Nothing on Earth & Nothing in Heaven

by Susan Fanetti

  William wasn’t ready to return to America yet, and his reluctance had to do with far more than work. Six weeks had passed since the night he’d sat with Lady Nora in a stranger’s rose garden. Three weeks had passed since he’d run into her at the theatre. She had not left his mind in all that time—or in the weeks before. From the moment he’d lifted her up from the grass in her father’s garden, the hapless Lady Nora had captivated him entirely.

  His attempts to erase her influence on him had all been for naught. Nights with talented lovelies sent up by Mr. Burns, his brief dalliance with the spectacular widow Mrs. Sweeney, before she’d moved on to Italy—he’d enjoyed the company of these women, but his enjoyment had been fleeting, while his preoccupation with Nora was not.

  Fifteen years had passed since he’d first been with a woman. In all that time, he’d enjoyed the fairer sex to his heart’s content, but he’d never met one of their number he’d considered for a life mate—because he hadn’t been looking. Not that he was opposed to marriage—in fact, he’d expected that in a few years, he’d put some focus on the endeavor and actually seek out a woman of his own age, pleasing enough to look at, with similar interests and worldview, a respectable intellect, and a sense of humor, and finally get on with the business of giving his mother grandchildren.

  Instead, he seemed to have inadvertently fallen in love with a naïf. A woman so young she was barely a woman at all. A woman who’d had no experiences of note, who lived in a world that made no room for him—or her, for that matter.

  But she had a similar worldview. She had a more than respectable intellect. And, though her frustration and sadness had clouded it somewhat, she had a sharp humor as well. As for her appearance—well. His eyes had never seen a woman more beautiful.

  He couldn’t have her, and yet he couldn’t leave the land she stood on. He hadn’t even kissed her, he’d barely touched her, and yet, like a schoolboy with a crush, he felt sure he was in love with her. Sentiment had erased most of the wisdom he’d acquired in fifteen years of enjoying the pleasures of the flesh.

  Now she was gone, back to the country, and he couldn’t even see her, but still he wanted to stay. So he focused on her brother, his true friend. Despite the end of the Season and of opportunities for Chris to show off his American friend, the two met with fair regularity, once or twice each week, but something had shifted between them since his sister had left. Not a schism, certainly, or even a chill. But every now and again, he’d catch his friend contemplating him, like he’d seen a hint of something and was trying to understand it. William hadn’t worked out the cause. They’d hardly said five sentences altogether on the topic of his sister in the past few weeks, and Chris wasn’t particularly interested in his work. William couldn’t fathom what else might have piqued his friend’s curiosity.

  He carefully slotted into their folders the documents he’d been reviewing and returned them to the desk at the Archives.

  The clerk took the folders from him with a nod. “Will there be anything else, sir?” The young man had been helping him all afternoon.

  “Yes, actually. Do you have geological studies from 1866? William Low and Sir John Hawkshaw both commissioned studies around Kent in that year. Would those have been filed in London?”

  “I believe so, yes. If you’ll wait, I’ll locate those documents.”

  “Thank you.”

  The clerk went into the cavernous stacks behind him. William turned and leaned on the desk, propping his elbows at his sides. The room before him, full of dark tables and chairs, was largely empty and smelled of wood polish, dust, and rotting paper—a vastly more pleasant aroma than most of London, which suffocated under a impenetrable miasma of coal fog, especially on a day like this, overcast and damp. All color seemed to have been leached from the world. He understood why those who could leave the city did.

  He could go home, to the beautiful San Francisco Bay, where the morning fog was sea-fresh and the sun broke through most afternoons. He should go home. Soon, his father would demand it. There was no reason to stay; his business interest was a failure, and his personal interest was folly. Moreover, he was lonely and homesick.

  And yet, he stayed.

