The Suffragette Scandal
“Of course you don’t understand. You’ve read a story, no doubt, where a man had information. Someone wielded a well-placed knife to make him divulge his secret in time. Good prevailed, and they all lived happily ever after.”
She felt sick.
“That was a tepid piece of fiction written by some man who sat at a comfortable fire, inventing a barely plausible tale for a gullible audience. You don’t torture a man to find out the truth, Miss Marshall, no matter how the stories sound. Any real scoundrel will tell you as much. You torture a man to make him into someone else. True pain is like black ink. Enough of it can blot out a man’s soul. If you’re willing to use it, you can write whatever you wish in its place. Want him to swear to Catholicism? Hand him off to the inquisitors. Want him to believe the sun sets in the east, and the moon is made of green cheese? Ready the hot knives. But once you spill that ink on his soul, you’ll never get it out. He’ll say anything, be anything, believe anything—just so that you’ll stop. You’ll ask him about Delacey, and he’ll invent any story you wish to hear, just to spare himself the pain. But it won’t hold up under observation, because it won’t be true.”
She swallowed.
“So no, Miss Marshall. I won’t give you your easy answer. It doesn’t exist. Go write the messy, difficult story. Write the tale without a happy ending. We’ll not get any other sort tonight.”
It was a good thing it was dark; she didn’t think she could look him in the eye.
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. The light in the main pressroom was blinding after the darkness of the archive room. The women—her women, women whose children she knew, whose hopes she’d listened to—were bustling about. Spreading sand to soak up the oil, shoveling that into buckets, and then scrubbing tables with soap and washing away the last of the residue with vinegar. Already the smell was beginning to dissipate.
Her hands were shaking. She’d never heard Mr. Clark talk like this before. That had been something close to a black rage—and over torture, of all things.
What kind of scoundrel was he?
She took a deep breath. He was the kind of scoundrel that was right.
She had to hone her anger to a fine edge. That poor, miserable creature in her back room was only a tool.
She needed a plan.
And for tonight, she needed a story. Maybe it would be an ugly, bare story, one with no simple endings or clear explanations. But it would be a story nonetheless.
BY THE TIME THE CONSTABLES ARRIVED, solemn in their blue uniforms, and took Mr. Bartlett into custody, Free’s press was running, spitting out pages.
She’d stuck to the bare basics: that denial that she’d crafted before Amanda left, and then the story of the fire and the man captured.
Around midnight, Alice delivered an armload of blankets. Free busied herself setting up a pallet in her office. She was arranging the makeshift bedding when Mr. Clark came in.
“What are you doing?” he shouted over the sound of the press.
She hadn’t been able to look at him since the archive room. She still couldn’t do it now. She stared at the gray wool blankets in her hands instead. “I’m preparing to sleep here.”
He folded his arms and glared at her.
“My house is gone.” She had to yell to be heard above the noise, and it felt good to vent her anger. “Someone must stay here overnight to be certain nothing else will happen. Alice and her husband are bedding down in the archive room, and since I have nowhere else to go—”
“If you’re staying,” he said, leaning down to her, “I’m staying.”
“Mr. Clark, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.”
She made the mistake of looking up as he said that. His eyes were dark. She’d expected him to be smoldering with anger after their argument. Instead, he seemed cold—ice cold. As if he didn’t care about her, didn’t care about anything.
He cast her another dark look, and then shook his head and turned away.
Chapter Nine
THE PRESS FINISHED ITS RUN after one in the morning. They packaged the papers in weary silence, readying them to be taken down to the station. A little water and soap, and a nightrail borrowed from Alice, readied Free for bed, such as it would be tonight. But after Alice and her husband had retired, Free found herself unable to close her eyes. She stared instead at the darkened ceiling and realized she had one more task to do tonight.
She stood and went to her door.
Mr. Clark was out on the main floor. He’d shed his coat; Alice had apparently brought him his share of blankets as well, and he was sitting on these. His feet were bare and he was examining his hand in the moonlight. He looked up as she opened the door, reached over, and pulled on a glove. He didn’t stand as she approached. He didn’t speak. He simply watched her come closer.
God, he still radiated cold.
She was not wearing as much as she normally would have. Oh, she knew the nightrail covered everything that needed to be covered. Still, it left her feeling…naked. And she already felt more than a little exposed to this man.
She knelt beside him. He didn’t move, not so much as an inch.
“Thank you,” she told him.
His expression didn’t change, not in the slightest, but he looked over at her as if he could freeze her heart.
She didn’t stop. “Thank you for your help. For stopping the fire. For stopping both the fires.” Her voice dropped. “Thank you for stopping me from doing something I would have regretted. I hadn’t said thank you yet—and I owe you that.”
“It was nothing.”
“And thank you for staying now—”
He cut her off with a shake of his head. “You’re making me out to be quite the hero, Miss Marshall. Tell yourself whatever lies you wish, but leave me out of them. I’m here tonight because I don’t want to be alone. No other reason.”
It took him a moment to realize that he was telling the simple truth. That she was sitting near him on the floor. Not next to him; not quite. Two feet separated them. Distance enough…and yet not enough distance.
He cast a glance in her direction.
“So, Mr. Clark,” she said. “When have you ever seen a man tortured?”
“Elsewhere.” He bit the word off. “It was far worse than you can imagine, Miss Marshall. I don’t have the stomach to talk about it, and I certainly don’t have the desire.”
“Very well, then.”