Zoey/Cho Regency era!AU
Dances and balls and afternoon teas and picnics, the usual diversions of the country, had never much interested Cho, much the same way they had never much interested Zoey, which probably had everything to do with why the two women had become such firm and fast friends, that mutual understanding shared between two souls that had the potential to be so much more than what life had planned for them. Marriage would come, of course, of that Cho was certain - but equally certain was the knowledge, bright and shining, that no one would ever understand her the way her best friend did, that no one would ever look at her and see more, encourage her to test the limits imposed upon her daily.
She would never have the freedom her brother did, never inherit a living of her own, never be permitted to earn one (and heaven preserve her poor mother's taxed heart if she ever broached the subject again) even if she'd possessed a skill worth anything in the real world, and Zoey's only chance of keeping her own mother in a comfortable home once her father passed was to secure herself a good match, but that utter certainty would never stop them from climbing down rough stone walls in the middle of the night, running through the fields to the old stone edifices in the clearings and climbing to the mossy plateaus to lie side by side and stare up at fields of bright stars and dream of something more.