Marry the Man Today

by Linda Needham

  “You know women. We change our minds as often as we change our hats.”

  “Why did you lie? Because you didn’t want me to know what you were up to today?”

  “Because you’d send someone to follow us, wouldn’t you? Even though we are perfectly safe from an abduction. I don’t appreciate being tended to like a child.”

  “Or is that your guilty mind, Miss Dunaway? What sort of mischief are you planning now?”

  “Mischief?”

  “Another protest? Have you Women’s Rights signs tucked up under your skirts?”

  Elizabeth should have gasped in outrage, but the sound turned instantly into laughter. “You must be joking.”

  “Oh, no, madam. I can see your plan now: just as the Speaker opens the debate, your ladies launch into a chant.”

  Elizabeth caught her hand over her mouth to quiet her laughter, but Blakestone only drew her closer, his sultry whisper dashing against her temple.

  “I warn you against this, madam. A single outburst from your ladies in the gallery and the sergeant-at-arms will haul you away to jail, and then you will have your precious press coverage in spades.”

  “Excellent news, sir.” Delighted to find the man so disgruntled and so unable to freely chide her in such a public corridor, she turned her head and whispered against the slight bristle of his very male cheek. “Any suggestions as to what we should shout to make the biggest impression?”

  He scowled fiercely down at her, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Mocking Parliament is no way to win them over to your cause.”

  “We had planned to shout ‘Give us the vote or give us death!’ but that might not quite do the trick. However, it’ll have to do for now since we’re late and fresh out of ideas.” She gave the startled man a huge smile, then started into the nearly empty Commons lobby, darting toward the gallery stairs.

  “Oh, no you don’t, madam!” He caught her arm as she reached the base of the stairs. “If it weren’t for the Lord Mayor’s inquiry, I’d be sorely tempted to let you go make a fool of yourself.”

  “Then what do you mean to do with me instead? Tie me here to the banister? Or put me in stocks out in the old courtyard? Think of the press coverage then!”

  “A pity we’ve outlawed that sort of punishment.”

  “An even greater pity that you have no idea when I’m pulling your leg.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The ladies of the Abigail Adams have not come here to protest.”

  “Then what?” He narrowed his eyes at her, focusing their dark intensity on her own. “You’re surely not here for anything but mischief.”

  “There’s a great pity too, my lord. That men cannot fathom the fact that women might possibly be interested in the everyday workings of government. But we are.”

  “Why?”

  “The same reason that men are interested: its laws affect every aspect of our lives. In these modern times, with so much at stake, we’d be fools not to keep abreast of Parliament. And to that end, from now on, the Abigail Adams will field a reporter to the Commons, every day of every session. That reporter will then relay to us what she has learned and we will be wiser for it.”

  “She?” He laughed. “A female reporter, turning up in the Press Gallery every day?”

  “Why not?”

  “Seems a waste of time. Why not just subscribe to the Hansard record?”

  “Because Hansard only employs men, and the ladies of the Abigail Adams require a woman’s point of view.”

  He went utterly silent, his frown deeply lining his forehead.

  “So, my lord, if you have no further objection, I’ll just go join the rest of my party in the Public Gallery. As is my right. I think.”

  Pleased with the squared-off confusion locked in the man’s jaw, and still reeling from the fiery thrill of his touch along the inside of her elbow, Elizabeth started up the stairs, certain that the man would follow.

  Hoping he would, because he did smell particularly fine today. Of laurel and musk.

  Infuriating woman! Ross grabbed back the bellow that would have stopped her in her tracks and doubtless brought the noise from the floor of the Commons to a halt as well.

  Instead, he followed her up the stairs, unable to turn his eyes from the lithe trim of her ankles teasing him from beneath the crisply white flounce of her skirts.

  Bloody hell, he felt like a besotted swain as he climbed into the warm air of the gallery.

  There they were, Miss Dunaway and her gang of women, perched like an eager jury, six above six, on the tufted leather benches that overlooked the great brawling machine that was the British government.

