A Rogue of One's Own

“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.