Molly House by A. R. Pip

Author:A. R. Pip
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, smuggling, horses, true love, inheritance, nonmonogamy, sexual trauma, found family, class barriers, englands sodomy laws

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For the next week, as he worked at his legal and illegal jobs driving around the city, Jack thought about how to earn a decent living in a way that would be acceptable to his husband. He thought as he watched an actual steam-powered boat trundling along the Thames. He thought as he drove past the factories at the edge of town where fine jacquard-style fabrics were made by machines that worked a hundred times faster than any man. He thought as he drove over the miles and miles of new paved roads that hadn’t existed two years ago. It was clear that the world was changing faster than it ever had before, and change meant opportunity for clever men. There was no need for Jack and his husband to choose between a life of crime or a life in the constrained world of the aristocracy. There was a third way, if only Jack could figure out how to use his skills to participate in this new world of industry and invention.

It was when he was sitting in traffic that the idea came to him. He was sitting on the wide bench of his carriage, staring down at the two mares’ backsides, thinking of how ridiculous it was that his passenger was only traveling a mile and a quarter, but that it was going to take forty-five minutes to transport him to his destination, because it was necessary to cross Westminster Bridge. The installation of the gas lamps on the bridge had reduced traffic flow over the bridge. Not because of the few feet of the bridge’s width that was closed off, but because every single driver in London had to slow down and stare as they passed the construction crew.

'Simpletons,' said Jack. 'All of you.'

The traffic was backed up all the way to St. James’ Park, which was also under construction. Jack’s carriage hadn’t moved more than fifty feet in the last ten minutes. He couldn’t even see what was ahead of him (or catch so much as a glimpse of the marvellous new gas lamps) because he was stuck right behind an overloaded cart. He was sitting there, fuming, watching his two horses stamp and twitch, thinking about how the traffic in London was worse every year, when something perfectly ordinary happened: a pair of ladies in a tiny one-horse gig slipped right through a little opening in traffic next to him, wove around in front of cart and sped out of sight.

At first, he was wistful. How he missed the days when he used to 'borrow' the earl’s fast gigs and tear up and down the lanes behind the great fields at the estate. Then he pondered why his single passenger had chosen to hire a big expensive carriage when he could be driving his own speedy little gig. ‘Probably doesn’t even know how to drive well enough to take advantage of how tightly those two-wheel gigs can turn,’ thought Jack. ‘But if I were a rich man, that’s what I’d drive in London.

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