The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(21)

Free let out a long breath. Amanda was right, and it was a calming thought. But then Amanda always was a calming influence. They’d met almost a decade before, when Amanda’s Aunt Violet—Violet Malheur now, the former Countess of Cambury, and a brilliant, successful woman—had announced a series of scientific discoveries, upsetting all of England in the best way possible. Amanda had attended Girton a year behind Free. After years of being friends, it had seemed easy to ask Amanda to join her when she started her newspaper. Now Amanda reported on various Acts of Parliament. She spent half her time in London, taking notes in the Ladies’ Gallery.

When she was here, though, she and Amanda shared this house and a charwoman. The land they had built the house on—leased for as many years as Free had been able to get—had once been a cow pasture on the edge of Cambridge. The space also housed the building where her press stood, some fifty feet away. That way, when the press was running late at night, they’d not be bothered by the noise. Her dwelling was scarcely a cottage—three small rooms—but she felt secure here, surrounded by her friends.

She shook her head. “Then we’ll figure out who is doing it, and we’ll stop them.” She hesitated. “In fact… Along those lines, do you recall the man who was here the other day?”

“Mr. Clark.” Amanda frowned. “Is that right? Is he advertising with us?”

“Yes. Well.” Free grimaced. “He wasn’t really here about advertising.”

“What a shame. With Gillam’s pulling out—”

“He was here because he claims that the Honorable James Delacey”—Free gave the word Honorable a sarcastic twist as she spoke—“is behind the copying. I’m not sure we can trust Mr. Clark. In fact, I’m certain we can’t. But he may be telling the truth about that.”

She spilled the whole story. Almost the whole story. She left off mention of the blackmail and the forgery. She also—somehow—didn’t mention the compliments he’d given her or the solid feel of Mr. Clark’s hands on her waist as he’d boosted her to the window.

Amanda listened with increasing disapproval. “Free,” she finally interrupted, “whatever were you thinking? Going off alone at night with a strange man? What if—”

“She’s taken bigger risks,” Alice said with less rancor.

“I told Mrs. Simms where I would be,” Free said. “I left a letter, so if anything happened to me—”

“Oh, good.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “If my best friend had been killed, I could have avenged her death. What a comfort that would be! You have to be more careful, Free. I’ve seen some of the letters sent to you. There was that incident two years ago with the lantern, and just three weeks ago, those letters painted on our door in the dead of night.”

“Well, nothing happened.” Free looked away. “As Alice says, I’ve done more dangerous things for a story. If I went into hiding just because people sent me vile threats, I’d spend my entire life cowering beneath a blanket.”

“Oh, don’t do this.” Amanda huffed. “There’s a massive difference between hiding beneath a blanket and slipping out at night with a man you just met. I don’t care how sterling his credentials were.”

“Oh, they weren’t sterling at all,” Free said. “I’d never have trusted him if they were. They were more like tarnished brass, and we laughed at them together.”

“Even worse. You have to stop taking risks, Free. Learn to be afraid for once.”

As if that was a skill she had to learn. Free’s nostrils flared. “My entire life is a risk. That’s what it means when I put my name on a masthead and speak up. If someone decides to make an end of me, there’s nothing I can do about it—nothing at all but surround myself with the illusion of safety. If Mr. Clark had wanted to kill me, he could have simply crept into my room in the middle of the night with a garrote.”

That brought to mind a memory of one of Free’s nightmares, a dark, lurid image that lurked at the edge of her conscious thought. Oh, she was afraid. She never stopped being afraid. She just tried not to let it stop her in turn.

Years ago, her aunt had passed away, leaving Free a surprising legacy. But the money she’d received was not the most valuable thing her aunt had left her. Her Aunt Freddy had also written her a letter. One of these days, her aunt had written, you are going to learn to be afraid. I hope that what I’ve managed to save for you will help you move on from that in some small degree.

Free kept that letter on the table next to her bed. Freddy had been right; she had learned to be afraid. Sometimes, if a nightmare was particularly bad, Free took the paper out and held it, and it kept the worst of her fears at bay.

She shook her head, shoving this all away. “We can argue about the past all we like. But the truth is that nothing I did could have stopped a determined assailant—not my good sense, not my most demure choices.”

“Free,” Amanda protested.

But Alice leaned over the table and patted Amanda’s hand. “She’s right, Amanda. If she didn’t take risks, then she’d be a lot less like herself, and a lot more like…” She trailed off, perhaps realizing what she’d been about to say.

“Like me,” Amanda said bitterly.

“No,” Alice said. “You take risks. In your own way.”