Chapter 29
When Tristan spotted the three bulging hemp bags at the center of her drawing room, he stopped dead in the doorway and whistled through his teeth. “When you said bags of mail, it was not an exaggeration.”
He strolled toward the desk while shrugging out of his jacket, then briefly derailed her focus by rolling up his sleeves and exposing muscular forearms. He looked enticingly purposeful, doing so.
“What do I do?” He turned to her, his face expectant.
Kiss me.
She cleared her throat. “You pick a letter. You determine whether the writer is a married woman and whether her woes pertain to her marriage. Whenever that is the case, you sort the letter into a category.”
She turned to unlock the doors to the cherrywood cabinet to take out the labeled boxes and the notebook for the tally.
“There are five main grievances married women experience,” she said as she set the boxes down next to each other on the long table. “Emotional, physical, or financial maltreatment, melancholia due to a lack of purpose, or a combination of the four.”
Tristan was silent, and when she glanced at him, he wore a frown.
“Right,” he said, and waved. “Continue.”
“You allocate each letter to a category and add up the numbers in this ledger. That is all there is to it.”
“I see,” Tristan said, his tone suspiciously neutral.
“Help yourself.” She presented the opened bag with a little flourish.
“Lucie.” The frown was back in place. “What, on God’s earth, is the purpose of this . . . ghoulish exercise?”
“Ghoulish? This is research.”
“Toward which end?”
“Do you know what the main argument of the opposition to a Property Act amendment is?”
He had the decency to look vaguely contrite. “I’m afraid not.”
“They argue that we must keep the legal status quo because unless a woman’s person is completely subsumed in that of her husband, it threatens the harmony in the home. They reason that only when a woman is completely dependent on her husband in all things will he feel obliged to care for her despite his selfish male interests. In the same vein, she will be deterred from nagging her provider and act like a good wife.”
His lips quirked without humor. “There is a logic to it.”
She shot him a dark look. “Logic matters not when its predictions are not grounded in reality. We have collected ample proof that coverture does not protect women from neglect or outright harm. We could in fact go as far as to claim that the opposite is the case. Which means the main case against amending the act is hollow, morally and also factually, and people who continue to insist upon it will have to do it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This,” she said, and made a gesture to include all the bags of mail, “is our case against the Property Act.”
He gave her an unreadable look, but she could hear his mind working from here.
He shook his head and reached for the letter opener.
He took one of the envelopes from his bag and sliced it open with a smooth flick of his wrist.
“My dear lady,” he read out. “It has been thirty years since Florence Nightingale sailed to the battlefields of Crimea, where she near single-handedly saved thousands of our wounded soldiers from certain death.
“Unfortunately, the existence of women such as myself has not changed despite Miss Nightingale demonstrating the tenacity and abilities of the female sex. And I call it an existence, rather than a life, because we much resemble a fancy bauble, decorative but ultimately useless, our place decided by others. I can’t help but feel that our lives lack meaning, filled artificially by chores and rituals that are empty and do nothing to better our minds, or the cruel realities blighting this world—the poverty, the spread of diseases, the ill-use of children, to name only a few. There are days when I feel I cannot breathe, and my heart is racing, as I watch my life running through my fingers like sand through an hourglass . . . huh.”
He dropped the letter onto the middle of the table and looked at her with raised brows. “I suppose this one is for the melancholy category?”
He selected the next envelope from the top of the pile.
“From a Mrs. Annie Brown. . . . My dear lady . . . I am increasingly convinced that the struggle for a married woman’s rights will be a longer and a harder fought battle than any other that the world has known. Men have been taught that they are absolute monarchs in their families, ever since the world began, and that to kill a wife by inches, is not murder—”
He faltered. “Bloody hell,” he said after a pause, and that was all he said for a while.
At first, she tried addressing him now and again, and he reacted with absentminded grunts, until she gave up. He did not touch the biscuits or the cup of tea she served him when the clock struck eleven. He waved away the brandy she offered, too. A focused Tristan, with furrows between his brows. She kept stealing glances at him in between letters. So many sides to a man she had once thought as shallow as a puddle.