  The ladies were chattering to each other, craning over the railing, pointing down onto the main floor where the morning’s proceedings were about to get under way.

  “Psst, Blakestone!”

  Miss Dunaway was beckoning to him with a subtle, utterly compelling crooking of her gloved finger, her green eyes flashing up at him. He might have actually had the strength to resist, but she splayed her fingers across the space on the seat beside her and patted lightly there.

  Or was that a caress?

  Lord help him find the strength to walk away.

  But, of course, he sat down beside her anyway, his nerves tattered, already on edge.

  “How can I help you, madam?” he asked, quite smoothly for a man who had just become thickly aroused in the gallery of the House of Commons.

  And tempted to disaster by a woman who was fast becoming an element of his blood.

  “Actually, my lord, the ladies have a few questions.”

  ” ‘Morning, my lord—”

  “Good to see you, sir—”

  “Will you be attending the charity ball, Lord Blakestone? It’s for a very good cause. And I’ve heard you’re up for auction …”

  Damnation, he was going to have to clear up that particular error right away. “Well, I don’t—”

  But the women reached out for him from all sides, extending their gloved hands, shaking his vigorously. Doubtless they would have backslapped him if they could have.

  None of that demure, sweet-miss stuff here. Damned if he didn’t like that in a woman.

  “Yes, and good morning to you all, ladies.” He returned their enthusiastic smiles. “Miss Dunaway was just telling me that you had a few questions.”

  “About Parliament,” the bewitching woman sitting so palpably beside him said. She was turned halfway around toward the group, her shapely backside making sound contact with the length of his thigh, taking his breath away. “Mrs. Niles, I think you had the first question.”

  Mrs. Niles stood, her hands clasped together. “My husband is a Conservative. He’s always said that you can tell a Liberal devil in Parliament by the red tail that sticks out the back vent of his coat. Well, my lord, I don’t see tails on any of the gentlemen down there. So, my question is .. .”

  “Yes?” he prodded, when the woman’s fiery glare into the pit below became fixed there.

  “My question is this, my lord: am I to assume there aren’t any Liberals in the Commons today? Or has my husband been playing loose with the truth?”

  Though Miss Dunaway’s head was turned mostly away from him, Ross could see well enough from around the narrow brim of her small bonnet that her jaw was working as hard as his to hold back a smile.

  “Well, Mrs. Niles …” A perfectly good question, but without a good answer that wouldn’t cause Mr. Niles to come find him with a swift punch in the nose. “Let’s just say that one man’s devil is another man’s leader. Politics is a matter of personal opinion.”

  Mrs. Niles snorted and crossed her arms over her bosom. “Well, then, my personal opinion is that my husband’s devil is no longer my own.” She sat down with a plunk.

  Miss Dunaway cleared her throat, hiding her unsubtle amusement beneath a delicate handkerchief that suddenly softened the warm dust-moted air with the barest hint of summer roses.

&
nbsp; “I have a question, my lord!” A younger woman in the second row was waving her hand at him. “How does all this Parliament stuff work?”

  Bloody hell, now there was a question for the ages.

  “What I believe Mrs. Morriston wants to know, my lord,” Miss Dunaway said, turning back to him with an unreadable glint in her eyes, “is how would a proposed measure which would, for example, grant women their God-given right to vote, become a law?”

  Well, he’d walked right into that one.

  The vixen was smiling at him in triumph.

  “That’s an excellent question, Miss Morriston,” he said to the eagerly grinning young woman. “And an excellent example, Miss Dunaway.”

  Because the Government that seriously proposed “votes for women” to this august body would be laughed out of Westminster. The Government would crumble on a no-confidence vote and a new prime minister would be sitting on the Treasury Bench the very next morning.

  But he could hardly burst the bubble of the ladies’ success with an explanation as cold as that. Though Miss Dunaway was eyeing him as if she believed that was his intention.

  Instead, he turned away from her silent defiance to the room below. “To begin with, ladies, the rows of benches on the left of the Secretary’s bench are occupied by members of the current government in power. And you probably recognize Lord Aberdeen, the prime minister, there on the front bench.”

