30
“
B
ut Sister Emily,” Lucretia Knightsbridge complained. “This beard
itches.”
Emmy, annoyed, snapped, “Well, what do you expect me to do about it? They were all out of mink beards at the costume shop.”
But none of the members of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage appreciated Emily’s sarcasm, and didn’t seem to be inclined to return to rehearsing their tableau, which Emmy had written and was now directing. It was Emmy’s hope that by conducting a mimed performance on the steps of the Parliament building of President Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, attention would be drawn to the parallel between the slaves in America and the women of England, and the men inside the Parliament building might be called upon to do as Mr. Lincoln had, and right a wrong that had gone too long uncorrected.
Lucretia Knightsbridge was supposed to be playing Lincoln, but she kept lowering her beard to bleat at Emmy about the discomfort of her costume.
“If Sister Lucretia doesn’t have to wear her beard,” Chrystabel Hemmings, who was dressed in the rags of a slave, with paper shackles glued around her wrists and ankles, whined, “then I shouldn’t have to wear these trousers. The wool chafes me.”
Genevieve Kenney sucked in her breath quickly. The prettiest of the members of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, she had been elected to play Lady Liberty, and was dressed in only a muslin toga, with a bough of gilt olive leaves in her golden hair.
“If you think your trousers are bad,” she cried, “what about
my
costume? I look like a harlot!”
It was in the middle of the uproar that took place directly following this statement that Emmy happened to notice, over the ladies’ heads, a tall and distinctly out-of-place figure at the end of the room. Out of place, of course, because the figure happened to be male, and males did not, as a habit, make their way into the sanctum that was the meeting place of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage.
And then, with a gasp of her own, Emmy realized who this particular male was.
And suddenly, she was rushing, as fast as she was able, to escape through the nearest possible exit. . . .
But Braden Granville was too quick for her. He easily barred her way to safety by thrusting a long and powerful arm across the doorway.
“Lady Emily,” he said, not bothering to raise his voice above the cacophony of female voices, still arguing vociferously, all around them. He didn’t have to. Like a foghorn, his deep voice carried easily above their more high-pitched, seagull-like tones.
“I believe you might be able to enlighten me, Lady Emily,” Braden Granville continued, “on a matter in which I have a most personal and burning interest.”
Emily swallowed. She had known, of course, that this was going to happen. Caroline had assured her she was wrong, but Emmy had known. A girl simply could not run from a man like Braden Granville and expect to get away with it. It didn’t happen.
Still, she’d promised Caro. And so she said, “This is a private meeting, sir. You have no right to be here.”
Up went those dark, intimidating eyebrows, including the one with the white slash through it, a scar from some long-ago knife fight, Emmy was quite sure. Pity the knife wielder hadn’t held the blade a little lower. She wouldn’t then be in this terribly awkward position.
“No right to be here?” Braden Granville asked, sounding amused. “Whyever not? I’m a supporter of votes for women, you know.”
Emily blinked up at him with astonishment. “You— you can’t be,” she stammered. “This is a trick. A ruse, to get me to tell you where Caroline’s gone.”
He said, “Not at all,” and reached into his waistcoat pocket. “It’s perfectly ridiculous, one half the population not having the right to a say in its governance. You are, for the most part, rational creatures. More rational, surely, than most men I know. I’d feel a good deal better knowing our government was in your capable hands than, say, Lord Winchilsea’s.”
Stunned, Emily could only stare at him, her mouth slight ajar.
“If dues are necessary,” Braden Granville remarked, “then I will, of course, pay them. But you, then, Lady Emily, must concede that as a dues-paying member of your organization I have, in fact, every right to be here.”
Emily watched in utter disbelief as Braden Granville thumbed through his billfold.
“I trust,” he said, pulling out a fifty-pound note, “this will suffice.”
Emily reached out to take hold of the bill in the manner of someone in a trance. But Braden Granville pulled it quickly out of reach.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “I want to know what I get in return for giving you my hard-earned money.”
Emily said, evenly, “A certificate of membership, of course.”
“A certificate? For fifty
pounds?”
“Well, and a sash.”
“A sash? What am I to do with a bloody sash?”
“You’re supposed to wear it,” Emily said. “At our rallies. It says Votes for Women on it.”
“Is that all?”
“No. You’ll receive our monthly circular—”
“Oh,” Braden said.
“That
ought to be entertaining. Will it, perhaps, explain why that woman over there is wearing a false beard?” And then he surrendered his fifty-pound note. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just tell me where the devil Caroline’s gone off to, and don’t lie. I can see straight through any attempts at prevarication. Always have.”
Emily took the bill, folded it crisply, and tucked it up her sleeve. It was admittedly with some sense of unreality that she did this, since Braden Granville was the first man to join any affiliation of The Movement, that she knew of.
