by Evie Dunmore
Mum and Oma—so endlessly supportive.
Bernie—what badassery, to do a one-day round trip to NYC in a three-piece suit. From PA. In July.
All my friends who picked up a romance novel for the first time—special thanks to Anna, Rob, and Nils.
All my fantastic cousins, from Beirut to Niagara Falls. Merci.
My sensitivity readers.
Kate and Montse—what would I do without a daily dose of Lilac Wine?
A battalion of historical fiction and romance authors who took the time to support my work—in particular Renée Rosen, Chanel Cleeton, Gaelen Foley, Eva Leigh, Anna Campbell, Megan McCrane, Amy E. Reichert, and Stephanie Thornton. I wouldn’t be where I am without their endorsement and encouragement.
Jennifer Probst, Rachel Van Dyken, Lauren Layne—the Tree of Trust is a gem and I love being part of it.
A special thank-you to my marvelous agent, Kevan Lyon, who is always a step ahead of things, and to my formidably patient, eagle-eyed editor, Sarah Blumenstock. Working with you is pure joy.
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the course of the novel, Lucie discovers her sexuality. How would you describe this journey? What do you think were the main drivers behind Lucie’s risky decision to accept Tristan’s offer, knowing that a sexual relationship outside of marriage would be socially unacceptable?
2. Can you relate to Lucie’s concerns that working hard on a cause will automatically pose a conflict with married life or a romantic relationship? Do you agree or disagree? Be specific.
3. How would you describe the conflict between Lucie and her mother? Did your opinion of Lucie’s mother change throughout the story? Why or why not?
4. Tristan does not immediately turn into a suffrage activist, despite witnessing how little protection the law provides his mother from the abuses of her husband. Why do you think that is?
5. What role does Annabelle play in this story? How is her approach to the Cause different from Lucie’s?
6. Fashion is a frequent topic of discussion among Hattie, Lucie, Annabelle, and Catriona. In the Victorian era, women of means were expected to present themselves fashionably and dress immaculately at all times. Fashion was also one of the few ways through which a woman could express her personality. How is fashion used in this story? Do you think fashion is political for Lucie and her friends? Why or why not? Do you feel fashion is still more than just fashion today?
7. Women’s magazines in the Victorian era were frequently edited by men, and usually aimed to inform and facilitate women’s correct conduct in society and in the home. How has this changed?
8. While we do not see Lucie tackling an overarching political event in the course of her story, she is regularly confronted—due to her political work—with what we today would call microaggression. Do you recall any of those instances, and how do you think these experiences would shape an activist like Lucie over time?
9. Lucie tells Tristan women have been explicitly fighting for equality for nearly a hundred years—ever since Mary Wollstonecraft wrote The Vindication on the Rights of Women—yet here we are, still fighting—another 140 years on. Do you feel this is still applicable, why or why not?
Don’t miss Hattie and Lucian’s story,
coming Fall 2021 from Jove!
London, July 1880
All the best adventures began with escaping Mr. Graves. All the most perilous ones, too, admittedly—as she hovered on the rain-soaked pavement in front of the Chelsea town-house she was about to infiltrate, feeling hot and damp beneath her woollen cloak. Hattie Greenfield’s mind inexorably wandered back to the last time she had run from her protection officer. It had resulted in an altercation with a toad of a policeman, and a dear friend being held in Milbank penitentiary.
She raised her chin at the lacquered front door atop the steps. Unlike the last time, she was not partaking in an inherently risky women’s rights march but in a private art gallery tour. Perfectly harmless. Granted, her friends would point out that both the art and the gallery were owned by a man society had nicknamed Beelzebub, and that he furthermore happened to be her father’s business rival, and no, she should not be found admiring the man’s Pre-Raphaelites unchaperoned.
She lifted her skirts and began the ascent, because first of all, Mr. Blackstone—Beelzebub—would not be present; in fact, very few people had ever seen him in the flesh. Second, she had registered for the tour as a Miss Jones, Classics student at Cambridge, rather than as Harriet Greenfield, Oxford art student and banking heiress. And lastly, she would not be unchaperoned—the full tour through the Sorcha Gallery of Arts and Antiques comprised a handful of other young art connoisseurs and likely their chaperones, and the invite in her reticule said she was keeping them waiting. The tour had begun at two o’clock sharp.
The iron-cast lion’s head on the door had large, pointy teeth. The warning that she was about to enter the lion’s den was almost too shrill to ignore for someone selectively superstitious. However, the advanced hour on her small pocket watch was all but burning a hole through her bodice.
The repeated thuds of the door knocker appeared to fade away unnoticed into the entrance hall beyond.
She rang the bell.
Silence.
Beneath the hem of her camouflage cloak, her wet foot began to tap. They must have begun the tour without her, unwilling to wait past the acceptable fifteen minutes. She had climbed from the hackney, hopelessly stuck in traffic and a downpour soon after leaving Victoria Station to walk the last quarter mile, and now she felt like a drowned mouse all for naught? The pounding of iron on oak became a little frantic.
The heavy door swung back unexpectedly.
