by Baird Wells
“She trusts you.” Simon snapped forward and rubbed his hands together. “Excellent! This is progressing very well.”
“Not particularly. In my limited experience, Lady Hannah is rarely at home alone.”
“A small thing.” Simon snapped and waved the matter off. “If I send Miss Maddox a summons, she won’t refuse.”
James bristled at the easy way in which Simon cattled people, even people like Margaret.
He was running out of manufactured bread crumbs, and he wondered why on earth he still bothered. Maybe it was a fear of the man’s hot-eyed determination, fear of what avenue Simon might take when James bowed out. And he would bow out, that very moment if it were feasible. But Hannah had to be warned first. She should know what her brother-in-law had been up to and prepare for what he might do next. “I appreciate your assistance.”
“As I appreciate yours.” For the first time, Simon leaned up out of his chair and offered James his hand.
Decided on the matter before he had reached the door again, James asked the driver to pass by Hannah’s townhouse, but two carriages out front pushed him on. Tad Hamilton’s alone would not have prevented him, but the one he did not recognize was too risky.
He made a second pass after supper only to find the house dark save a single window at the top floor. Gambling despite the evidence, he knocked anyhow, but a long-faced Mrs. Delford informed him of her regret and closed the door again. Hannah and Miss Maddox were out.
Agitated, he went back home under flagging resolve. He would tell Hannah the truth, though perhaps not in London, or at any time before the next century.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hannah followed her friend Millicent Fawcett out of the little brownstone house on Gower Street and into a late afternoon so chilled that icy fog turned the sunlight to pastel pinks and oranges above the surrounding rooftops. They met here with a few dozen other ladies at least once a week, in humble rooms belonging to the London Organisation for Women’s Suffrage. Today it had just been her and Millicent, some tea and conversation about their upcoming rally, and Hannah’s quarterly donation to Newnham Hall, Millicent’s college for women.
“I’m worried about next week,” admitted Millicent, fishing for the office key inside her heavy gray coat, an uncharacteristic furrow to her sable brow. “The Pankhursts have left a bitter taste in the mouths of the public. Two factories and a poorhouse attacked this month. They should appreciate that harming the poor hands our opposition a ready-made rebuttal.” She waved the key for emphasis. “Perhaps they do. But how can they keep on, when our conduct, beyond reproach, is our strongest weapon?”
Hannah tugged up her glove, burrowing into her fox collar, a sigh freezing its hair into miniature icicles. “They’re anarchists, Millicent. They don’t have a cause.” She laughed, then regretted a sting in her lungs. “Well, no cause beyond chaos. Any order besides the current order will do.” It galled her, and Millicent too, to be thought lacking in conviction because they didn’t embrace violence.
Millicent pocketed the key and crossed her arms in one delicate motion, chewing her bottom lip. “We have to distance ourselves from them each time we engage the public.”
Taking Millicent’s wool-clad elbow, Hannah tugged her down the steps. “And we shall. Particularly next week. Whatever they hurl at us, we’ll knock it straight away.” She stopped and rubbed reassurance into Millicent’s arms. “Our cause is right, Millicent. We’re justified, and determined. A detractor on our side of the fence hurts us a bit more than on the other, but they’re just as easily overcome. Persevere, friend.”
Millicent wrapped her in a crushing embrace. “What I’d give to have one hundred such women on my side!”
“You have one hundred such women, and a thousand stronger ones,” Hannah whispered fiercely.
“Is this how your lot conduct themselves in the street?” sneered a voice behind her. “Pawing one another over a lot of loose talk?”
Hannah let Millicent go, and took her time turning to face him, because she knew it would annoy him. “What do you want, Simon?”
He took a step forward, clenched fists shaking. “You know what it is I want; I’ve come to remind you that I am here, always here, until I get it.”
Millicent wedged a half step in front of her. “Hannah –”
Despite the cold, enraged sweat dampened her coat’s satin lining. She cut Millicent’s concern with a raised hand, a gesture that batted Simon’s attention to the other woman.