She found herself quite unable to look him in the eye. He had such a penetrating glance, for all his irises were merely brown. Still, there was no mistaking the flecks of russet within them, and that, she thought, was quite unnerving. How Caroline could love this man, she hadn’t the slightest idea.
But that she did love this man, Emily knew without a doubt. And since this man, in her opinion, was a good deal better for Caroline than the last one she had had her heart set on, that one being the pinheaded Marquis of Winchilsea, Emily decided to give him a chance to prove to her whether or not he was worthy of her breaking her solemn pledge to Caroline.
“What are you going to do,” she asked cautiously, “when you find her?”
Braden Granville set his jaw. “I intend to make her see that marrying that jackanapes Slater would be the worst mistake she could ever make.”
Emily folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, and I suppose she’d be much better off as your mistress?”
“Mistress?” He glared at her as if she had said something distasteful. “I intend to make her my wife.”
Emily let out a whoop of laughter at this. “Oh, please! You, the Lothario of London? Marry Caroline Linford? I think not.”
She ought not to have laughed. She knew it almost the minute the words were out of her mouth. She saw the pain that creased his face, the sudden dark anger that quickly followed it.
Still, he controlled the emotion admirably, saying in a carefully toneless voice, “I know that to you, the idea of a man like me marrying your friend is preposterous. And you’re probably quite right. But I think I’d be a better husband for her than that . . . than the marquis. And I intend to prove it to her, if you’ll just tell me where she went.”
All urge to laugh had fled with the sight of the very real emotion Emily had seen in those dark eyes. He loved Caroline, she realized with something akin to shock.
Really
loved her. She had thought as much outside the Old Bailey, but this confirmed it. Only . . .
“You can’t marry Caroline,” she pointed out. “You’re engaged to Lady Jacquelyn.”
“Not anymore,” was his terse reply.
“But . . .” Emily shook her head. “Caroline won’t be able to testify. If Lady Jacquelyn files for breach of promise, and Caroline is married to you—or even just engaged to you—her testimony won’t be counted—”
“I don’t care about that,” Braden Granville ground out, impatiently. “I’m willing to settle. Whatever it takes.”
“If she breaks it off with the marquis,” Emily felt compelled to inform him, “her name will be mud. And you can bet a pretty penny he’ll sue, too.”
“I . . . don’t . . . care.” He was obviously on the verge of losing his temper, that dangerous temper that Tommy had talked so much about. “Just tell me where she is.”
Emily blinked. Good Lord. It was true, then. It was perfectly true. The Lothario of London. The Lothario of London was in love with Caroline. Caroline, her Caroline, who could not pass a beggar without giving him half of what was in her purse, or a cart horse without slipping it a sugar cube. She had the most notorious skirt chaser in London so head over heels in love with her, he’d been willing to join the ladies’ suffrage movement, because her best friend had told him to.
“Caroline has gone to my country house in Shropshire,” Emily said. “Woodson Manor. She said she needed to be alone, to think. I’m not sure if you ought to—”
But Braden Granville had already turned and fled the room like a man with a . . . well, with a pack of angry suffragettes after him.
31
C
aroline sat upon the window seat, watching the rain splashing the panes, and wondered if she had lost her mind.
It certainly seemed to her as if she had. For what but madness could have made her behave the way she had with Braden Granville?
It was horrible, what she’d done. Worse than shocking. What had she been thinking?
And the worst thing of all was that she had brought it all down upon her own head. Lessons in how to make love. Indeed!
Well, she was alone at last—quite thoroughly alone, save the caretaker and his wife, and the men who cared for the horses. But they all lived out. Which suited her very well indeed: She needed peace and quiet, solitude in which to think through her dilemma, without any distractions—particularly in the form of Braden Granville.
Especially in the form of Braden Granville.
And now she was alone, and it was raining out, and she had all the time she wanted to sit and think about her horrible mistake, and how she was going to make things right again.
Only she didn’t think she could.
She saw that now. She did not love Hurst Slater. She knew now that she had never loved Hurst Slater. What she had felt for him had been nothing more than the gratitude, first that he had saved her brother, and then that, from out of all the women in London, he should have sought her out to be his bride. She had been flattered by his attentions, excited by his kisses—passionless, she realized now, though they had been—and gratified at the thought that this dashing young marquis wanted her, and not some prettier girl. Her, out of all the beautiful young women he knew. He wanted her.
And
that
was why, she knew now, that she had not wept when she’d found him in the arms of another.
That
was why she had not run for a pistol in a storm of jealous rage.
She had not loved him.
But that, of course, was the least of her concerns. Weighing far more heavily on her conscience than the fact that she did not love—and probably never had—her fiancé, was the knowledge that what Jacquelyn Seldon had accused her of yesterday at Worth’s was true:
She was in love with Braden Granville.
