“Oh no.” Winthram’s face fell. “The earl is searching the club—didn’t you know? Miss Fenley was the one who came to fetch me. She says Lady Greycliff and Lady Phoebe left not twenty minutes ago, and she can’t find them anywhere.”
Ice-cold fear robbed him of his breath, and Arthur slapped his palm over his chest. “Why would they do that?”
He knew the answer before he’d finished asking the question.
“I tried to tell you,” said a weak voice. Winthram and Arthur turned to stare. Winters sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “She doesn’t have a heart within her, but she does have a gun.”
* * *
THE DISTRESS AT having a gun shoved into her ribs was nothing compared to the shock of Phoebe Hunt being the one to hold it.
Whispering into Violet’s ear, Phoebe had cautioned her to follow directions and not to scream. “Matters are become quite serious, darling.”
There’d been no trace of humor in Phoebe’s voice, and Violet did as she was told. She exited the club in front of Phoebe at a calm but brisk pace. In the commotion of the departing crowd around them, no one noticed them walking away without their coats.
“Your Mr. Kneland will be watching the connecting door to Beacon House, so we enter via the servants’ entrance,” Phoebe explained. “If you try to warn anyone, trust me when I say that a bullet will ruin the line of your gown. I’m willing to shoot anyone who comes to your rescue. You don’t want to be responsible for that, do you?”
Violet said nothing until they were in the house and climbing the back staircase.
“Phoebe Eleanor Margarethe Hunt,” she hissed. “What is the meaning of this?”
Phoebe sighed in exasperation as though speaking to a young child. “I am threatening to shoot you unless you give me your work.”
“I know that, but . . .” Violet pushed open the door to her workroom. She’d hoped someone might be waiting there, but the room stood empty.
Phoebe stuck the gun deeper into Violet’s ribs. “No one here to save you.” She gestured to Violet with a brushing motion. “Fetch me the formula, darling.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Violet pushed the gun aside, twisting around to glower at Phoebe. “I understand why Adam Winters would want to keep me from neutralizing his weapon—”
“His weapon?” Phoebe cried, genuine anger in her voice. “Violet, not you, too? I cannot believe you would credit that pompous ruffian with my work.”
Phoebe’s words sank in, and Violet’s hurt and exasperation solidified into bone-chilling horror.
“You created poisonous gas canisters? My God, Phoebe. A man is dead because of them. Why?”
“Why?” Determination hardened Phoebe’s jaw. “Because I will no longer sit and wait for the world to change. I will change the world.”
“Change the world?” Violet echoed, stunned by Phoebe’s rationale. “You said the three of us would change the world with Athena’s Retreat. Instead, you worked with the Omnis? You don’t give a fig for the rights of workers.”
“I care about the rights of women,” Phoebe retorted. The low, squared bodice of her gown, an elegant creation of saffron silk, revealed her delicate clavicle protruding under her chalk-white skin. The pulse at her throat was beating extraordinarily fast. “The corrupt old men in this country will never let us out from under their bootheels. Groups like the Omnis are tools we can use to climb out from beneath their weight.”
Violet clasped her hands in supplication, desperate for Phoebe to return to her senses. “You don’t need to poison people to advocate for political reform. You’re from one of the most powerful families in England. Your voice alone—”
“My voice?” Phoebe’s rage was awesome to behold. Anger blazed hot enough to burn her skin away and reveal the muscles and bone beneath. “I have been shouting at the top of my lungs my whole life.” She gasped the last few words, straining to make herself understood. “My station makes me less powerful, not more. I could stand in the middle of a ballroom and recite my entire paper on carboxylation from start to finish, and the next day all anyone would remember is the color of my gown.”
Part of Violet sympathized, even though she understood Phoebe was traveling a road past righteous toward no redemption, until her gaze landed on the clump of solid menace in Phoebe’s hand.
