The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(28)

“And how is he doing?’

About as badly as Amanda was managing now. “The radicals hate it,” she said. “It limits voting to a small minority of married women. Everyone else hates it because, well…” Amanda shrugged once again. “It’s a terrible bill. But it’s a bill at least.”

“I’ll have to ask Oliver what he thinks of it,” Mrs. Marshall said. Oliver was her husband and Free’s half-brother. He was a Member of Parliament—and through a set of circumstances that Amanda had found it polite not to understand, also the half-brother of a duke. He was usually conversant in these affairs.

“Oh, he’s opposed, I’m sure,” Amanda said. “He’s part of the set that says the next suffrage bill must be the universal one. It’s the most dreadful mess.”

“Why is that?” Miss Johnson asked.

Amanda recognized this tactic from her youth. She was being drawn out—by an expert no less. She flushed.

“Well. There’s an argument about who ought to be allowed to vote. All women? Just women who own property? Or maybe only married women. Of course, almost every group favors a bill that allows only their ilk to vote. They all promise they’ll circle back eventually and include the rest—but there’s very little trust that those representations are true.” She considered that. “The mistrust is not unwarranted, given, um, the things that some have said.” No need to go into those. In the beginning, Amanda herself had been one of those women who shied away from universal suffrage. Women, yes, but poor women?

It had taken some interesting conversations with Alice Halifax before Amanda had come around, and she was still embarrassed with herself for her earlier stance.

“Universal suffrage,” she continued, “is a harder task to achieve, but if we’d insisted on it back in 1832…”

She trailed off, realizing that she was the only one talking. Once again, she felt herself flush. When she was seventeen, she’d thought that she could leave the drawing rooms she inhabited. She’d imagined learning more, becoming a larger person. She hadn’t understood that the process of leaving meant that she would never fit in her old life again.

She understood the rules just well enough to remember them a minute too late.

“But,” she said, feeling her cheeks heat, “we needn’t talk politics.” God. It was the most dreadful of drawing-room missteps. How gauche of her. She was so used to being able to say anything that she’d forgotten how to hold her tongue.

She made a great show of checking the clock on the wall. “Dear me. I must be off, or I’ll be late for my appointment with Rickard.” It was in two hours, but no point in mentioning that. She could look over her notes again.

“But we like hearing you talk of politics,” Miss Johnson said gently. “Haven’t you a few more moments?”

Too bad that Amanda knew that tactic, too. You were always supposed to set the other person at ease, no matter how badly she was doing. That left you free to gossip about her in good conscience afterward.

Amanda frowned repressively. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

She’d accepted reality for what it was years ago. She’d no interest in being a proper lady. She was a bull; her place was in a field, flicking flies off with her tail, or—if need be—charging her enemies with horns lowered.

But Miss Johnson sighed almost regretfully. “Do come back,” she said, a pattern card of politeness.

That’s all it was: politeness. If Amanda had been an artist, she’d have painted a swirl of butterflies around Miss Johnson, dancing gently around her. But she wasn’t, and instead, every one of those butterflies seemed to be lodged in her stomach, fluttering in protest.

It didn’t matter. If you were a bull and you happened to find yourself in a china shop, there was nothing to do but head for the exit and try not to knock over any of the displays on your way out. Amanda had understood that years ago, and nothing had changed since then.

“I will,” Amanda said.

It wasn’t precisely a lie. She was sure that Free would send another package one day, that Amanda would be forced to return.

And Miss Johnson and Mrs. Marshall would likely get a good day’s worth of gossip abusing her manners afterward, so it was a fair trade for all the broken china. She might have been able to shrug it off.

But there was one small thing that made this all more than humiliating. Miss Johnson smiled as if she had meant her invitation. Her flaxen hair shone in the morning sun, and her lips were perfectly pink as she said her good-byes.

Things would be bad enough as they were. But it was just Amanda’s bad luck that she had a taste for porcelain dolls.

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO, EDWARD had visited his brother. Tonight, he returned to James’s office once more. The room was almost precisely as it had been when last he’d come. Papers were strewn across the desk; volumes on land care and finance sat on the bookshelves lining the walls. The day’s newspapers had been stuffed in the rubbish bin.

This time though, he found James already in their father’s place at the desk. His brother opened the glassed door to the outside with a suspicious frown and gestured for Edward to sit across from him. “Why are you here, Ned?” he asked skeptically.

“I still prefer Edward,” Edward managed mildly. “But never mind that. I haven’t come back to bicker. I realized that I owe you an apology.”