He could remember the last time he’d seen her. Your mother was a regular coal-grabber, she’d said. But you, you’re like me. At the time, he’d laughed it off. His aunt never left the house; Oliver had a busy, varied career. Freddy constantly warned him about any alteration in his schedules, however minor; Oliver did new things. He wasn’t like Freddy.
You remember the pain, and you flinch.
He didn’t flinch. Did he?
Not from the outdoors, no. But…
Oliver shut his eyes and drew in a breath. He’d flinched from a great many other things.
Like Jane. When he’d first met her, he’d scarcely been able to watch her. She violated the precepts of polite society without thinking, and he’d flinched at first when he’d seen her. Jane was a coal-grabber, all right.
But Freddy was right. There had been a time when Oliver had held on to coals himself. When he’d first gone to Eton, for instance. Those first years, he’d insisted on his due. He’d proclaimed loudly that he was as good as any other boy, and he’d been willing to fight to keep it that way. What had changed, and when had it all gone awry?
The walls seemed thicker. The air felt closer. He could almost feel the walls he’d built of his life closing around him. He’d not realized they were there, so quietly had he made them. And yet when he reached out, there they were. Freddy had insisted to Free that she needed to stay inside, to wear her bonnets. And Oliver had been saying the same thing. He had looked at his sister, at her face shining as she was surrounded by a hundred women in Hyde Park, and instead of feeling proud of her accomplishment or happy for what had happened, he had felt tired. He’d tried to warn her off Cambridge.
It was an old tiredness he felt, the weariness of an aging dog lying in the summer sun, watching puppies at play. As if exuberance belonged to the young. He could remember, faintly, an echo of that feeling. Days when he’d insisted—over and over—that he was as good as anyone else, that he wasn’t going to bend to their ways, that he’d make them bend to his.
He turned the next page in Mrs. Larriger Leaves Home, but the words blurred before him.
He was asking himself the wrong question. Once, he’d been like Free, unwilling to back down or take “no” for an answer. The question wasn’t when things had changed. It was this: When had he decided to simply accept society’s rules, to play the game precisely as it had been laid out by those who already had power?
It had happened years ago at Eton.
When he’d finally learned to keep his mouth shut. When he’d discovered that he could accomplish more by holding his tongue and biding his time than by lashing out with fists and shouts.
He’d made a career of quiet, he’d told Jane. But at some point, quiet no longer carried the day. If he never learned to speak, what would be the point of achieving power? Simply to carry on carrying on?
With a great effort, with the effort of a woman uprooting everything she had known, Mrs. Larriger put one foot outside her door into the warm May sunshine.
It took Oliver a moment to remember his old self—the person he had thought was born of immaturity, the boy that he had put aside as he came into adulthood. He would never have thought himself ashamed of his background before now. And yet…
How was it that he’d taken the rules that he’d hated and adopted them for himself? He’d chafed when people told him he was a bastard. He’d raged when they’d said he would never amount to anything, that his father was nothing. How was it that he was telling the woman that he loved that she was nothing? That she was awful?
He’d started caring more about becoming the kind of person who could make a change than he cared about the change itself. He’d walked away from Jane, and by doing so, he’d told her all the things about herself that everyone else had thrown in her face: that she was wrong, broken, awful.
It was not the little lust of unmet physical needs that he felt for her. He loved her. He loved everything about her, from the fierceness of her devotion to her sister to the shrug of her shoulders when she found herself on horseback with him. He loved the way she smiled. He loved the way that she simply refused to feel shame simply because someone else didn’t approve of her behavior.
He loved Jane. He was always going to love her.
He loved the person she’d made of him—a man who could foil abductions and break into houses when circumstances required. A man who could take on Bradenton and see a foe to vanquish, not a powerful lord to be appeased.
And he’d wanted to make her into nothing because that’s what he’d done to himself.
He’d thought he needed a wren—some proper, upstanding woman who needed his money as much as he needed her breeding.
He could suddenly see his life with that unchosen woman. His ever-so-proper wife would never tell him outright that his father was uncouth and improper. She would simply intimate it with a sniff. Perhaps she might suggest that next year they might want to consider having the elder Mr. Marshall stay at home during the season, as he’d be so much more comfortable amongst his own kind.
She would bear his children—and she’d raise them to be quiet, well-behaved folk just like herself, faintly ashamed of their father’s origins.
“Yes,” he could imagine one of them saying, “perhaps there was that little defect of his mother, but at least our grandfather was a duke. That has to count for something.”
They’d never speak of their Aunt Free—too bold, too forward, altogether too everything. Even Patricia, married to a Jew, or Laura, running a dry-goods store, would be suspect. Eventually, his cipher of a wife would suggest that perhaps they’d all be happiest if they just pretended that Oliver’s family didn’t exist.
Jane had it right: He’d traded his bravery for his ambition.
And if he didn’t make this right—if he didn’t learn to suppress that memory of pain and reach in and grab hold of the coals in front of him, he’d be locked up for life in the chains of his own silence. He’d let too much go already: Jane, his sister, even that time with Bradenton. He’d let Jane do most of the talking. He hadn’t even told Bradenton to his face how disgusting he was.