“Have you no thought for anyone else?” Violet asked. “Everything you’ve done to slow my work could have had fatal consequences. Your canisters killed a man. Setting off bombs, causing fires . . . who are you?”
“I am the villain,” Phoebe announced, tossing her head and posing as though for a portrait of a warrior queen. “In every story and every play, it is always a man who takes that role. I am snatching it away from them. I am the mad scientist, you are the damsel in distress, and this time, the hero is nowhere to be seen.”
She snapped her words like the tail end of a whip. “I’m the one who told Fanny about his scandal, you know. I’d hoped he’d be halfway to Scotland by now, in a valiant effort to save your reputation.”
“You are selfish, is what you are.” Violet shook her finger in outrage. “You betrayed my friendship and the trust of every other woman in the club. How can you speak of wanting a woman’s voice to be heard when you broke faith with the one community that has always listened to you?”
“I’ve no time for this.” Phoebe brought the nozzle of the gun back into line with Violet’s heart and jerked her chin toward the oak cabinet where the formula was locked up. “Open up the drawer and give me the formula.”
“I’ve forgotten where I keep the key,” Violet said, feeling rather sly.
Phoebe shook her head slowly. “Everyone knows you keep it in the jar of lemon drops.”
Drat.
Violet stomped over to a row of shelves and climbed up on a stool. Standing on her toes, she pushed aside jars of powders and vials of liquids.
“There must have been ways to make your point other than violence.” Violet rooted about until she located the jar. A handful of lemon drops rolled around at the bottom, alongside a rusted little key.
“It’s the only way to get their respect.” Phoebe’s voice had softened. “Weren’t you tempted to do violence in those years married to Daniel when he pressed you into smaller and smaller spaces?”
She lowered the gun as she made her case. “First, he turned you from a brilliant young woman into a mere hostess. Then just a wife. Then even smaller. A place setter. A tea pourer. How did that make you feel?”
“I hated it,” Violet confessed, holding the jar tightly to her chest. “I hated him, and sometimes I hated myself.”
Phoebe’s intensity faded even more, and she nodded in agreement. “Since the beginning of time, they’ve had power over us because of their physical strength. Whenever we objected, they beat us into silence.”
“Oh, Phoebe.” Violet’s heart broke for her friend and whatever injuries she’d taken at the hands of her father, both on the outside and the inside of her body.
Phoebe shook her head, refusing to acknowledge Violet’s sympathy. “Science has given us the opportunity for parity. Do you know the canisters were not meant to be lethal? Adam ignored me when I told him to dilute the mixture in order to decrease the chances of fatalities. He wanted to raise the stakes, damn the consequences. Well, the stakes are now ours to raise. We can develop weapons to protect ourselves and keep dangerous men at bay.”
If Daniel had lived, if Athena’s Retreat hadn’t come about, would Violet have joined Phoebe’s mad undertaking? Rage as clean and pure as Phoebe’s was indeed compelling. Hadn’t the same invisible barrier trapped Violet from the world when she’d tried to make a point and the men around her would stare right through her?
“To use our discoveries for harm is . . .” Violet tested the theory aloud.
“Balancing the scales,” Phoebe insisted.
Compelling, but ultimately destructive. What did it accomplish to harm someone else because you had been harmed, other than beginning a cycle of pain without end? What would happen to the friendship and the community they’d created if their goal was to frighten and intimidate? Eventually, the anger would poison them all.
“There has to be another way, Phoebe. You don’t fight tyranny by engineering an even greater threat.”
Phoebe stared at the lump of grey metal in her hand. “Violence is the only language they hear.”
“No.” Violet flung her arm out as if to encompass Phoebe and the women on the other side of the walls. “You and me, Letty, the members, all the girls out there who will one day follow in our footsteps, we don’t have to accept that language. We can use science to create an entirely new vocabulary. Violence is easy. Changing how people think is difficult. We can do it if we work together.”
