Vanquished (4 page)

Humming a dance hall tune beneath his breath, Hadrian walked westward to where Bridge Street became Great George. Preoccupied with mentally fleshing out the details of Caledonia Rivers's veil-blurred visage, he took his customary shortcut through the alley behind his studio. By the time the sound of two sets of heavy footfalls reached his ears, it was too late. He looked back over his shoulder to the pair of familiar hulking figures closing in and felt his mouth go dry. Sam Sykes and his fellow debt collector, Jimmie Deans.
Damn!

Trapped, the best he could do was plant his camera behind the nearest rubbish bin and turn about to face them while hoping his legendary luck would hold. "Don't tell me you lads have come to have photographic portraits made?" He forced a smile even as he wondered how many teeth they intended on leaving him.

Thumbs in their pockets, Sykes and Deans drew up before him. "Best wipe that shite grin from your face, St. Claire before I'm minded to wipe it off for you," Sykes warned. "Your account is three months past due, and Bull wants his four hundred pounds, or else." Expression dour, he shook his shaved head. "You know Bull's terms as well as I do."

Bull was Bull Boyle, former pugilist and now proprietor of the Mad Hare Gaming Emporium in Bow, an establishment Hadrian heartily wished he'd never stepped inside. As for his "terms," the basic code was a pound of flesh for every hundred pounds past due. A code which, in retrospect, Hadrian really ought to have considered more carefully before playing not one or two, not three, but four hands of baccarat against the house at one hundred pounds per match--on credit. Only there'd been fresh dry plates and a new tripod to purchase and the rent on his studio to pay, not to mention his friend, Sally's orphans relying on him to carry them through to the spring.

Stalling, Hadrian said, "Tell Bull I need more time, another two weeks, and then I'll pay him what I owe him at double his rate."

Sykes spat onto the cobbles at Hadrian's feet. "Talk, St. Claire. It's always talk with you. I'd just as soon cut out that clever tongue of yours as waste me time hearing any more of your lies." He reached inside his open coat and drew a carving knife from his belt. "Jimmie, time to get to work."

Deans stepped forward and with impressive swiftness for one so bulky, seized Hadrian, pinning him against the stone wall. "Should we start with his ears or his nose?" He shoved his bulldog face up to Hadrian's, so close that Hadrian could count the black hairs sprouting from each nostril and all but taste the leeks on his breath.

Holding the knife so that the metal caught the glimmer of waning light, Sykes considered the question. "Oh, I dunno mate, you decide."

Good God but they meant to carve him up like a Christmas goose. Sweat trickling down his back, Hadrian said, "I can get the blunt, but I need more time." Inspiration struck and he added, "I've a big commission about to come in."

Sykes cocked a bushy brow and jabbed the point of the blade into Hadrian's Adam's apple. "How big?"

Hadrian sucked in his breath as sticky warmth trickled down his collar. "What would you say if I told you I was to photograph the Prince of Wales?" As lies went this one was a corker and yet he was counting on Sykes and Deans to be too ignorant to know that the London firm of John Mayall held exclusive rights to photographing members of the royal family.

"I'd say you were a bloody liar, that's what."

"Suit yourself, but I can't very well take the photograph if I'm in hospital, now can I? Who knows but Bertie might be minded to ask why I've had to beg off, and in my delirium I might accidentally whisper a name or two in the royal ear, if you take my meaning."

Deans, the slower-witted of the two, looked to Sykes for reassurance. "He's bluffing, ain't he Sam? He don't really know the Prince of Wales . . . do he?"

Hadrian shrugged, the movement possible now that Sykes had withdrawn the knife. "Who's to say that I don't? Either way, it's your call, mates. Of course if I do, I doubt Bull will thank you for being the ones responsible for having the police pay him a little impromptu call. Why, there's no telling what the bobbies might find if they turn over the place, now, is there? And Bull, well, I wouldn't be surprised if he took it in his head to collect his own pound of flesh-- or two." He punctuated the latter statement by dividing a knowing look between the henchmen.

Sykes spat again and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, considering. "All right, St. Claire. You win--for now. You can have your two weeks but after that . . ." He sliced a finger across his throat in the age-old gesture.