Her bag had emptied and been replaced by the next as his looked still half-full, but then, she had developed a keen eye for the gist of the matter, and rarely needed to read to the end. He startled her by abruptly coming to his feet and staring into a nothingness.
She lowered her letter into her lap. “Would you like some tea?”
“No,” he said absently, and then most ungentlemanly cracked his knuckles in his palms.
“If it is too tedious, you could also—”
“Oh no. This is interesting.” The jeering note in his voice alarmed her. “Very interesting.”
“In truth?”
His smile was positively sardonic. “Oh yes. It has been a veritable treasure trove of insights. So many gems. This one is my favorite.” He picked up a letter he had set aside.
“My dear lady,
“I turn to you in confidence, in the hope that you could help me on a matter about which a woman should be silent as a grave, but I cannot be silent any longer.
“I know a man who tells his wife, ‘I own you, I have got a deed to you and got it recorded, I have a right to do what I please to you,’ and the law of a Christian land says she shall submit, to indecencies that would make a respectable devil blush for shame. Man, who is said to have been created in the image of God, is the lowest animal in the world, and the most cruel. It shatters my faith in the goodness of God, so much that it makes me tremble for my own reason.”
Here, he stopped, and his gaze bore into hers over the rim of the page.
She inclined her head. “Yes?”
“You read such things every day, I presume.” There was a disconcerting flicker in his eyes.
“I do, yes.”
“Since when?”
She had to think about it. “They came pouring in around five years ago, when my name had become established. We have been collecting and categorizing them for nearly two years now.”
“‘We’?”
“The suffragist chapters across Britain. I consolidate the tally every fortnight.”
“Ah.”
He was pacing round the room, his hands clasped behind his back.
“How many?” he then asked curtly. “Letters, I mean.”
“Presently, we have a count of fifteen thousand.”
His laugh was harsh. “And those are just the ones who write to you.”
“I expect there are many more who never speak,” she acknowledged.
“Indeed.” He was contemplating her with an alertness as though he had never really seen her before. “And it hasn’t occurred to you yet to shoot the next man you meet on sight?”
Now he had her full attention. “What a curious thing to say.”
“How about setting fire to Parliament?”
“You are angry,” she said, amazed. “The letters shocked you.”
“I knew my father was a dastardly husband.” His gaze fell heavily upon the five boxes, now filled to the brim. “I had not realized all of them were.”
“Not all of them,” she said. “It is a rather filtered selection. Contented wives do not write to us. Though, of course, they would be no less trapped if their good fortune changed.”
He gave her a hard look. “It is abominable. All of this.”
A knot of tension she hadn’t realized was there until now dissolved in her chest. The sudden sensation of lightness made her fingers curl into her skirts, as though it would keep her from floating up toward the ceiling.
Until now, she had not been sure how her lover would respond to realities most people refused to see. Until now, she had not been entirely certain whether he would fall victim to the peculiar, selective blindness which afflicted so many otherwise perfectly sensible people when confronted with something ugly; whether he would claw for explanations, no matter how ludicrous, or would try to belittle away what unnerved him rather than face inconvenient truths. She should have trusted him. His mind was fluid and fast, it resented the rigidness of conventions rather than find comfort in their constraints.
A smile broke over her face. Perhaps that was why she had not debated her work with him so closely until this morning. He gave her so much joy. A morning of lying in bed with him, entwined and content like a simple animal, had her feeling bright and warm all day. Her time of joy and warmth would have ended quick like a shot had he proven himself unwilling to see. She had not been ready to know. She had not been ready yet to give him up. And it appeared she could keep him awhile longer.
“They are all the same, aren’t they?” His sweeping gesture included the three bags’ worth of mail.
“I’m afraid so.”
“And yet you sit there in your chair looking very calm.”