The man facing her was not a butler. His thinning gray hair was disheveled, he wore a paint-stained apron, and he smelled pungently of turpentine and . . . antique wax polish?
She tried to assess without staring whether his face, long and lined, was familiar to her from the artistic circles.
His assessment of her person was not subtle at all: his gaze searched the empty space to her right where a chaperone should have been—then roamed from the tips of her sodden shoes up over her cloak to linger on her undoubtedly frizzy red hair.
“And you’ll be?” he drawled.
She cleared her throat. “I am here for the tour.”
“The tour?” Comprehension dawned in the man’s eyes. “The tour.”
“Yes.”
His thin lips curled with derision. “I see.”
She shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m afraid I was delayed on my journey. I have come all the way from outside London, you see, and then there was such dreadful traffic on Lyall Street because of the heavy rain; the roads are—”
“Come on then,” he said, and abruptly stepped aside with a wave of his hand.
He had to be an artist, and he was cross, likely because she had interrupted his work; male artists had this prerogative, to let it be known that they were cross.
No maid or footman was in sight to take her cloak and hat, in fact the entrance hall was yawningly empty. A nervous flutter tickled her neck. But the turpentine man was already several paces ahead, his hasty footsteps echoing on the black-and-white marble tiles.
“Sir.” She hurried after him, water squelching between her toes.
He turned into a shadowed hallway. To her left and right, the intriguing lines and curves of statues and vases beckoned, but it was impossible to take a closer look; not slipping on the polished floor at this pace was a balancing act. Ahead of her, the man had stopped and opened a door.
He motioned for her to enter, but she hesitated on the doorstep, for while the room was brightly lit and spacious, there was no group of art students waiting for her here. There was no one here at all.
She glanced up at the painter, and he flicked his fingers impatiently
at the nearest settee. “Go on, take a seat.”
She gave a small shake. She could hardly sit down on the butter yellow silk in her damp cloak; even from here she could tell the settee was from the days of Louis XIV.
“Will you send someone to take my coat, please, Mr. . . . ?”
The man inclined his head in a mock bow. “You shall be seen to shortly.”
“Sir, I must ask you to—”
The door was firmly closed in her face, and she stood blinking at the white wood paneling.
“Right,” she muttered.
She blew out a breath. In the silence, the beat of her heart was loud in her ears. Warm sweat trickled down her back. Her toes felt . . . wrinkled in her soaked cotton stockings.
She tried a smile. “Adventurous,” she said. “This is fabulous, and adventurous.”
She turned back to the room, and briefly forgot about her sorry feet altogether.
This was a pirate’s lair. And the treasures were piling up high. Every shelf and table surface coming into focus was crowded with splendor: glossy, whirling porcelain couples—Meissen, at a second glance; filigree ivory-and-gold statuettes; ornately carved boxes with softly rounded edges in all shades of jade green. Select pieces were illuminated by small table lamps with ceramic shades so fine, the gaslight shone through them as if they were made of silk. The wall opposite was papered in a riotously floral Morris wallpaper—a waste, considering it was covered from floor to ceiling in paintings, their gilded frames nearly touching.
“Oh my.”
She laughed softly. On the Morris wall, a Cranach the Elder was on display, in between a picnic scene that looked like a Monet, and a smaller painting in the brown tones of a Dutch Renaissance work. Most people would have considered those considerably more intriguing than the Pre-Raphaelites. But in the fireplace to her right, a few embers were still aglow, and presently they held the greatest appeal of all.
She carefully picked her way through the array of decorated side tables, but her cloak still jostled one of them and sent a porcelain ballerina swaying precariously on her pointy toes. Goodness. Mr. Blackstone had a lot to answer for—each one of these pieces deserved its own secure display case. What had possessed him or his curator to jumble them together like guests of a carelessly composed, over-crowded dinner party, and in a room open to the public no less?
The heat coming from the grate of the fireplace was feeble; she stood as close as was safely possible in billowing garments and she was still shivering. Her reflection in the wide mirror above the mantelshelf confirmed she looked a fright: the purple feather on her hat was thin as a rat’s tail, her usually silky curls were a fuzzy riot, her upturned nose glowed pink.
If this was what her little walk had done to her face, she shuddered to think what havoc it had wreaked upon her slippers. She stuck out a foot from beneath her hem. Dainty heels, white silk, embroidered with the tiniest pearls. Clearly damaged beyond repair. Her stomach dipped. There went another of her favorites.
It was, by some stretch of imagination, Professor Ruskin’s fault. If he had not called her Abduction of Persephone “lovely” the other week, she probably would not have boarded the train this morning. It had been one such lovely too many since she had enrolled at Oxford last year. He had said it in passing, with a friendly nod; then he had lingered next to Lord Clotworthy’s isle and had critiqued his work for a full ten minutes, and she had stood with her ears straining to catch his advice on how to strengthen the Gothicness in the painting. Somehow, the idea to take a good long look at Millais’s Ophelia, which Blackstone had miraculously secured for his gallery, had taken root during that class. And yes, there might have also been a tiny, tantalizing temptation in the prospect of setting foot onto property owned by Mr. Blackstone, the one man in Britain who let her father’s luncheon invitations pass unanswered. . . .