“Garrett-Fawcett,” he sneered at Millicent. “That what you call yourself?”
Millicent’s slender face remained placid, hazel eyes steady. “I acknowledge both my own surname, and that of my husband, if that’s what you mean.”
There was no way of knowing if that was what Simon meant. Hannah suspected he had already chambered his next insult and was proved right on his following breath. “That sister of yours come to her senses yet? Hm?”
Millicent’s sigh was weary, pounded flat by a hundred such jabs before. “Elizabeth is well-respected; a skilled doctor, sir.”
“She’s neither of those things. If your mind was as like to a man’s as you lot claim, you would grasp the punchline she provides at our clubs and dinners.”
“From some of the very mouths into which she has dispensed treatment for cholera.” Hannah snorted. “A second and even a third time. A man would have let them perish by now. Perhaps you are all correct; perhaps we are the weaker sex.”
Simon’s lips pursed, a drawing up of truth around his prejudices, wanting to argue and trapped into making himself a villain by agreeing with her. He kept silent.
Millicent gentled her stiff arm, eyes locked in a hot, silent battle with Simon. “But ever the more compassionate in these moments, and that is something.”
“Delusional,” muttered Simon.
“I am not compassionate in this moment,” declared Hannah, shrill, raising her chin to Simon’s renewed attention. Two gentlemen scuffed boots against the walk, pausing to take her in, while a woman across the street clutched her shawl and ducked her head, facing the scene in the same posture as she might a fearful gale. Hannah saw them, now and at other moments such as these. They were the same men who jeered and pointed from the sidelines at rallies; the same women who’d been taught their place so thoroughly that anyone suggesting better for them was viewed with grave suspicion. Being quiet made everyone comfortable: guffawing gentlemen, frightened ladies, Simon. She shook a fist at him, not keen on making anybody comfortable. “I am vengeful, spiteful!” She thought of James, and how he made her feel in the recesses of her soul, and how Simon held that away from her. Silently she added ‘resentful’.
Simon raised up, so that he could just look down on her. “And that is why, at every moment, I shall watch you! There is nowhere far enough, obscure enough for you to hide from my scrutiny, or my wrath. I will look for your guilt until my last breath!”
“And I will make your eyes bleed from it!” she hissed into his face, clenching fingers that ached to strike his burning cheek.
Simon was less restrained. He gripped her wrist and crushed its small bones. “I am not the only wolf who circles you, Hannah. I don’t have to watch you. You’ll confess your sins and be your own undoing.”
Plenty of wolves circled; her and Millicent, and others. His threat fell flat. “I’ll confess nothing!” she cried. Millicent pushed his shoulder with a long-fingered hand, but it was Margaret’s appearance, her sharp slap at the back of Simon’s hand, that ended his abuse. She came around him like a banshee, and though Hannah had never been happy to see her, she was relieved.
“It’s nearing time for dinner. Lady Hannah should be returning home now.” Margaret slipped her lithe frame past Simon’s and wedged against Hannah, her palm guiding at the small of Hannah’s back.
She hated Margaret, hated her perpetual management, and hated her a fraction more for an ability to quell Simon when no one else could. They moved off along Darby, Margaret
a step ahead and Millicent on her arm. Hannah dared a glance back at her nemesis, his face a scarlet mask behind a fog of hatred billowing from his nostrils, and allowed gratitude for Margaret’s interference. Whatever her faults and transgressions, Margaret was not petrified by a man like Simon.
“You ought to go up to the Peaks district,” whispered Millicent, well aware that Margaret, no matter how many meetings she attended, was not an ally. But not aware, Hannah lamented, of them both being tethered to Simon. It was too humiliating a story to tell, and even if she had, there was a very real danger of Millicent making her see reason, or at least trying. If anyone could talk her out of revenge, it was her dear friend, and Hannah didn’t wish to be talked out of anything that might punish Simon.
“I need to be here next week,” Hannah fibbed, pulling on Millicent when they reached the corner. Margaret moved ahead of them, momentarily lost in Whitechapel’s sweaty, sooty press of bodies.
