At the end of February, on her twentieth birthday, Nora stood at the fireplace as the door of the cottage opened and Aunt Martha stepped in. William followed right after, carrying her aunt’s bags.
“Hello, dove.”
“Auntie.” She’d invited Aunt Martha to the cottage, but now that she was here, Nora didn’t know how to feel. Rationally, her aunt was probably the least culpable in the events that had so overturned Nora’s life, but still, in some ways, she felt more betrayed by Aunt Martha than by anyone. If anyone should have understood, it should have been her. In fact, Nora thought her aunt understood very well—and that was where the great betrayal lay. To understand and still stand back? Her father thought he was helping her; Nora could believe that was true. Her brother thought he was saving her; Nora could believe that as well. Not forgive it, but believe it.
Her aunt knew her pain, or one akin to it, and yet she’d stood back.
But it was that knowing which made Aunt Martha the best conduit for Nora’s reclaiming of her name and return to the world—a return she meant to control entirely. When Lady Nora Tate came back to light, she would be the woman Nora truly was, and no other—and she’d sorted out a way to do it.
She’d been in Bath nearly two months. Her body was almost fully recovered, except for more weight she needed to gain and the yellow horror on her head. Her mind, too, was fully her own again, except for the nightmares. She’d made some decisions about the course of the rest of her life. This visit was the first step on that path.
But she couldn’t seem to move or speak, now that her aunt was here.
William set the bags against the wall near the stairs and took Aunt Martha’s hat and coat.
“Oh, Nora. How I’ve missed you. May I hold you?”
Nora nodded but didn’t come forward.
Aunt Martha crossed the full distance between them and wrapped her in her arms. “Happy birthday, little dove. Thank you for calling me here.”
All Nora managed was another nod. Her plan would collapse before she’d started, if she didn’t find her voice. She tried again. “We have much to talk about, Auntie.”
Aunt Martha stepped back and smiled sadly. “Yes, we do.”
“I’ll put on the tea,” William offered, standing a respectful distance back.
Nora laughed a little and offered him a smile that showed her gratitude and her humor. William had developed some strong feelings about tea. He’d taken to requesting that Nell keep a pot of coffee brewing all day as well. But he understood the importance of tea to Britons.
He also understood the importance of this visit. They’d spoken daily, at great length, as Nora sorted out what she needed and why she needed it. She’d spoken, and he’d listened. He’d answered the questions she’d asked, and asked questions of her, but he’d never tried to tell her what he thought she needed. Sometimes, she’d seen him struggle with that, want to say something and work his jaw as if he were truly biting his tongue to hold back. But he’d held back and let her sort it out in her own way.
She knew now, and he was there to help her, but not to direct her.
So he went off to put the kettle on. They’d both learned to use the stove on Nell’s days off—like today, when they’d given her an extra day off so that the cottage would be fully private for this visit.
“Let’s sit, Auntie.” She gestured to the sofa. When her aunt sat there, Nora took up the armchair nearby.
“You look very well, Nora. I’m so glad to see it. How do you feel?”
“I’m well. Stronger every day. Did you find out about Kate and Maude?”
William’s private detective had warned against continuing the search for the women who’d first saved Nora. Once they’d found her, continuing the search for her friends might have revealed her widely, and might have put Kate and Maude at greater risk as well. But she didn’t know at all what had happened to them after the very first days at Holloway, when they’d all been separated and locked into the individual boxes they called cells.
It finally occurred to her, as her mind cleared and she could think of more than her own struggles, that Aunt Martha could use her Kensington Rose Club connections for information. And thus had her aunt been the first person in her family to earn a reprieve.
“I have some news. Some good, and some not. Kate is safe and well. She was released from Holloway after ten days, and, after some time in hiding, she’s back with her family in Okehampton. I was able to send word to her that you, too, are well.”
Ten days was less time than Nora served. She wondered what Kate had done differently to be treated more gently, but in the end, it didn’t matter. She sighed a great heave of teary relief. “Oh, that’s wonderful. And she’s content?”
“She is, I think. She’ll not work in service again, but away from London, she’s safe, and her family forgives her.”
“There’s nothing for them to forgive.”
“Others see it differently, dove. You know I agree with you, but not all do. That’s the struggle, after all.”
“Do you agree with me, Auntie? Truly?” Taking this tangent could tear open resentments Nora had decided to close up, and derail her plan, but the words came nevertheless.
“Of course I do, Nora. You know I do.”
There was nothing to be gained in circling that argument. Nora focused and returned to her point. “And Maude?”
Aunt Martha’s mouth set in a grim line. “The news is less happy there. I did find her, though she’s been in hiding for some time. She was released from Holloway with Kate, but arrested again in December, and held for two weeks. She’s lost her job and her flat.”
