To be perfectly honest, I had forgotten, okay?
In the wake of what had been a pretty fucking miserable night, between breaking Elizabeth's heart a little bit and spending most of my time alone in the darkness grieving - properly, finally grieving - for the world, and life, and people I had been forced to leave behind, and the lack of sleep... I had just plain forgotten that I was supposed to be meeting Margaret Goodenough in the morning.
So when I came downstairs in my crumpled jeans and tee-shirt with sore, puffy eyes, chapped lips, and what was probably an epic amount of bedhead, I just shuffled into the breakfast room. My only aim and sole intent was to grab some tea and toast, and plod back up to my room to be miserable alone. It was just past seven, but the sideboard was already filled with apples and fruit spreads, cheese and eggs, sausages and some kind of fish - gross. Otherwise the room was empty and silent, lucky for me, so I decided to stay and hunker down next to the source of caffeine while I could.
Feeling crusty and grimy, wrung out and worn thin, and all the other things you are when you're processing the death of everyone you've ever loved, I plopped myself with absolutely no grace whatsoever into the first chair I literally stumbled against. I ended up rocking the table a bit, but whatever, I was alone.
Except, no.
An annoyed little sound, a tiny feminine grumble, echoed from the far side of the table. Blinking, surprised, I turned my face to the other side of the room. Way at the end, with six chairs and the width of the table between us, a young woman wrapped in a well-loved quilted housecoat, blonde curls trying to escape from a askew sleep cap, glowered at me.
"Fuck," I said, feelingly. The teacup dropped from my hand.
Luckily, it didn't have far to go, and clattered down into the saucer with a noise loud enough to make me wince. Hot tea splashed against my chest, but I ignored it.
"Goodness!" the woman at the other end of the table blurted. "Are you well?"
"I'm, uh, fine," I said, my voice strangled and grief-rough. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I mean, I didn't think... how did you...?"
The woman, who I now realized had working on something that was propped up on a sort of wedge-shaped tabletop music-stand-slash-paper holder. She had a pencil on the tablecloth beside her, graphite smudged up the side of her hand. And she was glowering at me.
"We got in very early this morning, and I decided that I would try to get some work in," she replied. "While it was still quiet."
"Right, uh, I'll just," I said, jerking my thumb at the door. I stood, running my good hand over the disaster that was my hair, oh god. I was a sweaty disaster bisexual, and the woman at the other end of the table had blue-grey eyes like gimlets, and a frown that could cut glass, and Jesus fucking Christ, she was writing, and now that I was paying attention her face was the same shape as Francis', and she had that same kissable cupid's bow upper lip and this was a goddamned mess. I turned to the door and started to make good on my escape.
"Miss Franklin!" she called, and I froze on the spot, shoulders up around my ears. "You are Miss Franklin, aren't you?"
I nodded, terrified of what my voice might do. There was the sound of shuffling papers and I didn't dare look around. I could feel the weight of her gaze on me and it made every short hair I possessed prickle upright.
"Pleasure to meet you," she said, and it sounded teasing and smug and, oh my god, Margaret Goodenough was laughing at me. Silently, but laughing all the same.
"Pleasure's all mine," I croaked.
"Which is precisely why you are fleeing as if your train has caught fire, I presume," she said. I couldn't help the snort of laughter that floated out of my chest. Something deep inside me, still brittle with damp grief, cracked a bit. My shoulders dropped.
Okay. First time meeting a celebrity. Utterly sucking, but at least she had a sense of humor about it. That was good.
"I'm a wreck," I said. "Look, I'm sorry, I'm not fit for polite company right now, I should--"
"Nonsense," Margaret said. "We are none of us at our most attractive in the morning. And my brother tells me you had a most distressing night, which of course would excuse anyone all manner of sartorial sins. Please, don't let me interrupt your breakfast."
I turned then, which she didn't expect, because I caught her staring at me. No, not staring at me, exactly, but staring at my ass. Oh my god.
