a plush blanket beside the hearth, admiring the way our rings glinted in the firelight, I surprised her with the other part of my gift—a handful of letters of congratulations signed by Fanny Burney, Anne Radcliffe, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

What?

I was a rich, eccentric widow now.

I could establish a writer’s circle to encourage the mutual celebration and support of a whole gaggle of female writers if I wanted to.

As a treat.

~

And that, more or less, was that. Daisy’s book made a modest splash, but launched to no big fanfare. Sales of the book increased steadily as word of mouth made it popular, but it wasn’t a big runaway bestseller straightaway. This suited Daisy well enough, as she had no use or desire for fame. It would get in the way of her ability to spend time at her writing desk.

It was out there, and that was all that mattered to both of us. Cult followings didn’t appear overnight, anyway.

We spent our days much as we used to in Bath—writing and editing in the morning, spending our afternoons in the little town running errands, going to shops, meeting with our growing circle of casual friends, or visiting the amusements. Evenings were for entertaining, reading, and keeping up our correspondence with her secret writer’s group.

PTSD nightmares would plague me occasionally, brought on by storms that drove the water against the cliffs below our cottage. Long walks in the fresh air always helped, and my trauma-induced depressions burned away like mist in the dawn of Daisy’s smile.

As Daisy began work on what I knew was going to be her best-selling sophomore book, I took up my own bit of pencil to ham-fistedly record my own story.

“Are you trying to compete with me?” Daisy asked one morning from her writing slope by the window, overlooking the garden. I was on the sofa we’d put in her study, the small journal balanced on my knees. “Will you write something to best my own work?”

“Never.” I stood to press a reassuring kiss to Daisy’s temple. She had been teasing, yes, but there had also been a shaking thread of real concern in the question. Despite the good reviews, Daisy was still very unsure of her own talent. Imposter syndrome was a bitch.

“Then will you not tell me what you are writing?” she asked.

“When it’s done, you can read it.” I craned my head to look at her own papers, which she covered with a blank sheet. “What, you won’t let me see either?”

“It is only fair.”

It didn’t take me long to write my tale. I was very familiar with the characters, after all, and knew the plot intimately. Three days later I laid the journal in Daisy’s hands and said, “Let me know when you’re finished.”

Then I went to my room. I stirred up the embers in my fireplace, adding wood and blowing until there was a roaring blaze. It was nice to be warm, dry, on solid land. I didn’t think I would ever take that for granted. Besides, the dry heat helped soothe the way the scar ached in the damp.

From my dresser drawer I fetched the pink gingham bundle. I dragged the settee as close to the fire as the protesting hairs on my calves would allow, to study my ID cards in the firelight, tilting them to make the holographic print chase back and forth across the surfaces. The sheen was the same shade of yellow as an airline life preserver.

Footsteps creaked along the landing and then Daisy entered quietly, closing the door behind her. She crossed the room in a swish of skirts and sat down as close to me as she could, thighs pressed against one another from knee to hip, warm and soft through the silky fabric of her nightgown.

“Thank you, Sweet Pea,” she said. She had my journal in her hand, a bookmark already at the end. “For telling me about your childhood. For sharing your family and your life with me.”

I kissed her, soft and sweet. “I wanted the truth to be somewhere. For it to be preserved in one last place before I—”

I looked down at the handkerchief bundle on my lap.

“What’s this, then?” she asked, sliding a hand down my arm, tickling over the pulse point, then sliding along the back, over the knuckles, to tap what I was holding.

She stared at the cards for a moment. Then, without turning to me, laid her head against my shoulder and said, “These are from your time.”

“Yeah,” I said, the warmth from the fire and the warm bubble of lust and contentment from Daisy’s proximity making me languorous. “Driver’s license, right to universal health care card, student ID. These other two are money, believe it or not—debit and credit. Totally useless.”

“They’re beautiful,” Daisy said.

“They’re the last proof that I have that I’m not crazy,” I confessed. “That I didn’t make it up.”

Daisy tilted her chin up, put her lips against the lobe of my ear and puffed, “I believe you. I would not have filled my stories with yours if I did not believe you.”

“Then that’s, excuse the pun, good enough for me.”

I leaned forward slowly and fanned the cards out above the flames.

“Samantha.” Daisy grabbed my wrist, but not hard. Steadying, not pulling. Making sure that I really wanted to do what I was about to do.

“It’s okay.”

I dropped the cards one by one onto the hottest part of the fire. They sat there for a second, the lamination glittering in the refraction of the flames. Then the clear plastic coverings curled up and blackened.

The student card was cheapest. It bubbled in the center, the corners withering like rose petals before it collapsed with a whizzing hiss into a puddle of white goo. The credit and debit cards joined the pool of molten plastic in an instant. The health card went next, sturdy government issue weight, bubbling green and yellow. Then the driver’s license spat up smoke, and that horrendous picture where one pigtail had fallen out and the DMV photographer hadn’t bothered to tell me imploded in a smear of greasy black.

I let the pink gingham handkerchief, stained and worn, flutter into the flame. It burned swiftly, and I made my silent and final good-bye and thank-you to Dahlia as it did.

“There.” I was trying not to breathe too deeply as the plastic fumes curled around the mantle, before the colder air of the night sky sucked them up the chimney. “Now there is no more proof that Sam Franklin ever lived. There’s just Samantha Lewis.”

I cradled Daisy’s face between my palms.

“Hello, Sweet Pea,” Daisy whispered against my mouth.

“Hello, Daisy,” I said, and kissed her.

I pulled away, just enough to take in the curling spray of flaxen hair, the laughing eyes, the reddened, swollen lips, the high flush on her cheekbones, obscene and beautiful.

And all for me.

“Now what?” Daisy asked, when our kisses had reached a natural pause, having turned slow and indulgent.

Please, let me live, I had once begged and now, joyfully, I could say that I had.

Happily ever after, even.

“We do this,” I said. “Just like this. We live here, we raise a cat, we love each other.”

Daisy smirked. “I write. You publish the rest of my books.”

“Yeah.”

“As ‘lifelong companions’?” Daisy teased. She dimpled, sunny faced and content as her namesake. “That sounds like a most excellent idea.”

“It does,” I agreed. “You know, I think I read about it in a book once.”

The End