“Hattie,” she said, careful to keep her voice low, “whose idea was it exactly, to go to the duke of all people to free me?”
When she had arrived at Oxford yesterday, she had been in a daze, and her friends had talked over each other in their excitement while she had said very little, chiefly to keep the lies regarding her whereabouts to a minimum.
“It was Catriona’s idea,” Hattie said. “Since Professor Campbell was on his way to Cambridge, she suggested we should go to the duke.”
“But why?”
“It’s Catriona,” Hattie said with a shrug. “Her mind works in mysterious ways. She was quite adamant about it, actually, and rightly so. As a gentleman of your acquaintance, he was obliged to come to your aid. I admit I was skeptical at first, but he didn’t hesitate for even a moment.” Her face assumed a gossipy expression. “I heard this morning that he bailed out a dozen more suffragists. Did you know that?”
Something inside Annabelle went cold. “A dozen?” she said. “But that’s nonsense. Who told you that?”
Hattie frowned. “Lady Mabel. I don’t know how she knows; I suppose one of the other women must have said something to someone. A good rumor always finds its way.” Her face turned serious. “Annabelle, I know I said it before, but truly, I would have gone to my father to beg for him to help us, had the Montgomery plan failed.”
“I know, dear,” Annabelle said absently. Talk here in Oxford about Millbank and Sebastian’s involvement in the matter was a rather alarming development.
A mighty rumble rolled across the horizon and reverberated through her bones.
Hattie squeaked. “Quick. It will start pouring in a minute.” She began to hurry ahead, fleeing the first splats of rain like a disgruntled cat.
* * *
It took barely forty-eight hours for the rumor to spawn consequences. Annabelle had a dark sense of foreboding the moment she found the nondescript envelope in her pigeonhole.
Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth, the warden herself, was summoning her to her office.
The note slipped from her nerveless fingers. The last time she had been in the warden’s office, it had been for her personal welcome talk to the college. Her heart had thundered with excitement at the prospect of beginning her new life. Now her pulse was pounding with fear.
“I shall come straight to the point,” Miss Wordsworth said as soon as Annabelle had taken her seat. The warden’s intelligent face wore a grave expression. “I have been informed that a student from Lady Margaret Hall was apprehended by police at a suffrage demonstration on Parliament Square last Friday. Is this true?”
I am going to be expelled.
The study began to spin before her eyes. She could only nod.
Miss Wordsworth’s clear gaze assessed her with a measure of concern. “Were you treated well?”
“Well enough, miss.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Miss Wordsworth said. “Nevertheless, the matter is highly unfortunate. As you are aware, women in higher education already encounter opposition at every turn. Your comportment always reflects on women in higher education and our institution as a whole.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Scandal is ammunition for the opposition,” Miss Wordsworth continued, “which is why I had explicitly advised you to honor the trust we put in you despite your political stipend.”
Annabelle heard the warden as if from a distance. “I’m going to be expelled,” she said.
Miss Wordsworth’s face softened for a moment. “No. But you are rusticated with immediate effect.”
Annabelle gave a choked little laugh. Rusticated. Literally, it meant to go and reside in the country. Such a quaint term to describe the end of her dreams. Even if this was but a temporary expulsion, she had no country manor to which she could retreat.
As of now, she had nothing.
She kept her back ramrod straight. As if that could keep everything else from imploding in on itself. “Is it possible to say when I could be reinstated?”
Miss Wordsworth shook her head. “We will initiate an investigation. It normally concludes in favor of the student around the time the rumor has been forgotten.”
Annabelle knew enough about rumors to know that this would not be forgotten for years. She had been arrested and imprisoned, with no name to shield her.
She didn’t know how she made her way back to her room, made it up the narrow, creaking steps.
For a long minute, she stood in the door and looked at the tiny chamber. The narrow bed, the narrow desk, the small wardrobe that was just big enough to hold her few clothes. For four months, she’d had a room of her own. It was unfathomable that it should come to an end.
* * *
Through the bars of rain streaking across the window of his landau, Sebastian could make out the gray shape of Buckingham Palace and found the sight tired him profoundly. When this election was over and he had recovered his brother, he would go on a holiday. Somewhere solitary and warm. Greece. Hell no. Not Greece.
He could tell that the queen was not amused the moment he set foot in her apartment. Her compact form looked tense like a trap ready to spring; she was, in fact, brimming with an antagonism that was a little puzzling in its severity.
“First the farmers and the corn laws,” she said, casting his latest paper a withering glance, “and again you insist that Beaconsfield speak more in public—in town halls! Why, you will be wanting to give workingmen the vote next.”
“You will find no such proposition in my concept, ma’am.”
“Not in those words, no,” she said acerbically, “but close enough. Town halls! Besides, Beaconsfield’s constitution will not allow for the fiendish schedule you suggest.”
“Then I labored under the misapprehension,” Sebastian said, “that since he is running for the position of prime minister, he would be able to engage with his constituents.”
He knew the moment the words had left his mouth that they had been decidedly too sarcastic in tone. He was taken aback. His control had slipped, in a strategy meeting with the queen no less. She seemed equally surprised. Her eyes had widened; now they had narrowed to cool slits.
“Given what is at stake, for the country and for yourself, I would have thought you had an interest in winning this election,” she said.
He exhaled slowly. “I do. This is the best strategy for winning it.”
“It might well win the election,” she conceded, “but it is not how the party must win.”
“Ma’am, I don’t follow.”