That's... that's pretty awesome, not gonna lie, I decided. I turned, watched the way her grey eyes bounced to my tits in my tee-shirt and twenty-first century bra, and couldn't help but crack a smirk. She didn't look up into my face to catch that, just back down to her papers, trembling and making sounds like aspen leaves brushing together in her hands. Her ears turned absolutely pink.
"I guess I don't mind if you don't," I said, and grabbed a napkin from the sideboard to clean up the spilled tea. The seat was wet too, damn. After I refilled my teacup, I picked up my plate of cold toast and plopped myself down further along. Right opposite Margaret in fact.
"Jane Jessica Franklin, at your service," I said, bobbing a little head nod at her, and she flushed up and replied, eyebrow nonetheless arched in wry humor:
"Margaret Elizabeth Goodenough, at yours." She dropped eyes the color of grey moonstones to the stack of loose pages importantly, shuffling, then picked up her pencil.
Message received, I drank my tea and crunched through my toast as quietly as possible. At first, Margaret kept shooting me looks over her writing desk, as if expecting me to speak any second and bracing herself for it.
But I knew writers - I had friends in university who wrote fanfic and would bite my head off if I broke their concentration or tried to distract them while they were engrossed in the telling of tales. I had far more self preservation than to interrupt a writer at their craft. The only time I deliberately disturbed Margaret was when I realized she had lifted and moved to drink from her own empty teacup three times, then set it back down and clearly promptly forgot it was empty. The third time, I reached across the table and snatched it away by the saucer.
Margaret didn't even look up, engrossed as she was, and I poured her a new cup - adding milk, yeach - and returned it to her side without her ever noticing. It wasn't until she reached for it again, brought it to her lips, and encountered hot tea that she realized I was still there. Her eyes widened at me over the brim of the cup, then crinkled up in a hidden, small smile.
Oh, gosh. She was cute.
I mean, not pretty, not in the soft round way that Elizabeth was. Margaret was lean to the point of being androgynous, and her chin stubborn, her nose strong. But her sharpness was tempered by the soft wisps of her yellow-gold hair, her roses in her cheeks, the roundness of her jaw, the twinkling smile in eyes the same shape as Francis', but the color of a snow-laden winter sky. She was attractive, instead of just pretty. Fascinating. A study in contradictions.
Oh shit, I thought, as I realized her gaze was roaming my face the way that mine was roaming hers. Oh no, no, Jessie. Don't do this. Margaret Goodenough has a lover, a companion for life. You know this. Everyone knows this. Don't do this again. Christ, what is it with these siblings? Am I gonna get a stupid infatuation with the older sister, too?
Margaret set down her cup, and then licked her plush bottom lip, chasing after a stray droplet. I felt my stomach get warm, my eyelids heavy, and Christ - no - bad idea.
Somewhere upstairs, a door opened and closed, and the voice of a maid rousing her mistress to waking echoed like the murmur of a babbling brook down the stairs, breaking our stalemate. Margaret flicked a cross look at the door to the room, and began collecting up her things, slipping the papers that had been strewn across the table around her into a tidy pile, and popping them inside the writing desk.
"I, uh, I should go, you know... make myself presentable," I croaked, jumping to my feet and fleeing the room, yes, like the train of my dress was on fire. If Margaret said anything, I didn't catch it as I leaped up the stairs two at a time.
Once safely hidden in my bedroom, I closed the door behind me, and leaned back against it.
"Oh shit, oh damn," I muttered to myself, running my hand through my filthy hair. Then I lunged for the fire, where someone had hung a kettle over the embers while I'd been downstairs. I smelled awful, and I needed a wash. I needed, god, a lot of things. "Spectacular. Just... wow, way to make a great first impression. Dumbass."
