Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Twenty: In Which Jessie Takes Employment

March went out like a lamb, and the last batch of Elizabeth's fabric came into the shop. On our last afternoon in Godersham, the ladies – me included - all piled into Mr. Fale's open-aired carriage (the name for which I still hadn't mastered; barouches, phaetons, carriages, uhg, too many terms!) and went into town to fetch it. The roads were a mess of mud, or else we would have walked.

It was my first time off the Gale property. Not that I was a shut-in or anything, it's just that between my aversion to water and my newfound fear of the snow, it seemed wiser to stay inside where there was company, food, and a good fire. So I spent a lot of the trip huddling down into the brown jacket and the blue calico dress, which we had just finished trimming the night before, and marveling at the way the countryside was pushing up into green, fresh life. I shaded my eyes and wished I had sunglasses, or failing that, one of the ridiculous poke bonnets that all of the other women were wearing.

The trees that had been black and skeletal when Francis and I had first come down this road were now light brown, their bark drying out, their fingers covered over with tiny green buds. The snow had melted down into tiny wet patches and vast glittering puddles bordered with tentative shoots of hopeful grass.

I took deep breaths of the still sharp air, swallowing the scents of life and water and green, the wood smoke on the breeze and the rich scent of barnyard upwind. My lungs did not catch, my sickness long gone, and my hand, still hidden in my glove, did not ache in the sunlight. The world around me was fresh, reborn, alive, and I couldn't help but feel the same, warmth deep in my belly. The numb, angry, miserable person I had been the last time I had passed through this landscape, as cold and grey as the world had been around me, had changed to match the new season. I felt like I was awake again, for the first time since I'd boarded that awful plane.

I reached with my left hand and laid it over Margaret's. "I'm glad you're my friend," I whispered to her, and felt a funny little twist in my guts when she smiled back. It was a ridiculously sentimental thing to say, but it's what I was feeling in the moment.

The town of Godersham, when we arrived, was far smaller and a great deal more quaint than I had expected. Frankly, I wasn't sure what I had been hoping for – towering Victorian brown stones? Tumbledown medieval cottages? A combination of both? But the city was paved, the houses neatly aligned and leading in procession to a church on one end, and a square with shops on the other. We dismounted in front of the fabric shop, and filed inside. Elizabeth bustled importantly over to the clerk and they began inspecting the bolts that had been brought in, speaking loudly and excitedly about the upcoming nuptials, less, I think, for the benefit of the clerk and more to rub it in with the other ladies in the shop.

Women could be vultures, I knew, and I couldn't help but laugh at Elizabeth's vicious enthusiasm. I wandered away to browse through racks of silks and cottons that I could never afford to own in this age, and could never do anything with if I had the money to buy them. I marveled at the intensity of some of the colors. In my mind, the past was painted in pale watercolors. I'd always imagined that modern technology was what gave us such a saturated spectrum of fabric, but I could see that the clothing had been just as vibrant in 1806 as in the twenty first century. Considerably less neon, though.

Margaret found me staring at the ribbons lined up on their spools on the shelf.

"It's funny," I said. "I've never been a girly-girl."

Margaret snorted, a distinctly un-delicate mode of conveying disbelief that I was pretty sure she had picked up from me. It was endearing.

"I mean, one of those girls who curls their hair and paints their nails and wears lace. I liked the way I used to, er, dress. But I'm standing here, now, and I can't help but covet the pretty ribbons and the delicate lace. My hair is longer than it's been in ten years, and I actually want this stuff. It's freaking me out a little."