She didn’t want to be. It was horrible, knowing that she was. She loved him, in spite of his horrible reputation where woman were concerned, in spite of the fact that she highly disapproved of nearly everything about him, including his work and style of living. She loved him, in spite of Hurst, and his appealing blue eyes. She loved him in spite of all the things she’d heard, all the things Jackie Seldon had said. She loved him, had loved him since that moment in the hallway at Dame Ashforth’s, when her heart had done that queer flip-flop in her chest.
She loved him for being everything no other man in her acquaintance—with the possible exception of her father—had ever been: a self-made man, who’d had the strength and perseverance to pull himself up out of the gutter, and to the top of his line of work. A caring man, who hadn’t forgotten his friends and family in his meteoric rise to the top, who was not embarrassed to be seen in public with his very eccentric, but sweet, father. A man of honor, who had initially been appalled at her proposal, and had turned her away—she realized now that there were plenty of men out there who would not have been so gallant, who would have made every attempt to take advantage of her innocence. Braden Granville had not. . . .
At least, not at first.
But even then, Caroline was convinced he had not done so coldbloodedly. She was quite sure he felt something for her. She had seen it in his face the night before, as his father had led her away. A naked longing that had brought home, as almost nothing else had, the gravity of her situation, the fact that she’d been playing, all this time, with fire. . . .
Aren’t we?
That’s what he’d asked her, when she’d said it wasn’t as if the two of them were in love.
Aren’t we?
And that’s when she’d realized what she’d done. Because it had been all very well for her to love Braden Granville—for her to burn for him, and long for him, and sigh over him. It hadn’t mattered, because she’d been sure he hadn’t returned the emotion.
But for him to love her in return, and to have admitted it—well, sort of—in that voice, that voice that even now, remembering it, made the hairs on her arms stand up. . . .
What else could she do but run? Because it could never be.
They
could never be. She’d pledged herself to Hurst. She could not go back on her word. She could not do that to him, to her family. . . .
And then, as Caroline sat there, contemplating her sanity, or lack thereof, there came a knock upon the door, so loud and unexpected that she actually shrieked, and leaped up from her seat.
Who could it be? she wondered, fighting to get her heart rate back to normal as she stood in the middle of the Stanhopes’ front parlor, where the furniture was shrouded in white linen to ward off the dust until the family returned later in the summer.
A message, perhaps? A note from her mother already, though she had not been gone from London above twelve hours yet? Oh, why wouldn’t the woman leave her alone? She’d expressly written in the letter she’d left Lady Bartlett that she needed to be alone—though she had not mentioned just
how
alone she’d be, omitting from her note the fact that Emily and the rest of her family were still in the city, something that, if her mother found out, she would not have liked at all.
Pulling her robe about her—she had changed out of her traveling clothes and into her nightgown, though it was only just past teatime, because she had nowhere to go, and there was no one to see her, anyway—she went to the door.
It practically burst open at her touch, the wind from the storm outside had risen so in the last few minutes. Lashed by the rain, a tall figure stood on the doorstep, swathed in a great oilskin coat. The only person from the neighborhood who stood so tall as that was the vicar, who’d been known to drop by from time to time to call on Emily’s father. Perhaps he had seen the lights, and thought Lord Woodson was at home—
But then he threw back his hood, and Caroline shrieked. The person underneath the greatcoat was not the vicar at all.
Braden Granville stepped over the threshold, stripping off the dripping garment, and giving the door a shove closed behind him with his foot.
“Good God, Caroline,” he said. “What’s that you have on?”
Blushing scarlet, Caroline stammered, “It’s . . . it’s a nightdress. What are you doing here?”
“A nightdress?” Braden looked around, and apparently because there weren’t any servants about, hung his coat on the newel post of the staircase that curled from the foyer to the upper stories of the house. “I hardly think that appropriate attire at this early hour—anyone might come to the door—and particularly in weather like this. You must be freezing.”
“How,” Caroline demanded, in what she hoped was an authoritative voice, “did you find me? What are you doing here?”
“I ought to put the same question to you.” Braden looked around at the draped furniture, and the chandeliers wrapped in muslin bags, and declared, “This place is like a tomb. Did you really think you could get any serious thinking done here, Caroline? It’s a veritable sarcophagus.”
“It isn’t a sarcophagus,” Caroline said. “It’s just closed up for the season. And it’s a perfectly reasonable place to come to think. Especially since I came here to be
alone.”
If he got the hint, he didn’t let on. Instead, he strode into the parlor, kneeling down beside the cold hearth, and reached up inside the fireplace to open the damper. “I hardly think that was wise, do you? What about those nefarious evildoers Violet’s supposed to defend you against? You don’t think they have those in the country? You don’t think a young woman, all alone, in a big house like this, dressed in a nightdress that leaves very little indeed to the imagination, wouldn’t act as a magnet for men like that?”
