by Evie Dunmore
Hardly. With their collars flipped high and top hats pulled low, every man hasting past was a fortress.
The girl looked up, and their gazes caught. Best to give a cordial smile and to glance away.
“You are Miss Archer, aren’t you? The student with the stipend?”
Miss Greenfield was peering up at her over her purple fur stole.
Of course. The grapevine in Oxford worked both ways.
“The very same, miss,” she said, and wondered what it would be, pity or derision?
Miss Greenfield’s eyes lit with curiosity instead. “You must be awfully clever to win a stipend.”
“Why, thank you,” Annabelle said slowly. “Awfully overeducated, rather.”
Miss Greenfield giggled, sounding very young. “I’m Harriet Greenfield,” she said, and extended a gloved hand. “Is this your first suffrage meeting?”
Lady Lucie seemed too absorbed by her own ongoing speech about justice and John Stuart Mill to notice them talking.
Still, Annabelle lowered her voice to a whisper. “It is my first meeting, yes.”
“Oh, lovely—mine, too,” Miss Greenfield said. “I so hope that this is going to be a good fit. It’s certainly much harder to find one’s noble cause than one would expect, isn’t it?”
Annabelle frowned. “One’s . . . noble cause?”
“Yes, don’t you think everyone should have a noble cause? I wanted to join the Ladies’ Committee for Prison Reform, but Mama would not let me. So I tried the Royal Horticulture Society, but that was a miss.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s a process.” Miss Greenfield was unperturbed. “I have a feeling that women’s rights are a worthy cause, though I have to say the very idea of walking up to a gentleman and—”
“Is there a problem, Miss Greenfield?”
The voice cracked like a shot, making both of them flinch. Bother. Lady Lucie was glaring at them, one small fist propped on her hip.
Miss Greenfield ducked her head. “N-no.”
“No? I had the impression that you were discussing something.”
Miss Greenfield gave a noncommittal squeak. Lady Lucie was known to take no prisoners. There were rumors that she had single-handedly caused a diplomatic incident involving the Spanish ambassador and a silver fork . . .
“We were just a little worried, given that we are new at this,” Annabelle said, and Lady Lucie’s flinty gaze promptly skewered her. Holy bother. The secretary was not a woman to mask moods with sugary smiles. Where a hundred women clamored to be domestic sun rays, this one was a thunderstorm.
Surprisingly, the lady settled for a brusque nod. “Worry not,” she said. “You may work together.”
Miss Greenfield perked up immediately. Annabelle bared her teeth in a smile. If they lobbied but one man of influence between the two of them, she’d be surprised.
With a confidence she did not feel, she led the girl toward the busy hackney coach stop where the air smelled of horses.
“Identify, approach, smile,” Miss Greenfield hummed. “Do you think this can be done while keeping a low profile, Miss Archer? You see, my father . . . I’m not sure he is aware that working for the cause is such a public affair.”
Annabelle cast a poignant glance around the square. They were in the very heart of London, in the shadow of Big Ben, surrounded by people who probably all had dealings with Miss Greenfield’s father in some shape or form. Keeping a low profile would have entailed staying back in Oxford. It would have been much nicer to stay in Oxford. A gent nearing the hackneys slowed, stared, then gave her a wide berth, his lips twisting as if he had stepped into something unpleasant. Another suffragist nearby did not seem to fare much better—the men brushed her off with sneers and flicks of their gentlemanly hands. Something about these contemptuous hands made a long-suppressed emotion stir in the pit of her stomach, and it burned up her throat like acid. Anger.
“It’s not as though my father is opposed to women’s rights as such—oh,” Miss Greenfield breathed. She had gone still, her attention fixing on something beyond Annabelle’s shoulder.
She turned.
Near the entrance of Parliament, a group of three men materialized from the mist. They were approaching the hackneys, rapidly and purposeful like a steam train.
Uneasy awareness prickled down her spine.
The man on the left looked like a brute, with his hulking figure straining his fine clothes. The man in the middle was a gentleman, his grim face framed by large sideburns. The third man . . . The third man was what they were looking for: a man of influence. His hat was tilted low, half obscuring his face, and his well-tailored topcoat gave him the straight shoulders of an athlete rather than a genteel slouch. But he moved with that quiet, commanding certainty that said he knew he could own the ground he walked on.
As if he’d sensed her scrutiny, he looked up.
She froze.
His eyes were striking, icy clear and bright with intelligence, a cool, penetrating intelligence that would cut right to the core of things, to assess, dismiss, eviscerate.
All at once, she was as transparent and fragile as glass.
Her gaze jerked away, her heart racing. She knew his type. She had spent years resenting this kind of man, the kind who had his confidence bred into his bones, who oozed entitlement from the self-assured way he held himself to his perfectly straight aristo nose. He’d make people cower with a well-aimed glare.
It suddenly seemed important not to cower away from this man.
They wanted men of influence to hear them out? Well, she had just completed step one: identify the gentleman.
Two: approach him firmly . . . Her fingers tightened around the leaflets as her feet propelled her forward, right into his path.
His pale eyes narrowed.
Smile.
