then Montgomery said a strange thing: “You know that I care about you, Peregrin, don’t you?”
“Eh. Yes, sir?”
The duke sighed. “I’m not sure you do.” He scrubbed a hand over his tired face. “She was distressed, you say?”
“Miss Archer? Yes, quite.”
“I can see that it may have been a bad proposal,” Montgomery muttered, “and I do think she was lying,” he added cryptically.
“Did she know you had fallen off your horse when you, eh, proposed?” Peregrin asked, because blimey, he was as curious as he was disturbed by the whole development.
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, I reckon no lady wants a proposal right after a man has hit his head.”
Montgomery was quiet. “I may have called her a coward, too,” he said.
Peregrin’s jaw dropped. “I’m no expert, but that sounds like a terrible wooing strategy.”
“And I—God.” Montgomery groaned. “I was not quite myself last night. I was . . . too forceful.”
Of course he would have been too forceful, Peregrin thought, because that was exactly how Montgomery was: forceful, intense, and a little frightening. He probably didn’t even intend to be frightening. He probably couldn’t fathom that him always having a plan, and always expecting everyone to function logically, was enough to frighten the average fellow. It wasn’t quite normal, to unwaveringly have the eye on a noble aim and to be able to drop emotions that did not suit. But then, perhaps that was what confinement made of a man—after all, no one had shielded Montgomery from the cage their father’s death had left behind.
A hollow sensation took hold of Peregrin, as though he were about to plunge headfirst into the river Isis off Magdalen Bridge—you never knew what was lurking in the opaque waters. The point was, Montgomery needed a duchess, a durable, intelligent one he could not accidentally steamroll, one who kept him in a good mood and off Peregrin’s back. And while Miss Archer was in many ways not a suitable bride for him, perhaps in the most important ways, she was. She made Montgomery feel. One could even speculate that she would make his brother happy.
Montgomery was probably too drunk to remember much come morning. Hopefully, he would remember what he was going to hear next. He took a deep breath. “I think there is something you should know about Miss Archer.”
Chapter 31
Lucie lived on Norham Gardens in a narrow slice of a yellow brick house of which Lady Mabel rented the other half. The arrangement satisfied the expectation that unmarried ladies of still marriageable age must not live alone, and Annabelle woke in her creaky cot in the mornings with a sense of relief—there was no master of the house to answer to, no one who expected things to be done this way or that. Had she so desired, she could have morosely sat in the nook of the bay window until noon every day with the comforting weight of Lucie’s cat in her lap.
Lucie occupied one of the two rooms on the top floor and her housekeeper the other, and she had repurposed the whole ground level for the cause. There was an ancient printing press in the reception room, and in the drawing room the piano had had to make way for a sewing machine and bales of fabric for banners and sashes. A large cherrywood filing cabinet was stocked with stacks of blank paper, old pamphlets, and a copy of every issue of the Women’s Suffrage Journal since 1870. The wall around the fireplace was papered with news clippings, some yellowing, some crisp like the Guardian’s front-page article on their fateful demonstration. Left of the fireplace, a large potted plant had withered and died, the brown leaves looking ready to crumble to dust at a touch.
“This place has much potential,” Hattie said as she waltzed in with Lucie on her heels. “Are you sure you don’t—”
“Yes,” Lucie snipped, “I’m sure. This is a space for serious work; no feminine touch is required.”
Hattie made a pout. “I still don’t understand how pretty curtains would interfere with our work.”
Annabelle’s lips attempted a smile. It was the same debate every time before they settled down to work, and there was something reassuring in these little routines when everything else lay in ruins. All through last week, their quartet had met here in the afternoons and gathered round the oversized desk at the center of the room like surgeons around an operating table. The monthly newsletter needed to be sent out, and Lucie was planning an excursion to