  Late that afternoon, armed with information that stretched back to 1800, William left the Archives. The day’s misty rain had stopped, and an occasional beam of faded sunlight broke through the clouds. Traffic on the street was bedlam, here at the end of the working day, so he decided to walk back to the hotel—or at least part of the way, until the crush of humanity thinned out a bit and there was a chance a taxi would move faster than his feet could carry him.

  While he walked, he let the facts and figures, names and places roll through his mind until they found their fit. He kept only enough attention on his pedestrian progress to avoid colliding with fellow travelers, or stepping out in front of a car or carriage. He’d gone several blocks and had just stepped up from a cross street onto one of the many blocks in London lined with boutique shops—dressmakers and milliners, shoemakers and tailors. The sweet shop on the corner advertised clotted cream. William stopped abruptly before that shop because a skinny woman had also stopped short, right ahead of him.

  “Excuse me,” he muttered, still watching his new research roll through his mind. He meant to step around her and continue on down the street, but she stood in a way that seemed unusual, and he set aside his musings and focused. She wore a crumpled straw hat, a worn dun coat too heavy for the day, and a threadbare black skirt—the London uniform of the working-class woman out for errands. This wasn’t a neighborhood a woman like that could afford to shop in, but she could very well have worked in the back of any one of these shops. Or she might have been enjoying the arrangements in the windows.

  His grandfather had often told a story about his first years in America, when he’d had nothing but the barest scraps to survive on. He’d eased the ache in his belly and in his heart by going to streets like this. He’d study the suits in the windows and memorize the fashion, so he’d know how to dress when he made his fortune. He’d study the dresses and jewels so he’d know how to treat his woman. He’d stood near the baker’s and inhaled the aroma of fresh breads until his belly forgot that it was empty.

  This woman stood square with the sweet shop, facing the window with its elaborate display of candies and cakes, and William smiled, imagining the great John Frazier filling his belly with fantasy. He opened his mouth to offer to bring her into the shop and buy something for her and her family, but at just that moment, she turned her head suddenly, away from him, looking down the street. She pulled something from her coat and shouted “VOTES FOR WOMEN!”—and sent the brick in her hands through the sweet shop window. All along the block, female voices echoed her shout, and crashes resounded like rolling thunder. It seemed every shop on the block had been attacked.

  Her tasked completed, the woman turned toward William, who stepped immediately from her path and let her run. She veered down the side street, holding her straw hat atop her head.

  The sweet shop owner burst through the door. “GET ‘EM! GET ‘EM!” he shouted, and William then saw that men all around were chasing after the women who’d broken the windows. Traffic on the street had stopped; drivers had jumped from their vehicles—motored or horse-drawn—to join in the fray.

  To chase down women? Women? Over broken windows?

  Across the street, a mob of men had gotten hold of one of the window-breakers, and they were beating her. William saw a burly man who’d been driving a delivery truck—William had waved his thanks at the man when he’d stopped his turn to let him cross the street—cock his arm back and let loose an explosive punch.

  Five men had a woman on the ground—on a London street in broad daylight—and they were beating her. Over a broken window.

  No—over her cause. It wasn’t the windows that had incited this riot. It was women daring to challenge the social order. Daring to challenge men. This was about putting all women in their place. He’d hea
rd his mother’s lectures enough to have learned their message thoroughly.

  A few other men were trying to pull the brutes off, without success. William ran to help. He’d spent his formative years in roughneck railroad camps, and he knew where to find a brawl in San Francisco. He could handle himself in a fight. He tore off his jacket and loosened his tie, tossing them away before he jabbed his arm into the scrum and hooked it around the neck of the delivery driver. He dragged the oaf back, clear of the pile, and the other men trying to aid the poor woman used the break he’d created to pull off more of her assailants.

  Though he wanted to pummel this man for his savagery, there was no time for fisticuffs, so he instead kept him in the headlock until he was passive, nearly unconscious. Then he cast him aside and ran to get the last man off the woman—she was an older woman, too. Perhaps fifty years old. But she fought like a mountain lion, all claws and screeching.

