But some premonition was on him, crushing and dark. He would not have wed her. She would not have wed him.
Why, then, had they done it?
She was lying to him. It, their marriage, had had nothing to do with convenience.
No document in that room spoke of her. No letters from her. No mention of her in any of his correspondence with her uncle. Crispin had found no journals, but one drawer of his desk had held several appointment books, each meeting of the last four years carefully chronicled by date. Her name had not appeared in those he’d scanned.
The confusion infuriated him. He was done with living in a murk, taking a step that seemed to lead out of darkness only to collide with something else he could not remember. He would have it out with her, today, now.
As he stepped forward, his boot caught the crumpled note, sent it shooting ahead of him, skittering across the rug.
The vote. Today.
He took a hard breath. Scrubbed his hands over his face and inhaled again, longer, more deeply.
Confrontation must wait. He needed to bathe, to shave and dress. To prepare himself for the speech of his life.
* * *
Jane slowly made her way up the narrow stone stairway, still clutching the order of admission that Crispin had left behind for her. She had heard him come upstairs this morning, but like a fool, an exhausted sleepless fool frozen by fear, she had not gone to him. She had sat on her bed and listened to his footsteps, straining for each remark he made to his new valet, muffled through the door that connected their apartments. And then she had heard the door open and close again, and his footsteps on the stairs.
A minute later, she had flown to the window to watch the brougham pull out from the curb, carrying him away.
Her stomach had dropped then. She’d felt sure she would be sick. He had obviously discovered all he needed to know about her. He was heading straight to a lawyer, she had no doubt of it.
But when a maid came by minutes later, she carried a note from him. Enclosed was an order instructing the guards at Westminster to admit her to the Ladies’ Gallery without delay, and two lines for her, handwritten with evident haste:
The speech goes forward today.
Will look for you.
Jane had often heard the Ladies’ Gallery referred to by a rather more vulgar phrase, the Ladies’ Cage. The nickname made sense to her at last as the guard escorted her into a box bounded by iron railings, and separated from the room at large by an iron grille. As she sat, the ladies in the front row, a group of handsome matrons in middle age, turned to inspect her. Not recognizing her, they returned to their conversation.
The cage stood above the Speakers’ Gallery, from which foreign dignitaries and distinguished guests watched the proceedings. She spotted Atticus in the front row there, leaning forward to converse with a dark-haired, tanned gentleman of astonishing good looks who himself sat in the backmost row of the benches reserved for visiting peers. At the opposite end of the wood-paneled hall stood a gilded throne, before which the Speaker of the House stood, the party whips arrayed at his sides. Along the left and right walls, in three long lines of benches, sat the majority of the MPs, cast in rainbow-hued light from the stained-glass windows behind them.
She did not see Crispin on the floor. But she knew, from so many newspaper editorials mocking the indiscipline of the Commons, that the benches were unusually full today. The third reading was under way, a young man in a pale morning coat concluding his forceful disavowal of the bill, to the clear boredom of most of the assembly. “There is nothing new in what I have said today. I have said it all before—”
“Quite right,” called a heckler from the benches of the Opposition.
“I admit it,” the young man said tightly. “Yet while I have registered these objections three times now, sirs, I have yet to hear a credible reply. And so now, I must register my amazement and contempt as well. Good sense has deserted this assembly—”
Hisses rose, and then hoots. “No,” the young man called stridently, “you will not silence me that way. Mr. Speaker, I demand to be heard.”
“Order,” intoned the Speaker in a bored, indifferent voice. As he sat back down, he scratched absently at his thick white wig. The day had dawned unseasonably warm, and half the MPs on the floor had discarded their silk hats and were slumped in their seats, fanning themselves with pamphlets that Jane recognized from her uncle’s possessions—pages printed with the orders of the day.
Still, they had enough energy to mutter among themselves, and as the young man said, “Thank you,” one of them called, “Finish it up, then, your mother’s waiting.”
