In the end, Margaret decided that she would put the book aside for a while.
"Fresh eyes will find fresh ideas," she said, tucking the manuscript that held so much of my re-interpreted life away into a drawer for who knows how long. "I find I must think on this more, before I decide I am ready to begin the search for a publisher."
The urgency of creation at a lull, our morning marathon writing/editing sessions slowly transformed from Margaret interrogating me over my feelings about the story, and making notes in a little black-covered book, to lengthy chats or long walks down the leafy avenue. Sometimes she joined her sister in the back salon with the horde of little boys who were forever traipsing down the central hall and disrupting our ability to get any 'alone time' (thank god for that previously mentioned leafy avenue, or else we'd never get the chance to make out. And damn the fact that both of us had to share rooms with someone else because of propriety - Rose could no more bunk with a servant than I could in the upstairs part of the house). There was terrible needlepoint and visits to the library, and the free art galleries, and walks through the town to look in shops where neither of us could afford to buy a thing, but we could appreciate the latest ridiculous fads and the gossip of the town.
And when Margaret wasn't escaping the house, she dutifully did her share of management - reviewing the books and accounts, adjusting the budget, working in the kitchen garden alongside Miss Brown and I, mending tears and lifting fallen hems, reworking old garments and maintaining the never-ending mountain of letters that were business, pleasure, and family.
Me, I stepped it up in the kitchen a bit, and was sent on longer and longer shopping trips, which I tried to always end at Cooper's bake shop if I could. It was nice to have a friend outside of the house, and I liked hearing about all of the dramas of the bakery just as much, I think, Mr. Cooper the Younger liked hearing about the upstairs/downstairs life of the Goodenough household.
In the middle of the month, we had returned to the leafy avenue, which was now a riot of flowers climbing over the trellis, and dense with leaves. It was also, unfortunately, filled with other admirers of the gravel path's charms, which meant keeping me from Margaret's. Damn.
We were strolling, arms linked to hide my bad hand, and I probably had a bit of a storm cloud hovering over my because Margaret kept trying to make me laugh. She was succeeding of course, the adorable jerk. That's why it took us as long as it did to hear someone calling her name, and didn't even realize she was being addressed until a breathless looking woman of dark hair and complexion was practically skidding to a stop beside us.
"Miss Margaret!" the woman scolded us when we all paused, laughing. "Well, I swear, you are an impossibly deaf old woman!"
"Not that old," I butt in, and the woman rolled her eyes, but kept grinning.
"Miss Vanessa Donaldson, may I introduce you to my companion, Miss Jessica Franklin?" Margaret cut a look at me, humoured but already weary. "Miss Donaldson is the youngest sister of some of my brother's friends. What brings you to Bath, Miss Donaldson?"
"Well, papa got a house for the season, finally - it's taken him ages to see sense that Bath is where one must be to catch a husband, now that I'm out!" I jolted a little at the phrasing, and had to remind myself that 'out' here and now meant 'marriage-able' and not 'of the closet'. "A shame we could never convince your father to host us when he was still with us."
"Indeed," Margaret agreed, and meant clearly the opposite. I can imagine how infuriating a far-too-young chatterbox would be to Margaret as she tried to write, and how badly she would clash with Rose, who preferred solitary quiet pursuits like reading or ones where for most of the night you didn't need to talk to anyone, like going to the theatre.
"And you, Miss Franklin? Are you here to net yourself a lord? Perhaps even a duke?"
"No," I said. "I... I'm content with what I have." I squeezed Margaret's elbow once.
"Well then! Are you engaged?" Miss Donaldson squealed. "Please, show me the ring, Miss Franklin! I'm ever so fond of looking at the rings!"
"I... er," I said, begging for help from Margaret with a pleading glance.
"What Miss Franklin means by content is that she is currently attached to our household, and not currently seeking to leave to take up her own," Margaret said tactfully. "There is no rush."
Miss Donaldson snorted somewhat rudely, and giggled again. "Then you have been spending too much time with Miss Margaret," she told me. "The woman behaves as if she is a spinster already, doomed to a life with no romance, when we all know she could have had Mr. Vaughn as easily as that." She snapped her fingers neatly in her gloves.
"Mr. Vaughn?" I echoed, startled.
"No one," Margaret assured me, patting my hand in return, her own reassuring gesture.
"No one Margaret was engaged to for a whole four months!" Miss Donaldson pressed with another laugh, utterly failing to clock the sour look on Margaret's face. Yeah, there was definitely a story there that I was going to ask for later, if Margaret was in the mood to share it. "Perhaps your mind will be turned to marriage soon enough though, Margaret - isn't your brother's wedding in July?"