A push against her shoulder knocked her sideways. “Make way, madam!”
The brute. She had forgotten he existed; now he sent her stumbling over her own feet, and for a horrible beat the world careened around her.
A firm hand clamped around her upper arm, steadying her.
Her gaze flew up and collided with a cool glare.
Drat. It was the aristocrat himself.
And holy hell, this man went quite beyond what they had set out to catch. There wasn’t an ounce of softness in him, not a trace of a chink in his armor. He was clean shaven, his Nordic-blond hair cropped short at the sides; in fact, everything about him was clean, straight, and efficient: the prominent nose, the slashes of his brows, the firm line of his jaw. He had the polished, impenetrable surface of a glacier.
Her stomach gave a sickening lurch.
She was face to face with the rarest of breeds: a perfectly unmanageable man.
She should run.
Her feet were rooted to the spot. She couldn’t stop staring. Those eyes. A world of tightly leashed intensity shimmered in their cold depths that held her, pulled her in, until awareness sizzled between them bright and disturbing like an electric current.
The man’s lips parted. His gaze dropped to her mouth. A flash of heat brightened his eyes, there and gone like lightning.
Well. No matter their position in the world, they all liked her mouth.
She forced up her hand with the pamphlets and held it right under his nose. “Amend the Married Women’s Property Act, sir?”
His eyes were, impossibly, icier than before. “You play a risky game, miss.”
A voice as cool and imperious as his presence.
It heated rather than calmed her blood.
“With all due respect, the risk of being pushed by a gentleman in bright daylight is usually quite low,” she said. “Would you release me now, please?”
His gaze snapped to his right hand. Which was still wrapped around her arm.
&nb
sp; His face shuttered.
The next moment, she was free.
The bustle and noise of Parliament Square reached her ears again, unnaturally loud.
The press of strong fingers round her arm lingered like the afterglow of a burn.
He was already moving past her, staring ahead, his two companions rushing after him.
She swallowed and found her mouth was dry. Her lips still tingled as if he’d brushed over them with a fingertip.
A small, gloved hand touched her sleeve, and she jumped. Miss Greenfield’s brown eyes were wide with concern and . . . awe. “Miss. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” No. Her cheeks were burning as if she had fallen nose first onto the damp cobblestones. She smoothed a trembling hand over her skirts. “Well then,” she said with false cheer, “I gather the gentlemen were not interested.”
From the corner of her eye, she watched the ice lord and his minions file into a large carriage. Meanwhile, Miss Greenfield was contemplating her with covert wariness, probably trying to determine politely whether she was a little unhinged. She wasn’t, but there was no denying that she had acted on impulse. Lord help her. She hadn’t been impulsive in so long.
“Do you know who that was?” Miss Greenfield asked.
Annabelle shook her head.
“That,” the girl said, “was the Duke of Montgomery.”
A duke. Of course the first man she tried to lobby turned out to be a duke, just a fraction short of a prince . . .
A pair of heels clicked rapidly behind them; Lady Lucie was approaching with the force of a small frigate. “Was that what it looked like?” she demanded. “Did you just try to lobby the Duke of Montgomery?”
Annabelle’s spine straightened. “I didn’t know that he was excluded from our efforts.”
“He’s not. Just no one has ever tried going near him before.” The lady cocked her head and looked Annabelle up and down. “I can’t decide whether you are one of the bravest or one of the most foolish women I’ve recently recruited.”
“I didn’t know who he was,” Annabelle said. “He just looked like a man of influence.”
“Well, you had that right,” Lady Lucie said. “He is one of the most influential men in the country.”
“Wouldn’t it be worth a try, then, to speak to him?”
“Have you seen him? This is a man who divorced his wife after barely a year, kept her dowry, and made her disappear. We can safely assume that he is a lost battle where women’s rights are concerned, and not squander our limited resources on him.”
“A divorce?” She might be from a small place like Chorleywood, but even she knew that the aristocracy did not divorce. Still, she could not seem to let it go. “Would the duke’s opinion sway other men of influence?”
Lady Lucie gave an unladylike snort. “He could sway the entire upcoming election if he wished.”
“But that means that if he’s against us, it hardly matters how many of the others we win for the cause, doesn’t it?”
“Possibly.” A frown creased Lady Lucie’s brow. “But it is of no consequence. Our army is not made for attacking such a fortress.”
“How about a siege, then,” Annabelle said, “or a subterfuge, like a big, wooden horse.”
Two pairs of eyes narrowed at her.
Oh, grand, she had thought that out loud. Being pushed by that man must’ve shaken her more than she’d thought.
“Well, I do like the sound of that,” Lady Lucie drawled. “We should put Montgomery onto the agenda for next week’s meeting.” A smile curved her lips as she stuck out her hand. “Call me Lucie. You too, Miss Greenfield. And do excuse me, I believe that is Lord Chiltern over there.”
They watched her plunge into the fog, her red scarf flapping behind her like a pennant. When Miss Greenfield turned back to Annabelle, her expression was serious. “You saved me from Lucie biting my head off in front of everyone earlier. Please call me Hattie.”