The man flushed. “Is that how it goes? Very well, I have no intention of arguing with children. I am done.” He flopped back onto his bench. The man to his right clapped his shoulder in sympathy, but he angrily shrugged away.
Jane’s uncle now stood, waiting to be recognized. Throat tight, she leaned forward, glancing anxiously to the passage that opened onto the private arcade through which members entered. Last week, she and Crispin had studied a map of Westminster together, in case the worst happened and his escort abandoned him. Had he lost his way? Why was he not here to lend support to the bill’s opponents?
“I will not take much of your time, sirs,” her uncle began, pausing to allow his cronies to rap the benches in approval. “I think young Mr. Morris quite correct: we have heard every objection several times, and found none of them persuasive. From the speed by which this bill has proceeded, and the fierce passion of those who spared their time and effort to speak so eloquently in its favor in committee, I think we have seen the noble use of it. The people, our own constituents, our countrymen and friends, deserve better, I say, than to live in fear. And those who would argue it”—he shot a forbidding glance toward the opposite bench—“have failed to account for why they rate the safety of law-abiding citizens below the comforts of criminals.”
More thumps and rousing cries of “Hear, hear!” Her uncle had often let Crispin do the speech making for him. But to Jane’s great and unpleasant surprise, it was not for want of talent on his part. Had she not known the facts—and, moreover, the secret motive behind his passion—she might have believed his sincerity.
“And so,” he went on, “I propose that we waste no more of this assembly’s time on a matter that has already been decided, not only by ourselves, but by the will of the people. I move to close—”
“So soon?” Crispin’s voice rang out as he walked onto the floor. He had Lambert by his side. “It’s only half two, sir. Surely old age has not made you so feeble as to require an afternoon nap.”
A startled pause, then a wave of chuckles. Her uncle glowered. “Mr. Burke. What a preposterous interruption. Mr. Speaker, are we to have no order here?”
But the Speaker’s reply was swallowed up by a great gasp as Crispin crossed the floor, abandoning his erstwhile allies to take up a seat on the Government benches.
“What’s this?” someone cried, and a great hubbub arose, causing the Speaker to heave himself upright.
“Mr. Mason,” he said. “You will continue. Mr. Burke, should you wish to speak, you will be recognized in turn.”
Her uncle spluttered. “I—I cede the floor,” he spat, “on the condition that I be allowed to speak after him.”
The Speaker shrugged. “Mr. Burke, you have the floor.”
Crispin rose, walked a few paces to the center of the room. He looked over the Opposition, and a hiss went up. He was smiling faintly as he pivoted toward the gallery; when his eyes met Jane’s, her breath caught, and suddenly she forgot the debate at hand, the great challenge before him.
What had he found in that secret room?
Her heart tripped. Do you hate me now? she asked with her eyes.
His smile told her nothing. It did not alter a fraction. But he looked at her a long moment, and she felt pinned, like a butterfly to a board.
“Anytime now,” her uncle muttered, and Crispin turned to
face his new allies, many of whom looked back at him incredulously, and bent together to confer, no doubt warning each other to beware of tricks.
“I address this good assembly,” he began in a clear, carrying voice, “as one of its members, but also, perhaps more pertinently, as a recent victim of the very crimes which this bill purports to prevent. If anyone here has cause to fear that our penal system has failed us, that tolerance has become dangerous, that law and order are threatened—why, sirs, it is me. And if anyone doubts it, I will be glad to show you the cleft in my head, which I have been assured by my wife does not add to my charms.”
A muted chuckle from one side, stony silence from the other.
“But I need not prove it, do I? For you all have no doubt followed the story in the newspapers. Perhaps marveled at the irony of it, too. For I authored this bill, and then, as if my own words had conjured them, a group of criminals felled me in my tracks. I will tell you, sirs, that they were never caught. They still roam the streets, a threat to us all. You may well imagine, then, that I have every cause to stand in support of this bill, not only because I wrote it, but because I then lived through the very experience which this bill promises to spare you.”
