Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Twenty-Two: In Which Jessie Tests Limits

I finished with a quick, light kiss to that sweet little curl at her nape.

Our tea had gone cold by then, and Margaret was slumped forward over her writing desk with the most blissed-out face I'd ever seen her wearing. For once she didn't look strained around the eyes, or hawkish in her observations. She was smiling softly, one round cheek pillowed on her arm, eyes closed and lacking that little downward curve to the eyebrows. She sighed when I brushed my palm over her neck, and gave in to the temptation to touch her jaw line, figure out how soft, exactly, her skin there was, how fragile.

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.

"Har har," I said, moving to the cart and checking the tea pot with the palm of my hand; yes, it was still sort of warm. I topped up our cups. "That's a pretty old technique. Ancient Romans and Egyptians old. It's just that you people in this era don't touch each other."

Margaret sort of floated out of the chair and over to the sofa, facing the fireplace. I took the one plush chair to the side of it. There was a small, battered looking piano – not a grand, but not a full upright – against the wall opposite the fireplace and I wondered for a moment who among the Goodenoughs was the pianist. Maybe it was Francis. Maybe it had their father, and no one had touched the dusty, miserable looking thing since he'd died and they were only holding onto it for sentiment.

"I hold my sister's hand when we walk," Margaret said at length, but it wasn't really a protest. "Or her arm. I hold the arms of the gentlemen with which I promenade. I dance."

"Oh, dancing," I said with a scoffing smile. "Where we touch fingertip to fingertip and nothing else."

Margaret sat forward, intrigued now. "What else ought to touch? Dancing is merely a form of allowing a couple to converse in private while still in public."

"Dancing is sex," I said with a bounce of my eyebrows, deliberately crude. Margaret 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 pressed knee to nose, moving in rhythm. That is how you fall in love."

"I do not know what sort of dancing you're referring to," Margaret said, part haughty, part horrified, but mostly intrigued.

"Waltzing," I said, drawing out the vowel, remembering how scandalized Francis had been. "Or the Tango. The Tango is angry sex, whipping around in circles, throwing each other all over the dance floor, legs getting tangled up as the aggressor chases their prey with their hips."

Margaret went redder and sipped her tea. I laughed.

"The world will become very... free," Margaret 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. "Women can vote, can earn a wage, can love whomever and however they want. So long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, who cares what happens behind closed doors?"

Margaret looked up sharply but said nothing. I had phrased it deliberately, giving her answers, hints, that were vague enough to tease and give her an idea of what I meant, but not press her to have to have an opinion about it. Or think that I was propositioning here. I mean, I was a little, but not outright. She didn't have to give an answer right now.

"I do not need my father's approval to get married," I said softly, resisting the urge to reach out and stroke her bare wrist. "And I don't have to marry someone if I don't want to. If I would rather just have intercourse instead, I can."