It felt a little wrong, such familiarity first with a lady, and now an heiress. Annabelle took a deep breath. This was her new life, being a student, petitioning dukes, shaking hands with unfathomably wealthy girls in purple fur stoles. It seemed that the wisest course of action was to pretend that this was all perfectly normal.
“My pleasure,” she said. “And apologies for not keeping a low profile earlier.”
Hattie’s laugh floated merrily across the square, attracting almost as many scandalized glances as their pamphlets.
They failed to enthuse any man of influence that afternoon. In between half-hearted attempts, Annabelle’s gaze kept straying back to the direction where the coach with the duke had disappeared.
Chapter 3
When Her Majesty requested a meeting, even a duke had to comply. Even when the duke in question was notoriously occupied with running one of the oldest dukedoms in the kingdom and preferred to stay far from the madding crowds of London. One did not say no to the queen, and Sebastian Devereux, nineteenth Duke of Montgomery, knew that he was no exception to that rule. It behooved a man to know his limitations. It meant he could heed or ignore them precisely as the situation required.
He navigated the corridors of Buckingham Palace with long strides, effectively herding the royal usher before him. Secretary Lambton and Lambton’s protection officer were, as usual, trotting behind somewhere.
What did she want?
The last time the queen had summoned him at such short notice, he had walked out of her apartments tasked with ending a trade war with the Ottoman Empire. It had shot his routine to hell, and he was still dealing with the backlog of paperwork. He’d prefer it to be an even greater task now—one so monumental that it would entitle him to ask for something in return.
He handed his hat and greatcoat to one of the footmen lining the hallway to the royal apartment.
“You,” he said to Lambton’s protection officer.
“Your Grace?”
“There was no need to push the woman.”
The officer’s thick brows lowered. “The one on the square?”
“Yes. Or have you accosted any others today?”
“Eh—no, Your Grace.”
Sebastian nodded. “If I ever hear that you have laid a hand on a woman again, it will be the end of your employ.”
The officer was not his employee. But if he wanted to see someone lose his position, Sebastian made it happen. Hectic red splotches spread on the man’s throat. He bowed. “As ye wish, Yer Grace.”
An East End accent, and showing so easily? Times were dire when even the palace had trouble finding decent staff.
The large wing doors swung open, revealing the usher and the gilded interior beyond.
“Your Grace. Sir Lambton.” The usher dipped low as he stepped back. “Her Majesty will see you now.”
The queen’s stout figure rose from her armchair in a rustle of stiff black skirts.
“Montgomery.” She started toward him, one bejeweled hand extended. “I am pleased to see you.”
Her upturned lips said as much. She was in an appreciative mood. For now.
“Sir Lambton”—she turned to her secretary—“we trust your journey was uneventful?”
Lambton shook his head. “A near miss, ma’am. We were attacked by a feminist on Parliament Square.”
The corners of her mouth pulled down sharply. “I daresay.”
“She made straight for the duke.”
“The gall!”
“I escaped unharmed, ma’am,” Sebastian said wryly.
“This time,” the queen said. “This time. Oh, they ought to be given a good whipping. Wicked, unnatural demands! And who would suffer, if they got their way? Why, these women. No gentleman in his right mind is going to be willing to protect such mannish creatures should the need arise. Tell me, Montgomery,” she demanded, “did she look terr
ibly mannish?”
Mannish? The woman had had the softest, most inviting lips he’d seen on this side of the channel. A man could easily lose himself in the pleasures to be had from a mouth like hers. But what was more remarkable was that she had looked him straight in the eye. Green eyes, slightly slanted. Her smile had not touched them.
He shook his head. “She looked female to me, ma’am.”
“Hmph.” The queen looked unimpressed. “You know what happens when common people have grand ideas? Chaos. Chaos happens. Just look at France.” She all but whirled on her heels. “Those are tomorrow’s concerns, however,” she said. “Today there are more pressing matters.”
Sebastian tensed. Pressing sounded promising. She had something that belonged to him, or her nephew did, and he would get it back only if he could offer her something she would want more. In his sixteen years as Montgomery, there had never been such a thing. He understood. It was easier to control a duke, even a dutiful one, when one held his eight-hundred-year-old family seat hostage.
The queen lowered herself back into her armchair with such gravitas one could imagine it were her throne.
“You are a rare sort of man, Montgomery,” she began. “You assess, you decide, you execute, very efficiently and, remarkably . . . modestly.” She fingered the diamond-encrusted crucifix that dangled from her necklace. “And I so favor modesty.”
He gave a modest nod, when in fact he wasn’t modest at all. He did things in moderation because it yielded results, but she was not the first to misread him on that account.
And then she said: “I want you to be the chief strategic advisor for the election campaign of the Tory party.”
Ducal breeding kept his expression completely bland, but his mind screeched to a halt. “For the upcoming election?”
The queen frowned. “Yes. Something has gone awry. The Liberal party has gained a surprising lead.”
Not that surprising, if one looked at the country through the sober glasses of reality instead of Disraeli’s rose-tinted party ideology. But the queen had an absurd soft spot for the prime minister, upstart that he was, and now she was asking him, Sebastian, to keep the man in power?
