by Betina Krahn
In defiance of the male power and prerogative embodied in that wall of serge coat fronts and starched shirts, she took a step closer. To her satisfaction young Shelburne’s cocky smile faded, and he glanced at his friends and colleagues.
“According to you, the sacred ideal of hearth and home is nothing but a hoax perpetrated upon pathetic, weak-minded females,” she continued. “In one fell swoop you have made a mockery of marriage and sneered at the plight of the unfortunate.”
The gradual rise of her voice and the sardonic laughter of Shelburne’s friends attracted the notice of two men standing nearby, dressed in tasteless plaid wool jackets and large bowler hats, which had paper of some sort stuck in the brim. They scrutinized the young MP, then Antonia’s elegantly clad form and state of agitation. Drawing writing pads out of their pockets and pencils from above their ears, they edged closer to hear what was being said.
“You accuse me falsely, madam.” Shelburne stiffened and splayed a protective hand over his expensive tucked shirtfront. “I mocked no one. I merely quoted the words of an eminent peer, Lord Remington Carr, regarding—”
“The words of a scandalous radical who holds women in contempt and who assails the moral precepts of marriage and family that are the very foundation of our society.” Her expression sharpened with disdain. “A fine sort to model yourself upon, sir. You should go far in politics.”
“I assure you, madam, it was never my intent to defame women.” Shelburne’s tone lost all its condescension. “I strongly believe that this marriage bill is not an acceptable means to right the imbalance in the sexes. And Lord Carr is a most eloquent spokesman …”
“Lord Carr is a callous, unfeeling bore who masquerades as a freethinker,” she said, inching forward and tightening her grip on the handle of her purse. “And from the virulence of his diatribes against marriage, he is undoubtedly a freelover as well … a man morally bankrupt and utterly self-absorbed … totally without regard for a higher moral authority!”
Several throats cleared, and gazes that had been riveted on her suddenly flickered to something or someone just out of her range of vision.
“She’s absolutely right on that last part, you know,” a resonant male voice inserted. “He is totally without regard for any moral authority … higher than his own common sense.”
Sensing a possible ally, Antonia glanced in the direction of that voice, and her gaze caught on a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in an impeccable charcoal-gray suit, with an elegant dove-gray vest, silver-striped cravat, and black silk top hat. He was carrying a gold headed walking stick and a pair of kid gloves that perfectly matched his vest. And when her gaze slid upward, he was wearing an expression of cool amusement … on the most devastatingly handsome face she had ever seen.
His angular, exquisitely carved features somehow combined unequivocal masculinity with aristocratic elegance. He had broad cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a boldly curved mouth that made her suddenly, intensely aware of her own.
“As to the balance in his moral bank account, I doubt anyone this side of heaven’s gate can truly know it,” the gentleman continued, glancing at the others in a way that communicated something inscrutably male. “But I can say with some certainty that he has never found love free. Like most men, he has paid handsomely for his pleasures.”
As the others chuckled, he smiled, an effortless and assured expression that was somehow both alluring and annoying. Alluring? She stiffened and fought the stubborn fascination of her senses. Clearly this was no ally.
“I am sure that Lord Carr, like most gentlemen of leisure, has paid far less than have the women of his acquaintance,” she countered, pointedly ignoring his provocative reference to purchasing physical pleasures. “Not content with harassing and misusing the women in his immediate circle, he now seeks to spread his contempt for women and marriage to the rest of his countrymen as well.”
“Misuses his women, does he?” the gentleman said, raising an eyebrow in the direction of the others, who were staring at him in abject fascination. “That’s one charge I’ve never heard brought against him. He’s a known suffragist … favors the vote for women and giving them opportunity to work.”
