Vanquished Page 5

  But staring across the table into the MP's hardened eyes, the happenstance encounter seemed sinisterly providential, as if the Powers That Be had conspired to deliver the lady into his devil's hands. But first he had to find a way to infiltrate the fortress of what he suspected was a regimented and rather complicated life.

  "Exactly how do you propose I approach her? Were I to proposition her outright, I'd put her onto me for certain."

  "That's been taken care of." The MP slipped a hand inside his coat's breast pocket and pulled out a sealed letter. "Consider this your entree into Miss Rivers's inner circle."

  "Unless you want me to break the seal, you'll have to do better than that."

  "Millicent Fawcett is president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, as well as Caledonia Rivers's mentor. The Fawcett woman recently embarked on a month-long lecture tour of the United States, which is all to the good, ours at any rate. This letter informs her protegee that she is to submit to you taking a series of photographic portraits for display as part of the planned march on Parliament. The march will coincide with the third and final reading of the suffrage bill."

  "So the letter is a forgery?" It was more statement than question.

  "Of course. Does that shock you?"

  Hadrian thought back to his bygone days of purse snitching and sundry forms of petty theft, and shook his head. Tossing the letter aside, he eyed the open case. "I assume a forged letter and reading material isn't all you've brought?"

  "Quite." Dandridge withdrew a wad of fifty-pound notes from the lambskin lining and handed the money over to Hadrian. "Half now, and half on delivery of the photograph."

  Hadrian hesitated. Blood money, he thought, and stretched out a stained hand to take it. Heart pounding, he flipped through the stack before tucking it inside his vest. "This is a great deal of tin, Dandridge. What makes you so certain I won't take it and disappear?"

  "Greed, for one. If twenty-five hundred pounds can improve your life, only think what transformation five thousand can bring about." Dandridge snapped the case closed and rose. "Of course there is the instinct to preserve life, in this case your own." He looked down at Hadrian, gaunt face granite hard. "Play me false, St. Claire, and yours will be but one more body that turns up in the Thames."

  His second death threat in as many hours--what the devil had he come to? Watching Dandridge cross to the door, it occurred to him that even Harry Stone, miserable little bugger that he'd been, hadn't been someone men had wanted to kill.

  "Wait." Hadrian shot up from the table.

  Dandridge turned around and for a handful of seconds Hadrian considered returning the money and calling the whole bloody business off. But it was too late for that. Whether or not he kept the money, he knew too much to be let off the snare.

  "Once I have the photograph, how shall I contact you?"

  Dandridge opened the door and cold air rushed the room, chilling the perspiration dampening Hadrian's brow. "When you have it, I'll know. And I'll be in touch."

  The shop bell knelled, signaling the MP's departure--and the sealing of their devil's bargain. Hadrian sank back into his seat. Staring out the frosted glass of his shop's window, he traced the bump on his left palm where years before a sliver of camera lens had embedded. He'd had to crawl on his hands and knees at the time. The scar served as a reminder of how far he'd risen in life--and how far he still might fall.

  Yet his agreement with Dandridge involved a great deal more than bedding a woman and taking risque photographs of her. He had just signed on to ruin her life. Despite his past as a whore's son, a beggar and a pickpocket, he'd never felt so low as when he'd felt the weight of Dandridge's money in his hand.

  The best he could hope for was that Caledonia Rivers wouldn't be someone he'd have to work too hard at hating. To harden himself, he mentally cataloged her more obvious faults. Foremost, she was a suffragist and not just any suffragist but one of their leaders. And then there was her privileged status. Dandridge had said she was "well-born," which, in a word, meant rich. Hadrian recalled the bored society females who'd set foot inside his studio since he'd opened. With the exception of Lady Katherine, they'd been uniformly pampered and petty, oblivious to the plight of those whose duty it was to serve up their suppers and tend to their toilette and sweat out their lifeblood in their husbands' factories so that madam might have a smart, new carriage-- and a brace of virile young footmen to go with it.