* * *
Francis had told me earlier, but I had forgotten, that he had managed to sell my old smartphone for an obscene amount of clink to some fascinated science kook in London. Which had, in turn, made up for the money he'd expected to get in prizes from the battle. Which in turn, had made him secure enough to finally, properly marry Miss Elizabeth Gale. Which meant, in turn, that with the Goodenough ladies finally present, the wedding plans were spoken of almost obsessively by everyone in the house.
Well, almost everyone.
When I came back downstairs in the borrowed taupe dress that the Gales had offered me the night before, with my hair still damp and pulled back as best as I could make it without the maid to poke at me, I found a whole gaggle of women in the parlor. Their own breakfasts already eaten, Miss Rose Goodenough, and their mother were very pleased to make my acquaintance, and Margaret put on a good show of not knowing who I was as we were formally introduced. Like me, she'd taken the time to get herself up to the bare minimum standard of polite dress - hair in a knot, piled under a frilly muslin day-cap, and her dress of serviceable fabric in a light grey that did glorious things to her eyes.
Our eyes met as we gave our "how do you dos", and the corner of her mouth curled up in a wry smirk. I felt my heart lurch in my chest.
Down, girl!
Luckily, I had no such palpitations when I was introduced to Rose. So, it wasn't a Goodenough Family Curse or anything. Thank God. Much twittering then ensued about trousseau and trunks and linens and I had no idea what anyone was talking about, so I helped myself to the only other seat at a small card table in the corner of the room. Margaret was in the other chair. As I sat, she offered me another wry smile.
"And now, Miss Franklin, we wait."
"For what?" I asked, but she he'd up one ink-smudged finger and counted under her breath - one, two, three, four--
"But we should go to town today," one of the younger Gale daughters complained, seemingly apropos of nothing. "The new ribbons came in yesterday and the shop will be picked over!"
Margaret smirked and laid her hand flat, palm up, as if to say, and there it is.
"Honestly, Oliva," Mrs. Gale said, but she was smiling. "A single day won't make a difference."
"I will confess I am quite stiff from the carriage ride, and those awful beds at the inn," Mrs. Goodnenough said, rising from the same sofa where I'd watched her eldest daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law canoodling, with no indication at all of the confessed stiffness. "I could use a walk, and the day is bright! Rose, Margaret?"
"Of course, mother," Margaret said, standing and brushing down her dress. "Splendid idea. I could use a walk." She shot a meaningful look at me that made it clear that she intended to dawdle and stay well behind the clucking younger women.
And so it was that the whole of the female host donned thick stockings and Spencer jackets, winter bonnets and scarves and muffs, and ventured out into the freshly fallen snow. A big open sleigh drawn by two massive farm horses was pulled around to the front door, and they all piled to go shopping for lace, fabric, and the all-important ribbons. A young lady, I managed to winkle out of the conversation, wore pastels. Married women were privilege to the deeper, jewel tone shades, and rich fabrics.
I claimed a fear for my health if of going out into the snow so soon after my ordeal at the church - which had been explained to the company as a fever that had sent me wandering in the night while Francis and I had been breaking our journey in the little parish town serviced by Reverend Jenkins, keeping the cruel truth to ourselves - and retreated to bed for the rest of day. Before leaving, Margaret shot me a telling look that made it clear that she wished she'd thought of my excuse first.
A nap did me good, and I was feeling much more human when I forced myself down to the parlor to take a late luncheon when they returned at about three. Reminding myself that if I was going to spend the rest of my life around these people doing this sort of thing, I should actually try to learn something useful. So I nodded over the swatches of the fabric that they had ordered in from London, and actually quite admired the bolt of fabric that Elizabeth had bought for her wedding gown: a dark cream with an in woven whiter pattern of morning glories. The ladies were already they were discussing what sort of sleeves were required, how low the neckline could be for church, and how the dress could be altered again after the wedding for evening wear.
Right, yeah, that was a thing apparently - there was no buying a four thousand dollar princess poof, then preserving it in a box for the next thirty years. Nobody, not even the landed gentry, could afford to buy something and not wear it again. And white on brides wasn't a thing yet because Queen Victoria - the woman who had popularized the white wedding gown - hadn't even been born yet.
