“If you do not promise me to put this nonsensical notion of yours to rest, I will have no choice but to approach Shelbourne and Lord Northampton with my discovery,” he said. “Indeed, I would not be surprised if they had already been made aware by another. Lord Algernon was making no secret of his intentions.”
His assertion gave her pause. What a henwit she was for failing to realize Lord Algernon’s inability to keep from shamelessly boasting about himself every sentence would extend to mentioning her. How she would like to box his ears for the muck he had made of her excellent plans.
“You may as well resign yourself to the notion you are not my Sir Galahad,” she told Huntingdon. “I will do as I wish, without your further interference.”
He gritted his teeth. “You will most certainly not.”
Her patience wore thin. “And how do you propose to stop me, my lord? If you go to my father and brother with tales, I will have no choice but to tell them you are the man who ruined me. That I went there expecting to meet Lord Algernon, but found you instead. I will tell them you took me in your arms and kissed me passionately, and then you raised my skirts and undid the fall of your trousers and released your…”
Here, the lewd word for his manhood she had read in one of her brother’s naughty books escaped her, and she allowed her words to trail off as her mind frantically sought the correct term.
“Damn it, Helena,” Huntingdon ground out. “That is the outside of enough.”
She had shocked him sufficiently with her outrageous claim—all of it a bluff fashioned loosely of material from Shelbourne’s wicked literature. But because the word chose that moment to worm its way back into her mind, she said it aloud.
“Prick,” she stated, fire licking over her cheeks. Even her ears went hot, but she carried on. Because to the devil with him, that was why. “I shall swear that you took your prick and—”
“Not another bloody word!”
His infuriated growl rapped through the carriage like the report of a pistol at dawn. Helena blinked, all the filthy things she had been about to say vanishing from her mind in the face of his unmitigated fury. Well, mayhap she had gone too far. On an ordinary day, she would never dream of repeating aloud the lewdness she had only read about. But this was not an ordinary day, and each passing hour, minute, second, dragged her mercilessly closer to the day she would marry Lord Hamish and lose her freedom forever.
She had no doubt Huntingdon would think her a madcap jade after he had caught her attempting to ruin herself, and then she had done her utmost to scandalize him. But a perverse part of her rather enjoyed the expression on his countenance at the moment.
The carriage slowed at last.
“I hope I did not shock you with my candor, my lord,” she said lightly, as if she were paying a social call.
When in fact she had just crudely informed him she would tell her brother and father he had taken her virtue himself. And in the most vulgar fashion she could manage.
“Where did you hear such language?” he asked.
The smile she gave him was equal parts regretful and sincere. “I read it.”
She peered out the carriage window, gratified to discover they had stopped on the wrong side of the street, several houses down. Thank heavens this endless carriage ride was over at last. She scooped up her forgotten hat and arranged her veils. Rising, she opened the carriage door herself.
“Do enjoy the rest of your day, my lord.” With that, she clasped her skirts in her hands and leapt to the street.
Her landing was effortless and flawless. Not even a side step. There. He could take all his good intentions and cast them straight to the devil where they belonged. She would not marry Lord Hamish, and she would not be diverted from the path she had chosen.
Ruination would be hers. And after that, liberty.
“You neglected to give me your promise, my lady,” Huntingdon called after her, sounding aggrieved.
She turned back, allowing herself one last moment to drink in the sight of him. “You will not be getting a promise from me. It would only be a lie.”
He pinned her with a glare.
She pretended not to care and spun away, making good on her escape.
It was only later, when she returned home, that she realized her favorite necklace—pearl strands accompanied by an emerald pendant—was missing. She must have lost it somewhere in the madness of her dash to and from Lord Algernon’s rooms.
She may have lost her necklace, but she still had her ambitions of freedom. Those could not be lost or stolen. Indeed, they were all she had left.
Chapter Three
Our struggle, I am sad to say, is not a new one. Woman’s suffrage has been brought before parliament ceaselessly since 1867. Some nearly twenty years later, we fight on.
–From Lady’s Suffrage Society Times
“The female constitution is frail and delicate, prone to hysteria. Imagine the ruinous danger to our society were we to enable such wild creatures to have a vote in matters of grievous national import.”
Helena looked at the polished silver knife on the table before her and envisioned curling her fingers around it, taking it from the snowy linens, and launching it directly at the pompous Lord Hamish White.
He had a face, she thought unkindly, like a dish: wide and round, with a sagging jowl. He also possessed thinning blond hair, with the shiny evidence of his greasy pate gleaming beneath the chandeliers. His nose was a pronounced beak, and when he stood, there was no denying the paunch which slumped over his trousers and swelled his waistcoat seams.
He was an altogether unattractive man.
But not one whit of his unfortunate outer appearance could hold a candle to the hideousness which spewed forth each time he opened his mouth to speak.
She looked around the table—a small gathering consisting of Mama, Father, Lord Hamish, and Lord Hamish’s mother, Lady Falkland. In celebration of the looming betrothal announcement she was doing everything in her power to avoid. None of them seemed prepared to gainsay Lord Hamish’s deeply insulting assertion.
“The women cannot have the vote,” her father agreed. “Men are, by our nature, stronger and rational and far more intelligent than the fairer sex. It cannot be disputed. A woman’s place is at her husband’s side, and she must look to him for guidance, trusting he will make the right governing decisions on her behalf when she cannot.”
Helena ground her jaw. She was more than familiar with her father’s views of her sex. He believed they were intellectually inferior to men. If he had an inkling she spent her time at the Lady’s Suffrage Society instead of paying social calls as she claimed—thank heavens for a lady’s maid she could trust—he would have an apoplectic fit.
And Mama—well, Mama was quiet. Marriage to Father had crushed her spirit, and now Father had found a man fashioned in his mold to be Helena’s own husband.
“Precisely,” said Lord Hamish, a small morsel of his dinner flying from his mouth as he spoke. “Suffrage would be too great a burden for ladies to bear. They must turn instead to the far more rewarding sphere of home and hearth. Tending to one’s husband and children, that is the true meaning of a lady.”
Mayhap she could launch a boat of béchamel sauce in his direction.