The Suffragette Scandal

Edward didn’t bother to answer that. She’d given her name as Marshall? She’d called herself Miss? He’d have raised his own eyebrow at her, except that it would ruin the patrician lines of his profile. And right now, he was too busy playing a role to do that.

Instead, he frowned and crossed his arms, glaring at the man in front of him. “Well, now you’ve done it again. That’s not how you pronounce her name. That’s not how you pronounce it at all.”

“Ah.” The sergeant frowned. “Um. Is it… Let me guess. Huzzah! Miss Marshall! With an exclamation point?”

“No,” Edward said. “It’s not Miss anything.”

Free seemed as surprised by this as the sergeant. She’d not remembered it, then. She’d given her maiden name the same way that one kept writing last year’s date well into February. For that matter, did suffragettes even change their name upon marriage? He’d have to ask Free. If she was still willing to talk to him after she realized what he’d done. Edward kept his attention firmly on the sergeant.

“Married, eh? Who’s the unlucky sod, then? One of your tenants, I suppose? Tell him he needs to do a better job of keeping her under his thumb. You should leave her with us for the night. Let us soften her up.”

Edward managed not to shiver at the thought.

“Nonsense.” Edward smiled grimly. “Now you’re mispronouncing everything, Sergeant. She’ll do better with me. As for her husband…” He savored every moment of the sergeant’s expression—the shift from confused to surprised to appalled, the blood draining out of his face. “Let me tell you how to pronounce her name. You say it like this: Lady Claridge. And I’m her husband.”

LADY CLARIDGE.

For a moment, Free’s world stood still. She felt very high up, her lungs unable to gasp for air. He couldn’t—she wasn’t—that thing Edward had said, it was entirely impossible. But then reality asserted itself, and she remembered the plan they’d sketched out together.

He’d been supposed to come up with a brief note of release—the sort with a muddle for a signature, one that wouldn’t be traceable.

He’d apparently changed tactics, and not for the better. A forged order of release from a harried bureaucrat was already pushing things. But this? This was an utter disaster. He might as well have waltzed into a bank and announced his intention to empty the vault.

But she could hardly argue with him in front of the sergeant. That would just get them both thrown back in that cell.

Instead, she narrowed her eyes at him, willing him to change his story. Did I say Lady Claridge? I misspoke. Clark. I meant Mrs. Clark. That’s what he needed to say next.

He kept silent, looking down his nose at the sergeant.

The man had gone goose-fat pale; his eyes were round. Behind him, one of the guards—the one that had shoved her against a wall—whispered, “Oh, bugger me.”

“Your wife,” the sergeant said weakly. “Number 107 is your wife?”

Edward inclined his head to Free. “How was your stay in gaol, dear?”

So they were going to play it this way. Free managed a bored little shrug of her shoulders. “Passable, love. I’ve had better.”

“Well, then.” Edward smiled, letting his teeth show. He turned to the sergeant. “You know perfectly well you can’t hold my viscountess.”

“I’ll…” The sergeant swallowed. “I’ll just release her to your custody, then?”

“No, you’ll release her to her own. While we’re at it, you might as well release the lot of them.”

Oh, he was absolutely going to hear from her about this lie. And how they were to avoid the inquiry that would result afterward, she didn’t know.

“All? But they hadn’t a lawful permit!”

Edward gave him a supercilious little smile. “Come, sergeant. We’ve had this discussion already. When I say ‘all,’ you don’t add a question mark at the end. You say, ‘yes, my lord,’ and you snap to it.”

Free could hardly believe her eyes or her ears. He played the role of viscount so perfectly. His accent… God, if he’d spoken to her like that, with that snobbish public-school-affected mouth full of mush, she’d never have married him.

“Yes, my lord,” the sergeant said. And then he raised his voice. “You heard his lordship. Let them go. Let them all go!”

“My lady?” Edward smiled at Free. There was nothing of the rascal in his smile. It was highborn and stuffy, and she wanted no part of it. Especially since once this mess caught up with them, they’d both be arrested. And this time, there would be real cause behind it, not just some ridiculous quashing of permits.

This was not the time to have that argument.

“My lord,” Free said.

He held out his arm to her and she took it. He conducted her through the station like the best of stuffy husbands—guiding her around debris with a gentle touch, as if she couldn’t figure out not to step in refuse on her own. Her teeth ground, but if this was the act they had to put on…

Of all the lords to impersonate, why on earth had he chosen Claridge? James Delacey hated them enough as it was. It was a good thing that the sergeant knew nothing about the rarified heights of the ton. Delacey would never marry a suffragette, and if his wife had expressed a wish to attend a demonstration, he’d have starved her into compliance rather than fetched her from gaol. Delacey would never joke about exclamation points. He didn’t have a puppy-cannon. He’d never declare his affection for her by saying that he gave a very small damn about her. Edward was nothing, absolutely nothing like Delacey, thank God, because that man made her skin crawl.

Except…

Now that Edward had cut his hair, now that he was wearing that stiff suit of navy superfine…

He looked like him. A little. And she’d mistaken James Delacey for him once. While it had seemed ridiculous at the time, it no longer seemed so impossible. With that stance, with his hair cut in that sober, respectable way, he looked a bit like an older, thinner version of Delacey.

She shook her head, dispelling that awful illusion.

Edward conducted her outside, handed her into a carriage marked with, of all things, the Delacey family crest: a hawk clutching a rose. Stealing, or more forgery? It had to be forgery, she told herself. Had to be. But if so, he must have planned this for longer than a few hours. Why hadn’t he told her?