  William grabbed the man and yanked him back. He was slight, and William’s greater strength sent him reeling several steps backward, pinwheeling his arms so he wouldn’t fall. When he howled and charged at him instead, William put him down with a single right cross. The man tried to rise, and William fell on him, full of rage, and rained blows at his head until the man’s unconscious body rocked limply with each one. Panting, his hand aching, he came back to himself and stood to survey the scene.

  All of her assailants had been handled. The woman rested against the wall of a glove shop, sitting on a scattered sea of broken glass. Her skirt was hiked up, showing torn stockings and bloodied legs. Blood spilled from her nose and from a gash across her eyebrow, and dripped onto a large brooch she had pinned to her coat—a white rose. Made, he thought, of cotton.

  When William crouched before her, she flinched back, but she took his offered handkerchief and wiped the blood from her face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing for all of mankind at once.

  The woman shrugged and waved his words away. “’S’what you do, ain’t it? When we don’t do what we’re told. You whip your horses, kick your dogs, and punch your women. Big strong men you are.”

  “Right. Up you go, you old hag. Time to take a ride.” A uniformed police officer pushed between William and the woman and snatched her by the collar of her coat. Part of the collar tore away, and she fell back to the ground, so he grabbed her by her hair instead. She screeched and fought, and the officer hit her with his stick.

  “Stop! What are you doing?!” William shoved the officer without thinking and took protective hold of the dazed woman, putting himself between her and this new, more dangerous assailant.

  “I’m apprehending a criminal, is what I’m doing, and I’ll ask you once to step aside and let me do my job, or I’ll haul you in as well.”

  “She’s hurt already. She’s been beaten.”

  “She vandalized a business.”

  “You don’t know that! You English believe in innocent until proven guilty, don’t you?”

  The bobby glanced at the man still lying in the street, struggling to sit up, then turned back to William and sneered at him. “You want to learn our legal system, Yank? Happy to oblige.”

  William saw the nightstick coming, but, still holding the woman, he couldn’t evade its blow.

  Chris leaned jauntily against the marble wall of the station house, his wide smirk beaming out amused concern. “If you wanted a brawl, you had only to ask. I’d’ve found you a proper one. Queensbury rules and all.” He frowned and reached toward William’s forehead, where a prodigious lump currently resided. “You all right, old bean?”

  William knocked his hand away. “I’ll be fine.” His head thumped and his neck ached. His hand throbbed stiffly. His pride was singed, and his righteous fury flamed, but he’d be fine. “Thank you for the rescue.”

  “Say nothing of it. You’ve done the same for me.”

  Yes, he had. In San Francisco, Chris had enthusiastically celebrated his recovery from his earthquake injuries and found himself several scrapes among the rabble in the rubble along the waterfront. William had had spells like that in his youth as well, when wild recklessness seemed the height of living. But he was a bit older now, a bit farther along the road to a settled life. Now, when he wound up riding in a paddy wagon, it was for the cause of chivalry. Apparently.

  As they headed to the door, the room spun and the floor bucked, and Chris suddenly had his arm hooked around William’s waist. “Careful, Will. You look like you ought not be alone. Why not come back with me to the house for a quiet night? The cook’s up, and she’ll make us a late repast. I’ll have a room made up for you.”

  Exhausted and vaguely ill, William nodded.

  William slept a deep, yet restive sleep that night in one of the many bedrooms of Tate House and stumbled down to breakfast feeling disoriented and unwell—and still tired enough to sleep another night through.

  The disorientation persisted as he made his way to the dining room. It seemed that when Chris occupied the house alone, he did so with a skeleton staff and allowed them to close up most of the rooms. Covered furniture filled most open spaces, lurking like misshapen ghosts in silent rooms. Only the library, the dining room, and the kitchen remained in use on the main floor, and a single bedroom on the floor above—until last night, when another had hastily been made ready for him.

