A light rain fell over Parliament Square, redolent of spring, of tender greens and wispy white cherry blossoms. New beginnings, Annabelle thought, whether one was ready for them or not. She handed a suffrage leaflet to an elderly earl striding past. She knew him from sight; he might have sat in front of her in Claremont’s music room a while back. He took her leaflet with a nod, and she moved on to the next man, slowly working her way to the entrance to the House of Lords. Catriona and Lucie were behind her, catching whichever gentleman had slipped her net. Hattie should be waiting for them now in the Ladies’ Gallery, as that was something her father allowed. Luckily, Julien Greenfield had never found out about Hattie having been in the thick of the demonstration a few weeks ago. But the headlines they had made had put the Married Women’s Property Act back onto the agenda of Parliament, though Lucie predicted that the peers would spend hours debating an inane import tariff just to avoid ever discussing women’s rights, mark her words.
The gallery was surprisingly uncomfortable, considering that some of the peers in the chamber below sometimes had their lady wives watching from here. The ceiling was too low, a grille separated them from the men, and the air was stuffy with the smell of rain-damp hair and fabrics.
“Be glad the old chamber burned down,” Lucie murmured when she saw Annabelle tilting her head this way or that to get a clear view through the dizzying pattern of the interstices of the grille. “Women then had to sit in the ventilation shaft to listen in on meetings. I hear it was boiling hot.”
“One could almost suspect they don’t want women to watch them make laws,” Annabelle muttered.
Down in the chamber, the peers began debating the first point on the agenda—a possible half-percent tariff increase on Belgian lace.
The droning speech of one of the lords was disrupted when the door to the chamber creaked open again. Someone was running late.
“His Grace, the Duke of Montgomery,” the usher announced.
Annabelle froze in her chair, shock turning her blood to ice.
Of course he would be here. He’d be the last man in England to shirk his political duties.
She didn’t dare move, as if catching a glimpse of his blond head would turn her to stone.
She felt Hattie’s hand on her arm, the soft pressure helping to quell the chagrin ripping through her.
She had made her choices. Sensible choices.
Perhaps one day, when she was ninety years old, they would feel like good choices.
“My lords,” she heard him say, “I request to bring the Married Women’s Property Act forward on the agenda.”
The sound of his dispassionate voice sent a powerful wave of longing through her. So much so that the meaning of his words didn’t register until Lucie muttered a profanity under her breath.
“Request approved,” said the Speaker.
“My lords,” Sebastian said, “I request permission to speak on the Married Women’s Property Act.”
A bored “Aye” rose from the benches. “Permission granted,” the Speaker said.
Annabelle gripped the edges of her chair. Cold sweat gathered on her forehead. Knowing Sebastian was only a few dozen feet away and feeling all her senses come alive in response was distressing, but witnessing him launch a tirade against women’s rights, in front of her friends no less, would be unbearable. She fumbled for her reticule. She had to leave.
“Gentlemen, many of you will remember the speech John Stuart Mill gave on the floor of the House of Commons fourteen years ago,” Sebastian said, “the speech where he claimed that there remain no legal slaves in Britain, except for the mistress of every house.”
That elicited a few Boos and calls of “Shame!”
A small hand touched her knee as Annabelle made to rise. “Stay,” Lucie murmured. “I have a feeling this could become interesting.”
Interesting? It was nerve-racking, being forced to endure his presence so soon, when her heart throbbed with the phantom pain of a severed limb . . .
“The problem is,” Sebastian went on, “when one compares a married woman’s current legal status and the definition of slavery, it requires a great deal of self-delusion to ignore the similarities between the two.”
The peers made ambivalent noises.
Annabelle sank back into her chair. What was he saying?
“We try to smooth over these technicalities by investing women with other powers, more informal powers,” Sebastian said, “and there is of course the matter of keeping them safe. The world of men is a brutal place. And