  Feeling marginally better, he glanced down to the pamphlet topping the pile. The title alone went a long way in helping to flush out his image of Caledonia Rivers as a sanctimonious do-gooder, a toffee-nosed snob so far removed from the common man's plight that she wouldn't recognize real life if it bit her on her bustled ass.

  Speaking of her ass . . . what would she look like out of her clothes? Full-figured, he thought, recalling the split-second feel of her breasts crushed against his chest, and though he usually fancied a lither form, he had an inkling the extra flesh suited her. As for her face, from what he'd seen of it she'd looked to be passably pretty, dark-haired judging from the brows arching above those rather magnificent eyes and fair-skinned as any English rose could hope to be.

  Not that her appearance mattered, not in any meaningful way. Be she pug-faced and plain or a classically featured stunner, Caledonia Rivers was a means to an end, his ticket out of hell, and his last hope for salvaging the future he'd worked so hard to create.

  Caledonia Rivers was just another commission to him-- and it was time to get to work.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "This morning I had a deputation from the Working Men's Association . . . I dare say when it has to be done I can do it, and it is no use asking for women to be taken into public work and yet to wish them to avoid publicity. Still I am very sorry it is necessary, especially as I can't think of anything to say for four speeches. The first of these trials is to be next week. It is a tough and toilsome business."

  --ELIZABETH GARRETT, first female candidate for the Marylebone School Board, 1870

  Built to serve as the City Hall for Westminster, Caxton Hall set on the north side of Caxton Street, its proximity to Parliament making it a popular rallying point for political gatherings, including the suffrage cause. Accordingly, the Great Room was filled to overflowing by the time Hadrian forded his way inside, the several-hundred-odd attendees, mostly women, packed like kippers pressed into a tin. Standing at the back of the room, he shifted from foot to foot, the camera strap digging into his shoulder. Although he'd brought along the apparatus mainly for show, he found himself wishing he'd fought for a spot in the press box upfront. Wedged between a broad beast of a woman wearing whore's red and a dowager who smelled of talcum powder and sour apples, he would have sold his soul for a spot of fresh air--if he hadn't sold it to Dandridge already.

  Dandridge. Shoving away from the wall, Hadrian swept a searching gaze about the room, half-expecting to glimpse the MP darting out from behind one of the potted palms or peaking out from one of the tiered boxes--a foolish and rather paranoid fancy. Men like Dandridge didn't soil their hands with their own dirty work, let alone expend their time and self-importance lurking about the enemy camp.

  The sudden buzz of several hundred female voices had him returning his gaze to the stage in time to see the marigold velvet curtain draw back. Amidst a firestorm of clapping and the smoky flash and pop of press cameras, Caledonia Rivers stepped out onstage accompanied by a small birdlike woman of middling years. The latter led the way to the lectern, note card in hand. "My dear friends, colleagues, and sisters, it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce her among us who has distinguished herself as the oracle for delivering our message to the masses . . ."

  Hadrian scarcely registered the rest of the stilted introduction, his attention riveted on the oracle's quite pretty face. Unlike most of the women in attendance, Caledonia Rivers was bare headed, her dark hair swept back from her temples and pinned into a knot at the nape of her elegant neck. Freed from the he
avy outerwear of the previous day, she appeared both slender and statuesque, a splendid amazon approaching the podium, speech in hand.

  "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I stand before you tonight not to make pretty speeches but to address the fundamental question of why we are here. Because we want the vote, you might well answer. Indeed, we are here because we seek universal suffrage, the inalienable right of every member of a free and self-governing society to have a say, a voice, in that governance."

  She paused to cast her spectacled eyes out onto the assembly, and Hadrian was hit by the unnerving notion she was looking directly at him. Meeting the head-on heat of her gaze, he felt his heartbeat quicken even as he told himself he was being absurd. He stood at the very back of the room out of range of the domed electrical chandelier anchored overhead. Surely she couldn't see him. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling that the raw silk of her voice was directed solely at him.

