The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)

by Evie Dunmore

the mirror, her face was a placid, pale shape. A slight tension between her brows was the only indication of internal upheaval. This was why people thought of her as cool and collected, when in truth she just had a faulty transmission between her emotions and her facial muscles. It hid a multitude of sins.

Opponents of the Cause rarely changed their mind based on facts alone, but when they found just a single fact wrong in a petition, they used it to bash the credibility of the Cause itself.

They built women’s colleges far from the ribald town centers and surrounded the dorms with walls that were topped with broken glass, but there were no walls to keep a woman safe in her own home.

“I don’t have cold feet.” She would never understand how a man with such a quicksilver mind and a penchant for chaos mustered such infinite patience for her rigidity and stubbornness.

“You surprise me, Lord Palmer,” she said, her tone rather cool, and there was a slight edging away in the circle, which normally followed the entry of someone grand. “Do you truly believe that Henry the Eighth split from Rome for religious reasons?” Tomlinson blanched. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I know that voice. I know that expression.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Sorry, old boy. You are about to feel stupid.”

“Leaders wage war over power,” Catriona said, unmoved. “The fairy tales they spin to rally the common soldier is of course quite another matter.”

“It never ceases to enrage me,” said Lady Lucinda, gesturing with her glass in hand. “The whole ‘not rational enough to manage their own affairs’ trick.” “Goodness,” said Mrs. Blackstone. “It enrages women everywhere.” “That’s how it goes,” said her friend. “First, you deny someone the capacity for rational thought, then you establish control over them with a clear conscience.”

Tell me, how English do you feel after not quite two hundred years of union?” Her mouth quirked, conceding a point. “I don’t. Although part of my maternal line was English.” “Three hundred years,” he said with some impatience. “They always stay on our coast for two or three hundred years, then they leave, or the next conquest drives them out. In the meantime, the locals don’t just vanish.” “I suppose not. Not entirely anyway.” “We become entwined, yes; we might take the language, but we give it our dialect; we take a custom or a dish but alter it to suit us. Sometimes, we intermarry. It’s good for survival, good for business. Life goes on, c’est la vie. But when people don’t feel free or at least prosperous, they only bide their time. Governing locals who don’t much like you is costly, and a few centuries don’t erase the old ways. As long as one native is left alive, so is the history.”

“If I were the only person in the world,” she said to the ceiling, “how would I even know I was a woman? Who would tell me? Who would make me? I would just be me. Why can’t I just be me?”

The earl was quiet for a moment. “An interesting hypothesis,” he then allowed. “But no one is ever just themselves.” It occurred

“I’m the first to say give art back to where it belongs, but wouldn’t the pieces be safer here? No one will make things disappear from the British Museum anytime soon.” Lucie frowned but nodded. “Perhaps,” Catriona said, “but why are these pieces ours to safekeep when the people who had them taken from their ancestral lands want them back? A bit patronizing, isn’t it.” Hattie blew up her cheeks. “It’s not just any art, though, is it; it’s from the cradle of our civilization.” “So, when England was at war with France for a whole hundred years, would you have appreciated it if someone from the Mongolian Empire had come over and decided to relocate Stonehenge? Because the stones would be safer there since no one messed with the Mongols at the time? And they’d give us a pat on the head when we said thanks but we’d rather keep them? It wasn’t even Anglo-Saxons who put the stones in a circle, but we’re all rather attached to them today anyway.”

They had comforted one another through enough scandals by now, their loyalty and discretion were true and tested, but somehow it was different when it was one’s own scandal.

“If I were to marry, I would only marry someone I loved,” she finally said. “Of course you would,” Hattie exclaimed. “I would still need time to just be inside my head. You know that I don’t eat or drink at regular times when I’m focused on something. I wouldn’t care about going to bed before midnight or hosting a social event and I would walk around thinking about the page I should write or translate whenever I’m not at my desk. Don’t tell me a husband wouldn’t come to resent this. He would begin voicing perfectly reasonable demands about my availability, about keeping a schedule, about acting like a regular wife. I would feel guilty. I would resent him, too, but because we love each other, we try. In the end, I would have to choose between the happiness of the man I love and living in a way that suits me, which is dreadful; either way we are probably so enmeshed by then that ripping his soul from mine would leave an open wound. We would both be in worse condition than we were before.

