The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(3)
“Oh, too bad.” Her tone was sympathetic, but her eyes were mocking. “I see now. You’re a womanthrope.”
He’d never heard the word before, but the meaning was all too clear. She’d judged him to be just like every other man in England. Foolish to protest that he was different. Foolish to care what this unknown woman thought of him.
He spoke anyway. “No. I am a realist. Likely you’ve never met my sort before.”
“Oh, I’m sure I have.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard everything. Let me see. You believe that women will vote for the handsomest candidates without using their faculties of reason. Is that the size of your realism?”
He met her accusing gaze with an annoyed look of his own. “Do I look like a fool? I don’t see any reason for women not to vote; you’re no stupider, on average, than the typical man. If there were any fairness in the world, suffragettes would succeed in all their political aims. But the world is not fair. You’re going to spend your entire life fighting for gains that will be lost in political bickering ten years after they’ve been achieved. That’s why I won’t spare you three cheers. They’ll serve no purpose but to waste my breath.”
She looked at him for a moment. Really looked at him, as if she were seeing him for the first time rather than imagining a man-shaped…womanthrope in his stead.
“Good heavens.” She reached into a pocket in her skirt. “You’re right. I haven’t met anyone like you.”
She looked him over again, and this time there was no mistaking that slow head-to-toe perusal. His heart gave an odd little thump.
And then she smiled at him. “Well, Monsieur le Realist. Call on me if you ever find yourself in need of an exclamation point. I have an entire box of them.”
It took him a moment to realize she was handing him a card. She slipped it between the gloved fingers of his right hand; he caught it with his left before it could fall to the ground. The type was plain and unassuming, with none of the little decorations or curly scripts one expected from a woman’s calling card. But then, this was a card of business; no woman had ever given him one of those before.
Frederica Marshall, B.A.
Owner and Editrix-in-Chief
Women’s Free Press
By women—for women—about women
When he looked up, she’d already gone. He caught a glimpse of her yards away, wending her way through the crowds, her stool under her arm.
And then the swirling throng swallowed her and he was left with nothing but her card.
Chapter Two
Kent, later that evening
THE HOME WHERE EDWARD had grown up hadn’t changed at all.
A deer track ran through a nearby wood; a windswept meadow of wild grasses, carefully constructed so as to give a natural appearance, abutted the south wing. The river, a quarter mile distant from the house, made scarcely more than a comfortable murmur of passing water from here.
The house stood at the end of a long road a mile from the center of town. The ruins of a onetime fortress, the gray stones silver in the moonlight, loomed from the swell of a hill. A battle had once been fought here; he and Patrick had always been unearthing bits of armor and decaying sword hilts. Now there was little left but the battlements up high and, down by the river, a collection of stones that had once been a ferry. Those sad remains guarded a sandy ford that had long since been replaced by the bridge a mile upstream. After nearly ten years of absence, Edward was about as relevant to this scene as those abandoned battlements.
The modern house lay before him, the picture of utter tranquility.
That tranquility was a lie. On that field near the stable—that was the place where Edward’s father had ordered Patrick and Stephen whipped.
The windows of the house cast a golden, illusory light on the scene of that memory. Edward shook his head, dispelling his grisly thoughts, and stole his way to a glassed side door.
Moonlight spilled into the library. Through the windows, he could make out a desk stacked high with papers. Edward had received his share of reprimands in that room. He’d held his head proudly there, refusing to break, refusing to lie, no matter what the consequences.
Pah. He’d learned better now. The notion of morality was relative. For instance, he intended to break into this house. Some might call that “burglary.”
It would be, in the moral sense: The current residents of the house would not welcome his intrusion.
From a legal perspective, however, there was one small and yet salient difference: This house, and everything in it, still belonged to him. It would be his for four more months, until he was declared dead once and for all.
He couldn’t wait.
He pulled a thin piece of steel from its hiding place in his coat sleeve, crouched beside the lock, and listened for the telltale click. He’d known a man who could open any door in a few seconds flat. Edward, by contrast, had only rarely needed to break and enter, and so the skill was all too rusty. It took him three uncomfortable minutes to persuade the door to let him in.
The scent of old cigar smoke assailed him immediately—dark and pungent, a rancid smell that had seeped into the curtains, into the walls. It was an old smell, as if nobody had smoked in the room in months. Edward found the matches, lit an oil lamp on the desk, and turned the screw until a dull glow illuminated the desk. There were stacks and stacks of papers to go through. If Patrick was right, the proof would be here.