  "Yet how often I am asked by men and some women, too, why it is that we suffragists insist on making all this fuss and bother about national reform when, for the most part, our individual lives are led in our home parishes and boroughs, the circumstances of which have far greater bearing on our immediate health and happiness than those matters concerning Britain and her policies at home and abroad. To those of you who may harbor such doubt, whether openly or in secret, I answer you this: the sole pathway to civil rights, higher education, and equal status for women rests with the parliamentary franchise."

  A groundswell of applause and shouts of "here, here" had Hadrian looking about the room, which seemed to be vibrating like the current housed in an electrical pole. Be they young or old, beautiful or plain, rich or poor, the women's faces were uniformly animated, eyes glowing like beacons as they stared raptly ahead. He swung his gaze back to the lone figure standing at the podium. Despite her height and regal bearing, Caledonia Rivers struck him as very small, very young, and very feminine to stand at the eye of such a storm.

  A skilled speaker, she waited for the din to die down before continuing, "This is not, ladies and gentleman, a unique or sudden revelation. It was in 1867 that the Honorable John Stuart Mill, Member for Westminster, presented to parliament the first petition to grant universal suffrage to women householders. That petition, which bore no less than fifteen hundred signatures from women throughout Britain, was defeated in the Commons by 196 votes to 73."

  Predictably a chorus of boos and hisses greeted that pronouncement.

  Caledonia Rivers lifted an ungloved hand, motioning for silence, and Hadrian found himself wondering how that white palm and tapered fingers might feel against his flesh. "I grant you that in proportion to the millions of Englishwomen who reside in this country or its possessions, fifteen hundred signatures may not seem a very great number. However, when we reflect on how few women are encouraged, dare I say allowed, to express political opinions independent of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and in some instances adult sons, it becomes evident that every woman who succeeds in doing so should be regarded as the representative of a considerable body of opinion . . ."

  Hadrian thought her latter point rested on rather shaky ground. If women as a sex were too simpleminded to form their own opinions, let alone to put forth those opinions without wavering, then why the devil should the government give them the vote? But, he reminded himself, it wasn't what he thought that counted, but rather what Caledonia Rivers thought--of him. He composed his features into a mask of mild interest and listened on.

  "That we acknowledge a woman as our sovereign gives the lie to the conventional wisdom that would disqualify women for government. Where female sex is no obstacle to the higher privileges of political life, it cannot be to the lower, including the vote."

  She paused to sip from a glass of water, her tongue sliding over her full bottom lip, and Hadrian felt a warm, answering ache in the vicinity of his groin. "Yet throughout the seventies we have seen almost annual parliamentary debates concerning the issue of female suffrage, with at least three of the private bills put forth by our good friends such as Lord Brassey going to a second reading. Each time we have petitioned and each time we have waited, waited with patience and in good faith, only to have our hopes dashed by that vocal minority who would continue to oppress us." Her voice was pitching incrementally higher, a sign she must be approaching the finale. "Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today to say that I, for one, am done with patience, done with waiting. I stand before you and beseech you to join your voices with mine in demanding of our distinguished representatives: 'Votes for women--now'!"

  A heartbeat later "Votes for women NOW" roared throughout the assembly, and Hadrian felt the collective thunder, the thrill of it, resonating inside his very chest. It was as if a fever, a contagion, swept the room. The benches, the chairs, the other makeshift seats--all were deserted. To a person, the crowd surged to its feet, ignited by the words, the power, of one woman. Even women whom he felt certain would under other circumstances be the very pictures of propriety stamped and clapped, hooted and hallooed like fishwives at Billingsgate Market. One reed-thin matron dressed in the mauve of half-morning punched her gloved fist into the sky and let out a piercing wolf whistle worthy of a pugilist proclaiming victory in the ring.

  He swung his gaze back to the platform. Behind the lectern, Caledonia Rivers stood very quiet and very still. Staring out onto the churning crowd, occasionally acknowledging a familiar face with a small nod or wave, she'd set her mouth into a tight smile that never wavered. The smile didn't reach her eyes, which looked uncertain, he thought, and perhaps just a little afraid.

