She sat up straight and looked down at him with a measure of alarm. “Is this what you wrote in your war diaries?”

He squinted up at her. “Possibly.”

“You mean to ruin London Print with scandalous publications, but forbid me to do the same?”

Openly speaking against the expansionist wars had been tantamount to treason under the Tory government—the people who did so were considered radicals. As far as the current prime minister Gladstone was concerned, at this point she had no faith he would be much different.

Tristan observed her with a glint of intrigue in his eyes. “Are you afraid for me? Do you worry they will put me in the dock?”

She shifted uneasily. She had not expected him to hold such radical opinions. She had also—naïvely, she now understood—underestimated the depths of the scars he had brought home from the war. And yes, she worried.

“I agree with your sentiments,” she said truthfully. “I suppose I have grown overly fond of our publishing house.”

“Our, is it,” he said. “Do not worry. I have a way with words. They shall see whatever they wish to see in the diaries.”

“You are good with words,” she said, and not wishing to stir up his memories further: “What about poetry—will you write more poetry soon?”

Instead of this distracting him, his expression became darker still. “Who is to say.”

“Whyever not?”

“As you made it known rather fiercely at Claremont, you want truth in your art.”

She rememberd it with a faint smile. “It ruffled your feathers.”

“It did,” he said. “For I agree with you. And the truth and I have a rather strained relationship.”

Her frown lines appeared. “Go on.”

He nodded, as if to himself. “My father tried his best to whip me into shape, as you know. He certainly enjoyed doing it more than he should have, but I think in part he did it in the hope it would make things simple for me, teach me very clearly right from wrong. I suppose he thought it would be easier for a man to be upright when things are very clear and simple in his mind. But despite his efforts, I find things are so rarely just one thing or another. And I find there is no end to the truth; reach for it, and it slips away. I only succeeded in holding on to it once, and I turned it into the poems in Pocketful. Then I went abroad, and I have not written anything meaningful since.” He gave a shrug. “So who is to say.”

She understood then that by truth he did not mean honesty, but something more essential: the same mystery perhaps that had Hattie looking vexed for days because her painting lacked “heart,” or saw Annabelle working deep into the night to “capture the true spirit” of a long-dead script with her translation.

She brushed a fingertip over Tristan’s brooding bottom lip. “For what it’s worth,” she murmured, “I believe your father beat you out of shape, not into one.”

He went very still. A parade of thoughts and emotions rushed behind his eyes, there and gone when he next blinked.

He rolled over onto his side and rested his chin in his palm, his expression carefully blank. “And you,” he said. “Have you any aspirations outside your work for the Cause?”

“No.” She shook her head, amused by the ignorance of the question. “Never.”

“Never is a long time,” he said mildly.

“It is a necessity. Do you recall the quote over my mantelpiece?”

He thought a moment, then gave a nod. “‘I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.’”

“Yes. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this line in 1792. 1792, Tristan. It has been nearly a hundred years, and yet here we are, still fighting.”

His brows lowered with surprise. “That is a long time indeed.”

“And take John Stuart Mill—he has tried to make us equals for the past fifteen years. Did you know that?”

“I did know, yes.”

“He failed. Or take Gladstone—he promised us the moon as long as we supported his campaign. Now I learned he muzzled members of his cabinet when oppressive policies are tabled for a vote. He warned Millicent Fawcett’s husband in person not to abstain; imagine, he is not even allowed to abstain from voting against us, against the interests of his own wife.”

“It is a shame Gladstone would do that,” Tristan said quietly.

“So you see, when I say never, I mean it. If they wanted to hear us, they would have by now. I try to believe otherwise—I must—but there is a likelihood I shall be cold in my grave before the women of Britain are free.”

Tristan’s hand enveloped hers with warm pressure. “And if that comes to pass?”

She gazed into his searching eyes. “Then I shall leave this world knowing I spent my life on a good cause, and not regret it.”

He moved suddenly, and she was well pinned beneath him. Her surprised laugh faded fast, because he was looking down at her with an ardent glow in his eyes that left her a little weak in the legs.

“Ah, princess,” he said, a rare tenderness in his voice. “How you humble me.”

“As though anything could humble you.” She turned her head to the side when he made to kiss her. “And why do you call me that? Princess?”

He sighed. “You still have not read any Tennyson, have you?”

“I have not.”

“He wrote a poem called The Princess. It is about women like you.”

Her smile was bemused, and a little flattered. “How so?”

“I’ll cite a passage, and you shall see.”

“If you insist.”

He chuckled. “How could I deny such an ardent request?” The smile stayed in his voice as he continued:

  “But while they talked, above their heads I saw

The feudal warrior lady-clad; . . .

That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls,

And much I praised her nobleness, and ‘Where,’

Asked Walter . . . ‘lives there such a woman now?’

Quick answered Lilia ‘There are thousands now

Such women, but convention beats them down:

It is but bringing up; no more than that:

You men have done it: how I hate you all!

Ah, were I something great! I wish I were

Some might poetess, I would shame you then,

That love to keep us children! O I wish

That I were some great princess, I would build

Far off from men a college like a man’s,

And I would teach them all that men are taught;

We are twice as quick!’”

Long before he had finished, a peculiar sensation had begun traveling up and down her spine. Thought fragments shifted, trying to find a way to fit together.

“I must admit,” she said. “I do like this much better than Patmore’s Angel in the House.”

“And yet you seem vaguely disturbed,” he remarked; “why?”

She looked at him straight. “This poem expresses admiration for unconventional women, or is there a sinister conclusion at its end?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “No. It very much expresses admiration.”

“And yet you have called me princess for years, when we have only recently begun to like each other.”

His eyes turned opaque, like a well muddied by a sudden disturbance in its depths.

He was holding her face, and she felt his thumbs, very gently, touch her cheekbones.

“Perhaps I have always liked and admired you, Lucie.”

Her mind blanked.

It was a statement as well as a question, and it left her breathless and fleetingly disoriented.

“And are you normally in the habit of dyeing a woman’s hair blue when you admire her?” she said.

He did not smile. “I was a foolish boy when I inked your braids. And while I apologize for it, I cannot regret doing it—your hair was the silkiest thing I had ever touched and remained so for years.”

He was touching it now, and she could feel the reverence. It had been the first thing he had asked her to do when they had crossed the line, that she take down her hair. How long had he dreamed of touching it again?

Her heart was beating far too fast. He was rearranging her past one careless sentence at a time.

“I’d rather you not say such things,” she said softly.

His caresses ceased. “And why not?”

“Because I might believe them.”

When he made to reply, she shook her head. Because above all, she was frightened—the racing heart, the shortness of breath, it was fear. It seemed logical and natural that when there was a tender past, and a magical now, there would be a future as well.

And there could be no future.

Nothing thrived, or even survived, unless it could continue to grow, and the attraction that had sprung between them had nowhere to go beyond these stolen, dazzling hours. Even if his words now were spoken in earnest and not part of some careless seduction, she did not wish to marry. He would have to marry. And in this moment, here by the river, drunk on Pimm’s and the tender touch of his fingers in her hair, she wished all of it could somehow be different. And that frightened her most of all.