She couldn’t see much of Mr. Clark. But his silhouette straightened and he turned toward her. “You don’t know what you’re suggesting,” he said. “You can’t even say the word aloud. You want me to torture him.”
Said out loud, that ugly word—torture—seemed to fill the room. She didn’t want it. Every part of her rebelled at it. But there was that small corner of her that wondered. He’d burned down her house. He might know more. Wouldn’t it be only fair if…?
Mr. Clark made a rude noise. “God. I forget, sometimes, how naïve you really are.”
It felt like a slap in the face.
“I’m not naïve. Just because I can’t say the word.”
“Oh, you’re naïve to even think of it.” She’d heard him angry before, had heard him amused. She didn’t know what this emotion he expressed now was. Something darker, something more real than she’d ever heard from him before. “You don’t torture a man to get the truth, Miss Marshall. Didn’t you read your history of the Spanish Inquisition?”
Free took a step back from that intensity. Her back met the wall of the room. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t understand. You’ve read a story, no doubt, where a man had information. Someone wielded a well-placed knife to make him divulge his secret in time. Good prevailed, and they all lived happily ever after.”
She felt sick.
“That was a tepid piece of fiction written by some man who sat at a comfortable fire, inventing a barely plausible tale for a gullible audience. You don’t torture a man to find out the truth, Miss Marshall, no matter how the stories sound. Any real scoundrel will tell you as much. You torture a man to make him into someone else. True pain is like black ink. Enough of it can blot out a man’s soul. If you’re willing to use it, you can write whatever you wish in its place. Want him to swear to Catholicism? Hand him off to the inquisitors. Want him to believe the sun sets in the east, and the moon is made of green cheese? Ready the hot knives. But once you spill that ink on his soul, you’ll never get it out. He’ll say anything, be anything, believe anything—just so that you’ll stop. You’ll ask him about Delacey, and he’ll invent any story you wish to hear, just to spare himself the pain. But it won’t hold up under observation, because it won’t be true.”
She swallowed.
“So no, Miss Marshall. I won’t give you your easy answer. It doesn’t exist. Go write the messy, difficult story. Write the tale without a happy ending. We’ll not get any other sort tonight.”
It was a good thing it was dark; she didn’t think she could look him in the eye.
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. The light in the main pressroom was blinding after the darkness of the archive room. The women—her women, women whose children she knew, whose hopes she’d listened to—were bustling about. Spreading sand to soak up the oil, shoveling that into buckets, and then scrubbing tables with soap and washing away the last of the residue with vinegar. Already the smell was beginning to dissipate.
Her hands were shaking. She’d never heard Mr. Clark talk like this before. That had been something close to a black rage—and over torture, of all things.
What kind of scoundrel was he?
She took a deep breath. He was the kind of scoundrel that was right.
She had to hone her anger to a fine edge. That poor, miserable creature in her back room was only a tool.
She needed a plan.
And for tonight, she needed a story. Maybe it would be an ugly, bare story, one with no simple endings or clear explanations. But it would be a story nonetheless.
BY THE TIME THE CONSTABLES ARRIVED, solemn in their blue uniforms, and took Mr. Bartlett into custody, Free’s press was running, spitting out pages.
She’d stuck to the bare basics: that denial that she’d crafted before Amanda left, and then the story of the fire and the man captured.
Around midnight, Alice delivered an armload of blankets. Free busied herself setting up a pallet in her office. She was arranging the makeshift bedding when Mr. Clark came in.
“What are you doing?” he shouted over the sound of the press.
She hadn’t been able to look at him since the archive room. She still couldn’t do it now. She stared at the gray wool blankets in her hands instead. “I’m preparing to sleep here.”
He folded his arms and glared at her.
“My house is gone.” She had to yell to be heard above the noise, and it felt good to vent her anger. “Someone must stay here overnight to be certain nothing else will happen. Alice and her husband are bedding down in the archive room, and since I have nowhere else to go—”
“If you’re staying,” he said, leaning down to her, “I’m staying.”
“Mr. Clark, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.”
She made the mistake of looking up as he said that. His eyes were dark. She’d expected him to be smoldering with anger after their argument. Instead, he seemed cold—ice cold. As if he didn’t care about her, didn’t care about anything.
He cast her another dark look, and then shook his head and turned away.
Chapter Nine
THE PRESS FINISHED ITS RUN after one in the morning. They packaged the papers in weary silence, readying them to be taken down to the station. A little water and soap, and a nightrail borrowed from Alice, readied Free for bed, such as it would be tonight. But after Alice and her husband had retired, Free found herself unable to close her eyes. She stared instead at the darkened ceiling and realized she had one more task to do tonight.
She stood and went to her door.
Mr. Clark was out on the main floor. He’d shed his coat; Alice had apparently brought him his share of blankets as well, and he was sitting on these. His feet were bare and he was examining his hand in the moonlight. He looked up as she opened the door, reached over, and pulled on a glove. He didn’t stand as she approached. He didn’t speak. He simply watched her come closer.
God, he still radiated cold.
