An Ideal Duchess (36 page)

             
“See here, Amanda,” He said softly.

             
She lifted her face from his shoulder, and he assumed she was looking at him, possibly with gut-churning pity in her eyes.

             
“I’m backing you to avert scandal, but that is all.”

              Almost immediately, the rosy warmth of her proximity chilled, her hands cold and stiff, and she shifted away, taking with her the heat and heady fragrance of her body.

             
“Of course, Malvern,” She sounded formal and distant. “It is what a proper husband would do in this strange sort of situation, isn’t it?”

             
He said nothing, wanting the conversation to end, to close the door on the revelation he had not intended to share and the intimacy he was too suspicious to receive. She seemed to agree with his policy of silence, and the mattress dipped and the sheets shushed with her motion as she turned to her side, leaving a wide berth between their bodies on the bed.

House of Commons, October 1908

              Anthony would not have noticed the fluttering white object had his position as a backbencher not afforded a clear view of the galleries above the floor of the Commons. As it was, he merely assumed a note of some sort, or perhaps someone’s handkerchief had slipped from his grasp had that one object not been followed by another and yet another.

             
He sat forward in his seat to peer up at the grille covering the Ladies’ Gallery, his ears half attuned to Mr. James Remnant’s measured tones as he debated the Licensing Bill.

             
“….the debate would show the importance of allowing time for discussing the Amendments to the Bill. Thanks to the closure, many important Amendments had already been passed, and they had had no opportunity of discussing them, and in reference to this one he was quite sure the Solicitor-General would, after the debate had taken place, agree that it was one well worthy of consideration…”

             
Anthony squinted at the gallery, discerning a movement behind it, and then a slender, gloved hand thrust a tightly rolled cylinder through the hexagon-shaped holes in the grille, flicked her wrist to unroll it with a snap. It unfurled quickly, a long, rectangular banner with the word “Proclamation” in black bold print. Before Anthony could react—he didn’t know whether to laugh or to swear in irritation—all hell broke loose.

              “… The Solicitor-General had said it would be impossible to borrow beyond the compensation fund, but loans could be made on the future installments of the levy under the Bill. Loans, it was true, had not been allowed by the present Government under the 1904 Act—”

             
“Votes for Women!” Cried a woman’s voice behind the grille.

             
“Votes for Women!” was echoed by other female voices.

             
“Why don’t you do justice to women!?” A man’s voice cried.

             
Anthony and the other MPs rose from their seats in shock and outrage (though, Mr. Remnant continued to drone on) as a barrage of handbills fell from the Strangers’ Gallery like sheets of white rain He caught one of the handbills in mid-air: Women’s Freedom League.

             
He returned his gaze to the banner—now crooked and torn as MPs below attempted to pull it down as someone above attempted to yank it back through the grille: “Women’s Freedom League…Demands…Votes for Women…This Session.”

             
For some reason, his heart leaped into his throat, and he narrowed his eyes at the handbill as his suspicions coalesced into a definitely certainty. He was pulled from his contemplation when Winston touched his arm, his pugnacious face creased in annoyance.

             
“You will make certain they are escorted gently, but
firmly
from the premises, eh Challoner?”

             
“Of course, Mr. Churchill,” Anthony replied deferentially, pleased to be singled out by the President of the Board of Trade.

             
He cut through the chaos that was the House of Commons and hastened towards the Commons Lobby, where he was just in time to witness Miss Jessica Trant and three other suffragette disturbers (one of the three was a man—the source of those damned handbills) being carted down the staircase from the galleries by attendants.

             
“Miss Trant,” He stepped forward.

             
She strained against the hold of her captor to twist towards him; her violent efforts to fight and free herself had resulted in the destruction of her coiffure and the seams of her shabby coat.

             
“Did one of your cowardly ministers send you to confirm our exit, Challoner?” She arched a thick dark brow as the attendant hustled her past him and down the corridor towards the Central Lobby.

             
That stung.

             
Anthony paused shortly, acutely uncomfortable about her accusation, but desirous of making certain she was unharmed in the process of being ejected from the House of Commons. Her low opinion of him be damned, he felt an uncanny affinity with her, and continued after the errant suffragettes. He caught them just as the attendants marched them out the doors into the Old Palace Yard, and Anthony was appalled to find a score or more of suffragettes mobbing the yard, the glow of the streetlamps casting a yellow glow over their angry, contorted faces, their aggressive stance, and the banners they held in the air. The only barrier between Parliament and the suffragettes were the long line of bobbies wielding sticks and batons as they held the women back from storming the Commons’ evening session.

             
He caught sight of Jessica just as two bobbies parted to allow the attendant to push her through the line, and stepped down into the yard, feeling more conspicuous than he ever experienced in his tailcoat, striped trousers, and top hat.

             
“Wait! Jessica! Miss Trant!—”

             
He forced his way through the police line after her, and was suddenly faced with the stern, furious expressions of suffragettes—he wasn’t certain whether he was safer behind the bobbies or in the midst of these admittedly terrifying women. Nevertheless, he clutched his top hat to his head as the women began pelting him with shouts of “Votes for Women” at him and other derisive questions about his stance on women’s suffrage, braving their gauntlet as he struggled through the sea of bodies in the direction he assumed Miss Trant had gone.