Silence now. Her uncle was twitching in his seat, but even he would not disrupt an audience so obviously enrapt. Crispin had not shared this version of the speech with Jane, but he had taken her advice to the letter: he was crafting a personal narrative rather than one based on facts and figures. Facts and figures could be ridiculed and shouted over. But a tragic narrative was far too interesting to ignore.
“Crime is a plague,” he said gravely. “It is alarming enough when we imagine it locked away in those slums that we, the fortunate men of this assembly, never will visit. When it spills into our own streets, when it threatens our wives and children—why, then we feel doubly outraged. This is hypocrisy, of course, but I do not protest it. I dislike it, but it is only human. Meanwhile, to wish to take every measure to keep our loved ones safe—that is human, too, one of the most noble aspects of our nature. Those who have supported this bill are to be commended, then—not condemned. Their intentions are honorable.” He fixed his eyes on her uncle and offered a sharp smile that undercut his words. “Even Mr. Mason’s.”
A jeer came from the Government benches, aimed at her uncle. An answering jeer rose from her uncle’s men. The noise rose, threatening to drown out the speech.
“But as I lay dying,” Crispin said loudly, and the shouts faded. “As I lay bleeding on the pavement, skull broken, I looked up for the light. I will admit it: I looked up with the hope of heaven, for I did not expect to survive. But instead of any light, what did I see? I saw the faces of darkness. The men who had murdered me—for I was dying, let us be clear—the men who murdered me wore the looks of hell on their faces. And that hell, sirs, was not wickedness alone, oh no. It was a wickedness fueled by hunger and want, fear and base desperation—”
“What ho!” cried her uncle. “Are we to weep for murderers?”
“—and I saw in that moment,” Crispin said sharply, “the noose that would hang them, and I was glad.”
Silence. Those on the Government benches now looked uncertain. Jane felt the same. This did not sound like a speech to defeat the bill.
“Yes,” Crispin said more quietly. “I was savagely glad, God forgive me. It was not Christian, sirs—but I am no Christ, to forgive my murderers even as I lay dying. God save my soul, but what I wanted was vengeance. And had they been caught, sirs—I would have had it. For our system spares no sympathy for murderers, not even if hunger and misery drive them. We hang murderers in this country. And this bill does not dispute or change that. But what it does advocate, sirs, is that we should punish petty criminals with the same ferocity that this assembly decided not so long ago to reserve for those with blood on their hands.”
Her uncle rose, calling an objection, but nobody looked at him. The full force of the floor’s attention was locked on Crispin now, and he radiated gravity, sober confidence, forceful conviction. “Shall we go back, then?” he demanded. “Shall we reverse course, and punish all lawbreakers with equal harshness? Should I, lying on that pavement, bleeding to my death, have felt no worse than a man robbed of his cuff links? Should I have wished for my murderers to receive the same terms of imprisonment as a boy who stole bread? Should I? You tell me, gentlemen. You tell me, and I will counsel that man dying on the ground in blood-choked gasps. I will tell him, ‘These men who laid you low, they deserve the same treatment as the boy who stole lace. That boy, let him rot alongside these men while they wait for the hangman. Let them whisper their evil lessons into his ear, when with a ticket-of-leave he might have returned to the discipline of his parents. Let them teach this boy their ways, so he might grow into a man just like them, who will put other men onto the pavement, bleeding to their deaths in the name of justice.’ Yes, sirs? Shall I so counsel myself?”
He paused. He paused so long that Jane grew afraid he left too much opportunity for her uncle. But her uncle’s jaw looked clenched too tightly to unhinge, and nobody else spoke.