She was not wearing as much as she normally would have. Oh, she knew the nightrail covered everything that needed to be covered. Still, it left her feeling…naked. And she already felt more than a little exposed to this man.
She knelt beside him. He didn’t move, not so much as an inch.
“Thank you,” she told him.
His expression didn’t change, not in the slightest, but he looked over at her as if he could freeze her heart.
She didn’t stop. “Thank you for your help. For stopping the fire. For stopping both the fires.” Her voice dropped. “Thank you for stopping me from doing something I would have regretted. I hadn’t said thank you yet—and I owe you that.”
“It was nothing.”
“And thank you for staying now—”
He cut her off with a shake of his head. “You’re making me out to be quite the hero, Miss Marshall. Tell yourself whatever lies you wish, but leave me out of them. I’m here tonight because I don’t want to be alone. No other reason.”
It took him a moment to realize that he was telling the simple truth. That she was sitting near him on the floor. Not next to him; not quite. Two feet separated them. Distance enough…and yet not enough distance.
He cast a glance in her direction.
“So, Mr. Clark,” she said. “When have you ever seen a man tortured?”
“Elsewhere.” He bit the word off. “It was far worse than you can imagine, Miss Marshall. I don’t have the stomach to talk about it, and I certainly don’t have the desire.”
“Very well, then.”
He pressed his hand to his forehead, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I bother. There’s no point to any of this.”
Free traced a drawing on the floor with her finger. “My opinion? I think you bother because you’re not quite as bad a man as you make yourself out to be.”
“Yes, tell yourself that, Miss Marshall.” There was a mocking tone in his voice. “Tell yourself that I’
m your knight in shining armor, here to save you from fires and foes. That’s a lie, but some people need lies to sleep at night. I’m here for my own reasons. I admire you. I like you.” His smile grew darker. “I’ll take you to bed, if you wish. But don’t ask me to pretend that this”—he waved his hand about —“that any of this matters a damn. It doesn’t.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
He moved an inch toward her. “You’re the loveliest woman ever to bash her head against a wall, but the wall you’re battering is higher and thicker than the Great Wall of China, and there’s only one of you. It’s not the stones that will give way to you, my dear.”
Free swallowed. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“Ah, the wall is made of paper, then, and you’ll burst through it at any second.” He laughed at her, and she could hear that ice in his voice. “Give yourself another ten years, and maybe you’ll understand what you’re facing. Until then, go ahead. Keep fighting.”
Free contemplated him in the darkness. “After tonight, do you still think that I’m naïve? That I don’t understand how the world works?”
“There’s no proof you do understand it. After everything you saw today, you still stayed up to send out your next issue. What do you imagine your little paper will change? Do you think that suddenly, Delacey will read one of your essays and say, ‘Good God, I’ve got it all wrong. Women deserve to be treated fairly after all’?”
“No,” Free looked away. “Of course I don’t think that. I’ll never convince him.”
“Or do you imagine that there is a group of men somewhere who haven’t yet made up their minds on the question of female suffrage? Men who are thinking, ‘Well, I suppose women might be actual human beings, just like men. Maybe I had better look out for them.’”
Free felt her face flush. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Because I can tell you what will happen,” Mr. Clark said in his dark, dangerous voice. “You women will squawk amongst yourselves about injustice and fairness. Maybe if you do it loudly enough, someday a handful of you will be allowed to vote, and it will be accounted a great victory. Maybe in fifty years, women will achieve a distinct minority in the professional classes. We might have a woman doctor, a woman barrister, and then five or ten of you might form an organization together and shake hands because something has been accomplished.”
Free let out a breath.
“Maybe in a hundred years of women voting, you might manage a single female Prime Minister.” He gave her a rough smile. “But just the one, and even so, people will never take her seriously. If she’s stern, they’ll blame her menstrual cycle. If she smiles, it will be proof that women are not strong enough to lead. That’s what you’re setting yourself up for, Miss Marshall. A lifetime of small wins, of victories that land like lead in your stomach. Your cause may be just. But you’re delusional if you think you can accomplish anything. You’re pitting yourself against an institution that is older than our country, Miss Marshall. It’s so old that we rarely even need speak of it. Rage all you want, Miss Marshall, but you’ll have more success emptying the Thames with a thimble.”
He touched a finger to his forehead in mock salute, as if tipping a hat. As if she’d just departed the land of reality, and he’d wished her a pleasant journey. His words didn’t match his actions, though. He came even closer to her as he spoke, leaning in with every sentence, until he seemed almost on the verge of kissing her.
“You’re right,” Free said, shutting her eyes.
He blinked and sat back, cocking his head. “What did you say?”
“I said you were right,” Free repeated. “You’re right about all of that. If history is any guide, it will take years—decades, perhaps—before women get the vote. As for the rest of it, I imagine that any woman who manages to stand out will be a target for abuse. She always is.”
His eyes crinkled in confusion.
“What I don’t understand is why you think you need to lecture me about this all. I run a newspaper for women. Do you imagine that nobody has ever written to me to explain precisely what you just said?”