  “My my, his lordship’s gone gray since last I saw him.”

  “Thinner too.”

  It was no wonder. These were trying times for the man and his cabinet.

  “Now, ladies, can any of you tell me what party Lord Aberdeen belongs to?”

  Mrs. Niles snorted in derision. “I don’t see a devil’s tail sticking out of the man’s coat, so he can’t be a Liberal, can he?”

  The women laughed their approval.

  “Lord Aberdeen is a Tory,” Miss Dunaway said. “But he has actually formed a coalition government. One party working in concert with another, for the single purpose of running the government.”

  Leave it to Miss Dunaway to already know the details of her own personal opposition.

  “Exactly right, madam. Last year, Lord Aberdeen, a follower of John Peel, joined his majority party with a smaller faction of Whigs—”

  “Excuse me, Lord Blakestone, but whatever is that man doing?”

  He’d suddenly lost the attention of the women. They were staring at something in the back benches behind Aberdeen.

  “That’s no man, Mrs. Deverel, that’s my husband.” The woman sniffed toward the man at the very back of the benches who was waving both arms directly at her, glaring up into the gallery, his face blotched with red fury.

  “I didn’t know your husband was a member of Parliament, Mrs. Sayers.”

  “He is indeed, Mrs. Niles. My husband is the Conservative member from Nesbit Grange.”

  Now the man was gesturing toward the entrance to the Commons.

  “I think he’s trying to tell you something, Mrs. Sayers.”

  “Seems so, Mrs. Barnes.”

  Miss Dunaway’s brow was a wing of troubles. “Didn’t you tell him you’d be here today?”

  “Why should I?” She snubbed her chin at her husband. “I decided that if Mr. Wilton Sayers wanted to make a fool of himself by telling me that I shouldn’t be here, he was going to have to do it in front of all his friends.”

  The ladies actually applauded.

  The very quiet Miss Dunaway merely arched a bemused brow up at Ross, unapologetic about the poor clod’s reaction.

  All the while Mrs. Sayers was the image of calm, ignoring her husband entirely, though he’d begun to make enough noise that the other members were now staring at him as though he had gone mad.

  “You heard me, Vita Marie!” Sayers’s strangled voice ricocheted off the benches and rattled around in the vast, vaulted ceiling.

  But stubborn Vita only tilted her chin higher.

  With another shout, Vita’s husband dashed out of sight beneath the gallery for a moment then reappeared at his bench, shaking his fist at them.

  “Well, now, ladies”—Miss Dunaway turned back to her distracted group— “would anyone like to ask Lord Blakestone another question?”

  “I was wondering, my lord—”

  The rest of the woman’s question was cut off by the sound of heavy footsteps pounding up the gallery stairs, followed an instant later by two men in police uniforms who burst into the Public Gallery. They drew their nightsticks with great drama, then began striding toward them.

  Bloody hell! What the devil was going on here?

  “I’ll take care of this, madam,” Ross said quietly to Miss Dunaway.

  Feeling suddenly protective of his horde and in a fighting mood himself, Ross blocked the way of the policemen in the aisle, aware that Miss Dunaway was also on her feet now, arms spread to protect her charges.

  “That’s enough, fellows,” Ross said, meeting the men two steps up. “There’s nothing here. Leave them alone.”

  “Sorry, your lordship, but the ladies are gonna have to leave.” The older sergeant-at-arms wagged the stick toward the horrified women. “They’re disturbing the proceedings.”

  “You’re bloody wrong, sir. Now get on with you.” Ross balled his fists at his sides, a natural reaction to an unjust claim, ready to take on both men, ready to let them retreat from this outrage.

  “Your pardon, Sergeant,” Miss Dunaway said from behind him, remarkably evenly, slipping her hand into the crook of Ross’s elbow, “but we have every right to be here.”

  The man ignored Miss Dunaway completely and leaned in to Ross as though they were fellow conspirators. “It’s for the best they leave, sir,” he whispered with a debasing nod toward the women.

