The Scandalous Suffragette

by Eliza Redgold

  Yet along with her dejection her anger had grown. She had every right to speak her mind, regardless of what anyone like Mr Burrows thought. The M.P. was precisely the kind of man whom the suffragettes fought against.

  But she didn’t want to fight Adam.

  Wearily, she made her way up to the solar. Inside was Arabella. Violet sighed. She supposed her elder sister-in-law had loathed her speech, too. Perhaps she thought Violet had discredited the Beaufort family.

  ‘That was quite a speech.’ From where she was seated by the fireplace, Arabella looked at Violet over the top of her book. ‘Bravo, Violet.’

  Violet stared at her sister-in-law, amazed. Arabella’s usual haughty manner had quite disappeared.

  ‘Why, thank you, Arabella. That’s not what Adam thought,’ she added miserably.

  ‘Don’t worry about Adam,’ Arabella said. ‘He’s like Beau. His bark is worse than his bite.’

  ‘Is it?’ Adam raised an eyebrow as he strolled into the room.

  He still wore his cricket whites and he’d caught the sun during the garden party. His face appeared slightly tanned, making his eyes more sky than midnight.

  Arabella closed her book. ‘Talking of Beau, I think I’ll take him for an evening walk.’

  Silence fell as she left the room.

  Adam shut the solar door and leant against it, his long legs crossed. ‘It’s time we had a talk, Violet.’

  * * *

  All afternoon, as the garden party had dragged on, Adam had wondered what he would say to Violet. Contrasting emotions had roared around his body that he’d only been able to release out on the cricket field, as he’d thwacked the ball with the cricket bat over and over again.

  Pride. Disbelief. Fury. Rage.

  And an overwhelming protectiveness for his wife.

  He’d said the words aloud for the first time when he’d introduced her to the crowd before she gave her opening speech. It was then he’d known that something had permanently changed inside him, something powerful.

  His wife. Those two simple words, but they’d made him stop and catch his breath.

  At their wedding ceremony, he’d taken his vows seriously. He’d been stunned by his feelings when he’d raised her veil. But it wasn’t until she stood next to him on the podium, so beautiful to him in her white hat and purple dress, with the green sash tied around the stem of her slender waist, that he’d felt married to her.

  A partner. A helpmate.

  His wife.

  He’d been proud to say those words. Proud of her. And when on the podium she’d called him her husband, he’d felt that same rush of pride and happiness.

  It was entirely unexpected and disconcerting, to say the least.

  Now, standing before him, Violet lifted her chin. He knew that movement of hers well by now, a combination of defiance and confidence.

  ‘I agree, it is time we talked,’ she said. ‘Time for some plain speaking.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He indicated the sofa in front of the empty fireplace. ‘Shall we sit?’

  She hesitated, then moved across the room, head still high, and took a seat at one end of the sofa, allowing for distance between them.

  He crossed to the drinks tray. ‘Would you care for a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He raised a brow. ‘I thought you liked whisky.’

  She smiled briefly. It was enough to take away the strain.

  ‘Perhaps I will have one.’

  He poured generous measures for them both. Even if it was before dinner, he needed it.

  He handed her the glass, avoided her fingers. Avoiding the sofa, too, he took his drink to one of the leather club chairs, sat and tilted it to face her.

  ‘Did Burrows hurt you?’ Just saying the man’s name brought back the rage.

  She shook her head. ‘No. I twisted it when he pulled me, but my ankle’s not injured.’

  She held it out beneath her skirt. They were so fine, her ankles. Another, now-familiar emotion added to the mix as he looked at her leg in its white buttoned boot and stocking. He wondered, momentarily, if she had worn her striped garter while she gave her extraordinary speech.

  He forced his mind back to the matter at hand.

  ‘I’m relieved he didn’t hurt you.’ Adam took a draught of whisky. ‘I’d have had him up for assault if there had been any lasting damage.’

  ‘Many suffragettes have experienced a lot worse. They’ve been punched and bruised, had bottles thrown at them. I know the risks.’ Violet gave another lift of her chin. ‘I suppose this talk between us is about my speech.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then please hear me out,’ she said quickly, before he could speak. ‘You have to understand. Being a suffragette isn’t a hobby. I have to take every chance to speak out for the Cause. I told you of my desire to make speeches for suffrage. I can’t miss an opportunity, especially one that presented itself as it did this afternoon. But I never meant to embarrass your family, or you.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You didn’t embarrass me. Is that what you thought? I was surprised, certainly. Taken aback. But it was a good speech. You have a talent for it.’

  She widened her eyes. ‘You liked it?’

  ‘It was impressive.’ No one could deny that. He’d watched the reaction of the crowd. She’d stirred them. Her voice, strong and clear, her message direct. If women like Violet continued to speak out for the Cause, women’s suffrage had a chance. The annoyance of the M.P. only demonstrated what a challenge such women had become to some men.

  ‘Then why were you so angry?’ she demanded.