She drew back. “I have not been calm in over ten years, Tristan.”
His gaze narrowed. Several seconds ticked past in heavy silence.
“No,” he finally said. “I suppose you were not. God.” He speared his fingers into his hair, leaving it in disarray. “Lucie. You must publish the results.”
She couldn’t help a deeply cynical smile. “This certainly used to be the plan.”
“Finding a newspaper to run it, however, should be a challenge—it’s poisonous.”
“It is near impossible,” she confirmed. “We tried. But as you can imagine, people would rather not see it. Of course, society is well aware that women are in danger from their menfolk ever since Oliver Twist, you know, when Dickens had Bill Sikes kill poor Nancy. But Nancy was a drudge of the working classes, wasn’t she? Surely you noticed that most of these letters here are written eloquently, sometimes on very costly stationery. These are middle-class and lady wives, Tristan. The maltreatment of married women is not a secret, but they want you to believe it is a problem of the poor. No, it is pervasive. It spares no one. We prove it. And that is the poison you speak of.”
Tristan was pale. “You must take it to the House of Commons.”
She sniffed. “And have these precious voices wedged between two agenda points on import tariffs? Only to be dismissed and forgotten, as is usually the case, or to hear again that we should wait some more? No. Men of influence have been fighting for women’s suffrage on the floor of Parliament for twenty years. Don’t think we have not considered all our options—we have been trying for twenty years, too.”
He gave her a brooding stare. “You have tried the Manchester Guardian, I presume?”
“Of course. In the end, we decided to acquire our own means of distribution.” She cut him a pointed look. “Unexpected circumstances ruined it.”
A moment of confusion.
As the pennies dropped, one by one, his expression turned vaguely horrified before her eyes. “London Print.”
She nodded.
“Oh grand,” he said, and then, “This could have sunk the entire publishing house.”
“Possibly.” She gave an apologetic smile. “Of course, we very much hoped it would survive. Somehow.”
He gave a shake as if waking from a dream. “You bought an entire publishing house for the purpose of a single publication.”
“It is a very important publication. And it goes straight into the hands of tens of thousands of women of the kind who write to us. They would have known they are not alone. And there would have been headlines after all.”
His mind was churning behind his eyes, rapidly like a flywheel. “The plan is rather convoluted,” he finally said. “But bold, and strangely brilliant, given the circumstances. Ambushing women across the land from the pages of their divertive periodical. Brutal, too. I am, however, surprised you would gamble with the money of your investment consortium.”
“Tristan.” Her tone was gentle. “They know.” And, when disbelief filled his eyes: “I would have never proceeded without the ladies’ consent. No, they all knew they might never see their money again. For that reason, it was rather challenging to pull a consortium together. There are very few women in Britain who are both independently wealthy as well as so supportive of women’s suffrage that they could be entrusted with the plans for our coup.”
He wore the expression of a man who had just learned that the earth was not flat. “We have a circle of financially suicidal lady investors in Britain—little Lady Salisbury? In truth?”
She almost felt sorry for him then. “I’m not the only woman in Britain who is angry.”
“No,” he said slowly. “I suppose not.”
His jaw set in a determined line, and he walked past her, straight out the door.
She came to her feet and rushed after him.
He was in the corridor, wearing his coat, taking his hat off the rack.
Her heart leapt in alarm. “You are leaving?”
He reached for his cane. “To London.”
Will you come back?
One hand on the door handle, he glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes already focused on something that lay ahead. “If you want me tonight, wait for me in our room—though I cannot tell yet when I shall be back. Keep the back door locked, it is safer for you.”
“But wait—how will you get in?”
He was already gone, and only later did it occur to her that he had skipped down her front steps in bright daylight. They were becoming careless in rather too many ways.
He returned when the night outside the curtains in Adelaide Street was as dark as a pit. She had long slipped into an unruly sleep and woke disoriented at the sound of careful footsteps. She blinked and found it made no difference whether her eyes were open or closed.
