The Suffragette Scandal (The Brothers Sinister) (26 page)

He took a breath. “I lied when I said I commissioned it.” He didn’t look at her. “Or, rather, it was a mangling of the truth. I commissioned it, but the artist was myself.”

She blinked and looked at it again. “Oh. My.”

“Don’t look so surprised. You’ve seen my sketches. You know I have some capabilities as an artist.”

“Some, of course. But sketches are one thing. Any number of people can manage a creditable sketch. This is something else entirely.”

“I spent two years with a blacksmith.” He shrugged. “I learned a few tricks. And I had to decide who I was. I couldn’t be the useless little rich boy I had been all that time. I felt as if I were trapped in a labyrinth with no way out, traveling tangled paths that could not lead me to the surface. I made that”—he nodded at the paperweight—“trying to find myself in the man I became.”

Free looked at the piece again.

“No,” he told her. “You won’t find me in there. That’s the whole point. I only ever found a collection of twisted passages leading nowhere. I never found a place to go, a person to be. I learned to believe in nothing, because that way I would never be disappointed.”

“So.” She picked up his paperweight and turned it over. “This was your search for a heart?”

“No.” His voice was ever so quiet. “I made that when I gave up on having one altogether. I didn’t think there was any point in looking for such a ridiculous object until I met you. At some point in the weeks of our acquaintance, I realized I
did
have one buried somewhere.” He looked over at her. “There’s no point in searching it out now. By the time I realized it existed, it was already yours.”

Oh.
Her chest felt too tight. She could almost feel her eyes stinging in response. “And still you’re leaving.”

“I am.”

Free knew that she was the sort to push others. She knew because she’d been told it, time and time again, and because…well, frankly, it was true. Other people were often wrong, and she had no qualms about letting them know.

But if she had one regret in her life, it was pushing too much at the wrong time. When she was younger, she had pushed her Aunt Freddy. Freddy had been beset by a complex mix of fears, ones that Free still didn’t understand. Still she’d pushed, as if she somehow knew better than her own aunt what Freddy needed.

And what had she accomplished by that? They’d both been miserable, and in her aunt’s final days, she’d made Freddy feel as if she were not good enough.

Sometimes, she’d learned, the only way to move forward was to stop pushing.

“Very well,” she heard herself say calmly.

It was rather like his gloves; there were some things a man needed to speak about when he was ready. A man like Edward didn’t give her a piece crafted by his own hands because he wanted to walk away and forget her. He did it because he wanted her to remember. Maybe he needed to leave for now. But deep down, he expected to come back when he’d sorted himself out.

All she had to do was leave the door open.

“I suppose I should send you a memento in return,” she said casually. “If you’ll give me your address, I’ll send you issues of the paper.”

It was as obvious a falsehood as the one he’d delivered about the paperweight itself.

He snorted. “Are you lying to me, Miss Marshall?”

“Of course I am.” She smiled at him. “I thought it would put you at ease.”

He laughed, that dark, appreciative laugh she’d come to adore. “Touché, my dear.”

For a second, they stared at one another, her will matching his.

“Just the paper, now,” he warned. “No letters.”

It was a victory of a sort, that she’d made him tell that lie. He clearly knew it was a lie; he gave his head an annoyed shake.

And then he rubbed a hand through his hair and looked away. “I own a metalworks in Toulouse,” he mumbled.

“Why, Mr. Clark, that sounds surprisingly respectable.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t make too much of it. I’ve only had it a few years. And you’d best not ask how I got the money to start it.” He smiled tightly. “For that matter, don’t ask how I got the first references I needed so that business would start coming in.”

“Does this metalworks have an address?”

He wrinkled his nose at her. She smiled calmly in return while her heart raced. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he took a sheet of her paper and scrawled a few lines.

“I won’t write back,” he told her.

He was such a dreadful liar. Let him lie, if that’s what he needed for the moment.

He didn’t take hold of her, didn’t even touch her. He simply stood and strode to the door. “You have my best wishes, Free. Now and always.”

And then he turned and left.

E
DWARD HAD KNOWN WHEN
he gave Free his address that he might as well have given up right then. The last thing he could withstand was a sustained correspondence. He managed to let the first of her letters pass without a reply. The second was harder. She told him about construction on a new home, about how her suit against his brother was prospering—well—and the public response to the revelations they’d jointly engineered at that soireé—even better. Her advertisers were returning, her subscribers were more loyal than ever, and her subscription numbers were up ten percent and still growing. Everything was looking up, she told him.

Everything, she said, but one little thing. She didn’t specify what that was, but he didn’t need to ask.

It took all his willpower to keep his silence.

But then two weeks passed—two weeks in which her newspapers arrived without any personal notes at all. That circumstance should not have had him grumbling in complaint.

Still, when he saw a scrap of paper attached to his paper one morning, he grabbed for it.

Apologies for the silence,
she wrote.
I’ve been busy. See attached.

He read through her piece. His heart beat faster as he read; his fists clenched on the paper. And when he reached the end of it, he didn’t just give up on the notion of chivalrously ignoring her; he grabbed for his own paper and scrawled a response.