“Somewhere, Hannah,” Millicent pressed. “The south of France. Rome. You have to move beyond Webster’s abuse.”
There was no such place. She might gain a head start by slipping away before dawn, but noon would find Simon at her heels, no matter her velocity. Half of England and all of London, it seemed, lived in the impossible depths of Simon’s pocket. Despite the quantity within, he could reach in and pluck out just who he needed, when needed, and they wouldn’t refuse. At least, not more than once.
“I will not run. We ought to have a say,” she insisted, tipping a nod to Long Nel, queen of her filthy corner and holding court in a moth-eaten brown shawl. Nel had survived cholera, a husband with a weighty right hook, and three decades on London streets. The woman’s only reward was a wide berth on her side of St. Mark’s from the other molls, with no say in a world that passed her by as quickly as they passed judgment on her. Where, Hannah wondered, did anyone expect Nel and women like her to go, without a voice?
Hannah squared her shoulders, and took Millicent’s arm more tightly as they passed over the invisible boundary between London’s dark and light halves. Dirty, narrow alleys and stinking gutters gave way to the wide promenades of Grosvenor square, tenement rows replaced by Westminster’s Georgian brownstone mansions. It wasn’t a choice people made, to live on one side or the other. A dash of hopelessness washed over her at the idea, and the permanence of circumstances decided entirely by fate. “We ought to have equal rights. No man, not Simon Webster or any other harrumphing suit, ought to keep us from them. He won’t chase me away, not now.”
They had reached her door, and Margaret stood sentry, holding it wide in silent insistence that Hannah pack away all her sedition and accept her place once more.
Millicent wrapped her in a slender embrace, and then pulled away and made a tender frown. “You’re strong, Hannah. You’re an example to us all.”
She laughed and squeezed Millicent’s hand. “And you are wise. Hopefully your example is the more prominent of the two.”
Millicent rolled her eyes, her expression betraying a small dimple. “Good day, my dear.”
Hannah left Millicent at the steps and went in, reflecting on the exchange with her friend as much as her tangle with Simon as she slipped from her coat and pried frozen toes from her boots. When she had settled in front of the fire and warmed her feet a little on the hearth, she thought of James.
Millicent had called her strong, but James had made her regret that strength. She longed to melt into him, to share a little of her struggle, her reckoning with Simon. James had never demanded her subservience, derided her independence. He was subjugating her in a far more dangerous fashion: by her consent.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hannah pounded up Brook Street, taking out her frustration on the cobblestone, a step at a time. She’d started for Claridge’s directly after her visit to the Fitz house, despite intending to visit the tea room much later. Her purpose in going had been to help Sarah purchase a suitable wardrobe for her position at the Cheswick school. Almost as soon as she was settled in the parlor, though, Eleanor had explained in a numb and empty-eyed way that Sarah would be needed at home for another year, only one more year, while George had nodded his head, fixed with a contented – or oblivious, smile. The children had been still, in an uncharacteristic and disconcerting way, while Sarah’s sobbing upstairs underscored the whole awful moment.
Hannah had pleaded, heaped up facts, and even come dangerously close to arguing with George Fitz over his daughter’s keen mind. One tiny mouth, she’d reasoned, seemed so much simpler to feed than an older one, a girl who needed maintenance and a wardrobe, and had a chance to earn her own keep. Eleanor had muttered in exhausted dollops that the trade-off was worthwhile, and that Sarah could just as easily have her needs seen to if she married, while George had pondered whether this would be the last addition to the Fitz family. Who knew, he’d said with a glint of innuendo, how many more times all hands would be needed for a newcomer.
Hannah had blown from the house like a gale, in a foul temper rarely matched by anything besides the effects of Simon.
She’d answered James’ note the day before, saying that they could meet at four, but now wished she’d chosen earlier. Claridge’s red brick turrets weren’t so far from his home or hers; she could go home and pen a note. Not knowing if he’d already gone out and not wishing to encounter Margaret, Hannah reconciled herself to being early and took a turn up and down the street, appreciating how nothing ever changed, before she went in.