  She knows all this fuss and bother is a necessary evil of winning, but she doesn't fancy it, not a jot, he thought to himself, and the vulnerability he saw in her wary gaze gave him heart that his own victory might be won as well. Caledonia Rivers might be an orator on par with any statesman he'd ever heard. He didn't for a moment doubt she was genuinely, passionately committed to her cause. Clearly she was highly intelligent and highly educated. In all likelihood, she spoke several languages and spoke them fluently. All in all, she exuded the sort of social polish one didn't acquire but rather was born to--along with the silver spoon stuck straight up her ass.

  But though Caledonia Rivers might be as cultured as a prize pearl, beneath her armoring of tightly coiffed hair, high-buttoned shirtwaist, and the voluminous umbrella of those very stiff, very starched skirts, she was still a woman with a woman's weaknesses and desires. It was the woman within, and not the leader without, to whom he would appeal, woo, and ultimately win over.

  So when the crowd finally began to thin, roughly half heading for the exit doors and the other half queuing up stage-side for the chance to shake the hand of their heroine, Hadrian didn't hesitate. Gaze trained on the pooled electric light hitting like a halo atop his quarry's dark head, he pushed a path toward the stage.

  Callie looked up from the genteel older lady on whose program she'd just scribbled her autograph and felt her heart stumble over itself. Striding toward her, looking coolly confident and yes, just a trifle amused, was him, the blue-eyed Adonis from the park. Hadrian St. Claire. The photographer she'd thought never to see again, whose handkerchief and business card, even now, lay at the bottom of her dresser drawer. The drawer which, she would dissolve with shame if ever forced to admit, housed her small collection of most cherished mementos.

  She sucked in her breath and tried to focus on what the woman before her was saying. Something to do with an invitation to address her ladies' association in Hampshire but beyond that she couldn't be sure. Nonetheless, she made it a point to smile and nod, fobbing off making any immediate commitment by directing her to Harriet, waiting in the wings with appointment book at the ready.

  The woman moved on only to have several more file through along with a reporter from the Times seeking a quote. By the time she broke away to look about again, the room had cleared considerably. Hadrian St. Claire appeared to have left as well. The depth of disappointment that
observation stirred set off a bevy of warning bells. Really, why should she care in the slightest one way or another? The man was nothing to her, a virtual stranger. Yet she did care, she cared a lot or easily too much judging from the hollow feeling overtaking her despite that she stood amidst a room chockfull of supporters. Dear Lord, she must be lonely and desperate indeed to latch onto a stranger and make him the answer to filling the empty place inside her. Pathetic, Callie, well and truly pathetic.

  A hand settling on the blade of her shoulder sent her spinning about, and she found herself face to face with Hadrian St. Claire. The speech papers slipped through her fingers, which suddenly felt as nerveless as her knees.

  "Oh dear, I seem to be making a habit of this." She dropped to the stage floor.

  Grinning, he followed her down so that they were both squatting, heads bowed and knees brushing. "Yes, we must make a pact to stop meeting this way."

  Between them, they managed to gather the papers and after some awkward shuffling, she had them back in hand, a messy stack. He offered her a hand up and personal touch that it was, she felt the heat of him flare up through her fingertips. "How did you get here?"

  Stepping back, he cast a sheepish glance back to the set of side stairs leading up to the stage, gold-tipped lashes grazing the high planes of his cheeks. "I've never been terribly good about waiting in queue. Dash it, I've never been any good about waiting at all. Are you put out with me?"

  He looked at her then, another of those melting, too-long looks that set her to wondering if he might just have the capacity to see through her clothes, some sort of special radiographic power endemic to photographers, this one at least. Her hands, which had remained steady throughout her speech, were at once trembling and chill. And low in her belly, the shameful liquid warmth she had fought against pulsed and pooled.