“What he favors is giving them the boot … straight into the street,” she said, turning to face him squarely and finding her gaze drawn to his eyes, which were fixed intently on her. Dark eyes. Liquid. Absorbing. Her knees felt a little strange, and of their own will her fingers slid to the row of buttons down the front of her jacket. “He would force women to abandon their homes and hearths, and drive them out into grueling labor they are ill suited for. He’d have them digging in coal pits, carrying hod, hauling fish nets, and operating vile machinery of all sorts.”
“Ahhh.” He raised a long, well-tapered finger, and she couldn’t help noticing the evenness of his teeth as he smiled. “But women already do all those things—work in Welsh coal pits, carry brickyard hod, work on fishing boats, and operate mechanical marvels in factories. And they work in offices and hospitals and shops, as well.”
Antonia stiffened, knowing what he said was true. “Not ladies,” was her only rebuttal. “Only those poor women who are not fortunate enough to have a home and family of their own. Or women whose families were left destitute by feckless men and cruel misfortune. A woman’s place is in the home, sir. And a man’s place is to provide that home.”
“Whether he wishes to or not,” he stated, clarifying her position.
“We are all born to a duty and a place ordained by a higher power,” she retorted. “Few of us get to choose our lot in life.”
“Then how convenient it is that a woman’s lot is to be born to security and ease … to be waited upon hand and foot and to issue orders to the rest of humanity.” He chuckled at the way her chin came up; then he glanced knowingly at young Shelburne and his parliamentary cohorts. “I would dearly love to continue this fascinating debate, madam, but I am seriously overdue for an appointment. If, perchance, a part of your lot has been to receive an invitation from Lord and Lady Ellingson for their soiree tomorrow evening, then perhaps we can take it up there.”
Without waiting for a response, he touched the brim of his hat—“Madam”—then turned a nod toward the wide-eyed MP’s behind her and strode off.
She came to her senses a moment later, staring at his broad back and long, self-assured stride, and feeling irritable at having a ripening debate cut off so precipitously by a handsome, enigmatic stranger. Blushing, and grateful for the hat veil that concealed it, she turned back to Shelburne.
“You see how this idiocy spreads? Because of your airing of those wretched articles, everyone will soon be an expert on Lord Carr’s despicable opinions!”
Young Shelburne blinked, then grinned. “That fellow should be an expert on the earl’s opinions.” He nodded after the disappearing gentleman. “That was Remington Carr himself.”
The Earl of Landon.
Himself.
Antonia drew a sharp breath she couldn’t seem to expel, then turned on her heel and bumped into one of the news writers lurking behind her. She gritted out an “Excuse me,” seized Aunt Hermione’s arm in hers, and sailed for the doors with the sound of muffled male laughter falling at her back.
Lord Remington Carr. The wretch had just sauntered up and made a royal fool of her. Every inch of her skin felt as if it was on fire by the time they reached the street.
They were in the cab and halfway home before she could overcome her embarrassment enough to think clearly about it, and when she did, her humiliation only deepened. From reading the earl’s infuriating articles and hearing his hostile views on women and marriage, she had somehow developed a picture in her mind of a stodgy, embittered old man whose suits for ladies’ hands had been resoundingly rejected in his youth. Wealthy, educated, and unmanageable himself, she decided, he had turned his own romantic failures into a vengeful social crusade against both women and marriage. He was a thoroughly dismal human being: miserly, miserable, and w
arped by a life filled with disappointments.
Nothing she had read or heard had prepared her for tall, dark, and elegant, for liquid eyes and an intriguing smile, or for gentlemanly manners and exquisite taste in clothing. And the fact that she was thinking of him in such terms—elegant and gentlemanly—infuriated her.
“He should be a warty old toad,” she muttered aloud, glaring at the vision of his memorable half smile, which lingered in her mind.
“What?”
When she looked up, Aunt Hermione was staring at her with that annoyingly perceptive gaze, and it was no use denying where her thoughts had been.
“I said the outside should match the in,” she declared. “It ought to be a law.”
“He was handsome, wasn’t he?” Hermione said a bit wistfully.