Believing Phoebe must be moved by these sentiments, Violet went to embrace her friend. Tragedy struck when she hopped off the stool and promptly stepped on the skirts of her gown. Both women gasped in horror at the sound of ripping silk.
“My dress,” Violet cried in dismay.
“The first decent gown you’ve had in years.” Phoebe bemoaned the wanton destruction of fashion. “A Mensonge creation, at that.”
When Violet took another step, she tripped on the torn hem and fell to the ground in a clumsy heap, the jar flying from her hands. Broken glass and lemon drops lay everywhere. Violet let loose a hearty curse.
Phoebe gasped. “I had no idea you even knew that word,” she said. “Impressive.”
Violet preened, but her mishap had recalled Phoebe to the task at hand. Despite Violet’s hopes, Phoebe was too far gone to let their moment of camaraderie deter her.
“No more delays, Violet,” she said calmly. “The key is next to your knee. Pick it up and open the cabinet.”
“I’ve twisted my ankle,” Violet complained. She sat up and grabbed at her foot. “You are not going to shoot me anyway. Are you?”
Phoebe readjusted her grip on the ivory handle of the gun and pulled back the hammer. A small click meant the cylinder had locked into place. The sound caused Violet’s heart to plummet. A folding trigger dropped, and Phoebe set her thumb to the side of it.
“You’re right. I won’t. I will, however, point my gun at the door. Whoever walks in risks a bullet to the heart. Do you want that?”
Violet shook her head. “Neither do you. Put the gun away.”
A blanket of regret settled over Phoebe. “I cannot stop now, Violet. My father terrorizes every person in his life without any repercussions—the opposite, in fact. If there’s one lesson he’s taught me, it is that fear is power, and I want power. I won’t be at anyone else’s mercy ever again.”
Certain she could talk her friend into reconsidering, Violet racked her brains to find an argument strong enough to win the battle between love and fear.
* * *
ARTHUR TOOK OFF running, not bothering with the servants’ staircase, pounding up the main hallways without care, terror grabbing at his ankles. He’d known this would happen. He’d violated his cardinal rule and allowed something beautiful and warm into his barren world.
He’d killed Violet. He’d killed her with his stupid, selfish need for something precious to call his own, if only for a few hours. Lady Phoebe had been in front of him the whole time, and what had he been doing? Eating black buns. Chasing tarantulas. Waltzing.
The door to Violet’s workroom was closed, but Arthur burst through as though it were made of paper. Phoebe stood a few feet away from Violet, aiming a revolving pistol straight at him.
“Go away, Mr. Kneland, if you do not want Lady Greycliff hurt.”
Rage roared through him.
Arthur had never hit a woman in his life. Even when Mirabelle Delacroix had knocked him over the head with a plank while attempting to assassinate a Spanish duque, he’d subdued her without coming to blows. However, the sight of Violet, face as white as paper while sitting huddled on the floor, tested his resolve.
Arthur put his hands out, willing his heart to slow and his mind to sharpen. “Adam Winters has been apprehended,” he said. “He confessed to his part in your scheme.”
“Confessed?” Phoebe snorted. “More like bragged, then speechified, then complained.”
As she spoke, Arthur noted her awkward grip and checked the distance between them and Violet.
“He also treated me to a lecture on the perfidy of certain females,” Arthur added.
Phoebe pursed her lips to the side. “He loves that word.”
“He claims to love you, as well,” Arthur said.
“Love?” Phoebe waved the gun as though it were her pointer finger, and Arthur’s stomach lurched. “He has less understanding of that word than he does the word ‘perfidy.’ Sex is not love. Control is not love. Possession is not love.” She let loose a frustrated groan. “Why is anyone surprised that I wish to put men in their place?”
“It wasn’t just men you hurt,” Violet pointed out.
“You set off a bomb,” Arthur said, raising his voice and drawing attention back to himself. “And that man who died had a family.”
Phoebe gripped the gun so tightly the seam of her glove split at the side. “Yes, I designed the bomb that went off in the second-floor rooms last month. It was meant to create the greatest amount of noise and smoke with the least amount of damage,” she said. “Do you know what Adam did?”
