Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Twenty-Five: In Which Jessie Comes To A Realization

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.