A Rogue of One's Own (A League of Extraordinary Women, #2)

by Evie Dunmore

As usual in her line of work, this was simply a matter of waiting. Unfortunately, patience was not a virtue she possessed.

Invariably, she had this effect on people—making them nervous. It’s because you are very purposeful, Hattie had explained to her; perhaps you should smile more to frighten them less. Experimentally, she bared her teeth at Mr. Barnes. He only looked more alarmed.

“If fashionable clothes and pretty smiles wielded any significant influence, surely our bankers, dukes, and politicians would be strutting around impeccably dressed and grinning like Cheshire cats,”

I’m afraid the idea that a woman is a person, whether married or not, is so inherently radical no matter which way I present it I shall be considered a nuisance.”

My lawyer still thinks I used the money for a new hat collection.” She cackled with glee. “How many hats does the man think a woman needs?”

I’m a little worried, she wanted to tell her friends. I’m worried I may have bitten off more than I can chew. She would, of course, say no such thing. A dithering leader was about as useful as a wet blanket.

I am not denying that fashion’s allure is a weapon of sorts in a lady’s hands. What I object to is the fact that it is the only weapon we may wield in public without suffering scrutiny

She probably still thought she could take on the ills of humanity with her bare hands because she had justice on her side. To hold any such conviction was of course a source of endless frustration.

His mind, usually sprawling and contemplating several different things at once, became calm the more his surroundings exploded; it was the reason he was a good soldier when it counted, and why he felt a remarkable sense of focus and quiet in Lucie’s presence, antagonistic force of nature that she was.

Nineteen years old, still believing in fairy tales. Some women never stopped believing. Up and down the land, in brothels and manor houses alike, women sat waiting for a man to rescue them.

Were they aware that the cure they were hoping for could easily become their curse? Oh, they were. But ten years of glimpsing behind quiet, decorous façades had taught her that some never saw other options, and others never dared to seize them; and then there were women like Amy, who had never been presented with much in the way of options at all. And some days, she could not help but feel that no campaign in the world had the power to change this.

She was greeted by the soles of a pair of large shoes, propped up on a vast desk. A spread-open newspaper concealed the owner of said shoes. Her heart plummeted. Only one gentleman of her acquaintance would read the Times like a pantomime villain.

Tristan’s manservant did not look at all surprised to find an enraged woman at his master’s doorstep at an unrespectable time. He did, however, bodily block her entry with his tall form.

Her gaze made a slow journey around the Valentine Vinegar cards flanking the mirror, the hatchet-faced suffragists and the withering rhymes about women who dared. They had been sent to her to intimidate her in her own home. She had taken them into the sanctity of her bedchamber and made them hers, until familiarity had blunted the cutting words and mellowed the ugliness.

“There is an obvious line between frankness and insolence, Avi, and I’m impressed by how boldly you cross it.”

She had not yet truly comprehended power then, and how treacherously easy it was to side with it, and to ask that the downtrodden ones change before one demanded the tyrant change.

There were other things he contemplated telling her. I offered to shoot five men for Lucie Tedbury, and I am not certain what it means.

She had once been his mother’s closest friend, but her fine-boned attractiveness was permanently marred by a vague, deep-seated antagonism she must have cultivated for decades. Not unlike her daughter, except that Lucie’s antagonism was lovingly honed like an arrow and had a clear target.

“You see, the curious thing about causes is that they usually continue well without you. The question is whether you can continue well without the cause.

All that separated her from that woman had been a few books and pamphlets, read at the right time . . . or had the diversion begun sooner? Had there always been something in her disposition that had gradually edged her off the beaten path?

“A yearning to control our fickle destinies.” His tone was faintly dramatic. “The cynic is but an idealist who preempts the shock of disappointment by deriding everything himself.

“Society is dumber but stronger than you,” he murmured. “Be devious. Be subtle. If you can.”

Bewildering. If it was truly in woman’s nature to be an ever demure and pleasant sunbeam in the gloom, why then, it took an awful lot of ink and instructions to keep reminding woman of this nature of hers. . . .

Keep your enemies close, but this close? A bad, bad idea.

“I believe this counts as flirtation, my lord.” “The shameless kind,” he confirmed, and pulled her closer.

If he were any other man, she would think he was displaying signs of jealousy. But Tristan would never be so gauche as to be jealous, even if he had a claim.

He licked deeper into her mouth, already enchanted. A last, sane remote of his mind expected her to bite. There was a scrape of teeth, clumsy rather than angry. He’d let her draw blood if it pleased her.

“Do not use politics to try and command me to bed you.”

“Hell,” he said softly. “I cannot deny you when you say please.”

His scheming mind at rest, the structure of his face was uncorrupted by dissolution, cynicism, calculation. Here was the clean, gloriously symmetrical countenance of the angel Hattie and every Old Master aspired to eternalize on canvas. The slumbering Gabriel in repose. Odd. She preferred him awake.

“Ah, darling.” His smile was lopsided. “My second rule is: do not trust me. Not in the deep, blind sort of way.” “Why?” “Because even I do not trust myself such.”

What puzzled her most was that nothing had been missing from her life before him—how could he feel essential now?

She was an inch from becoming his creature. So close to becoming someone who’d plead with their husband when he did not come home at night, who made excuses when they lied, who lied to themselves only so they could carry on orbiting around the fickle creature that was man. She was so close, when Tristan was neither the source of the food she ate, nor the roof that sheltered her, nor the name protecting her. She had a choice. And here she was, on the floor.

“Then for your sake, I hope there won’t be a child,” he murmured. “Because if there is, I give you my word now: I shall drag you to the altar, bodily, if I must, and you shall say I do, and politics can go hang.”