A glance out the window said the sun was still high in the sky, but already butterflies swarmed in her belly at the prospect of facing him at dinner. Half dream, half shadows, their erotic intimacy last night appeared in soft focus now, but, oh, it had definitely happened. His fingers inside her, his teeth against her neck. She gave a nervous little huff. Her current condition would keep them on separate sides of the bed for a few nights. A no would suffice to deter him in any case; she knew this now. The trouble was, she might not say no. She could feel herself waver. And he knew. In the controlled, patient way a confident man could afford to wait, Lucian was waiting for her.
Chapter 23
Harriet hid behind Bradshaw’s Railway Guide during the train ride to St. Andrews. A sharp new awareness loomed between them since their erotic interlude two nights ago, and she was shying away from the edges. He was keen to repeat the experience, but he was wary of it, too—his chest warmed and his mind muddled whenever he looked at her. She had borrowed an old-fashioned straw bonnet in anticipation of the seaside, and looked too young to be his wife with the large green silk bow beneath her chin. Yes, warm and muddled. Drunk people made bad decisions.
When the train rattled through the small town of Strathkinness at noon, the coach waiter served some sandwiches, which Harriet seemed to enjoy, and instead of picking up her Bradshaw shield again after the meal, she acknowledged his presence: “The women of Drummuir,” she said, “one of their worries is that their clothes don’t dry properly on time even when they put them through the mangle, especially during the rainier seasons.”
“Year-round, then,” he said, and it summoned the ghost of a smile.
“A building with a heating system where they could hang the woolen clothes to dry would greatly help reduce rheumatic troubles in the community,” she said.
A shockingly obvious solution. “I’ll have one built,” he said. “Thank you.”
“They also complain that their pay is lower than the men’s.”
“That’s not uncommon.”
She was watching him alertly. “Will you raise their pay?”
“Yes.”
“Equal to the men’s?”
“Not quite, no.”
Her face fell, and he felt her disapproval like a too-tight cravat round his neck.
“They should be paid more than the men,” she said. With her belligerent face beneath the feathered crown of her bonnet, she looked like an angry titmouse. “They work double: both in the colliery and in the home.”
“Agreed,” he said.
Her hostile expression softened.
“Their fellas wouldn’t like it,” he explained. “And the more frustrated they are, the darker their moods get around their women.”
She drew back. “But it’s the women demanding it,” she said. “Surely they know their own mind?”
“But was it all women demanding it?”
“No,” she admitted after a disgruntled pause. “But it’s still a poor reason.”
He nodded. “Don’t mistake me—I’m not approving of it.”
“But accepting it?”
He remembered the fists to his face when he had stood between his mother and her husband as a lad. “No,” he said.
“Oh, how frustrating,” she said, “to keep a woman’s wages low to soothe a man’s vanity.”
“It’s not just vanity,” he murmured.
“Cruelty, then.”
“For some it’s that. Mostly, though, it’s pride—”
“Pride!” she cried. “What is there to be proud about?”
“Very well, a fragility, then, masking as pride,” he said grimly. “The sort you have when you have little else.”
She kept shaking her head. “Upper-class men maltreat their wives, too,” she said. “I helped compile a report about this very thing. What is their excuse, then? I shall tell you what I think it is: it’s a contempt for women ingrained in some men, an innately low regard for wives. Just last month, the fines for a rabbit poacher were five pounds and one month in prison, and for a wife beater it was ten shillings and a fortnight in prison. One concludes that regardless of circumstances, even the law holds the health of a wife in lower esteem than that of a rabbit—a fine example to the public, is it not?”
“Ten shillings,” he repeated, baffled. “How do you know this?”
“From the Women’s Suffrage Journal,” she snipped. “It lists these cases in every edition. Lest we forget.”