“Shh,” came his voice from above. “It is me.”
The bed sagged under his weight with a lazy creak.
She reached for him, and her hands met satiny skin and muscle. She had slept through his arrival, and him discarding his clothes.
“You came back.” Her sleepy hand trailed over his back, down the indent of his spine, eliciting a purr.
He lifted the blanket and moved over her, one with the dark. He smelled good. The warmth of his naked body touched her skin, and anticipation began to simmer.
Her hand found the silk of his hair. “What did you do?”
“I met a few fellows.” His lips teased her ear, then the side of her sleep-flushed neck. “And I have claimed my seat in the House of Lords.”
Her eyes were wide open.
“One more sword for your troops, princess.” His breath brushed against her chin. “I had meant to do it the day after you had told me about a hundred years since Wollstonecraft, but—”
She lifted her head and her mouth met his, and he made a soft noise of surprise. She touched her tongue to his and he grunted, and his weight settled heavily on her. Heat welled between her legs. She arched up, seeking the pressure of his chest against hers.
Not enough—she struggled, trapped in swathes of sheets and nightgown.
He broke the kiss, his laugh a dark rumble. “Such impatience.”
Her nails bit into the balls of his shoulders, because it ached. She was aching for him. “I need you.”
He made a soothing sound. “Then you will have me.”
The bed groaned as he stretched himself out beside her and slid his warm hand beneath the hem, up her thigh, and up. The respite of being intimately touched was fleeting; a tension was tightening beneath her skin and it demanded all of him. She squeezed her thighs together, trying to trap his languidly circling hand.
“Poor darling.” He shifted, and she heard the scrape of the small box that was ever present during their encounters.
Her fingers curled over his wrist.
He stilled.
“Leave them,” she said softly, “if you wish. Be careful.”
He rolled over her, and a haze took her, there was only liquid heat and the blunt pressure of him demanding to be let in. “Oh God,” he said. She could not speak. The silky glide of his movements was unlike anything he had made her feel before. Noises climbed in her throat, uncontrollable, she was dissolving in sensations. Her one hand was on his shoulder, the other low on his back, she saw with her palms how he moved between her legs. From a distance came the rhythmic creaking of bedsprings. An echo of his voice, murmuring that she could enjoy him as long as she liked, as long as it took, the whole night, forever, if he lasted—she did not last, not at all. The tension curled her toes and broke in hot voluptuous spasms, and a starlit sky rushed at her as she screamed.
She was still panting when she came to, and a high-pitched noise rung in her ears.
Her fingers were mindlessly smoothing the damp hair on his nape.
Agony of bliss indeed.
When he stirred and raised his head, she could feel him looking at her.
“Of course.” Soft irony tinged his voice. “I should have known that politics would please you best.”
Her hands flattened on his sweat-sheened back. His muscles were tense, he was supporting his weight, careful not to crush her.
Her belly felt sticky. He had been careful.
“You please me very well,” she whispered.
She strained to stay awake, to hear him tell her that she must not trust him, must not need him, but he remained silent until she was asleep.
He was lying on his side, his body protectively curved around the sleeping woman in his arms. His blood was still racing, his eyes and ears straining as though threats were hidden in the shadows, and he was ready for them. He would try and protect her from anything.
Of course, he was currently a threat himself. He felt her heart beating beneath his hand, his careless hand. Did she know she was in love with him?
He was painfully aware that he was. He had nearly lost himself in her when she had come undone. For a mad moment, he had wanted to do it.
He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in. Hubris came before the fall, they said. And he had fallen hard, and was falling still. It meant he could not stay in India. He had to make a new plan and it involved returning posthaste. And he had to do the dreadful thing and tell her everything. It was what a good man would do. He had not wanted to be good in half a lifetime, but now he did; he fair ached with it. Cecily, Rochester, India. He would tell her. His arms tightened around her of their own volition at the thought, as though to say they wanted to hold on to happiness just a while longer.