Her attention, of its own volition, shifted to the pair of green-glazed, round-bellied vases flanking the mantelshelf clock. They were easily overlooked at first glance as they hid in plain sight, unremarkable in their earthy simplicity like the poor relation in a ballroom filled with opulence. And yet . . . their shape . . . her eyes narrowed at the relief on the nearer vase. After a moment’s hesitation, she tugged the glove off her left hand, stuffed it into her cloak pocket, and lightly skimmed her index finger over the simple pattern on the vase’s rim. A keen sensation prickled down her back. She was looking at something extraordinary indeed. With some luck, there was a mark to confirm her suspicions—if she dared to check for it.
Her deliberation was brief.
She took the vase in both hands, handling it with the anxious care she would afford a raw egg, and turned it bottom-up. She sucked in a breath—there was a mark. All the fine hairs on her arms stood erect. This unassuming piece was almost certainly a Han vase. Or an excellent counterfeit of one. If it was real, it was two thousand years old. Her palms turned hot and damp.
“I’d rather you not touch that,” came a gravelly male voice.
She jumped and shrieked, pressing the vase to her breast.
What she saw in the mirror made her freeze.
The pirate had returned to his lair.
He must have very quietly opened the door while she had been engrossed. He was watching her, with his arms folded across his broad chest and a brawny shoulder leaning against the door frame.
She turned slowly, her stomach hollowing. While he was of course not a pirate, this man was no improvement over the ill-mannered artist earlier. He was not decent—he was missing both his jacket and his cravat, and his sleeves were rolled up and exposed muscular forearms. His coal black hair looked rough to the touch. Stubble darkened his square jaw. But the most uncivilized part of him were his eyes—they were trained on her with a singular intensity that curled her toes in her wet slippers.
“I just . . .” her voice faltered.
He closed the door. Her grip on the vase tightened. Obviously, he had been sent to fetch her, but her instincts were alarmed and urged her to retreat. He moved in on her smoothly, too smoothly, rattling precisely nothing on his prowl through the delicate art pieces. She was motionless like a rabbit arrested by a predator’s stare until he was right in front of her.
He was arresting. His eyes were cool and gray as slate. Impossible to tell his age; he radiated a compelling vitality, but he had the look of a man who had lived too much, too soon. His features were all contrasts: coarse but well-proportioned; his inky lashes and dark brows stark against his pale skin. His nose might have been noble once, but it had been broken and now the bump vaguely disturbed the symmetry of his face.
He held her in his gaze while he slid two fingers of his right hand into the mouth of the vase. Which she was still clutching like a thief caught in the act.
“Why don’t you give this to me,” he said.
Her skin pulsed hot red with embarrassment as she released the precious ceramic. Words were hopelessly jammed in her throat. She had brothers, and she studied alongside men, daily. She was never tongue-tied in their presence—she was never tongue-tied. But as the man placed the vase back onto the mantelshelf, she was preternaturally aware of his scent, an attractive blend of pine soap and starch, incongruently clean with his piratical appearance. She was altogether too aware of this man being a man. He was of average height, but so very . . . broad. Shirtsleeves of finest cotton clung snugly to his biceps and the balls of his shoulders, hinting at swells and ridges of muscle no gentleman would possess.
She glanced back up at him just as he inclined his head, and their eyes met in another mutual inspection. Her mouth turned dry. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but his irises had darkened by a shade or two.
“I had not meant to touch it,” she said, sounding prim.
A faintly ironic expression passed over his face. It failed to soften the hard set of his mouth. “And with whom do I have the pleasure, miss?”
The heat emanating from his body was warmer than the embers on the grate. She knew because he stood too close. His right hand was still braced on the mantelshelf next to her shoulder, his arm subtly cutting off any escape route to the left.
“My name is Miss Jones.” It came out on an unnatural pitch.
A flash of silver lit his eyes as he registered the lie. “And what is the purpose of your visit, Miss Jones?”
He was a Scotsman. His Rs were emerging as softly rolling growls. This certainly explained the Celtic dark locks and fair skin. . . .
She licked her lips nervously. The purpose of her visit? “The full tour?”
There was a subtle tension in him, and a flare of contempt in the depth of his gaze. “And are you certain of that?”
“Of course, and I would be much obliged if you could—”
He raised a hand to her face, and a rough fingertip lightly touched her cheekbone.
The man was touching her. A man was touching her.
Everything slowed.
The gray of his eyes was as soft and menacing as smoke.
She should scream. Slap him. Her body did not obey, it stood hot and useless as the air between them crackled with a knowing, that she was on the cusp of something vast.
“Aye,” came his voice as if from a distance. “Then I shall give you the tour, Miss Jones.”
His fingers curved around the soft nape of her neck, and then his mouth was on hers.
Photograph by the author
Evie Dunmore is the acclaimed author of Bringing Down the Duke. Her League of Extraordinary Women series is inspired by her passion for romance, women pioneers, and all things Victorian. In her civilian life, she is a consultant with an M.Sc. in Diplomacy from Oxford. Evie lives in Berlin and pours her fascination with nineteenth-century Britain into her writing. She is a member of the British Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA).
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