  ‘I was angry at Burrows.’ Angry didn’t begin to describe it. To hear the M.P. insulting and then see him manhandling Violet had filled Adam with the kind of rage he’d never known existed. He’d only just managed to hold his fists to his sides to refrain showing the man quite how angry he was.

  Violet shook her head. ‘He’s a horrible man, just as Jane said. How can you support him?’

  ‘I don’t support him personally. I support our party.’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘Not quite.’ Adam half-drained his glass. ‘I was angry with you, too, for a good reason. You ought to have told me what you were planning.’

  She took a fast sip of her drink, then another. ‘I didn’t intend to keep it from you. I’m sorry.’

  Adam threw back the last of his whisky, felt the fire go down his throat. He dropped his glass on the table, fought back the urge to seize her hands.

  ‘This is a marriage, Violet. I haven’t forgotten how you slipped away from the wedding reception. I’ve never pressed you about that, but I must ask you in future not to keep secrets. I didn’t expect it to be the case, when we made our agreement. We don’t need to keep secrets from each other.’

  She bit her lower lip. ‘I never thought of it that way.’

  ‘We have to trust each other. We decided to be friends, remember? We don’t want an atmosphere of deceit. This might be a marriage of convenience, but we want it to be a good marriage. Don’t we?’

  Slowly, she nodded, but her eyes remained troubled.

  He had the impression she was holding back. There was still something she wasn’t telling him. He was certain of it.

  Adam exhaled. He wanted to show her, with more than his words, what he’d discovered that afternoon. But he had to keep control.

  It was damned inconvenient, the feeling that had come over him at the garden party, almost knocking him off his feet. He’d realised what it was as she gave her speech, standing there in front of everyone, undaunted. So brave. He’d had to walk away from her after the scene with Burrows, to keep control as the surge of his emotions took hold.

  He’d begun to suspect it earlier, even before she spoke on the podium. In an absurd romantic gesture, the kind
he never expected himself to make, he’d picked a violet, the only violet left in the grounds, the last of the season, and stuck it in his hat, merely to make her smile.

  He might have embarked upon a marriage of convenience, but Adam knew he had to face an inconvenient truth.

  He was entangled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘And to the want, that hollow’d all the heart,

  Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye...’

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson: ‘Love and Duty’ (1842)

  The smell of warm crumpets wafted into the solar as Arabella lifted the silver lid.

  ‘Time for tea, at last. I’m starved.’ Jane cast aside her sewing, flopped on to the window seat and put her feet up on a cushion.

  Arabella’s mouth formed a disapproving line. ‘You oughtn’t to lie about like that, Jane. Sit up straight.’

  ‘Oh, Mama’s not here.’

  Adam’s mama had recovered from her influenza, but she needed more rest than usual.

  ‘Will you pour the tea, Arabella?’ Violet asked.

  Arabella nodded.

  They settled at the table in front of the fire. Since the garden party, the days had already become cooler, as summer hinted at autumn.

  Violet carefully rolled up her own needlework. She’d taken up the project of mending the fine old tapestries in the manor. Many of them appeared to have been worked by hand, rather than on a loom, and she had some skill in embroidery. She intended to help all she could at Beauley Manor. Adam worked so hard. She wanted to do the same.

  She spread a crumpet with butter. ‘I had a pamphlet today. There’s a new suffrage play to be put on in London. I intend to go and see it.’

  Jane sat upright on the window seat. ‘Oh, how marvellous! I did so enjoy Votes for Women! I’d like to see another of her plays.’

  Violet shook her head. ‘Votes for Women! was written by Elizabeth Robins. It is soon to be published by Mr Mills and Mr Boon, I believe.’ She was looking forward to its publication. Having missed seeing the play performed, she was keen to read the printed script.

  ‘The upcoming play is called How the Vote was Won. Not that it has been won yet, of course. The title aims to inspire us. It is by Cicely Hamilton. I’m sure it will be excellent, too.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ Jane agreed. ‘Might I attend the play with you?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll send for tickets.’ Violet turned to Arabella. ‘Would you like to come, too?’

  It was unlikely Arabella would want to attend another suffrage play, having expressed some disdain for the first, but it seemed ill mannered not to invite her. Since Violet had given her speech at the garden party, a new amity had developed between them.

  Arabella hesitated over the teapot. ‘Perhaps I shall.’

  Jane’s mouth dropped open. ‘You will?’

  Violet closed her own mouth before it could fall open as widely as Jane’s. ‘That would be delightful, Arabella.’

  Arabella nodded, then picked up her book.

  ‘Suffrage dramas are being performed in private residences,’ Violet said thoughtfully. ‘It might be possible for us to put on a play here at Beauley Manor. We might raise funds for the Cause.’

  ‘That would be marvellous!’ Jane exclaimed again.

  Violet laughed aloud. Jane’s enthusiasm for the Cause was beginning to rival her own.

  ‘I’m still to attend a suffragette rally,’ Jane said.

  Violet glanced at her leather writing case. Along with her other correspondence, a letter she’d received that morning had perturbed her greatly.

  A lilac letter.

  She wrung her fingers together. She couldn’t ask Jane to accompany her to the suffrage event referred to in the letter. It would be far too dangerous.