“Your word, not mine,” she said, feeling a betraying heat creeping back into her cheeks. But “handsome” was the perfect word to describe the insufferable earl, and some unruly part of her was reacting massively to the fact. Alarmed, she took hold of herself and told herself that he was the enemy, no matter what he looked like. As she sorted through the encounter, she came to his last unsettling words just as Aunt Hermione commented on them.
“You’re going, of course.” It was both a question and a statement.
“Going where?” Antonia asked with a deepening frown that she supposed was probably transparent to the old woman.
“To the Ellingsons’ party, where else? You know Constance Ellingson has been after you for the last two years to attend one of their evening dos. Just send her a note and you’ll be on the list”—she waved a hand—“as simple as that.”
“Why on earth would I want to go to one of her interminable evenings?”
Aunt Hermione smiled, knowing that she had the perfect goad. “Why, to put the wretched earl in his place, of course. He needs to be taught a thing or two about women and marriage, and who better to do it than you?” It was then that Antonia finally realized that Hermione’s angelic face hid a devious streak. “And knowing you as I do,” the old lady continued sweetly, confirming it, “I know that you simply will not allow such a challenge to go unanswered.”
A challenge. Antonia expelled a full breath at last and settled back on the worn leather seat to look out the cab window. That was exactly what the high-handed earl had issued her: a challenge. He had allowed her to rail on humiliatingly against him, then had cut her off and used her own choice of words to toss down a gauntlet that was part invitation, part ultimatum. To continue the debate, she had to comply with his terms: meet him at the Ellingsons’ soiree.
She was incensed by his arrogance and was burning to even the score publicly for the humiliation he had just caused her. But was going to the Ellingsons to confront him a courageous or a foolhardy thing to do? If she went, would she find some way to discredit him and his radical views of marriage and the place of women, or would she find herself staring witlessly at his absorbing eyes and handsome mouth again?
Moments later she came to her senses, sitting in the motionless cab and staring at a hand that was extended to her through the sunlit opening of the door. Hermione had already dismounted the cab, and the driver was waiting to help her step down. For one crazy instant, as she looked up, she suffered the impression that the driver’s hand belonged to someone else and beckoned to something far riskier than the street outside her doorstep.
A shiver of anticipation ran through her shoulders and left her tingling in two spots that caused her eyes to widen. She looked down at the tightly buttoned front of her bodice, then jerked her face up.
By the time her feet touched the paving bricks beside the steps leading to the broad front doors of her house, her decision was made. And as she paid the driver and mounted the steps, she couldn’t say if the unsettling feeling seeping through her was excitement or dread.
As Antonia fled Westminster in high dudgeon, Shelburne and his colleagues had started for the Smoking Room, intent on a round of celebratory drinks. One of the news writers scurried along beside the young MP, who recognized him and quickened his step. The writer matched his haste, mentally measuring the distance to the Smoking-Room door, where he would lose access to the MP. Correspondents were barred from entry into that privileged territory.
“Fine speech, Mr. Shelburne,” the writer said in an ingratiating tone.
“As if you would know the difference. Go away, Fitch,” Shelburne said, glancing away irritably.
“Who was the ladybird?” Rupert Fitch, correspondent for the sensational and widely read Gaflinger’s Gazette, asked in breathy, urgent tones. “The one in purple, who near chewed yer ears off?” he prompted. When there was no response, he added, “A fiery little thing, eh? Seems to hate the Ladies’ Man, right enough.”
The “Ladies’ Man” was a title bestowed upon Remington Carr by none other than Rupert Fitch himself. The news writer had long ago decided that a wealthy blue blood who went against both prevailing political winds and royal favor to demand women’s political and economic rights might make for interesting reading. In the florid and highly competitive world of Fleet Street journalism, a news writer had to make the most of every opportunity for a juicy byline. Of late he had taken a more intense interest in the radical earl’s activities, hoping that he would do something more scandalous than write suffragist magazine articles and work to seat the radical atheist Bradlaugh in the Commons.
