A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell, #1)

by Deanna Raybourn

“I smoked opium once. It felt like listening to you, only rather more mundane.”

I pointed to my carpetbag. “Except for my net, everything I have need of in the world is contained in that bag—including a second hat and a rather sizable jar of cold cream of roses. Do not tell me you couldn’t travel with as little. I have faith that men can be as reasonable and logical as women if they but try.” He shook his head. “I cannot seem to formulate a clear thought in the face of such original thinking, Miss Speedwell. You have a high opinion of your sex.” I pursed my lips. “Not all of it. We are, as a gender, undereducated and infantilized to the point of idiocy. But those of us who have been given the benefit of learning and useful occupation, well, we are proof that the traditional notions of feminine delicacy and helplessness are the purest poppycock.” “You have large opinions for so small a person.” “I daresay they would be large opinions even for someone your size,” I countered.

I turned on Stoker with scorn. “O, the perfidy of men.” “What have I done?” he protested. “Nothing at present, but you are the only representative of your sex I have at hand to abuse. Take your lumps for your brothers.”

It is men who have kept women downtrodden and poorly educated, so burdened by domesticity and babies they can scarcely raise their heads. You put us on pedestals and wrap us in cotton wool, cluck over us as being too precious and too fragile for any real labor of the mind, yet where is the concern for the Yorkshire woman working herself into an early grave in a coal mine? The factory girl who chokes herself to an untimely death on bad air? The wife so worn by repeated childbearing that she is dead at thirty?

It is easy to stiffen one’s upper lip and carry on when you dare not share your cowardice for fear of being misunderstood. But it is a difficult thing to heft one’s burden alone when there is someone willing to share it.

“Can you not exercise some influence in this?” Stoker shrugged. “I could sooner influence the sun to set in the east, Sir Hugo. She is entirely her own woman.” The rush of gratitude I felt for Stoker’s understanding nearly made me dizzy. Never before had I encountered a man so willing to abandon his allegedly God-given right to dominion over the fairer sex.

‘I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.’”