The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(63)

And then he turned and left.

Chapter Sixteen

EDWARD HAD KNOWN WHEN he gave Free his address that he might as well have given up right then. The last thing he could withstand was a sustained correspondence. He managed to let the first of her letters pass without a reply. The second was harder. She told him about construction on a new home, about how her suit against his brother was prospering—well—and the public response to the revelations they’d jointly engineered at that soireé—even better. Her advertisers were returning, her subscribers were more loyal than ever, and her subscription numbers were up ten percent and still growing. Everything was looking up, she told him.

Everything, she said, but one little thing. She didn’t specify what that was, but he didn’t need to ask.

It took all his willpower to keep his silence.

But then two weeks passed—two weeks in which her newspapers arrived without any personal notes at all. That circumstance should not have had him grumbling in complaint.

Still, when he saw a scrap of paper attached to his paper one morning, he grabbed for it.

Apologies for the silence, she wrote. I’ve been busy. See attached.

He read through her piece. His heart beat faster as he read; his fists clenched on the paper. And when he reached the end of it, he didn’t just give up on the notion of chivalrously ignoring her; he grabbed for his own paper and scrawled a response.

May 14, 1877

Good God. Are you trying to stop my heart? Nothing from you for all that time—and then only one brief note. I had thought you’d given up doing investigative work personally. You understand that when you go into a very dangerous mine that you are putting yourself in danger?

You could have died. You almost did.

I won’t stand for—

Edward stopped, and imagined himself saying that to Free in person. She’d make a rude noise—and all too well-deserved. He crossed that off, too, and stared at the paper a long while before trying again.

Even if you think nothing of your own safety, think of—

That wasn’t any better, to imply that she hadn’t thought about the consequences of her actions. He scratched that through.

Tell me, do you imagine yourself invulnerable, or—

He took a deep breath. It was almost as if he could hear her responding, taunting him. He scratched dark lines through this, too. After a long while, he wrote again.

I have sat in one place crossing lines off this letter for far longer than I should. It’s almost as if you are sitting over my shoulder, offering your sarcastic thoughts in response to my most protective impulses. You’re obviously intelligent enough to understand the risks you’re taking, and you’ve decided they’re worthwhile. I know better than to argue with you on that score.

So I will swallow all my other worries and end with this: I have sat with you at night and felt your fear. I do not know how you face it again and again. It is more than I could do.

You bewilder me.

Edward

It would be foolish to send the letter. It sat on his desk for days while he argued with himself. Finally, he slipped it into the mails, and was even more annoyed when that did not feel like an act of weakness.

It was a matter of days before he heard from her again.

May 20, 1877

Dear Edward,

It was nothing. All in the name of reporting, really. It was rather fortuitous, in fact, that I experienced a cave-in. Under such circumstances, I could…

Oh, very well. I can see you tapping your foot impatiently at me. I’m not fooling you, am I?

I always write my articles so that I disappear. The words are about the hospitals and the inmates, the streets and the streetwalkers. If I reference myself at all, I talk about the false persona I invented to do the investigations. To everyone in the world, I can pretend that all those things happened to someone else.

Everyone but you. I may give false names and false backgrounds, but the things I’ve reported have always happened to me. You may find it bewildering that I’m still willing to take it on.

But to me, knowing that you know, that there’s one person who knows I’m not truly fearless…well, that makes it bearable.

Just don’t tell my brother.

Yours,

Free

Edward thought a long while before responding.

May 28, 1877

As I don’t believe in sending letters filled with treacle-like sentiment, I feel as if I should…send you a puppy or something.

Alas. I don’t know if puppies keep when sent through the mails—and I doubt they’d pass through customs these days.

It’s too bad you aren’t a pirate, as you’d once planned. That would make puppy delivery far more efficient. I’d bring up my own ship next to you and send you an entire broadside of puppies. You’d be buried in very small dogs. You’d be far too busy with puppy care to worry about anything else. This is now sounding more and more invasive, and less and less cheering—and nonetheless I have yet to meet anyone who was not delighted by a wriggling mass of puppies. If I ever did meet such a person, he would deserve misery.

Do not doubt the power of the puppy-cannon.

Edward

P.S. If there is no puppy attached to this message, it is because it was confiscated by customs. Bah. Customs is terrible.

After that, it was impossible to pretend he was not corresponding with her.