Peele snorts, then holds the pamphlet out for my inspection. “They’re coming for your father’s workhouse, Montague. Bloody radicals—what sort of idiots make a charity the subject of their ire? And look there, they haven’t even spelled impoverished correctly—it’s got two p’s.”
I’m almost sure it hasn’t, but hearing him say it makes me doubt my own mind. If I spelled it wrong, surely the printer would have caught that error. For God’s sake, Louisa would have. She’s a tyrant about spelling. Also, how is it that I could not possibly think less of this man, and yet his opinion of me immediately weighs heavier in my mind than my own sense of self?
Peele makes a show of skimming the pamphlet, though I’m sure he’s not reading a word. “Falsehoods, slander, lies, more slander, more lies, that’s all it is.” He runs a dramatic finger under each line, tracing them in mimicry of reading, then taps the final line and declares, “All a pile of Whig shite. Your poor father puts up with so much nonsense from these dunces who don’t have a notion what they’re talking of.”
In actuality, my father puts up with very little. He has an army of secretaries and clerks who do it for him. And the Saint James Workhouse is the furthest thing from a charity.
I should say that. I should say that to him. Or at least defend my spelling of impoverished, which I’m sure is correct. Almost sure. I should not be this completely paralyzed. My heart should not be beating so hard it feels about to explode.
“Adrian,” someone calls, and Peele and I both look up.
Louisa is crossing the path toward us at a quick trot.
“Ah.” Peele folds the pamphlet in half and flicks it in her direction. “Speaking of Whig shite.”
“Good morning, Lord Parkgate.” Louisa stops in front of us, smoothing the front of her work skirt like it’s brocade. “You’re looking pickled. How’s your wife?”
“How’s your brother?” Peele counters. “I haven’t seen him since he brutalized poor Lord Dennyson.”
“Yes, well, we all try our best to avoid you.” Lou’s eyes dart to the pamphlet on the ground, like she’s trying to calculate the likelihood that I offered it to him. Low. The likelihood is very, very low. Subterraneanly so. She must realize that, based only on the fact that I’m breathing as though I’m trying to climb a mountain and my lungs are full of porridge. Is that an actual medical condition? Porridge lungs? It’s not even real and suddenly I’m sure that’s what I’m afflicted with. I might be dying. There seems about a fifty percent chance I’m dying.
“Were you enjoying your reading?” Louisa asks Peele.
“Oh yes.” Peele snickers, obscenely proud of the joke he hasn’t yet made. “I love a good piece of fiction.”
Louisa purses her lips, thin as a thread.
“You do know, Miss Davies,” Peele continues, and his grip tightens on my shoulders. My flesh feels raw and tender, like an overripe fruit, and for a moment I’m concerned he’s grasping me so tight he broke through it. The sweat pooling along my back starts to feel like blood again. “That your dear fiancé’s father is one of the patrons of the Saint James Workhouse.”
Louisa folds her arms. “I don’t believe a personal relationship to someone who supports the exploitation of the poor is reason enough not to speak up against it.”
Peele laughs with his mouth so wide I can see bits of his lunch stuck in his back teeth as he turns to me. “It’s admirable to try and tame a bitch, Montague,” he says, like Louisa isn’t here. “But no one would blame you if you tossed this one out in a sack.”
“Those workhouses,” Louisa pushes on, unmoved as ever by the names men call her, “exploit their occupants for free labor without providing the sanitary, safe living conditions promised in return.”
“Are you going to let her tell stories like that when you’re married?” Parkgate asks me, still ignoring her. “Were she my wife, I’d buy her a Bible and an education in manners before I permit her out in public.”
“Good job I’m not your wife, then,” Louisa says. Mortimer is staring at Louisa like she’s an animal in a zoo, his hungry gaze dipping from her face to the neckline of her dress.
Louisa’s eyes meet mine, a silent plea to say something to the effect that not only will I never try to control her movements, but woe be to those upon whom she unleashes her brilliant self? Or at the very least, tell Parkgate’s lackey that it’s polite to look a lady in the face when speaking to her, and if he continues to make eye contact with her breasts instead, perhaps he and I should take a walk so that I can give him a basic anatomy lesson. I’d like to be the kind of man who says any of that—what sort of selfish, cowardly fool am I that I can’t advocate for the woman I love, to say nothing of the fact that I am putting my own bodily comfort above the actual human souls trapped in workhouses across the country? I have the audacity to keep my mouth shut when asked to step to the defense of those who cannot defend themselves? I am pinned by the anvils on the end of Peele’s arms, swallowing and gasping like he’s holding me underwater.
Louisa’s mouth turns down with what I assume is disappointment and I want to say, Yes! I know! I am also deeply disappointed with who I am! We are in agreement on that subject! But then she tips her chin back toward the entrance to the park. “Let’s go, Adrian,” she says.
“I would suggest you try a less demanding tone with your soon-to-be husband,” Peele says. I swear to God, he’s pushing me into the earth.
“I’m not demanding,” Louisa says evenly.
“Just because you want to walk away from an argument you know you can’t win, doesn’t mean Adrian has to come with you,” Peele says.
Louisa cocks her head, eyes narrowing. “I am not walking away because I am wrong, I am walking away because this is a conversation that will be entirely unproductive and I’d rather waste my time elsewhere.”
“Well then.” At last—at last!—Peele releases me. I swear I hear my ribs crack as they slot back into place. “Please, don’t let me waste any more of your time, Miss Davies.” He bends down to retrieve the pamphlet from the dirt, and Louisa extends her hand to me.
“Adrian.”
And then a series of things happens all at once.
As Louisa reaches out, Peele straightens and thrusts the discarded pamphlet into my chest, knocking her hand out of the way. At the same time, his valet steps forward for God knows what purpose, but his shadow falls over me. And suddenly I feel trapped. I feel surrounded. Peele has batted Louisa from me and I am about to be squashed between these two vile men and their terrible breath and their conservatism. Peele is going to grab my shoulders again, and this time my arms will break off in his hands. He’s going to look at the pamphlet and realize I wrote it and find more spelling errors and I’m never going to take a proper breath again in my whole goddamn life and I have nowhere to run.
And, like any animal cornered, my instinct takes over.
So when Peele thrusts the pamphlet at me, I punch him in the face.
He screams. Actually screams, a sound whose closest kin is the wails the foxes make when they smell the dogs closing in. That noise used to make my mother cover her ears, and I almost do the same thing now.