  Ross wanted to plant his fist in the middle of the man’s nose. But now the sounds from below had grown immensely, a chorus of bellowing voices, the Secretary shouting, banging the gavel against the podium.

  “Let it be, Sergeant.” Ross gestured to the wide-eyed women. “Sit down, ladies. You’re staying here.”

  But then a shrill voice came barreling up the gallery stairs.

  “Vita Sayers, what are you doing here with those”—and then Sayers himself appeared above them at the top of the stairs, standing spread-legged, jabbing a finger toward the beleaguered group—“those, those, those … women?”

  Ross had never seen a man’s face as molten red, or such hatred throbbing in a man’s neck. Fearing what Sayers would do next, Ross tapped aside the two security officers and put himself in front of the man.

  “Come on, now, Sayers,” he said, approaching carefully, “let’s you and I go on down to the—”

  “You’re a woman, Vita! You don’t belong here. Go home, do you hear me?”

  “You don’t scare me, Wilton.”

  Ashamed for his entire gender, Ross caught the man as he tried to plow past him to his wife, who was now frowning stubbornly at her husband, the other women filling in around her.

  Sayers leaned hard against Ross, still trying to get past him, hissing his words through his teeth. “Are you deliberately trying to humiliate me, Vita?”

  “Only you can do that, Wilton, dear.”

  “Vita!”

  Again the Secretary banged the gavel from below, this time shouting, “Quiet up there! Do you hear me? Quiet in the house, everyone, or I’ll have the hall cleared!”

  But Sayers was nearly apoplectic at this point.

  The women were calling down curses on the man.

  And the gentlemen of the Commons had joined him in a clamorous protest over whatever trouble those damned women up in the Public Gallery were causing the honorable member of Parliament.

  Furious at the lot of them, Ross himself was about to tackle Sayers and throw him over the railing, when he heard Miss Dunaway from beside him, her voice clear and in complete control.

  “Please, everyone!” she said, raising her hand to the gallery, and then to the
rioting below. “Stop this foolishness immediately.”

  The roar of outrage flared, then moments later the entire House of Commons and all its galleries fell to a breathless silence, every eye trained on Miss Dunaway.

  “Come, ladies,” she said, with confident dignity, taking up her wrap from the bench in front of her. “We know when it’s time to leave.”

  Her ladies objected en masse.

  “But, Miss Elizabeth—”

  “I don’t think we should go—”

  Vita pointed at Sayers. “Shut up, Wilton.”

  “Ladies, please.” Miss Dunaway held up a gentle hand to her rowdy confederates. “I’m afraid we’ve reached the point of resentment and of diminishing returns. There’s nothing more for us here.”

  She turned her quiet dignity to the enormous well of silent, upturned male faces below, ministers and peers, country squires and captains of industry, all of them staring up at her in what Ross could only interpret as awe.

  Then, in perhaps the greatest show of statesmanship that he’d ever been witness to, the remarkable Miss Dunaway squared her slender shoulders and spoke an unerring challenge in a resolute voice that she surely meant to echo across the centuries from the diligent pages of the Hansard record.

  “Make no mistake, gentlemen,” she said, scanning the Commons with that utterly bewitching smile, “we’ll be back. And one day we will stay.”

  Brava, madam.

  “Good day to you, Blakestone.”

  Then she turned up her chin again and walked past him. She started up the aisle to the sound of a befuddled Commons, leading her proud band of women past the sagging jaws of the two sergeants-at-arms and then the stunned Sayers himself.

  Bloody hell, what an exit! The woman was magnificent, from her gilded auburn hair to those lovely ankles. Doubtless right down to the succulent tips of her toes and all the luscious parts in between.

  He let her go, though he desperately wanted to chase after her with his congratulations. But that would surely take away from her triumph. Besides which he didn’t want to seem too approving of her impossible campaign. Didn’t want her to hear the pride in his voice. Or to learn that her group would be followed by his operatives.

  And most certainly didn’t need her to catch on to how firmly she aroused him.