             
The only trouble was that he had no recognizable method of identification: all of the women looked rather alike in their faded, age-worn coats, low, flat hats, and boots, and lined, tired faces. He suddenly realized these were not the polished, neatly attired suffragist types he had met at various political teas or in the theater. This was the face of the poor.

             
As this reality sank into his brain, he caught sight of Jessica, her untidy bare head instantly recognizable. He pushed towards her and caught her arm before she could slip away again. She snapped towards him when her instinctive reaction to jerk away as he grabbed for her caused her to fall heavily into his body, her nose pressed into his sternum.

             
He had an arm full of Jessica Trant, warm, curved, and sinewy before she pushed away with a huff of irritation. He held her arm fast, partly to keep her from surging away in the crowd, but mostly to retain bodily contact, and her peevish expression as she looked up at him, brown eyes narrowed on his face, told him she recognized this.

             
“Are you absolutely, bloody mad?” He growled over the din.

             
“Well, Challoner,” said Miss Trant with a touch of acerbity. “Based on your appalled expression, I see two years has not changed your opinion on the matter of women’s suffrage. I declare that sitting in the Commons amongst all of those weak-minded cowards has turned your brain to mush.”

             
“You could have been arrested!”

             
“Being sent to gaol only proves the inhumanity of denying half the population the right to vote.”

             
“Don’t be an ass, Jessica.” He winced at his vulgarity. Something about her loosened his tongue to a dangerous degree.

             
Her mouth curved into a smile of delight. “Don’t curb your language on my account, Challoner. I’m no lady so you can say damn, or hell, or even…
fuck
if you like.”

             
“Wh-what did you just say?” Anthony felt as though the wind had been knocked out of his lungs.

             
“Fuck,” She raked a glance over his body. “The vulgarity for copulation, which is what you would like to do with me.”

             
“Bloody hell,” He swore under his breath, torn between horror and amusement over her acute perceptiveness of the inner workings of his mind.

             
“That is why you’ve come after me, isn’t it?” She continued matter-of-factly. “The PM or Lloyd George only ordered you to see we left Westminster.”

             
“Churchill,” He corrected automatically, and then gritted his teeth when she smirked.

             
“
Ooh la la
, as Gaby Deslys would say—you’ve come to consort with quite exalted company since we last met.”

             
“You’ve been following my career.” He said flatly.

             
“It is imperative to keep abreast with potential allies—or targets,”

             
“And?”

             
“It remains to be seen whether you are an ally or a target,” She said carefully. “Your presence out here tells me you move at the direction of your superiors—” She raised a hand to his lips when he started to protest. “—but you haven’t called for our heads, so we shall see how you develop.”

              “I am my own man,” Anthony said tersely. “You were there when I won my seat for the Liberals.”

             
“Oh yes, the Conservative Duke of Malvern—your patron for your rotten borough. He is sitting in the Lords right now, no doubt falling into an even greater atrophy than you are in the Commons.”

             
Anthony’s head snapped up over the suffragettes and banners as he looked towards the general vicinity of the House of Lords. He had not spoken to Bron in over two years, and the stony silence from the Townsend family served to make him feel as though he were in the wrong, and not blasted Bron for failing to understand his need to move from beneath his shadow.

             
A shadow that had fallen more heavily, and more burdensome, across him once Bron had become the Duke of Malvern. He had been close friends with Bron since they were boys at Summer Fields, and he had seen Bron’s easy display of biting, unforgiving temper—only he and Alex (
and Vi
, he thought sourly) had been safe from it. To see it—no, to feel it—turned in his direction was almost as painfully searing as if Anthony had touched a hot range with his bare hands.

             
To his surprise, Jessica gave him a sympathetic look, but her attention tore away from him when the suffragettes began surging forward. The abrupt change in her expression, from sympathy to feral glee, was disconcerting to say the least, and before he could react, she was out of his arms and into the crowd of women attempting to break the police line.

             
“Damn and blast!” He swore loudly. “Jessica!”

             
But she was already away, and to his dawning horror, grappling with a bobby who waved his police stick perilously close to her head. He himself was forced to duck from the banners and hands flying as the suffragettes and the police began pushing and shoving at one another. He took a blow to his midsection and another to his shoulder, and then an elbow to his right eye.

             
He saw stars and fell to his knees, a hand pressed to his eye, as every point of contact between himself and the melee began throbbing with pain.
My God
, he wondered, aghast at the almost gleeful violence towards women who just wanted to vote and their supporters. He staggered to his feet, hand still over his bruising eyelid, and shouldered his way towards the front of the suffragettes just in time to see Jessica handcuffed and yanked towards a black maria.

             
“Jessica!”

             
He pushed at the policeman holding back his part of the crush as another man began lashing at the bobbies with his belt.

             
“Here now, you want to be arrested too?” The policeman shoved him back.

             
“No, I simply—” Anthony fell against the man as charging suffragettes behind him began climbing onto his back to break the line.