“I withdraw my support of this bill,” Crispin said—softly enough that his colleagues leaned forward in their benches to hear. “I withdraw it,” he said, louder, “and I urge you to do the same.” At full force: “I withdraw it, and I will answer any objection Mr. Mason might raise, with facts and statistics, if the Commons so desires. But I have shared the main reason already, don’t you think? We have sufficient murderers in this country, enough to lay me low already. I will not have it on my head that I helped to create more of them.”
* * *
Jane waited until the vote had been called. Sat trembling as the decision was pronounced. She could not see Crispin’s face; he was angled toward the Speaker. But when the victory was declared, and the floor burst into a chaos of cries, jubilations and curses mixing together, she rose.
Atticus went bounding out into the throng, catching his brother by the shoulders, swinging him around into an embrace.
That was all she needed to see. She picked her way out of the gallery, down the hall, and out the door, knees trembling. Her emotions were too large for words. She felt as though she had run five miles and drunk a hundred cups of coffee, a dozen glasses of wine, and then been cast off a cliff.
We changed history today.
It should have been enough.
Yet that man on the floor, his strong golden voice, his restrained passion, his ferocious wit—watching him, she had ached with animal longing. Such a man. How could she bear losing him? But if losing him were the price of victory, how could she regret it? What would it make her to regret that loss in the face of a triumph that would save thousands of lives?
It would make her selfish, small-hearted. Human.
When the carriage came around, she could barely manage, with the help of the footman, to climb into it. As it turned onto the road, she stared unseeing out the window.
It took two hours for Crispin to return to the house. She sat in the morning room, stitching. She had not stitched in weeks. She had not required the numbness it delivered.
Her fingers now were reddened from the careless pricks of her needle. She could feel them, and the pain kept her steady, helped her keep grip on her composure, when Crispin at last came into the room.
His color was high, his smile wide. “Mason raised hell after you left. Like a bawling child. You should have stayed—it was a wonderful show.”
So he’d looked for her afterward. That was something.
“Congratulations,” she murmured. “It’s an extraordinary victory.”
His smile faltered. “One for which you’re owed a great deal of the credit.”
She smiled back—not persuasively, it seemed. She saw his mood dim to match her own, and felt anew the sting of her own selfishness, her petty cares.
“The speech was all yours,” she said. “It was grand, Crispin.”
He paused, then sat down across from her. �
��That was not the speech I would have given, had you not shown me the way to go with it. We make a great, powerful pair, Jane.”
The pause that settled felt curiously weighty. She sensed no animosity in it. He had not come home intending to accuse her, after all. Whatever he’d found in that secret room did not anger him.
But no part of her felt relieved. He had found something that had altered the very air between them. Otherwise he would have fetched her before going to Westminster.
The door opened. A footman wheeled in a cart, atop which rested a silver wine bucket, a bottle of champagne submerged in mounds of ice.
She glanced at Crispin and felt a little internal jolt as their gazes connected.
“I think you deserve,” he said, “to share in this celebration.”
So the guillotine would not drop just yet. He would keep hold of the rope for a while.
But she did not want to celebrate with a blade over her head. “I am not in the mood,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you go to your club? I’m certain there will be a hero’s welcome for you.”
“Those men had nothing to do with this victory.” His face was calm, his gaze speaking. “This was our work, yours and mine. And so we’ll drink to it together, too.”
He rose, taking the bottle from the footman, dismissing him with a nod. His strong hands twisted once. With a sharp pop, the cork released; he let the foam spill into the wine bucket before pouring.
As he handed her a glass, the novelty registered. She had never before been invited to claim a political victory, to celebrate it as her own. She had never dreamed of such a moment. But now that it was upon her, she could not enjoy it, for her mind insisted on calculating the cost.
Her parents had believed that politics might be a virtuous art, practiced nobly, without compromises. But maybe they had been naïve. Had they lived longer, and had Papa amassed the kind of power that her uncle enjoyed, they might have learned that idealism shaped noble goals but rarely helped accomplish them. In the political world, conspiracy and manipulation were not sins but skills to be wielded.
A Lady’s Code of Misconduct Page 22