He frowned. “Well.”
“Do you suppose I’ve never been told that I’m upset because I am menstruating? That I would calm down if only some man would put a child in my belly? Usually, the person writing offers to help out with that very task.” She swallowed bile in memory. “Shall I tell you what someone painted on my door one midnight? Or do you want to read the letters I receive?” Free wrapped her arms around herself. “I am here, on the floor of my press, because I told a man I wouldn’t bed him, and so he burned my house down. So, yes, Edward. I know the obstacles women face. I know them better than you ever will.”
He exhaled harshly. “God, Free.”
“Do you think I don’t know that the only tool I have is my thimble? I’m the one wielding it. I know. There are days I stare out at the Thames and wish I could stop bailing.” Her voice dropped. “My arms are tired, and there’s so much water that I’m afraid it’ll pull me under. But do you know why I keep going?”
He reached out and touched her chin. “That’s the one thing I can’t figure out. You don’t seem stupid; why do you persist?”
She lifted her face to his. “Because I’m not trying to empty the Thames.”
Silence met this.
“Look at the tasks you listed, the ones you think are impossible. You want men to give women the right to vote. You want men to think of women as equals, rather than as lesser animals who go around spewing illogic between our menstrual cycles.”
He still wasn’t saying anything.
“All your tasks are about men,” she told him. “And if you haven’t noticed, this is a newspaper for women.”
“But—if—”
“I had myself committed to a government lock hospital,” Free said. “I was locked up with three hundred prostitutes suspected of being infected with syphilis, so I could report accurately on the cruelty of the attendants, the pain of the examinations.” She still couldn’t bring herself to recall those in any detail—the feel of being held down, the invasive metal tools wielded without an ounce of gentleness had all hazed to thankful forgetfulness. “I told everyone that there were women dying in pain with no comfort but to be tied to their beds writhing in agony. I reported that there were women who had shown no signs of disease in two years who were still kept like prisoners.”
“And yet the government is still locking up women with syphilis. The Thames rushes on, Miss Marshall.”
“But the two women I learned were free of symptoms are now free. And every time Josephine Butler speaks to a crowd of men, she sketches a picture with her words of what those thousands of women endure. Grown men weep to hear it, and we chip away at that wall, day by day. It will come down someday.” She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. “You see a river rushing by without end. You see a sad collection of women with thimbles, all dipping out an inconsequential amount.”
He didn’t say anything.
“But we’re not trying to empty the Thames,” she told him. “Look at what we’re doing with the water we remove. It doesn’t go to waste. We’re using it to water our gardens, sprout by sprout. We’re growing bluebells and clovers where once there was a desert. All you see is the river, but I care about the roses.”
His eyes were dark and the light was dim enough that she could see scarcely make him out. But his whole body was turned to her.
“Everything about you matters to me.” He leaned in. “It shouldn’t. I keep telling myself it shouldn’t, that it’s only the lust talking. But every time we talk, you turn my world upside down.” His smile was tight and weary.
“You’re wrong again. The world started out upside down. I’m just trying to set it right side up.”
“Either way gives me the most astonishing vertigo.”
He reached out. But he didn’t touch her—his hand was gloved, and he held it, poised, a hair’s breadth from her cheek. She could feel
the warmth of him. But he pulled it back with a shake of his head.
“Good night, Miss Marshall,” he said.
EDWARD WASN’T SURE what roused him in the middle of the night. A sound, high-pitched; a rustle perhaps.
He came instantly awake. His heart rate accelerated; he jumped soundlessly to his feet. But there were no footsteps, no sounds of anyone shuffling about outside. And then that noise sounded again—a soft, muffled moan coming from Miss Marshall’s office.
He went to the window that looked in on that space.
The only illumination was the moon, and that came in only indirectly through a single high window. Her form twitched; her hand reached up, as if to push someone away.
He should have let her sleep.
But he was so far beyond should when it came to her that he knew he wouldn’t. Dangerous to enter her office. He was in his shirtsleeves, and she… He could see her ankle poking out from under a blanket, the flash of her wrist. Miss Marshall was far too undressed for his peace of mind.
He opened the door anyway, kneeling beside her. He set his hand on her shoulder.
“Miss Marshall,” he murmured.
She turned again, unwaking. He brushed her forehead. A clammy, cold sweat met his fingers.
“Free.” He ran his hand down her cheek.
Still she didn’t wake.
“Darling,” he whispered.
Her eyes opened on that. She blinked, hazily, up at him. God, he was in so far over his head. With her hair spread out around her, her eyes not quite focused on him, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He could not have captured her, not with pencil or paint. He couldn’t have tried. After all, a man could only draw what he could comprehend.
“Shh, darling,” he whispered. The endearment, once used, came too easily to his tongue a second time. “You were having a nightmare.”
She exhaled, pressing her lips together. Then, very slowly, she sat up. “I know that,” she said tartly. “It was my nightmare.”
He wished he could whisper sweet nothings in her ear. It will all be right. Sleep again; I’ll not let anything harm you.
The Suffragette Scandal Page 11