“And her children? She has two daughters.” Nora thought of serious Amy, four years old and helping her learn to care for children, and portly little baby Pauline.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I don’t have news about them. But … but they’re not with her, dove. It’s likely they’ve been taken from her.”
William came in with the tea tray. He’d brought a plate of biscuits as well, laid out in a circle, and Nora might have been charmed by his efforts, if she hadn’t been reeling from the thought of children being made virtual orphans because their mother wanted them to have a claim to their own destiny.
“Is everything all right?” he asked as he set the tray on the table before them.
“Maude’s in hiding. She’s lost everything. They took Amy and Pauline from her.” Nora leaned forward to pour the tea.
“Damn.” He came and stood beside Nora’s chair. “Is there anything we can do, Martha?”
“No, I think not. I can’t think how we could intervene, and any attempt would expose you both too much.”
“Yes, but I’m done hiding. That’s what else I want to talk with you about, Auntie.” Now that it was time to put the plan in motion, Nora faltered. What she meant to do, it would very likely make her the centre of the biggest scandal in England. It would certainly tell her father, and anyone else who might wish to know, where she was.
In her hesitation, William must have sensed her turmoil. His hand settled on her shoulder and squeezed gently. That was all—a show of support, and an offer of his strength if she needed it.
Rooted in her hesitation was the same fear that had kept her aunt on the sidelines of the fight. Understanding that, she set her fear aside. “I want to speak with the press. Is there a reporter that you know to whom I might tell my story? A woman, perhaps, but one whose work has reach?”
Aunt Martha sat with her teacup hovering between its saucer and her mouth. She took a long, very slow breath and cleared her throat. “Nora, are you certain? Do you understand what such a move would do?”
She thought she understood very well. She’d worked it out with William over days of long talks. “Do you remember the night we rode to the Howsend house?” The night she’d ruined their daughter’s dinner by speaking her mind, and had fallen off a cliff into manufactured madness.
“Vividly.” Her aunt set her tea on the table.
“I told you that night that I believed until women of name and means risked themselves for the cause, no one of name and means would care. Well, I didn’t set out to risk what I risked, but those things happened to me. They happened to me because no one knew who I was, so people in power thought I was no one. They thought I didn’t matter. But as Eve Frazier or Nora Tate, I am the same woman. I feel the same pain, and have the same thoughts. I matter the same, no more, and no less. Now that I’ve experienced what I have, I know more than ever how right I was. I need to stand up and say that this happened to me. To Lady Nora Tate, the daughter of the Earl of Tarrin, descended from Dunstan, who sacrificed himself to save his king and speed the birth of England.”
In saying the words, Nora found strength and righteousness. More than simply an example from the noble class to shock the people awake to the abuses against suffragettes, she was the descendant of heroes. Her father spoke often of their long and storied lineage. In it, he saw his responsibility to preserve the honourable reputation of the title of Tarrin, and from that place, he’d done what he’d done to Nora.
But he was wrong. It wasn’t in the reputation that their family’s honour lay. It was in acts of heroism, in risking everything for what they believed in. Fighting the valiant fight.
“Florence Miller,” her aunt said. “She’s a sister in the cause. She edited The Woman’s Signal during its heyday, and she contributes to the Daily News now. I know her; I can arrange for her to come to Bath.” She reached over and set her hand on Nora’s knee. “If you’re certain, dove. Once you take this step, there’s no turning back.”
“I know. I’m certain.” Certain, but terrified. William’s hand slid from her shoulder to caress her arm. He knew her fears.
“You’re very brave, Nora. I’m a bit in awe of you. I … I’ve brought you something. Not a gift, though I’ve one of those as well.” She stood and went to the bags William had set aside. Rummaging in one, she came up with a small package wrapped in brown paper and twine. She sat again on the sofa and handed the package to Nora.
“You’ve earned these, little dove. As much as any who’ve worn them.”
Nora untied the twine and folded open the paper. Inside lay two items that made her eyes itch with sudden tears. Both were pins. The first was a white silk rose. A Kensington Rose.
The second was a violet, white, and green striped grosgrain ribbon. A silver banner across its top was engraved with the words FOR VALOUR. Another silver piece had been slid onto the ribbon. It read: 21st November 1911, SEVEN WEEKS. A silver disk at its bottom bore the words HUNGER STRIKE on one side.
On the other side was her name: LADY NORA TATE.
That night, after Aunt Martha had gone up to bed without lifting even a single eyebrow at the news that William and Nora shared a bedroom, Nora sat in bed with the rosewood box that had been her aunt’s birthday gift and studied the pins she’d set inside it. It was a bitter honour, to have that ribbon. A true honour, and momentous, but commemorating a horror. The rose, too. Sometimes, Nora wondered whether she truly had deserved it, whether she truly was a warrior in this battle. She’d fallen into her circumstances, or been pushed. Few choices, in the light of retrospection, had been her own.
