David stared at her, alarm rising. ‘Why does anything have to happen? You’ll live at home like Patience, won’t you?’
Sophy shook her head. ‘David, Patience is your parents’ daughter. I – I was foisted on them when my mother died, and your mother has never let me forget it, as you well know. I have to take responsibility for my own future. I can’t expect them to keep me now I’m old enough to work.’
‘Work?’ He sounded as shocked as though she had said something indecent. ‘But you can’t work, Sophy. You’ll stay at home until you get married.’
‘I can work and I will.’ Her voice brooked no argument. ‘I’ve been thinking of various things I might do, although I must admit nothing particularly appeals. But then, why should it? Thousands of people have to work every day at jobs they don’t like. Think of the mines and factories and mills.’
‘Those are men and it’s right and proper they earn a living.’
‘Women work just as hard as men, David. Harder. And not just in the home caring for their family either. Lots of women have to take in washing or needlework, and some work in the factories and milliner establishments, the mills, all sorts of places. They do a day’s work and then go home and start there.’
‘Those are working-class women, not someone like you.’
She stopped dead, staring at him. He was probably the gentlest of the brothers, and undoubtedly kind and caring, but the way he had spoken grated on her. Her voice was uncharacteristically sharp when she said, ‘We’re all the same under the skin, David. Queen and washerwoman. It’s just an accident of birth that separates the lady in her big house with umpteen servants and the pauper starving in one room.’
David blinked. He hadn’t heard Sophy talk like this before and he didn’t know what to say. ‘But – but that’s just how things are, how they’ve always been.’
‘It doesn’t mean it’s right or that it should continue. In fact, lots of things should change. People laugh at women who say we should be able to vote the same as men, but why not?’
‘Is this the sort of stuff they’ve been teaching you at Miss Bainbridge’s Academy?’ David was completely out of his depth but fascinated by her vehemence and flushed cheeks.
Sophy, who had been about to elaborate further, stopped, and then giggled. ‘Goodness, no. Miss Bainbridge would have a fit. She even vetted the books we read and the list of what she considered improper was endless. But Jessica, one of the girls in my dormitory, had a brother who used to give her the newspapers he bought and she smuggled them in for us to read. Most of the girls didn’t bother, but I found them interesting. I learned more about life from them than I ever did from Miss Bainbridge and her team of old spinsters.’
‘Good gracious.’ David found he was more in love than ever. ‘Like what, for instance?’
They continued to discuss the merits of social and political reform, Gladstone’s dealing with the Irish situation, the controversy over women’s suffrage and a whole host of other issues on the walk home, both of them enjoying themselves immensely. It was the first time Sophy had been able to voice her opinions and arguments, and although such matters were part of David’s education, he had never heard a woman’s point of view before. Indeed, he would never have imagined the female sex concerned themselves about anything other than the latest fashions and the price of a new bonnet. He knew there were a few, what were considered ‘strange’ young women in the country, who attended the Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, all from upper-and middle-class families, but his tutors had been scathingly dismissive of this establishment, and his conviction that a woman’s place was in the home had never been seriously shaken. Now he was having to think again, and it both excited and worried him. But excitement prevailed.
Sophy was a wonderful girl, he told himself, as they neared the vicarage gates and she laughed at a joke he had made, making him feel ten-feet tall. Just wonderful. And the next moment, surprising himself as much as her, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her full on the lips, dislodging her bonnet so it fell to the back of her neck where it dangled, held on by its silk ribbons.
It was over in an instant. Sophy jerked away, her outraged ‘David!’ bringing him immediately to his senses. And there it might have ended. A brief second of boyish ardour.