The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(27)

“If ever you change your mind,” he said, “do let me know.”

“You mean, if I decide to trust you?”

For a moment, his eyes grew dark. His fingers tapped against her cheek. And then he moved away. “I’m a realist, Miss Marshall. I don’t hope for things that can never be. I meant that you might one day relax your requirements.” He turned away. “Now go home and sleep. I’ll watch the mails.”

Chapter Seven

“IT’S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU, Lady Amanda.”

Lady Amanda Ellisford sat, her hands clasped around a saucer, trying to remember why she was doing this again. Oh, yes. That was it. She was doing this because apparently, she loved pain.

Not that there was anything inherently painful about visiting Free’s sister in law. Nothing at all. Mrs. Jane Marshall was perfectly lovely. Her secretary was…more than that.

Once, Amanda had made morning and afternoon visits alike with no sense of unease. Now, though, the trappings of the social call—the plate of biscuits and sandwiches, the clink of cup and saucer—served as an ever-present reminder of what she no longer was.

She was no longer the girl who sat in pink-papered drawing rooms yearning for more.

And yet here she was. Sitting. In a drawing room.

“Just Amanda will do,” she said, trying not to sound stiff. “There’s no need to Lady Amanda me.”

Time was, there’d been nothing stiff about her under circumstances like these. She’d known how to make small talk about nothing at all for hours on end—a consequence of having had nothing in her life to talk about. But the skill had atrophied after years of disuse, and now, it seemed as if it had been some other girl who had been able to chatter away without flinching.

Today, even the tick of the clock behind them seemed to reprimand her. You no longer belong here. You walked away. Why do you think you can simply come back?

It echoed a long-remembered voice. You went away once. I wish you’d do it again, and never come back.

Mrs. Jane Marshall obviously had never known what it meant to be conscious of her every move. She wore a day gown of pink-and-orange checks, trimmed with yellow lace. It would have been a hideous combination on another woman—like imagining flamingo feathers stuck haphazardly in a chicken’s tail. On her, it just…was.

Amanda felt like the badly feathered one in the room.

“I’m only in London a few more days,” she said. “Free asked if I would bring by a few letters—and this for the boys.” She held out an envelope and a brightly wrapped package.

“She spoils them,” Jane said, but she smiled as she took the package. “I’ll be sure to write her a thank-you. And thank you so much for bringing it by.”

“I have no wish to bother you,” Amanda said, making sure to look at Mrs. Marshall directly and at her secretary not at all. “I’ll be out of your hair in a twinkling.”

“But you’re never a bother to us.” Those words, said in so sweet a tone, did not come from Mrs. Marshall. Amanda turned—mostly reluctantly—to take in her secretary.

If Mrs. Jane Marshall was a flamingo, her social secretary, Miss Genevieve Johnson, was a perfect little turtledove. Or—to use another, not quite inappropriate example—she was like a china doll. She was perfectly proportioned. Her skin was a flawless porcelain, her eyes brilliantly blue. If there were any justice in the world, she would be stupid or unfriendly. But she wasn’t; she had always been perfectly kind to Amanda, and her intelligence was obvious to anyone who listened to her for any length of time.

She was exactly the sort of woman whom Amanda would have stood in awe of, when she’d had her Season nearly a decade past—the sort of brilliant, shining social diamond that Amanda would have watched breathlessly from afar.

In those ten years, Amanda had figured out exactly why she’d watched women like her with such avid intent. But understanding why Miss Johnson made her uneasy made her feel more in doubt, rather than less.

When uncertain about a conversation, ask a question requiring a long answer. That was what her grandmother would say.

Amanda struggled to think of something appropriate. “So… How much do you two still have to do for your spring benefit? The last Free told me, you were up to your ears.”

Miss Johnson’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rose. Not so high as to be rude; it seemed an involuntary response on her part, and Amanda realized she had misstepped somehow.

“We only have to send the thank-yous for attendance,” Mrs. Marshall said. “But there was a great deal that had to be done.”

Oh, God. It had already happened. Amanda felt herself blush fiercely. Of course it had. Miss Johnson would never have made so horrible a blunder. If Miss Johnson was a china doll, Amanda felt like the proverbial bull entering the shop where she was kept. She was outsized and clumsy, capable of smashing everything around her with one misplaced flick of her ungainly tail. She felt both awkward and stupid.

“But tell us why you’re in town,” Miss Johnson said. “Are you visiting your sisters?”

“My sisters don’t see me.” Her response was too curt, too bitter.

Miss Johnson drew back, and Amanda could practically hear china plates crashing around her, breaking to smithereens.

“I’m here to talk to Rickard about his suffrage bill,” she continued. “He’s been circulating it, trying to get anyone else to sign on.”