With that, at least one thing came clear. Oliver stood. He didn’t know how to make things right with Jane yet, but Bradenton…
Bradenton owed him a vote, and Oliver was going to collect.
He set the book down, retrieved his coat. He went down the staircase and out into the main entry.
And with a great effort—with the effort of a man uprooting everything he had made of himself—Oliver put one foot outside into the warm May sunshine.
It was half an hour later when Oliver was shown into the Marquess of Bradenton’s study. The man looked extremely annoyed. He shook his head as he sat at his desk, tapping Oliver’s card against the wood.
“I had three-quarters of a mind not to see you,” he said.
“Of course you did.” Oliver said. “But your curiosity got the better of you.”
“But then,” Bradenton said, “I recalled that Parliament would be voting, and I wanted to work on a speech. One about farmers and governesses. I figured I needed to study my source material.”
Was that supposed to be offensive?
“Save your insinuations,” Oliver said. “And your sly jabs. You’ll need your breath to cast your vote to extend the franchise.”
Bradenton laughed. “You can’t be serious. With what you did to me, you think to win my vote?”
“Of course not,” Oliver said. “How could I win your vote? You’re a marquess, and I’m just one man out of a hundred. One man out of a thousand.” He let his smile spread as he tapped his fingers on the table. “One man out of, say, a hundred thousand.”
Bradenton frowned. “One hundred thousand?”
“More than that, actually. Did you go to Hyde Park a few weeks ago? I did. There was an infectious joy, an exuberance in the air. The people gathered. The people won. I read the estimates of the crowds in the paper later, and yes, that was the lowest number
I saw bruited about. One hundred thousand.”
Bradenton shifted uneasily in his chair.
“It’s precisely as you’ve pointed out before,” Oliver said. “There’s one of you, and one hundred thousand of me. You seem to find that comforting. I can’t figure out why.” Oliver leaned forward and smiled. “They’re terrible odds, after all.”
“I’m entirely unmoved by the protestations of rabble.” But Bradenton spoke swiftly, refusing to look Oliver in the eyes. “I have my seat in the House of Lords by birth. I don’t have to bow to what the common people desire.”
“Then you won’t mind when the headlines proclaim that the Reform Bill was blocked once again, and this time by a margin that included the Marquess of Bradenton.”
Bradenton’s eyes widened and he sucked in a breath. But a moment later, he shook his head with vehemence. “I wouldn’t be the only one.”
“No. But think how good your name would sound in a headline. Bradenton Blocks Bill. It’s alliterative.”
Bradenton clenched his fists. “Stop it, Marshall. This isn’t funny!”
“Of course it isn’t. You’re unmoved by the protestations of the rabble. When they gather outside your house, massed in numbers larger than you can count, you’ll laugh in their faces.”
“Shut up, Marshall,” Bradenton growled. “Shut up.”
“Yes, that’s a good one. Tell them that while they’re chanting. ‘Shut up.’ That might work. Maybe they’ll listen. Or maybe they’ll stop talking and start throwing rocks. Did you know they played the Marseillaise near the end of the demonstration?”
“Shut up! The constables—they’ll throw the lot of them in prison.”
“Oh, I saw constables on the day of the Reform League’s gathering,” Oliver said. “All two of them. They would make a lovely barricade, those two solitary blue uniforms arrayed in front of your house, their truncheons gleaming as they faced a crowd of ten thousand. They might stop a charge for ones of seconds.”
“Shut up!”
“No,” Oliver mused, “you’re right. They wouldn’t last that long. Because more than half the constables can’t vote, either.”
He let the silence stretch. Bradenton sat back in his chair, his breathing heavy.
“So you see, Bradenton, you are going to vote to extend the franchise. Because there are thousands of me and one of you, and we are not quiet any longer.”
“Shut up,” Bradenton said again. But his hands shook and his voice was weak.
“No,” Oliver said. “That’s the whole point. You have had all this time to shut me up. To make me follow your rules. I am done with shutting up. It’s your turn.”
Chapter Thirty
“I want something big.” Jane was seated on the sofa in the front parlor of the rooms she’d leased in London with Genevieve Johnson seated next to her. “Something utterly huge. Something as loud and as impossible to ignore as my gowns are. But this time, I want it to have purpose.”
“Do you have something in mind?” Genevieve asked. “And what has this to do with me?”
Jane swallowed. “You told me once you wished you had a husband only for the reason that you would take great pleasure in spending your husband’s money on charitable works. How do you feel about taking mine?”
Genevieve blinked. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, leaning forward. “Tell me more.”
“I’m offering you a position,” Jane said. “A paid position on the Board of Advisers for the Fairfield Charitable Trusts.”
Genevieve’s eyes grew round.
“It doesn’t exist yet,” Jane told her, “but it will. I don’t want to economize. I want to act. To do things.”
“What kind of things?”
Jane shrugged. “I’ve always wanted a hospital. Or a school. Or maybe a hospital and a school in one, one that sets standards for the rest of the country. So we can stop charlatans from conducting medical experiments on the unsuspecting, for one.”