  Glancing up, she saw Arabella studying her over the top of her book. She had also been in the solar when Violet opened her lilac letter.

  ‘Are you quite well, Violet?’ Arabella asked now.

  ‘Of course,’ Violet replied with a quick smile.

  She checked the little gold watch pinned to her bodice. Lately, since the garden party, Adam had taken up the habit of returning to the Manor earlier. Sometimes he even dropped in for tea. Many men considered teatime merely a pastime for the ladies, an interruption to their day, but he didn’t appear to bother about such conventions.

  As if she’d summoned him, the door clicked open. Adam strolled into the solar.

  He smiled at Violet across the room. Her heart leapt. Her day had been so absorbing, with the unsettling letter about the Cause, but as always, she continued to think of him during the day. Her mind had been engrossed, but her body sprang into life at the sight of him. It had been that way ever since he’d held her in the river.

  She hoped it would dissipate, over time, this sense of longing. It had to. But instead, it was growing more powerful. They hadn’t strayed again across the line set by their marriage of convenience, but they had become closer in a way she had not anticipated after the garden party, as they both worked hard on their respective causes and the estate. They were truly becoming friends. More than friends. A partnership was forming between them, as they shared their daily lives together.

  Idly, he picked up the letters that had been left for him on the silver tray. His hands fascinated her now. They were so strong, yet she knew they could be so gentle.

  She watched, as if mesmerised.

  With one finger, he slid open an envelope.

  She bit her lip. The encounter in the river had to be forgotten between them. She had to erase the sensations he’d aroused in her, created not by words, but by touch.

  The secret touch of Adam’s hands.

  At the letter tray, he’d moved on to a large bundle of papers. He was reading intently, a frown fierce between his eyebrows.

  ‘You’re keeping secrets,’ he’d said to her, after the garden party. ‘You have to trust me. We have to trust each other.’

  Uneasy, Violet glanced at Adam, and again at her writing case and her own letter.

  * * *

  The fire in the grate flickered red, orange, yellow. The blue-and-white tiles around it, old, chipped, but holding their own, were a surprisingly good match to the array of fashionable pale blue china on Violet’s dressing table, along with crystal and silver lidded pots that glistened in the firelight, as she sat, reflected in the glass.

  Adam knew her routine now. It had become his most cherished hour.

  Watching Violet dress for dinner.

  Not that he watched her undress, of course. That would be unthinkable. He grimaced inwardly. Not to say unwise.

  Yet he couldn’t resist their time alone together. The habit brought him a sense of security that he’d never experienced before. Whenever he could, he came back to her at dusk, around teatime, and always before dinner, when they had a short time alone together before going downstairs to the hall and the company of his family.

  At this hour of the evening, the connecting doors were now usually open after Violet had changed her clothes, when she was adding the last touches to her toilette. When she had changed from the skirt and blouse she usually favoured for the daytime—practical, but well made—she would put on an evening dress and open the doors between them. He never opened them himself, he’d made that rule. But he made sure he was there.

  At first, their connecting doors had remained closed all day and all night. Then, one evening not long after the garden party, she’d emerged to ask him to help her clasp a necklace. She hadn’t wanted to call her maid for the small task. Many women wanted their maid in constant attendance, but not Violet. He liked that about her.

  ‘Gatekeeper, butler, field hand and lady’s maid,’ he’d said with a bow. ‘At your service.’

  He knew, from her continued similar requests, some necessary, some maybe not, that sh
e, too, cherished the growing intimacy between them. Now he regularly clasped a diamond necklace around her slender throat, tied a sash or buttoned a difficult catch. She would help him, too, with a cravat, or to fasten his cuffs. Sometimes she would merely ask him about his day, or who was coming to dinner, or he would listen to what had passed in hers.

  Tonight, out of her purview, he’d washed and was fully attired in his evening clothes. He could have gone down to dinner, or to the hall for a drink. Yet still he lingered upstairs.

  Near Violet.

  His wife.

  She’d opened the doors already tonight. From the low chair near the connecting door, he witnessed her slow, leisurely movements. As dusk fell, many other women would draw the thick velvet curtains, but she did not. There was no chance of her being seen from outside, the garden walls were too high for that. The soft twilight coming in the window on her skin made it whiter than ever, creating shadows and curves as she lifted her arms to attend to her hair.

  It had been a damned awful afternoon, but seeing her there made some of the horrors of the last few hours evaporate. Whether she was as aware of him as he was of her, he wasn’t sure.

  He stretched out his legs. It was all so extraordinary. He’d liked her when he’d proposed, well enough, he’d thought, to make a match of it. Surely there didn’t need to be more than liking. His parents hadn’t even had that, at least not by the end, when cold silence between them alternated with bitter arguments. There had always been tension, always an undercurrent. With the horrifying debts his father had been hiding he now knew why, of course. But as a young boy, he hadn’t known the reasons. He’d only known that marriage looked unpleasant and damned inconvenient. A marriage of convenience was surely enough, rather than to have love turn to such bitterness.