  The night before skulked in a hazy corner of William’s memory, as if he’d drunk himself into a stupor, but he was sure he hadn’t. The bobby had hit him hard enough to jumble his senses around—a much less enjoyable way to lose an evening. But he remembered that a chilly, heavy rain had begun just as they’d arrive at the house. He and Chris had sat in the library before a cozy fire, eating a simple meal and talking. How he’d gotten to bed, though, he couldn’t recall.

  Before he entered the dining room, he dug into his mind and made himself remember as well as he could. He did recall talking rather a lot—Chris peppering him with questions that he’d answered. About the riot and arrest. About politics in general, and women’s suffrage in particular. About his family. About his business. The more William remembered about their conversation, the more it seemed an interview, and he’d been more expansive in his answers than he normally would have been.

  Chris was already at the table when William went in. A full breakfast was laid out on the sideboard, but his stomach rebelled at the sight and scent of food, so he went to the urn, prepared to resign himself to—oh, thank God. It was coffee.

  “You have coffee!”

  “Of course. I’m not a bumpkin. My father, on the other hand … Will, you look a sight. If you’d like, I’ll have the doctor come round and take a look at that lump.”

  With the rich aroma of black coffee already settling his head and his stomach, William sat at the table. “Thank you, but it’s not necessary. The nightstick knocked some things loose, but I’ll take a day or two off and be fine.”

  “It’s not often that a gent with the means to take the Buckingham Suite at the Dohring gets roughed up by a bobby on the street. I can’t wait to tell the boys at the club. I’ll be a hero for knowing you!” He laughed and folded up the day’s first edition of the Times. “I think I’ll leave out the part where you defended the honor of a suffragette. They might not allow you round anymore—or me, for that matter.”

  William grimaced as the memories of the riot flowered into fullness. He sipped his coffee and said nothing.

  “You really support those women? Throwing bricks and all?”

  “I support their cause, yes. And I don’t think a woman who breaks a window deserves to be beaten by a mob.” He took another sip and added, “My mother is a suffragist.”

  “So you said last night.” Chris grinned. “I believe it of your mother. Angelica Frazier is a force of nature. With her on the stump, American women are sure to succeed. She reminded me of—”

  He stopped abruptly, but William filled in the rest. “Your sister.” He’d already considered whether that might have been why
Nora had captured his interest so wholly and quickly: she reminded him of a woman he admired for innumerable reasons that had nothing to do with their blood relationship.

  “Yes. My sister. A more contrarian nymph has never trod upon English soil. Her very first word was ‘No,’ and she applied it liberally and imperiously. When she first learned to say her own name, she called herself ‘Nono,’ and believe me, she named herself better than our parents did. Her second word was ‘why.’ She’s been arguing and demanding answers ever since. She’s a hopeless cause.”

  Smiling at the bittersweet thought of a tiny Nora making big demands, William finished his coffee. His head still throbbed, and all the things he could see had frayed edges, but he made his sore eyes settle and hold on his friend, who was clearly working his way toward something.

  Chris set his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “You’re a champion of hopeless causes, aren’t you, my friend?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How well do you know my sister?”

  William sat up straight and tried to force his mind to clear. Was there hostility in his friend’s tone? Did he know that William had, all unintentionally but more than once, hurt Lady Nora? What had he said last night, in the haze of his rattled head?

  “You know how well I know her. You’ve been with me every time I’ve seen her.”

  “I’m not asking if you’ve prowled about where you oughtn’t with my sister, Will. If I believed that, you would still be in a cell, and I’d be studying up on the rules of dueling. I trust in your honor. I’m asking—never mind being coy. Is there something between you? Do you admire her?”

  Without the mental faculties in his bruised brain to parse out a political answer, William answered the only way he could: honestly. “I can answer the second question more easily than the first. Yes, I admire her very much. But no, I don’t think there’s anything between us. I don’t see how there could be.”