She felt the anger she had come here to remember, yes.
But she also felt the vulnerability that came with bold transgression. It was one thing to be defiant in the company of people who agreed with you. It was quite another to do so in the world of men who saw your actions as the early symptoms of a coming plague.
They must be careful.
She must be careful.
Nonsense. Don’t let them make you timid. That’s exactly what they want.
She needed something to calm her nerves.
Out the window, she noticed the architect in the distance, walking from Tregereth’s toward the empty drover’s cottage up the downs. He must be staying at the cottage while he did the renovation.
He really was a striking man, with that sun-tanned skin and lustrous hair and excellent, broad shoulders. The memory of his fingers biting into her wrist had been the most exciting part of her entire evening with Henri.
She wondered if Mr. Anderson was as skilled at his trade as he was at staring soulfully out to sea. If so, he would have to be a genius, for she had not seen a man look quite so appealing in an age—and she was not in the habit of leaving appealing men unnoticed.
She could find uses for such a person.
She, Thaïs, and Cornelia had made a pact to build a handsome, dignified building in the middle of London for their institute. The kind of building that would assert by its sheer heft the worth of women like themselves, and rebuke by its elegance the notion that a certain kind of lady had no claim on decency, let alone the rights of men.
They had come up with a goal of raising fifty thousand pounds, on the basis of that number sounding large and impressive. But it would help to have a sense of how much the building they imagined might actually cost.
Perhaps she could ask Mr. Anderson’s advice, as a favor.
It would be a serviceable prelude to gleaning his enthusiasm for providing other sorts of favors.
She dashed off a note.
“Tompkins,” she called. “Would you mind another errand?”
Adam lifted his face to the humid wind blowing off the cliffs as he made his way back up the path toward the cottage he’d let for the summer. Cornwall in June was a sultry, sticky business, and he paused to remove his waistcoat and unknot his cravat, letting the breeze filter through his linen shirt.
He heard a clacking in the distance and looked up to see he was passing by Miss Arden’s house. A shutter on her terrace window was loose, blowing in the wind. He had the strangest urge to walk up the steps to her property and offer to fix it.
But that would be perverse, as he’d spent most of the previous evening fighting off distracting thoughts of her knowing smile when she’d caught him looking at her. Had there been an invitation in it?
It didn’t matter. He was not here to think of women.
He averted his eyes from her house and walked more quickly.
The glare of Cornish summer was a welcome respite from the gray light of Cheapside, even if the work he’d taken on for Tregereth was the kind that left him irritated at the necessary frivolity of renovating yet another country pile when he itched for work of real distinction.
But distinction was a privilege for the rich. He needed to do well by this commission, for in a stroke of luck, Tregereth’s house happened to be directly down the coach road from Alsonair, the principal holding of the Marquess of Pendrake, who helmed the Board of Works. Pendrake was said to be on the cusp of commissioning a new naval armory, the Crown’s largest public building in decades. It was Adam’s fondest hope that Pendrake might be moved by the graceful signature of Anderson Mayhew, Architects, as he passed by Tregereth’s.
Perhaps Adam could even secure an introduction.
He’d been waiting for such an opportunity for half his life. The firm he had founded with his brother-in-law’s backing was moderately successful, but the patronage of baronets requiring additions to their modest manors was not going to lead him to the kind of commissions that would fulfill the promise he’d made to his wife’s family when they’d allowed their daughter to marry so far beneath her station.
Mayhew had invested in Adam’s firm believing him capable of great works, with great return on capital. Bridges. Aqueducts. Public institutions. He owed the Mayhews far too much to continue building fripperies for country squires year after year.
Particularly given what he’d already cost them: their daughter.
He could not make up for the loss of Catriona. But he would feel better if he could at least repay his share of the six thousand pounds in capital Mayhew had invested when they’d moved the business to London.
“Papa,” a small voice cried from the distance.
He looked up to see his children gamboling down the hill. He was shocked by how transformed they looked after a fortnight here, as though they’d breathed in happiness with the seaside air. Perhaps they’d inhaled too much of his own melancholy with the dreary London fog these last three years. Here, they seemed lighter.
Adeline rushed toward him as he rounded up the path. He grinned at his grass-stained, spritely daughter even as his heart lurched to see her smile like that—at only four, she was already the very image of her mother.
“Papa! We saw a lamb. He came right up to me,” Addie told him, breathless.
Adam scooped her up into his arms, enjoying the peal of laughter this provoked. “What lamb could resist the lovely Adeline?” he asked her.
“It was a sheep,” Jasper corrected, intent that his sister should know the difference. “Three white sheep and one black one.”
Adam reached down and ruffled his boy’s hair, wondering if there had ever been such a solemn seven-year-old. “Then I hope you apologized to the lot of them on behalf of your sister. Grown sheep detest being called lambs.”
Adam’s own sister chuckled from the blanket where she was tucked under an enormous straw bonnet against the sun, reading a book. “We took a walk up the downs this morning. Jasper made the acquaintance of the shepherd and Adeline engaged in a barking competition with his dog.”
Adeline gave a sharp bark into his ear to demonstrate. “Arrruff! Arrrrrrruff!”
Adam lowered her to the grass. “Run and play,” he said, scooting her off to join her brother, who had already lost interest in the adults and was constructing a fortress out of the shards of Cornish shale that pebbled the grasses and tufts of gorse along the cliff tops.
He glanced down at the cover of his sister’s book. An Essay in Defense of Ruined Women. Seraphina Arden’s signature work.
He stiffened.
He had not mentioned his encounter with its author to Marianne. It embarrassed him to think about his reaction to Miss Arden. The way he’d been unable not to notice the limning of her body through that sheer, wind-whipped gown.
“A little dry reading?” he asked, pointing at the book.
Marianne laughed sheepishly and tucked it under the edge of her blanket. “I know she’s controversial, but Miss Arden is Kestrel Bay’s most famous resident, and I thought it might be interesting to form my own view of her arguments after hearing so many complaints about them at the market.”
He smiled. “And what is your assessment?”
“You know, Miss Arden is not nearly as shocking as the rumors suggest. One would think the book was bawdy, the way they shout about her fallen state, but it’s mostly about laws and education.”