Arthur shook his head, glancing quickly between the gun and Violet.
“He asked his men to check my work,” Phoebe said. “They took my bomb and rewired it—because what would a lady know? I told Adam not to tamper with the canisters, that adding too much of the reactant would render the mixture lethal. I might as well have been speaking another language. Or no language.”
Her arm remained steady, and Arthur knew a round could get off before he could grab the weapon.
“You can hold yourself to blame for everything after that,” she said. “If you hadn’t become one of Violet’s lost causes, she would have finished the formula weeks ago.”
Fear threatened to suffocate him when Phoebe gestured toward Violet with the gun.
“She is forever trying to change men’s nature. It won’t work. Patience.” Phoebe spat the word out as if the taste disgusted her. “Kindness. To powerful men, those are another way of saying ‘weakness.’”
“You have it wrong,” he said. Though facing a gun and possibly worse, he opened his heart. “Violet is one of the strongest people I have met, and her patience and kindness are the source of that strength. Even more impressive is her compassion. Her knowledge, her friendship, her home: She shares it with a generosity that amazes me. Humbles me. Makes me want to be a better man.”
Arthur paused. Not because Phoebe’s outstretched arm now shook, but because he wanted, he needed, to say this before he left Violet forever—one way or another.
“You treated these gifts poorly and should be ashamed of yourself,” he told Phoebe. “Such gifts are rare. They are precious, and when they come into your life, they change you, for the better, forever. The closest a man might come to heaven would be if he were loved by Violet Greycliff.”
Phoebe’s beautiful eyes misted with unshed tears. Given time, she might have apologized or confessed to a change of heart. Declarations of love tend to have that effect on people.
She never got the chance.
Arthur took advantage of the moment and rushed toward her. She wouldn’t have gotten off a shot if he hadn’t stepped on something round and hard. His feet flew out from under him, and he toppled Phoebe to the ground. A blinding flash lit the room, everything spun, and the rank smell of gunpowder burned his nose.
Damn it. Not again.
Beneath the rushing of blood in his ears was the sound of
Violet screaming.
He wished she would stop. He wanted to tell her how much he would miss her.
For in a matter of seconds, he would say goodbye.
26
I DIDN’T MEAN TO shoot anyone.”
Exhausted by the night’s events, Violet bit back a curse and glared at Phoebe. “You do not carry a weapon designed to kill without tacit acceptance that it will achieve its objective. You loaded it. Your intentions after the fact are irrelevant.”
That Violet could see Arthur’s chest rise and fall as he slept was the sole reason Phoebe stood here in Mrs. Sweet’s office and not in jail or worse.
Leaning against the far wall, Grey crossed his arms. He was watching Phoebe’s every move—when he wasn’t peeking at the skeleton hanging in the corner.
He’d arrived home to find Grantham wheezing and crawling up the front stairs to Beacon House, then he’d burst into the workroom as Violet and Phoebe were stanching Arthur’s bleeding. Once Arthur had been transferred to Mrs. Sweet’s care, Grey had bundled Phoebe out of the room, keeping her confined until Violet arrived.
Grey spoke in a low, flat voice. “Arthur may have officially left the service of the government, but he was shot protecting government secrets by a woman who might be considered an accomplice to murder.”
Phoebe pulled at the waist of her gown, now wrinkled beyond repair and spattered with the rust red stains of Arthur’s blood. “My father would never allow a member of his family to sully his name by standing trial for so heinous a charge.”
Grey flicked a speck of dust from his coat sleeve. “I wonder how he will resolve that problem when I deliver you to him.”
Phoebe flinched, her fingers clenching the thin fabric of her skirts.
“No,” Violet said.
“I cannot permit her to simply walk free.” Grey studied Phoebe as one might examine the specimens floating in Mrs. Sweet’s jars, with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion.
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