Claridge’s tea room was an afterthought to the hotel, converted from a gentleman’s hall when it was realized that the modern gentleman could and would find sport in all sorts of places, while ladies with money longed for refreshment. Everything masculine had been promptly tossed out of the very square space, without a moment’s considerations for how round tables and potted palms would be well-fitted, to which the answer was ‘not very’. A good number of tables were poked into the space, making linen and lace draped obstacles for the waiters to dodge around to reach an inconvenient kitchen wedged off of the back, out of sight from genteel eyes not used to witnessing any sort of labor. Like so many things in London, including the women who visited Claridge’s, the tea room was tradition, beauty, and very-near impracticality.
Hannah ordered their tea, and a quantity of things to eat, which she did when she was acutely frustrated. Chicken salad and cucumber sandwiches arrived along with petit fours with angelica and scones with jam, but not the raspberry. She couldn’t bear the indignity of a hundred seeds in her teeth after the balance of the day she’d had. Ham croquettes sounded necessary, along with egg salad on brown bread. Bonbons were a foregone conclusion. When her waiter inquired ‘Anything else?’, Hannah swore he was teasing rather than asking. She explained that she would decide when her companion arrived, and caught a twitch of the man’s brow, perhaps expressing doubt at anyone else’s coming at all. She hid her smile until he’d turned to go, hating that he’d made her do it.
She watched the wide mahogany doors in a shamelessly open fashion until James appeared at last. Long, from his gray top hat to his arms and legs, and even fingers inside his gloves, he pulled her eye in pleasing spans across his figure.
She hadn’t hidden her anticipation of him, but as he drifted toward her between the tables, a fluster boiled over and she dropped her eyes just when she most longed to look. It wasn’t worry over the other clinking, murmuring guests, but James himself that made her struggle.
He leaned across the table and examined the empty chair beside her with a single stroke of curiosity, then set his hat onto it, eyes otherwise fixed to her under a pull of his brow. His eyes touched her scowl, cheeks that held a bit of scald, and lips she felt still drawn up. “You’re feeling unwell today?”
“I am feeling…” She drew off her gloves and rubbed her face. “I’m not sure there are words for it.”
“Simon?”
“The Fitzes.”
“Mmm.” James’s single noise, barely audi
ble under the room’s ambient conversation, was a sound of perfect understanding. He claimed his cup, still empty, pretended to swirl its contents and then peered inside. “George has found reason to keep Sarah at home, and Eleanor has agreed with him.”
“Uncanny.” She took his cup and set it back on the saucer with a clink. “Anyhow, I don’t want to talk about it.” Straightening for their laden-armed waiter, she unfolded her napkin and brushed it over her lap in deliberate silence while he arranged his spread.
“Your face says otherwise,” James accused, taking a scone when the waiter had flitted on to the next table.
“My face says I’m upset.” She made a careful examination of the tiered stand, considering sandwiches to keep from meeting his eyes. “If anything in my expression has invited you to try and fix that, you’ve been misled,” she warned, not ready yet for anything conciliatory. Hannah pinched her selection with little gold tongs, and softened her words with a glance.
She loved when he accepted her challenge, how a smile played at the farthest corner of his mouth, all on one side, while it blazed unchecked in his gray eyes. He cocked his head a little, and caressed her with a look, at least it felt to her that that he did, and made it hard for her to swallow.
After he’d punished her sweetly a moment, he rose a fraction and peered again at the chair where his hat rested. “No Margaret today?”
“No. That was why I wrote you yesterday; she mentioned riding this afternoon.” It occurred to Hannah in a sharp spark how absent Margaret was of late, and how grateful she was for the change.
“I find it strange that as much as you two cannot bear one another, and how your family can’t bear you, you’re still invited to Simon’s dinners and parties.”
“Isn’t it that way in the country?” She considered the upstairs-downstairs differences a moment. “There is no greater virtue in London than behaving correctly; no greater sin than disregarding its social code.”
