Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Thirty-Two: In Which Jessie Makes A Choice

I wasn't surprised to see a Reverend in the parlor when I was escorted downstairs by Susan. Mr. Lewis was nothing if not predictable - most serial abusers were. I had washed my hair and scrubbed the graphite smudges from my fingers, and was wearing a pale pink dress trimmed at the breast with a posy of baby's breath. The sheer girlishness of the ensemble was insulting. It was also hot – the room was stifling in the summer heat with a fire lit, and all the curtains cinched shut. I wondered why there was a fire at all.

This new Reverend was sort of craggy, and looked far less easy to sway than Reverend Jenkins. This man's nose rosy with drink and his eyes hard. I missed Jenkins and his robust wife fiercely. Not only because they looked at me like I was a human being, and not a piece of property about to sign myself away to a new Master.

But then I met Rose's smug look and my yearning burned away into a terrible hatred. She was standing at the base of the stairs, staring up at me as I descended, a pinched smile on her face. I don't know what she was so happy about - she'd clearly been exiled to the hall, and was only following me into the parlour now. The way her eyes roamed over the curtains, the fire, the spindly little table where the Reverend and Mr. Lewis and an uncomfortably official looking document. Rose was just seeing them for the first time too.

"You just hate me this much, huh?" I hissed at her as I was pushed past her by the bland and unblinking valet who had come to fetch me, deeper inside the room. Rose only offered an ironic curtsy in return."I promise you'll regret this."

It wasn't a threat. It was true – and not just because of the misery she was putting me through with this farce. Margaret would make Rose regret this choice, absolutely, if she really was sending me apology letters. And Francis probably too. I hoped.

God, I hoped.

And, of course, when Rose she realized what kind of man Mr. Lewis would prove himself to be, I was certain that Rose would be appalled by his treatment of me.

Mr. Lewis stood at the Reverend's side, dressed now in a mockingly formal black suit. He also looked smug as all hell, and I really, really wanted to deck him one. Instead I walked to his side and said, "You still can't make me say yes against my will."

"Ah, but that is where you are wrong, Miss Franklin," Mr. Lewis smarmed at me. "This time, I have ensured that you will want to."

He held out a folded piece of paper. I frowned and looked down at what it said – my eyes caught on the words Margaret Goodenough, and royalties, and debut edition, and my heart jumped up and caught in my throat. I forced myself to start at the top, where the title of the document declared itself a publishing contract. With Margaret's neat little signature already on the bottom.

This was the publishing contract for The Welshman's Daughters, with an indication that the licensing rights had been purchased by the publisher Pickering and Sons. And the name of the publisher himself? George Henry Lewis.

"Bastard!" I breathed, honestly flattened.

I didn't have to ask what he meant by it. The threat was clear enough in his triumphant smirk.

"I thought you were a judge, not a printer!" I spat. Rose stepped closer, confused.

"Printer, Mr. Lewis?" she asked by he waved her back with his free hand. Rose hesitated, wavering, eyes cutting between me and the paper he held. "Miss Franklin? What does he have?"

"But you're not a Pickering!" I protested.

"My mother was a Pickering - I preferred the law to the family business, but I have kept my hand in. Fortuitously, it seems."