The next choice, however, and every one thereafter, would be hers alone.
Having closed up the cottage for the night, William came in and shut the door. As he began changing into bedclothes, Nora shifted her attention to him.
They weren’t physically intimate yet, though they slept together every night and Nora was fully aware that he desired her. It was often difficult not to notice his desire. She felt desire of her own, and remembered how wonderful it was to feel his body inside hers. But she wasn’t yet ready, and not because of the treatments she’d had in the hospital or any rough abuse in prison. Her relationship with William, consummating it in every way, seemed like the final piece of her puzzle, the one that wouldn’t have a place until all the other pieces were locked together.
But sleeping in his arms kept the nightmares at bay, so they slept together every night. Truly, here in Bath, they’d begun something not so far from a marriage, and Nora loved everything about it.
He settled beside her and looked into the box in her hands. “May I?” At her nod, he picked up the grosgrain ribbon. “I hope you’ll understand what I mean when I say that I hate that you have this.”
“So do I. But I’m honoured to have it, also.”
“Yes. It’s a war medal. No one wants to be in the situation to earn one.”
“Yes. This is a war, of a sort. Christopher would probably disagree.” He’d fought a real war, after all, and been badly wounded.
“I don’t think he would, darling. But you’d have to ask him.”
Nora cast a sidelong glance and made her displeasure known; William replied with a tilt of his head and a shrug. She’d brought her brother up, not him, and he wasn’t going to apologise for using the opportunity. That was fair, she supposed. But her new puzzle had no piece for forgiving her brother.
He set the hunger strike medal back in the box. “Now that you’ve started your plan, how do you feel?”
“Terrified. Aunt Martha called me brave, but I don’t feel brave at all. I simply feel in my heart that it’s the right thing.”
“That is bravery, Nora—to act despite your fear.”
“I suppose.” She closed the box and set it on the bedside table. William turned off the lamp, and they settled into their nighttime embrace.
He kissed her head, nuzzling through the short curls that would become waves if the damned mop would finally grow out. “How was it being with your aunt again?”
“Good, I think. I missed her. It’s easier not to be so hurt and angry when I can remember how much I enjoy her company.” She felt an odd tension in William’s arms, as if he were holding something back. “Don’t say it, William. You’ve already advocated for your friend once tonight.”
He chuckled. She loved that sound, especially when her head lay on his chest. “You keep opening doors for me to say something.”
“Fine, then we’ll not speak. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Not just yet. You know I do have a gift for you today. More than the music box. But I’m holding onto it until you’re ready to say yes.”
He’d given her a glorious clockwork box that played ‘Ode to Joy.’ As the tune played, a tiny white bird pushed open its golden cage and flew out to perch atop it. “You bought me a ring?”
“I did. I’ll give it to you right now, if you’re ready. Or in ten years, if you’re ready then. Or any time. But I want you to know that I have it.”
“I’m not ready just yet.” She lifted onto her elbow and looked down at his shadowed face, wavering in the shaded moonlight. “After I talk with Mrs. Miller. After people know, and we see. Ask me then.”
He smiled. “I will.”
Florence Miller was a sturdy, businesslike woman of about sixty years. She’d been a feminist, suffragette, and social reformer for her whole life, and she carried herself precisely like a woman who’d been fighting for forty years or more. She was, in fact, rather terrifying, and Nora might well have lost her nerve if she hadn’t already stepped so far onto this path.
Eager for the story, Mrs. Miller came to Bath the very next day after Aunt Martha contacted her. She shooed William away—all the way out of the cottage—within five minutes of her arrival. Nora let him go with a pang. Her strength was her own, but his strength reminded her of hers. She was sorry to lose the warm hand on her shoulder. But she fingered the brooches on her blouse and remembered that she was brave because she was afraid and went on anyway.
Aunt Martha, Mrs. Miller allowed to stay, and the three women sat in the cozy cottage parlour with tea and cakes. Nora told her story, and Mrs. Miller wrote it down. She was kind, and gentle, in her questions. She interrupted rarely, and only to seek clarification. She waited for Nora to come to a pause in her thinking before she asked a question that would push her further or take her in a new direction. At some point in the afternoon, while she wove her tale, Nora forgot why she was telling it, the looming scandal she created with each word, and simply told her story.
She was the woman who had lived that life. The picture made of all those pieces.
She was whole now. Nearly. One more piece. And she was ready.
By the time she was done, the day had reached its gloaming, and she noticed that someone—Aunt Martha, no doubt—had turned on the electric lamps. Mrs. Miller had filled pages and pages of a leather notebook, and Nora had told everything, from the death of her mother forward to her sojourn in Bath. She’d told about her father and Christopher, about William, about her aunt. She told about Lady Francine’s dinner, and the doctors. She told what she remembered about the blue bottle and being locked in her room. She told about running away—though she was careful not to name Kate or Maude—and Parliament, and Holloway, and Bedlam. She’d told everything she remembered, everything she felt. She told and told until her jaw ached and her voice was hardly more than a whisper.
