Sedition by Katharine Grant

Author:Katharine Grant [Grant, Katharine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805099928
Amazon: 0805099921
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2014-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Annie’s pleasure at teasing Monsieur was matched by the pleasure of her days. There was always music, and there had been three outings too, three sunny afternoons when she and Alathea, wearing matching veils, had walked together. It mattered little to Annie where they went or what they did. With Alathea beside her, she was happy to stroll around markets, to shiver outside Newgate as Alathea described how the stone arches on the dead man’s walk got narrower and lower as he approached the drop—how did she know these things?—or to sit for an hour or two in the Salutation and Cat, up the street from the prison, listening to men she did not know using words she did not recognize to describe a world that could never be. Over this last, Alathea disagreed. “If a world is possible to describe, it must be possible to organize. What’s so difficult? Everybody equal, everybody free, everybody owning everything in common.”

“If it’s so easy, why isn’t it done already?” Annie posed the question gently, more for the delight of conversation than for an answer.

Alathea had an answer anyway. “Men. It doesn’t suit them.”

“It’s men who are suggesting it,” Annie pointed out. They had left the Salutation and Cat. She stopped and uncrumpled her leaflet. “‘Pantisocracy and Aspheterism,’” she quoted, “‘will minimize greed amongst men. They are antidotes to the corruption of power and the problems of property.’ It’s written by a man.”

“A poet,” said Alathea, curling her lip and walking on. “Can’t you tell? What woman would talk of pantisocracy and aspheterism when all they mean is equality and the abolition of property rights. Would you?”

Annie, catching up, had to agree that she would not. “Women could bring about such a world?” she said. “It could happen?”

Alathea nodded emphatically. “It will happen.”

“Here?”

“In the New World,” said Alathea. “Anything’s possible there.”

A chill in the sun. “You’re going to join them,” Annie said.

“I might.”

Annie waited for an invitation. None came. Alathea talked easily of other things. Annie did not mention the New World again. When they arrived at Soho Square, Annie expected to go straight to the ballroom. Instead, Alathea led her past the waiting pianoforte, upstairs to her attic bedroom. Annie prepared for something awful: trunks filled and labeled; a traveling cloak laid out. What she got was her first full-on-the-mouth kiss. It was a huge affair of lips, tongues, spittle, suckings, blowings, leakings, nippings, subtle and unsubtle tilts, forces, pressings, and pressures. Taken by surprise, Annie’s lip exploded in spasms over which she had no control. This frightened her. She did not know such sensations existed, the biggest sensation of all being that Annie of the harelip was being kissed, kissed, kissed as she had never, ever expected to be. She wanted to cleave to Alathea, to shout her love aloud. She did not say a word, for even as they struggled for breath, she read the warning in Alathea’s eyes: together but apart; love but no attachment. This was why there had been no invitation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.