"What do you think, Miss Jessie?" Elizabeth asked, looking deliberately, but not unkindly into my eyes. "You have been the lone companion of Francis for these long months; will he like it?"
I smiled, really smiled and reached across the space between chair and the settee where she was sitting with the bolt unraveled on her lap, and took Elizabeth's hand in my good one.
"Miss Elizabeth," I said, offering her the olive branch I know we both needed, "Francis Goodenough is pretty hopelessly in love with you. You could wear a burlap sack and he would still think you were an angel fallen from heaven." The women around me tittered. "But I think this would be a lot more comfortable."
Elizabeth's smile grew into a more generous, more genuine version of itself, and we shared a quick, sad moment between the two of us, the acknowledgement that the tiny rivalry was over. That she had won, and that I was happy for her.
"And patterns, what of patterns?" Mrs. Gale asked. "What is the wedding fashion where you come from, Miss Jessie?"
"Not all that different," I confessed, and it was truth. "A veil in the hair, usually less lace, a bit of a sleeker cut... oh," I said, looking around at the piles of ribbons and buttons and swatches scattered all over the parlor, "Where's your blue?"
"Blue?" Elizabeth echoed. "I... I do not wear blue. It does not flatter."
"But you can't get married without blue," I said. "It's tradition."
Margaret set down her tea cup and leaned forward, curious. "Whose?"
"Ours, I guess," I said with a shrug. "I thought it would be yours, too, but I guess not. It's, uh, for luck, on the wedding day. You know, the bride is supposed to wear 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue'."
"I've heard this," Margaret said, and I was startled to realize that she'd said it softly, as if she didn't want to intrude. And moreover, that everyone else behaved as if she hadn't spoken and kept on.
"You have?" I asked, making a point of turning my whole body to face her, so that the rest of the women couldn't ignore her. Imagine! Ignoring Margaret Goodenough!
Margaret looked uncomfortable suddenly being the center of attention, and I realized all of a sudden that maybe I wasn't doing her favor.
"Well, where, dear?" her mother asked.
"It's a Lancashire saying, I... I think?" and she sounded so uncomfortable, so uncertain, that I jumped back in with: "It's possible. My gran used to say it."
"Ah, I see," Margaret said, one finger on the handle of her tea cup, pushing it in a circle around her saucer. "The dress will be new."
"I have ... you may borrow the amber crucifix that Francis gave me," Rose offered to Elizabeth, magnanimously, clutching her hand in a sisterly way.
Now everyone was grinning, thinking hard.
"Something old," Mrs. Gales aid, tentatively, "What of the bible that was my mother's?"
"That'll do," I said. "And blue?"
Elizabeth protested softly. "It is still not flattering."
"That's easy, then," I said. "Put one little blue flower in the middle of your bouquet. A spray of forget-me-nots, if you have them. I mean, when they're in season. The, uh, the wedding will be in the summer, eh? Or perhaps a morning glory, to match the pattern. It's what my mom did."
"Tell us?" Margaret implored, and I realized suddenly that if I really did go to live with the Goodenoughs, that this was probably going to be a refrain I heard often from the authoress.
"It was all in my Mom's bouquet," I said. "A silk flower from her own mother's bouquet, surrounded by the new, fresh, real flowers, a pretty silver stick-pin borrowed from her sister, and a blue ribbon to hold it together. She, uh," I had to pause to clear my throat, which had gotten tight again, "she saved the whole thing for... I mean, she saved her mom's silk flower and dried and preserved some flowers from her bouquet for... for when it was my turn."
Elizabeth sighed. "That is romantic."
"Yeah," I said, and took another sip of tea to cover my own surprising reaction, brushed at the corner of my eyes, disguising the manoeuvre by pushing back a piece of hair that had fallen forward. My parents had been stupid-face in love, too, the same way Elizabeth and Francis were. I just don't think I'd ever noticed before.
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