Aunt Martha had spoken only a few words in all the hours of the afternoon. She’d simply sat and listened, and occasionally dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
When she was finished, Mrs. Miller closed her pen and latched her notebook. “You’re a brave young woman, Lady Nora.”
“No braver than the others. Less brave than many.” She lifted the medal on her blouse. “I’ve seen ribbons like these with three and four bands on them. I don’t know that I could go through it even once more.”
“I think, if your path takes you back to Holloway, you will do what must be done.”
The mere thought made her stomach cramp. “It won’t. I’m not staying in England. After we’re married, I’ll go with William to his home in America.”
Aunt Martha showed mild surprise. Nora expected censure from the old warrior woman who would write her story, but she got none. Mrs. Miller smiled a grandmotherly smile. “They fight there as well, Lady Nora. Somehow, I think you’ll not so easily give up a fight you’ve risked so much for.”
“You honour me, Mrs. Miller.”
“You understand that this story will very likely cause a stir, yes? Your family will be the cause of talk for some time, and you’ll not be a heroine to those who oppose women’s suffrage.
“I understand. I’m ready.”
“You’re only twenty, my lady. Is that right?”
“Yes. As of a few days ago.”
“Well, my belated best wishes, then. But you understand you’re still a minor, yes? As you are unmarried, your father remains your guardian.”
She and William had discussed that as well. Nora knew her father well enough to know he wouldn’t act to take her over like that again, not with his treatment of her a scandal in full flower. He was the man, after all, who’d lied to Scotland Yard so that it wouldn’t be known she’d run away. He wouldn’t try to claim her.
But if he did, he’d find himself with a vicious fight on his hands.
“I’m ready.”
Three days later, the story was in the Daily News. GENTLE SUFFRAGETTE! The headline read.
EARL’S DAUGHTER TELLS HARROWING TALE OF IMPRISONMENT AND TORTURE.
The fight for women’s suffrage has hit the highest echelons of Society. Lady Nora Tate, daughter of Oliver, Earl of Tarrin, sat with this reporter and told of horrible abuses at the hands of those charged to protect us.
The story began on Page One and continued over the whole of Page Three. Mrs. Miller had got two photographs for her story from Mr. Hardy, the detective—one of the few formal photographs ever taken of Nora, when she was fifteen, and a group image of her and others being taken to Holloway Prison.
But the Daily News was a radical leftist publication, not read in the circles of power, and the story didn’t create a true crisis until the next day, when the Times contacted Aunt Martha, who corroborated Mrs. Miller’s reporting. Nora and William knew to expect what happened next, and she was ready when the Times reporter—a man, and not nearly so sympathetic as Mrs. Miller—found their cottage in Bath.
William stayed at her side for that interview, and for the photograph the reporter insisted upon. But it was Nora keeping him calm, not the other way around. His hackles were up like a wolf challenged for his pack. The threat of violence came off him in thumping waves with each belligerent question the reporter asked.
But Nora was ready for each question. She answered them calmly and pointedly, without dissembling on any point. Even when he dared ask about her relationship with William. She’d had to put her hand on William’s leg to keep him in his seat, but she herself was calm, and she answered honestly. There was no scandal she would wear like a shameful cowl. She was proud of who she was, and whom she loved.
The story in the Times condemned her nonetheless, for the scandal, and her ‘lawlessness,’ and especially for the way she ‘abased herself and cheapened her name’ with William. Her father was condemned as well, for not having control of her.
Nora read the piece with a bitter smile. All the old worries about dragging the family name through scandal seemed trivial now. A name that could be brought down by a woman’s voice was not so much of a name at all.
The House of Tarrin was stronger than that. It had been built of sturdy stone and valiant blood.
William read the story and slammed the paper into a wad between his fists, then hurled it into the fireplace. “Bastard! I’d like to see him show his face here again! I’ll take it off his fucking skull!”
“It doesn’t matter.” She caught his arm as he murdered the flaming paper with the poker, stabbing it viciously again and again. “William, it doesn’t matter.”
“The things they say!”
“William, listen. It’s doesn’t matter what they say I am. I know who I am. We’ll be married, and we’ll go to California, and they can have their scandal here. It doesn’t matter.”
He seethed for a few seconds more, until her words finally made the fore of his mind.
He calmed at once and turned to her, his face now slack with naked need. “Nora?”
Their love was a powerful thing. She felt it all through her, like an electric current. “I’m ready, William. Ask me now.”
“Marry me, darling. Please marry me.”
“Yes.”
When he grabbed her into his arms, she put her hands in his hair and pulled him down. She kissed him with all the potent passion she felt.