Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Thirty: In Which Jessie Tries to Start Over

London stunk. It reeked of polluted fog and he dirty Thames and disappointment, anger, resentment. My resentment. A fortnight was not enough time to cool my anger - inside I still fucking burned at Margaret's betrayal. How could she not love me enough to stand up to her sister for me? How could she just deny what she was, for the sake of some religion, some God she had never met? Homosexual couples got married in churches all the time in the twenty-first century, and it didn't cost them their souls to do it. Why did it have to cost Margaret hers to love me now?

We were supposed to be married in all but paperwork and she had told me to go so easily, so quickly, after one goddamned conversation.

I only wanted her to fight for me. And she couldn't even--

Well, it didn't matter now. I'd done what needed doing. I'd packed a bag with what little I could call my own, all of it brought with me to the Gales - a comb Margaret had gifted me with for Easter, a small purse of coins, my bundle of ID cards, my three dresses, jeans, teeshirt, and chucks - and left that very night.

Hitching into Godersham proper had been easy, but getting to London after that had been longer and harder. The first coach toward London and a night at an inn had spent nearly all the cash I had, and I'd sold the nice dress I'd meant to wear to Mary and Francis' wedding at the second in order to make it all the way to the city. I scrounged for paper and pen when I'd arrived to send a letter back to Bath, having come up with a plan on the cramped, sweaty, day's long journey to the equally cramped and sweaty city.

The last time I had been in London, it had been with Francis, ages ago.

It felt like another lifetime entirely – before I had been safe and needed, back when I had been vulnerable and confused and hurting. When I had forgotten who I was, when I had been desperate for the respect and need of someone, anyone, enough to throw myself at Francis, enough to agree to then throw myself on the mercy of his sisters.

Thomas Cooper had replied to my letter by showing up in person not two weeks later, where I had begged a room in exchange for tending bar and letting myself get pinched by shitty men in a shitty tavern in a shitty part of town. He even went so far as to get down on one knee in the thrushes covering the tavern floor, stale beer soaking into his trousers, when he offered me the ring.

And I had smiled, and tittered, and blushed, because Thomas Cooper was a good man and I was using him for my own security. The least he deserved was my enthusiasm, put on as it was. And who knew? Maybe in a few years I would have gotten over Margaret and her bullshit, and actually have a happy, loving relationship with my husband. Why not? He was kind, and gentle, and funny, and thoughtful, and a hard worker.

It wasn't like it was his fault that he wasn't Margaret Goodenough, love of my fucking life. With me being penniless and Thomas being naught but the son of a middlingly successful baker, we needed somewhere to stay. (Somewhere that wasn't in the scuzzy part of town.) Thomas had a brother, Joseph, and it was to this elder Mr. Cooper's house we next went. I was already heartsick and travel worn, exhausted and crumpled and grimy before we freaking walked across most of the city, so I was pretty dead on my feet by the time Thomas and I - he carrying both our bags, the sweetheart - landed on their front stoop.

Mrs. Joseph Cooper was heavily pregnant but still managed to greet us warmly from her place by the fire.

"Now, love," she had said gently, seeing the tightness around my eyes and misinterpreting them for post-engagement jitters. "Nevermind you none about your wedding night." She patted her impressive belly and smirked knowingly. "There ain't nothing wrong with lovin' your husband all the way through the mattress."