When Shelburne glared at him, Fitch apparently took it as a sign of encouragement. He leaned closer and his voice dropped to a wicked ooze. “What’s Landon done to ’er? Give ’er the jilt? Give ’er the slip? What?”
Shelburne gave him the shoulder and strode on until he reached the door to the Smoking Room. There he slowed, then paused with a canny look and waved his colleagues through the door ahead of him. Turning to the relentless little muckraker, he looked down his nose at the fellow’s ill-fit collar and gin-flushed complexion.
“All right, here’s a tidbit for you, Fitch. The ladybird was indeed a lady. Lady Antonia Paxton … wealthy widow, do-gooder, and defender of marriage and the sanctity of the home.” His expression warmed at the sight of wheels turning in the newsman’s mind. On impulse he greased the gears that turned them. “But being a gentleman, I must stop there and leave it to you to discover what they truly are to one another.”
Fitch’s ferret-quick eyes narrowed and his mouth quirked up at one corner.
“I owe ye one, Mr. Shelburne.”
Chapter Four
Night rolled softly over the city. The air had been cleared by a gentle afternoon shower, making it a perfect evening to open the terrace doors and let the perfume of the gardens drift in on the breeze. Men in swallowtail coats and ladies in delicate silk gowns arrived at the Ellingsons’ great house on Park Lane in open calashes and stylish barouche coaches. Inside, they moved through the gilt and mahogany splendor of the drawing rooms and into a long glass conservatory, which opened onto ranks of flower-covered terraces.
Into that gathering of wealth and privilege stepped Remington Carr, devastatingly turned out in his best evening dress, and ready for battle. As he made his way through the rooms, heads turned and tongues wagged behind feathered fans and potted palms. He did not appear often at social gatherings, and his presence, even at liberal Lord Ellingson’s house, was cause for speculation. He took a hand here and there in greeting, and met an occasional eye, but his attention was trained on the search for what he remembered of the infamous Lady Antonia Paxton.
It had been an unpleasant surprise that afternoon to have Carter Woolworth point out to him a trim, well-dressed figure across the Central Lobby at Westminster. And as he approached her, his surprise had turned to confusion. From the various descriptions her victims had supplied him—a vulture, a charging rhino, a jackal, a fire-breathing dragon—he had expected something more on the order of a zoological specimen than a woman. Something with a few more tusks or talons. At the very least, someone a decade or two older and twenty or thirty stones
heavier.
He was unsettled to find her in mere womanly form and dressed in fashionable silk rather than leathery hide or scales. And as he surveyed her attractive figure and heard her pleasant voice—no roar or hiss there—he felt an even stronger rustle of disquiet. She was younger and more feminine than he had anticipated and, as a result, was probably a good bit more dangerous as well.
It was precisely that thought which saved him. Dangerous. She was a diabolical woman, and he knew how to handle them.
He had learned of her interest in the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill from Sir Albert Everstone, who had seen her at parliamentary hearings on the measure and whose wife she had approached for gallery passes. It was a relatively small matter to get young Shelburne to read from his recent piece in Blackwood’s, and he felt reasonably sure that his inflammatory words would catch her notice and raise her ire. His trap was set.
And she had charged straight into it; seeking out Shelburne right away to deliver him a set-down. All he had needed to do was engage her attention and throw down the gauntlet. Now it remained to be seen if she was proud enough or angry enough to pick it up. A servant approached with a tray of champagne, and as he chose a goblet and sipped, he smiled to himself. She would pick it up; he was sure of it. And the instant she stooped to conquer, she was his.
A quarter of an hour later he looked up from having a word with his host and caught a glimpse of a woman in black-edged purple across the drawing room, speaking with his hostess. As if in response to his intensifying stare, they turned in his direction, and he felt a brief surge of triumph. It was the dragon. It had to be; she was the right size and shape, and dressed in half-mourning colors.