I find we always gravitate toward playing the same tried and tested games. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to forget a pattern once I have seen it.

“We will not do this again,” he said. They took measure of each other’s damp faces and turbulent eyes, and without any more words being exchanged they both knew that they would absolutely do this again.

What do you do when your feelings don’t match your options?”

I kept thinking, I kept thinking about how a part of me has wallowed in sorrow for years. How many decisions have I made because I was afraid of some dreadful thing that in the end would have never come to pass? How often have I said yes or no to something just to avoid a certain type of pain? I don’t think I’m a coward; sometimes I even think I’m brave. But now I look at myself and I think, who would I be, today, had I never been so needlessly afraid? I’m . . . pathetically sensitive.”

“Do you know how a tree changes shape to grow around an obstruction?” she asked, her voice hollow. “How it develops an unnatural bent, or ugly bulges?” “I have seen these trees, yes.” “I’m wondering how misshapen I am,” she whispered. “I wonder how bent out of shape I am from these attempts to exist around some fear, instead of just growing, straight and up, as I should have.” Elias was silent for a moment. He put down the knife. “A tree cannot be ugly,” he said. “In nature, all that matters is to survive. A living tree is a good tree.”

“Why me?” he asked. She spoke without thinking: “When I’m with you, I don’t feel wrong. I feel . . . I just feel.”

The cruel irony that the displaced turned to the shores of the displacer was not lost on him, but the truth was that a home without a future felt like a graveyard to the young.

It frightened her, to think about whether people actually lived how they truly thought and felt, or whether they spent their time living two lives: the one they performed, in public and their own homes, and the one that played out in their mind, in parallel to everything they said and did. Neither one, performed or imagined, struck her as more real than the other, so unless the two versions were congruent, one lived only half a life.

“It means, bury me.” “Isn’t that a bit morbid?” He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “We say it to someone we don’t want to live without. Hence, we must go first.”

So began the redefinition of greatness into the act of tirelessly caretaking, organizing transient activities, and brightening people’s day. As Mrs. Keller went on about being the beating heart of every home, the social facilitator, the protector of babies and the elderly, a realization dawned on Catriona: that it was all about the body for a woman. Growing a child, birthing it, nursing it; any female body would do for that. Pleasuring a husband, wiping sweaty brows, stirring the stew: any pair of female hands could do it. Whether the head attached to the female had an interest in Arabic or horticulture, whether she was a lady or a peasant, it was irrelevant as long as she provided the body without fuss to those who needed it. As such, a woman’s destiny was to react to surroundings, not to actively set her own path.

“Is it the number of children?” he asked after a pause. “Or do you want none at all? You don’t want them on principle?” The look on his face was serious, bone-deep apprehension. A curly head, leaned against his shoulder, a small starfish hand on his chest. She scoffed with mild self-deprecation. “It’s become clear to me rather recently that I wouldn’t mind one. I don’t object on principle. I object to this notion that it would be my highest purpose, or my only purpose. Because I don’t think it is. I think that I . . . I matter. A woman matters, married or not, children or no children. I matter, just as I am, right now. I’m a whole human being.”

“I’m glad you are by my side today,” she said. He gave a nod. “Of course,” he said. “It’s your victory day.” Indeed, but not all children cared to understand their mother’s battles.

“When we pioneered this cause,” Lucie broke in, “we knew very well that it was for the benefit of those who were to come after us. Had I hoped to see this day today? Absolutely. But I had never expected it. This fight began before I was born. I recall too many women who dedicated their lives to the Cause, and they passed on decades ago. Most of you won’t ever know their names. Don’t mistake me, there is still work to be done; the wheel of human inanity will undoubtedly keep turning. However, my ride on it ends here, today. This is your cause now, if you want it—pick up the torch. See that the right to vote extends to women in their twenties, and the penniless. Help women put themselves up for every election. See to it that Oxford will finally give its women proper degrees. Support your sisters, regardless of their position in life, and tell them to use their rights—to receive an education, to keep their earnings, to find a husband who treats them as an equal, or to remain single. As for me, I desire no thanks for helping you get those rights, but don’t begrudge me my rest.

“This is a new dawn,” she said. “It’s rising over ruins, though,” Hattie murmured. “Yes,” said Annabelle, “but we are looking at the silver lining.”