A tiny frown marred her brow. “How unusual. Her Majesty is nothing if not sensible. Surely she would put a Tory victory above any personal sensitivities?”
He gave a shrug. “It appears that she considers that opportunism.”
A shadow of regret passed over Caroline’s intelligent face.
He’d often thought that he had cause to be grateful to her. After his wife’s betrayal, it would have been easy to become bitter, to see a treacherous, overemotional creature in every female he met. Caroline had been the antidote with her collected, rational ways, showing him that no, they were not all the same. Had his mind closed itself up entirely, he could have never loved Annabelle.
“Say, Caroline,” he said, “are you still the treasurer for the Ladies’ Committee for Prison Reform?”
Her expression remained unchanged. But there was a soft rattle of her teacup against the saucer.
Because she knew that he knew that she was indeed still the treasurer of the committee. And that she had a direct line of communication with Queen Victoria.
There was a resigned look in her eyes when she met his gaze. “I overstepped the mark,” she said.
“There is no question that you did,” he said coolly. “The question is, why. Why, Caroline? I had an election to win. Why not wait before carrying tales to Her Majesty?”
She carefully set her cup on the table between them. “I was not sure you would win the election without . . .” She bit her lip.
“Without what?”
She released a sigh. “Without an intervention from the only authority you accept. Before matters with Miss Archer became too public. I confess I never expected the queen to react in such a manner.”
He gritted his teeth so hard, it took a moment before he could speak. “You had no right.”
She folded her hands in her lap, a small, sinewy knot against her blue skirts. “Had word got out that you were jeopardizing your name for a country girl, the opposition would have used it to shoot your credibility to pieces. Had I approached you directly, you would have put me in my place.”
“And so you went behind my back,” he said, and damned if she didn’t display an utter lack of repentance.
“The prison director told his wife,” she said. “Apparently, it doesn’t happen often that a duke walks into his office at night to personally extract prisoners. His wife unfortunately is a gossip, and before I could blink, every lady on the committee knew that you had freed a number of suffragists and a few thieves, and had threatened to personally shut down Millbank, and no matter how much of that is hogwash, these ladies went home to their husbands, and half of those men are not your friends.”
“Do you think I wasn’t aware of that risk?”
“Of course you were,” she cried. “The very fact that you obviously chose to ignore it is what frightened me. Why not call in a favor and send some other peer to do it for you?”
“Ask another man to jeopardize his reputation on my behalf?” He shook his head. “And I always tend to matters personally when they pertain to the people I love.”
Caroline paled. “Love. Montgomery, this isn’t like you.”
“Don’t presume to know me,” he said softly.
“I know enough,” she shot back, the knuckles of her clasped hands bone-white. “I’m keenly aware why you asked me to be your lover. You are reluctant to use courtesans, and your code of honor forbids you to bed your own tenants or staff, or to cuckold men below your station. Likewise, you wouldn’t take up with the wives of fellow dukes. I was tailor-made for your needs: a widow, an equal, and in close proximity. Sometimes I wondered how you would have solved this conundrum if our estates didn’t share a border.”
The slight quiver to her chin was far more revealing than her words.
“Be assured I was fond of you for your own sake,” he said. “Other than that, I fail to see the point in your rant.”
A humorless smile curved her mouth. “The point is that nothing you do is ever impulsive. And from the start, your actions over Miss Archer defied rules and reason, beginning with you galloping around the county with her on your horse. I didn’t believe it until I saw the two of you together. The very way you look at her—”
He cut her off with a dark, dark stare.
She swallowed. “History is riddled with men brought to their knees by a pretty face,” she murmured. “I could not just stand by and watch. I couldn’t.”
“It is remarkable, the things women do to try to save me from myself these days,” he said.
A glance at his pocket watch said the fifteen minutes of a social call were over.
On his way to the door, she called out for him. And for old times’ sake, he turned back.
She stood, perfectly composed again, like a steely reed at the center of the room.
“She is a lovely young woman, Montgomery. Society will bleed her dry by a thousand cuts if you officially make her your mistress. In such matters, the woman always bears the brunt.”
“I’m aware.” He nodded. “Good-bye, Caroline.”
Chapter 32
A light rain fell over Parliament Square, redolent of spring, of tender greens and wispy white cherry blossoms. New beginnings, Annabelle thought, whether one was ready for them or not. She handed a suffrage leaflet to an elderly earl striding past. She knew him from sight; he might have sat in front of her in Claremont’s music room a while back. He took her leaflet with a nod, and she moved on to the next man, slowly working her way to the entrance to the House of Lords. Catriona and Lucie were behind her, catching whichever gentleman had slipped her net. Hattie should be waiting for them now in the Ladies’ Gallery, as that was something her father allowed. Luckily, Julien Greenfield had never found out about Hattie having been in the thick of the demonstration a few weeks ago. But the headlines they had made had put the Married Women’s Property Act back onto the agenda of Parliament, though Lucie predicted that the peers would spend hours debating an inane import tariff just to avoid ever discussing women’s rights, mark her words.
The gallery was surprisingly uncomfortable, considering that some of the peers in the chamber below sometimes had their lady wives watching from here. The ceiling was too low, a grille separated them from the men, and the air was stuffy with the smell of rain-damp hair and fabrics.
“Be glad the old chamber burned down,” Lucie murmured when she saw Annabelle tilting her head this way or that to get a clear view through the dizzying pattern of the interstices of the grille. “Women then had to sit in the ventilation shaft to listen in on meetings. I hear it was boiling hot.”