hands making a shooing motion. “Would you like to take a look at yourself?”
Annabelle flexed her arms. “Will that not bring me bad luck, to look at it before it’s finished?”
“No,” Hattie said. “Painters say that to keep difficult clients from studying their own portrait every hour. You have been exemplary. Behold thyself.”
Annabelle picked her way around tightly crammed easels and marble busts, careful to not jostle anything with her skirts.
When she joined Hattie in front of the tall canvas, she was dumbstruck. It was like staring into an enchanted mirror—the woman in the painting reflected her physical features with impressive accuracy, but Hattie’s paintbrush had drawn everything to the surface she usually labored to keep hidden.
“That is how you see me?” she asked, aghast.
Hattie untied her apron. “I think it is what you could be,” she said, “if you dared. It’s certainly how I’d want to be.”
“Like . . . this?”
“For once in my life? Yes. Wait until it is finished; I promise it will sparkle.”
“More sparkle?” Annabelle said feebly.
“Oh yes,” Hattie said. “Trust me, it needs sparkle to shine in Julien Greenfield’s sitting room. He’s agreed to have the grand reveal during his investment summit in a few days’ time.”
A shudder ran through Annabelle at the thought of scores of men seeing her like this. It was just as well that she didn’t move in those circles.
Hattie’s studio at the Ruskin School of Drawing was barely a mile from the Randolph Hotel, so they decided to take a little walk. Mrs. Forsyth and Hattie’s protection officer trailed behind as they made their way up High Street. The air was unusually sultry for a winter day, and Oxford’s spires and sandstone turrets stood out against a quietly darkening sky. Gratitude welled in Annabelle’s chest as she drank in the familiar honey-colored college walls and gray lead roofs. She had come so, so close to losing her place here.
“Hattie,” she said, careful to keep her voice low, “whose idea was it exactly, to go to the duke of all people to free me?”
When she had arrived at Oxford yesterday, she had been in a daze, and her friends had talked over each other in their excitement while she had said very little, chiefly to keep the lies regarding her whereabouts to a minimum.
“It was Catriona’s idea,” Hattie said. “Since Professor Campbell was on his way to Cambridge, she suggested we should go to the duke.”
“But why?”
“It’s Catriona,” Hattie said with a shrug. “Her mind works in mysterious ways. She was quite adamant about it, actually, and rightly so. As a gentleman of your acquaintance, he was obliged to come to your aid. I admit I was skeptical at first, but he didn’t hesitate for even a moment.” Her face assumed a gossipy expression. “I heard this morning that he bailed out a dozen more suffragists. Did you know that?”
Something inside Annabelle went cold. “A dozen?” she said. “But that’s nonsense. Who told you that?”
Hattie frowned. “Lady Mabel. I don’t know how she knows; I suppose one of the other women must have said something to someone. A good rumor always finds its way.” Her face turned serious. “Annabelle, I know I said it before, but truly, I would have gone to my father to beg for him to help us, had the Montgomery plan failed.”
“I know, dear,” Annabelle said absently. Talk here in Oxford about Millbank and Sebastian’s involvement in the matter was a rather alarming development.
A mighty rumble rolled across the horizon and reverberated through her bones.
Hattie squeaked. “Quick. It will start pouring in a minute.” She began to hurry ahead, fleeing the first splats of rain like a disgruntled cat.
* * *
It took barely forty-eight hours for the rumor to spawn consequences. Annabelle had a dark sense of foreboding the moment she found the nondescript envelope in her pigeonhole.
Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth, the warden herself, was summoning her to her office.
The note slipped from her nerveless fingers. The last time she had been in the warden’s office, it had been for her personal welcome talk to the college. Her heart had thundered with excitement at the prospect of beginning her new life. Now her pulse was pounding with fear.
“I shall come straight to the point,” Miss Wordsworth said as soon as Annabelle had taken her seat. The warden’s intelligent face wore a grave expression. “I have been informed that a student from Lady Margaret Hall was apprehended by police at a suffrage demonstration on Parliament Square last Friday. Is