Caroline reached up and clutched the wrapper even more tightly closed. “How did you find me?” she asked. “I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. Anyone except . . .”
“That’s precisely how I found you.” Braden, having found some wood, appeared to be intent on lighting a fire to ward off the damp chill of the house. “Lady Emily told me.”
“Emmy
told you?” Caroline could hardly believe her ears. Emmy, her best friend, with whom she’d trusted her deepest, darkest secrets, had let spill the most intimate one of all, and to
this
man, of all people?
“No,” Caroline said. “No, I don’t believe you. Emmy wouldn’t do something like that.”
“She would,” he said, as he carefully lit the pile of tinder he’d built beneath the wood pile. “She’s quite reasonable, you know. A good deal more reasonable than you.”
Caroline, still very indignant, but grateful, actually, for the fire, which had sprung merrily to life, and was already sending some much needed warmth in Caroline’s direction, said, “I have been perfectly reasonable.”
“Have you?” He was still kneeling before the fire, on the rather raggedy polar bear skin rug that Emily’s mother had refused to allow in their London town house, but which her husband, Lord Woodson, had insisted upon keeping, having shot the creature himself—in self-defense, or so he claimed—on a polar expedition in his extreme youth.
When Braden looked up at Caroline, she could see something that very much resembled a sparkle in his dark eyes.
“Then why did you run away?”
Disconcerted by this sparkle, Caroline stammered, “I—I told you. I needed time to think. . . .”
“Not now,” Braden said. “I mean last night. Why did you run away from me last night?”
“Oh,” Caroline said, faintly. She had not been expecting that particular question. “Because . . .”
“Because why?”
She couldn’t tell him. Not there in Lord Woodson’s drawing room, with her in her nightclothes, and her feet bare. How she must look to him! She hadn’t a shred of dignity left. This was what he’d reduced her to. She was quite sure the tracks of her tears must be showing, all up and down her cheeks. Her eyes could only be red and swollen.
“Because it can’t be,” she said, her voice raw. “You know it can’t be.”
The sparkle, she noticed, disappeared abruptly. “ Because I’m not gentry?” he asked, quietly.
Caroline, struck to the heart by the hurt in his voice, found herself, without quite being aware she’d moved, sinking down onto the thick fur rug beside him, and reaching for his hand.
“Of course not,” she said, keeping her gaze fastened on the hand she held in her lap, since she found it a good deal easier to look at his calluses than into his eyes. “You know it has nothing to do with that. It’s true that it would seem as if we come from different worlds, you and I. But they’re not so very different. My father wasn’t always an earl. He wasn’t even always considered a gentleman. But like you, he was one, anyway—from birth. Some men— no matter how low-born—just are.”
He had grown very still the moment her fingers had come in contact with his. Now he asked, in a voice that no longer sounded hurt, but was still unimaginably soft, “Then why?”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. He was still waiting to hear why it was they could never be together. As if he didn’t know. As if it hadn’t been all they’d talked about, since she’d first come to him, that day in his office. Did she have to tell him? Did she have to say the words Hurst Slater, Marquis of Winchilsea?
She looked up then, into his face, meeting his gaze with her own . . . and then hastily looked away again, appalled. For what she’d seen in his dark, normally so inscrutable eyes was a look of such naked longing that it took her breath away.
And that was when it struck her that they were all alone together in the house—that there was no one else around for miles and miles, save her horses—and that outside, the storm had gathered in intensity until the clouds had rendered the evening sky black as night, and the rain was lashing the windowpanes quite savagely. That even if she’d wanted to—and she most definitely did not—she could not have reasonably turned Braden Granville out into such weather.
“Oh,” Caroline couldn’t help murmuring, “dear.”
And then, to her abject horror, she felt him reach up with his free hand, and pull a pin from the complicated pile of ringlets she’d been too tired to brush out.
“Oh,” she said again.
He hesitated, his hand, which had been raised to pluck another pin, balanced in front of her eyes.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, curiously.
“No,” she said. “Only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Only I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Wish I wouldn’t what?”
“Touch my head like that,” she blurted, in a rush. “It isn’t right.”
Braden lowered his hand, but his gaze, as he looked down at her, was uncomprehending. “You don’t want me to touch your hair?”
She nodded vigorously, and in doing so, realized the pin he’d removed had been a crucial one. She could feel the heavy pile of curls slipping already. “It’s wrong,” she said. There was an unbearable tightness in her chest, and she was beginning to suspect that she might burst into tears at any moment. “Don’t you see it’s wrong, Braden? Everything we’ve been doing . . . it’s very wrong.
I
was wrong. No matter what you say.”
“Is that,” he asked, in quite a kind voice, she thought, “why you ran away?”