Another jolt went through me. Right. Francis. Marrying Elizabeth. God, I hadn't thought of Francis in... weeks? At least, not like this. I probed my feelings about this and decided, no, I was good about Francis marrying Elizabeth still - excited for them even. Although, there was a small seed of jealousy there... or, no, wait, was it envy instead? Margaret had said that jealousy was about protecting what you already had, and evy was about wanting something that wasn't yours... but what could I possibly want that Francis and Elizabeth had, if I--
"It is," Margaret said, throwing my train of through off the rail. "We will be traveling to Goddersham in a fortnight."
"How lovely!" Miss Donaldson enthused. "How delightful - have you had a new dress made for the occasion? Oh Miss Margaret, you must!" She turned to me. "She always dresses like such a fudy-dudy."
Margaret curled her mouth in a way that looked like a smile and both of us knew very well was not.
"Oh, and did you hear!" Miss Donaldson went on, oblivious to the way both of us were biting our tongues. "Francis and Mr. Lewis had quite the falling out when your brother returned to London for his orders. 'A bloody great row in the square', is how my own brother tells it, fo he was with Francis when Mr. Lewis confronted him over 'that woman'! Goodness, do you know who he meant? Not a mistress surely, what a scandal that would be!"
"No scandal!" I cut in before Margaret could answer. Nothing that I was exactly ashamed that I had slept with Francis. But it wasn't really something that needed spreading around if someone did decide to believe Mr. Lewis, if that horrible human shitstain decide to start oversharing. "Mr. Lewis proposed marriage, I declined, and Mr. Lewis thinks the Captain has the power to persuade me because of my, er, friendship with his sisters. Rest assured, the Captain has been kind enough to agree to continue to dissuade Mr. Lewis on my behalf.
"Well!" Miss Donaldson, said, the wind clearly gone from her sails. "Marriage proposals all around," she said, then twiddled her fan and fought back what was clearly a very unhappy expression. "For all but me, it seems. Perhaps your Mr. Lewis could be persuaded--"
"No!" Margaret and I said almost exactly in unison.
Miss Donaldson pouted, and I felt sorry for her - marriage was a meaningful thing her, the only real way for a woman who had no independent means could secure a future. Clearly she was having trouble getting that security, and for that I pitied her.
"You'll find someone," I said, reaching out to touch her shoulder gently, warmly, with my good hand. "I know you will. Someone who appreciates your enthusiasm, and loves your, ah, verbosity. But trust me when I say, woman to woman, that Mr. Lewis is fit to be no one's spouse. Don't do that to yourself just because you're afraid. He'll make it worse."
As I gave my little speech, Miss Donaldson's eyes grew rounder and rounder, until a spark of understanding was struck behind them. "I see, Miss Franklin. Yes. Thank you for your honesty. Well!" she said again, smoothing down her gown. "please pass my felicitations on to your brother, Miss Margaret. We are staying on Avon Street, should you like to drop by for tea. I ... I would very much like to further our acquaintance, Miss Franklin."
"Same," I said, surprised to realize I meant it.
Miss Donaldson blinked at me, like most people did when I replied in a way they understood but didn't expect, then curtseyed and scampered away, calling out, "Miss Jemima! Oh, Miss Jemima, well, I say your new reticule is the most absolute delight!"
"You really wish to deepen that acquaintance?" Margaret asked me, as we resumed walking.
"She's talkative, so what?" I said. "She's clearly pretty self-conscious and down on herself. She's young and she's probably been told her whole life that the entirety of her worth is tied up in her face and how rich the dude she bags is. Don't you feel sorry for her?"
"Well -" Margaret began, and then chuckled when we realized she'd just accidentally parodied Miss Donaldson. "I mean to say, I suppose I did not consider that."
"I be she's a romantic," I said. "There are people like that - who just desperately want to be in love. And there's nothing wrong with that. Wanting to have someone special, someone they can grow old with and--"
And there it was again, that weird niggle of... of something I couldn't quite name. The nebulous envy.
"And?" Margaret asked.
"...uh, sorry. I lost my thoughts there for a second."
"Clearly."
"What was I saying?"
Margaret smiled over at me, the genuine one that crinkled up the sides of her eyes, and I was slammed with that weird swoopy feeling again.
"You were expressing understanding that marriage can be genuinely desirable for those who have a life partner they cherish, rather than as a transaction."
"Yeah. That," I said, and swallowed heavily. Why was all flushed and sweaty all of a sudden? "I... I mean, I.. this Mr. Vaughn, you don't regret... I mean of course not or you would have married him but, I... man, I don't know what it is that I'm trying to say."
