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She felt disappointed. Unaccountably. “You had parents who were good to one another, but for those of us with no such model, marriage can seem like a risk. Even more so now that I’ve realized the possibilities of suffrage.

Can you not see that there must be some other way for two people to love one another?

A way that doesn’t involve subjugation of one party to the other?

” He was silent while she felt her irritation grow.

She crossed her arms, hugging the soft warmth of his coat to her one more time, then shrugged out of it.

She didn’t bother with her corset, but pulled her breeches on over her chemise and shrugged into her still-wet tunic.

“I would never see you that way, Ophelia, in case we are even discussing the two of us in a marriage.”

“I know you wouldn’t, but others would. Women are expected to exist as foils to their husbands, the homely little wife tending to her husband while he is free to go and tackle the outside world.

People expect women to stop being interested in their own lives, to be satisfied with cookery and birthing babies.

Society expects it, and then men wonder why it shouldn’t be that way after all. ”

“I think you’ll find that I’m the last person who’s interested in what other people expect.

I’ve had enough of other peoples’ expectations and ideas to last me a lifetime and more.

” He stood, still ankle-deep in the water holding his jacket loosely.

“You don’t want me to make assumptions about you, so I’d ask you for the same courtesy. ”

He was right. She had assumed she knew what he wanted, had let everything become about her own worries.

“Do you want those things?” he asked, his eyes clear and calm. There was no pressure in his question, only curiosity. “The cookery and the babies?”

She felt caught between honesty and the fear of what it might cost her. “I ... things were not easy growing up. I don’t see myself wanting children in the future,” Ophelia said, her voice growing quiet. “I am sure I want a life, one of my own choosing, my own direction.”

He watched her quietly and she was forced to admit that it hadn’t occurred to her that a man could feel constrained by expectations, too.

“Do you want those things, Silas? Not cookery, but babies?”

“Babies,” he said quietly. “I don’t think so.

I had always thought so, before, but I don’t know that I want to bring a child into the world that I have seen.

There is so much to repair for the people already here, I suppose I’ve been thinking that might be work I could do.

Cookery though ... perhaps I might try my hand.

” He said it with a smile and his voice was light, but Ophelia felt the weight behind his words, the choices he had already begun to consider.

She was embarrassed she hadn’t asked him sooner.

Silas still felt punch-drunk from their kiss, the taste of Ophelia heady and cool on his tongue, but he forced himself to think about what she had asked.

Was marriage the only way to live as a couple?

Of course, it wasn’t literally the only way.

He knew that, knew there were men and women who lived outside the bounds of what society gave its assent to, knew there were spinster friends who cared for each other their whole lives, bachelors who shared rooms with their lifelong friends.

But he didn’t “know” any of those couples, wasn’t sure they would be welcomed at respectable tables or in the circles of people he had encountered.

Don’t be an arse . Your circle of experience is laughably small, and just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist .

Still, the thought was a barb in his chest; he feared an arrangement without marriage would push Ophelia to the very margins of society, and he couldn’t imagine her there.

She belonged in the very centre of things, not society per se, neither of them had any use for that, but amongst friends, able to move freely, without worrying about judgement.

He wanted her to have everything she wanted, but he wasn’t sure he could give her this.

“I don’t know, Fee,” he said at last, slipping unthinkingly into the nickname. “Suppose you’ve come across a great deal of new thinking since you left Wood Grange, but I’m not sure I’m such a modern man, as it were.”

“I think at heart you are, Silas. Perhaps your habits of mind need time to catch up with your instincts.” She gathered her gaiters, stockings, and boots into her arms and straightened once more.

“I’m sorry I sprang all this on you. It’s a lot, I know .

.. I think I’m more than a little wrung out from last night.

Everything feels a little intense at the moment. ”

Silas nodded, thinking that that wasn’t all that had inspired the conversation, the brand of her lips on his still as present as the conflict between them.

It cut him to the core to say it, but he wanted her to know that he held her under no obligation or assumption.

She was free to kiss him and have nothing come of it, reputation or relationship be damned.

He didn’t want that, of course. He realized as the words hung between them that he wanted to kiss her again and again, to run his hands over her body, to have hers hot on his own skin.

To explore what was so tenuously growing between them, to hold on to this new thing with both hands.

Instead, he schooled his face into neutrality and tried his best to believe the words he said aloud.

“If this conversation has made you feel uncomfortable about our kiss, you need think no more of it, Ophelia. It will stay between us and need change nothing. You have my word.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said, hugging her corset to her chest, a streak of colour rising up her neck. “I liked ... really liked , kissing you, I want to do it again. But ... but I don’t want you to think I aim for marriage,” she said, her chin lifted, eyes steady.

“I see,” Silas said. He wasn’t sure if Ophelia was testing him or herself, so he paused before saying, “I feel like a fussy old woman.” He chuckled.

“Worrying about marriage and protection when you are ready to cast it all aside. I need to figure out what I think, but God, I want this, whatever this might be, so badly I’m sorely tempted to throw my assumptions about all of it out. ”

“Me, too,” Ophelia said quietly, shifting her bundle of clothes to take his hand.

They crested the hill hand in hand. For the first time since he had met Ophelia, he didn’t worry whether anyone would see them together. He squeezed her cool hand, and she squeezed back.