Genevieve’s eyes were shining. “A charity hospital,” she said, “one with a reputation for major advancements. One that people will fight to sponsor, to be a part of. Oh, I’m going to have to take notes.”
“I’ll call for paper.” But as soon as Jane picked up the bell—it had scarcely even made a noise—the door opened.
“Miss Fairfield,” the footman said, “you have a visitor.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
But suddenly she knew. Behind the footman, she saw a form. Her heart stopped and then started once more, beating with a ponderous weight that seemed to tear her equanimity to pieces. Jane stood, clutching her hands together, as Oliver came out of the shadowed hall. His spectacles gleamed in the late afternoon sun. His hair seemed to be made of fire. But it wasn’t his face that riveted her attention, nor even the direct, demanding look in his eyes.
He walked in and suddenly—suddenly—she couldn’t breathe.
“Oliver.” She managed that word, and that word alone.
“Jane.”
“What…” She swallowed, smoothing out her skirts, and shook her head. “Oliver,” she finally choked out, “What in God’s name is the color of your waistcoat?”
He smiled. No, it was too little to say that he smiled. The expression on his face was like sunlight after a dark cave—utterly blinding.
“Would you know,” he said, “that on my way here, I was stopped by three men of my acquaintance, all of whom asked me the same question?”
She shook her head helplessly. “What did you tell them?”
“What do you think?” He gave her a smile. “I told them it was fuchsine.”
“And? What did they say?” Her voice was low, her heart beating rapidly.
“And I found it strangely liberating,” he said. “As if I’d just made a declaration.” He was looking into her eyes, focused entirely on her.
“Precisely how liberated were you?” She could scarcely recognize her own voice.
“Jane, you are not a blight. You are not a disease. You are not a pestilence or a poison. You’re a beautiful, brilliant, bold woman, the best I have ever met. I should never have implied that you were lacking. The fault was in me. I didn’t think I was strong enough to stand at your side.”
She was not going to cry. She wasn’t going to hold him or allow him back in her life without question simply because he realized he had missed her. He’d hurt her too badly for that.
He took another step forward, and then bent to one knee. “Jane,” he said, “would you do me the honor of being my wife?”
She didn’t know what to think. Everything was all muddled. She shook her head, reached for the one thing she understood.
“Your career,” she said. “What about your career?”
“I want a career.” He swallowed. “But not that one. Not the career where I hold my tongue as other men berate women for wearing too much lace. Not one where I keep quiet while my youngest sister appears before a magistrate for the crime of speaking too loudly. Not one where the price of my power is silence about the things I most hold dear.” He bowed his head. “I don’t want you to compromise yourself. To be any less than you are. I won’t ask you to change for me because I’ve realized that I need you precisely as you are.”
Jane brought her hand to her mouth.
“I don’t need that quiet wife. I need you. Someone bold. Someone who won’t let me stand back from myself, and who will tell me in no uncertain terms when I’ve erred.”
She didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve needed you to shock me out of the biggest mistake of my life. To make me recognize my fears and to reach into the fire and grab hold of the coals.”
His voice was rough.
“I need you, Jane. And I love you more dearly than I can say.”
Behind her, Genevieve made a noise. “I think I should absent myself,” she said.
Oliver blinked. “Oh, good God. Miss Johnson. I didn’t even see you there.”
Genevieve smiled. “It’s Miss Genevie
ve. And I had noticed.” She waved at Jane. “I’ll be back later. With paper and ideas.” So saying, she slipped out.
Oliver looked at Jane. He shifted uncomfortably on his knee and then sat on the floor. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
She nodded.
“You were right about my courage. I know precisely where I mislaid it.” He let out a deep breath. “I was seventeen years of age. My brother was a year ahead of me; he had gone on to Cambridge, and I’d been left alone at Eton for one final year. It didn’t matter, I thought. I was wrong.”
He shut his eyes.
“There was an instructor. He taught Greek, and he took it upon himself to teach me a little more than that. Every time he heard that I’d spoken up, he would take me to task in class. He would call on me to translate in front of everyone—texts that none of us had seen before. And when I stumbled he’d tell everyone how dull I was. How stupid. How dreadfully wrong.”
He wrapped his arms around himself. “I could fight other boys, but an instructor, acting within his power? There was nothing to do. As the term went on, it grew worse. My punishments stopped being simple embarrassment. I was hardly the only boy to experience corporal punishment at Eton, and he never went beyond the line. But when it was happening every day, every time I spoke…”
Jane came to stand by him, and then slowly lowered herself to the floor next to him.
“Anything is bearable if you can fight it, but if you must sit back and take it… That breaks you in a way I can’t explain.” He took a deep breath. “I made excuse after excuse for myself as I grew more quiet. I was being pushed. Forced into it. It was temporary; I’d stop once I got out of there. But deep down, I’ve always known the truth: I wasn’t brave enough to keep talking. I learned to shut up so loudly that I never managed to unlearn it afterward.”
“God. Oliver.”
“It doesn’t sound like much. But it trains you, an experience like that. To feel sick when you open your mouth. To hold back.”
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