Margaret raised an eyebrow curiously. "You're not the only one who has had past chances," Margaret said. "Simply because I'd never been kissed before, please don't assume that I was unwanted."
"Of course not, Margaret," I said, then remembered myself and that we were in public and corrected to; "Miss Goodenough."
I wondered if she'd loved Mr. Vaughn. I wondered if it occurred to her she was allowed to not find him attractive, that she could love a woman if she really wanted. I wondered if she regretted him.
That same envy surged at the back of my throat when she talked about how interesting, how kind he was, and I swallowed it with some difficulty and a great deal of surprise. I squeezed myself tighter beside her body. We were of a similar height and I was able to lean my forehead briefly against the back of her shoulder when she paused to inspect some flower or another hanging at eye level off the back of a trellis along the gravel path. We didn't have it all to ourselves this time
"What is wrong, Miss Franklin?"
"Nothing," I lied. "I just... I'm being a greedy jealous bitch, honestly."
Margaret laughed and made something in my stomach swoop and soar. "Do not be," Margaret said softly. She pulled my hand up to her mouth and kissed it sweetly, in a friendly manner. I'd have much rathered a kiss on the lips, but any kiss at all was a nice one. It still made my blood fizz a little each time. "You are far more wonderful than any fellow who only sought to marry me for my father's approval, and to inherit his living. I wish never to have anyone but you in my life, you know. I am content. Made whole."
"I think you're wonderful too, Margaret," I said, cowardly but grateful that I didn't have to look her in the face when I said it. She went still beneath me. "And I'm... very glad I've met you. And that you're... we're... that you... didn't marry him."
Uhg, how much more emotionally constipated could you sound? I scolded myself. Unable to say what I really meant, not with other walkers enjoying the trellis and the flowers around us, I straightened and turned away and walked back the way we'd come, stopping to stare at my own meaningless clump of petals. I heard Margaret walk up behind me, the crunch of the stones beneath her silly, cute little slippers, and I covered my eyes with my hands.
What was this?
I admired Margaret, of course I admired Margaret. She was smart. She was funny. She laughed all the time. She believed me, she believed in me. She was wonderful. And I couldn't help the way my cheeks flushed when she studied my own face, the way my stomach flipped over whenever she touched my hand. She looked me in the eye and saw me. Me. Not this Jessie Franklin we had made up and had Rose half believing in, not the apparition that had risen from the sea to take its place as her closest friend.
Margaret Goodenough saw Jessica Franklin and liked her, and I was so far away from home, so alone, that it was enough. It was everything. Margaret was the entirety of my existence.
This jealousy, this weird possessiveness, god this was... was this...?
I'm in love, I realized. Like honest to god, get down on one knee love. Holy shit. No wonder all the marriage talk is making me squirmy.
I turned, quickly, before she had anything to say, and grabbed her shoulders. "I wish..." I began, and then I stopped. Because I couldn't say it out loud.
No, I did not wish I had met Margaret in the future, in Paris, after my graduation but before I started looking for real work, because I wouldn't have cared then. I would have shared a bottle of wine, a fuck, maybe a few days of smiles and tours, but I would have missed out. On this. The careful comfort, the ability to mean something to her, to be of use to her. The slow intimacies and the easy burn of her kisses. I wanted that, oh, I wanted that so badly, to mean something to Margaret. To be irreplaceable. To make her mine and be hers forever and I couldn't... I couldn't.
Margaret met my eyes and waited for me to finish my sentence. I didn't.
"I think I..." she said, then trailed off herself, her own eyes widening, cheeks pikening, reading my own epiphany in my gaze like one of her own fucking books. "Oh. Well. That is a revelation."
I felt my heart lurch. Oh, god, no, what was I doing? People were going to clock the way we were standing, figure out that we were standing too close, speaking in tones too intimate for two friends in public. I was going to ruin history. I couldn't, I couldn't let Margaret get hurt because of me.
"No," I whispered. "No, Margaret. Don't. I ... I mean... me, too... I do too! But. Not here. Not... now."
"Jessie," she said and raised a gloved hand to my cheek. Her palm was warm, covered in fine velvet, and I turned around and fled.
"Let's go home," I said, earnest, trying to keep the smoulder out of my voice. We could find a room, a moment, surely to -- there had to be somewhere where I could kiss her, and tell her that I loved her, and that I wanted to marry the hell out of her and how stupid was I, that I had accepted that I might be the 'bosom friend' that she lived with for the rest of her life, that I may be the mysterious friend from the history books. "Let's... let's go home now."
Jesus, Jessie, catch a goddamn clue.
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