Nearly a year after she and Sarah have settled and set up their shop and set up their lives, it occurs to Elsie that they now have something that resembles leisure-time. When she points this out to Sarah, the younger woman immediately smirks and reaches for Elsie's buttons. And, yes, while this is a marvelous way to spend their free time, Elsie's mind has cravings just as her body does.
That is how they came to be in the dingy secondhand bookshop over on Fifth Street one August morning, the pair of them naturally gravitating towards the back of the store where prying eyes could not find them.
Elsie has developed a shameful fascination with Sarah's neck, and today the temptation is too much, even for their public environment. Sarah stifles a soft little chuckle as Elsie comes up behind her and winds her arms about her waist, her lips finding that tender place just under her ear.
"Steady now, filly- what would old Carson say if he could see you now?"
"Mr. Carson is not here, Miss O'Brien." Elsie growls, squeezing the younger woman's waist in a pointed way. She manages to steal a few furtive kisses before she releases Sarah, and they both wander off on their own quests; Sarah to the travelogues, Elsie to the history section.
Within half an hour Sarah meets Elsie in the English literature area, a book on Africa's fauna tucked under her arm.
"What's this you've got- Shakespeare?" Sarah mutters, her lips pursed as she scrutinizes the cover. Elsie frowns at her, feeling rather protective.
"And what's wrong with Shakespeare?"
"Nothin'- I was hoping you'd turn up something a bit more…interesting, is all."
Elsie wants to give her a good crack upside the head with the volume clutched in her hands, but a lifetime of rigid self-discipline holds her in check.
"I cannot believe my own ears! Have you ever even read Shakespeare?" she demands, and Sarah glares.
"Of course I 'ave, I'm not a bloody peasant! I've a favorite, too, as it happens."
"Oh?"
"Hamlet. It's a grand comedy, that one."
"Comedy? Everyone died!" Elsie cries, and Sarah hushes her with an imperious stare and slim finger over her lips. The younger woman smirks.
"Yeah, everyone died, an' I've never laughed harder."
"Dear God, but you're a disturbed one."
Sarah merely smirks again and saunters off into the shelves, leaving Elsie to mutter over Julius Caesar.
She finds Sarah again a quarter of an hour later, her entire attention given over to Wuthering Heights. Elsie stares, at first unable to comprehend, and then she, too, smiles smugly.
"A romance, Miss O'Brien? Why, there is a tender-young schoolgirl inside you after all."
Sarah eyes her, closes the book with a snap.
"Hardly a romance, Mrs. Hughes, and scarcely a joyful happening for pages on end. Refreshing, really."
Elsie touches her hip, rests her chin on Sarah's shoulder.
"So you like that all the main characters suffer, then?"
"Put it like that, an' I sound like a monster! What I like is that every idiot gets their comeuppance in the end. In a way, it's justice, which is the best sort of fiction around."
"I'm beginning to think that you've taken the wrong lessons from these books."
"Or perhaps you have."
Anyone who didn't laugh once during Hamlet is lying.
None of the above mentioned books or characters belong to me.