May 14, 1877

Good God. Are you trying to stop my heart? Nothing from you for all that time—and then only one brief note. I had thought you’d given up doing investigative work personally. You understand that when you go into a very dangerous mine that you are putting yourself in danger?

You could have died. You almost did.

I won’t stand for—

Edward stopped, and imagined himself saying that to Free in person. She’d make a rude noise—and all too well-deserved. He crossed that off, too, and stared at the paper a long while before trying again.

Even if you think nothing of your own safety, think of—

That wasn’t any better, to imply that she hadn’t thought about the consequences of her actions. He scratched that through.

Tell me, do you imagine yourself invulnerable, or—

He took a deep breath. It was almost as if he could hear her responding, taunting him. He scratched dark lines through this, too. After a long while, he wrote again.

I have sat in one place crossing lines off this letter for far longer than I should. It’s almost as if you are sitting over my shoulder, offering your sarcastic thoughts in response to my most protective impulses. You’re obviously intelligent enough to understand the risks you’re taking, and you’ve decided they’re worthwhile. I know better than to argue with you on that score.

So I will swallow all my other worries and end with this: I have sat with you at night and felt your fear. I do not know how you face it again and again. It is more than I could do.

You bewilder me.

Edward

It would be foolish to send the letter. It sat on his desk for days while he argued with himself. Finally, he slipped it into the mails, and was even more annoyed when that did not feel like an act of weakness.

It was a matter of days before he heard from her again.

May 20, 1877

Dear Edward,

It was nothing. All in the name of reporting, really. It was rather fortuitous, in fact, that I experienced a cave-in. Under such circumstances, I could…

Oh, very well. I can see you tapping your foot impatiently at me. I’m not fooling you, am I?

I always write my articles so that I disappear. The words are about the hospitals and the inmates, the streets and the streetwalkers. If I reference myself at all, I talk about the false persona I invented to do the investigations. To everyone in the world, I can pretend that all those things happened to someone else.

Everyone but you. I may give false names and false backgrounds, but the things I’ve reported have always happened to
me.
You may find it bewildering that I’m still willing to take it on.

But to me, knowing that you know, that there’s one person who knows I’m not truly fearless…well, that makes it bearable.

Just don’t tell my brother.

Yours,

Free

Edward thought a long while before responding.

May 28, 1877

As I don’t believe in sending letters filled with treacle-like sentiment, I feel as if I should…send you a puppy or something.

Alas. I don’t know if puppies keep when sent through the mails—and I doubt they’d pass through customs these days.

It’s too bad you aren’t a pirate, as you’d once planned. That would make puppy delivery far more efficient. I’d bring up my own ship next to you and send you an entire broadside of puppies. You’d be buried in very small dogs. You’d be far too busy with puppy care to worry about anything else. This is now sounding more and more invasive, and less and less cheering—and nonetheless I have yet to meet anyone who was not delighted by a wriggling mass of puppies. If I ever did meet such a person, he would deserve misery.

Do not doubt the power of the puppy-cannon.

Edward

P.S. If there is no puppy attached to this message, it is because it was confiscated by customs. Bah. Customs is terrible.

After that, it was impossible to pretend he was not corresponding with her.

June 3, 1877

Free—

I don’t know what you mean. I do not resort to the ridiculous to avoid talking about feelings.

My God! Look behind you. It’s a three-headed monkey!

Now, what were we talking about? Ah, yes. You were telling me that Rickard was circulating a modified bill. Let me play devil’s advocate to your outrage: Even if only
some
women vote, it will prove that the sky can still remain firmly attached to the heavens and will forestall the worst doomsayers of the lot…

There was no point lying to himself now about what was happening. He’d done a terrible job of walking away from her, and look what had happened. Now he was no better off at all. There was no future in this though. What was he to do, tell her the truth of who he was? Let her know that his brother had been the one who caused all her problems, and then ask her to be his viscountess? She’d hate the prospect.

It was the chance that she might not say
no
that most shook him.

He was disgusted with himself when he began to look for a buyer for his metalworks.

June 10, 1877

Free,

I don’t feel qualified to advise you on answering your brother’s worries. I understand his concern, but you don’t have to listen to him. You only pay attention to him because you love him. This is what happens when people love you: They start annoying you.

Next time, if you wish to avoid this, try to poison your sibling relationships at a much younger age. It works wonders, I’ve found.

Yours,

Edward

June 21, 1877

Free,

Yes, I did manage to wrap up that bit of business I had mentioned before. As for the other thing—yes, I do have a younger brother. He’s my only living family. If you must know, he’s the one who told the British Consul in Strasbourg that I was an impostor. Suffice to say, I don’t think you would like him.

The only reason you are writing to me about my brother is because yours has gone on that elaborate trip. Tell me more next time you write. Is he in Malta yet? And when was he supposed to be back—August?

Edward

P.S. You are only proving me right. Love. Aggravation. Once again, they go hand in hand.

Edward sighed and looked up from the letter. He was dillydallying. But what was he to write instead?
I was born Edward Delacey, and my brother burned your house down. I was born Edward Delacey, and I could be Viscount Claridge if I mentioned that fact in England.

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her. He couldn’t walk away. He didn’t want to claim her under false pretenses. But if he ever told her the truth…