Expression grim, Deans fingered the scar slashing his stubbled jaw. "Bull ain't going to like it."

An eye on Hadrian, Sykes shrugged. "Two more weeks and then it'll be five hundred pounds he owes, not four. In the meantime, we'll let him keep his eyes and ears. Bull has plenty o' trophies in the pickle jar as it is." He poked a thick stump of forefinger in the vicinity of Hadrian's face. "But mark me, St. Claire, we'll be back to collect and, fancy friends or no, you'll pay up or we'll finish you."

Hadrian watched them back out of the alley. Once they'd disappeared into the encroaching twilight, he took off his hat and swiped a gloved hand across his sweating brow. In the distance, he could make out bits and pieces of a speech in progress.

"Distinguished colleagues . . . guests, sisters . . . brothers."

Despite the tunnel-like echo of the bullhorn, the female voice rang out full and rich, confident and strong. A feminine voice--yet the voice of a natural leader.

Caledonia Rivers's voice. Who could have guessed that bumping into the suffragette would prove to be the nicest part of his day?

It was coming on twilight when Callie stepped up to the makeshift podium amidst the flash fire of press-photographers' cameras. As always when she was about to speak, her stomach fluttered and skipped as though an entire brigade of butterflies had taken residence within. Inside her fur-lined leather gloves, her palms were damp with perspiration.

Yet she also knew that as soon as she began, any nervousness would melt away as her gaze and heart connected with the collective of the crowd. In this case it wasn't much of a turnout as rallies went, just about fifty-odd, and most of them recognizable as LWSS members and representatives from the other member organizations comprising Millicent Fawcett's newly formed National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. But then again, after standing about in plummeting temperatures and rain-soaked fog for two days now, perhaps the already converted were more in need of inspiration than anyone.

Before beginning, she took a moment to push her borrowed spectacles higher on the bridge of her nose. The eyewear was an accessory, a crutch of sorts, the corrective glass replaced with clear. It was foolish, she knew, but for whatever reason looking out at the world from behind the barricade of spectacles bolstered her self-confidence.

"Distinguished colleagues, guests, sisters. And brothers," she added, nodding toward her friend, Theodore--Teddy-- Cavendish, who smiled and saluted her from the back of the crowd.

Looking out onto the green, she took note of the running noses and cold-pinched faces and decided on the spot to cut her speech by half. The bullhorn proved to be more encumbrance than boon. Halfway through, she handed it to Harriet and made do with her own raised voice.

Afterward, she spent a good quarter of an hour shaking hands with women who came up to meet her, society ladies and tradesmen's wives, women of independent means and women who hadn't a penny apart from what their husbands gave them in allowance. Women who had never known a day of toil in the whole of their lives and others who had known little but. By the end of it, her fingers felt so numb she could barely feel the eager hands pumping hers and she was keenly aware that her nose had begun to run. Without thinking, she reached into her coat pocket for her handkerchief, but the rumpled linen square she retrieved wasn't hers. Seeing the "H.S." embroidered on an upper corner, she stuffed it back into her pocket unused, a flush working its way across her wind-chapped face.

Her vice president, Lydia Witherspoon, was the first to greet her when she stepped down. "Well done as always, Callie. But are you quite sure you're well? You look a bit feverish."

"Do I? It must be the effects of the wind, not to mention the coffee Harriet has plied me with for fear I'd fall asleep mid-sentence." Eager to change the subject, she turned to her secretary, already busy gathering up their things. As soon as Lydia had moved on, she leaned in to Harriet and confided, "I'm afraid I may have no voice left for tomorrow night."

Harriet paused from her packing. Looking up, she grinned broadly. "I hope you find it because we're expecting two hundred or more."

Two hundred or more.
Callie suppressed a sigh. Now that her address was concluded, she felt a profound weariness tugging at her, an exhaustion that went beyond mere physical fatigue. How lovely it would be to go home and curl up beneath the covers with a cup of tea and a book, perhaps one of those sweetly foolish penny dreadfuls she hadn't picked up since her schoolgirl years, when she'd still believed in fictions like
True Love
and
Happily Ever After.
But these days leisure was beyond her reach, a self-indulgence for which she simply hadn't the time. She had any number of tasks to attend to before she could seek out her bed, and neither novel reading nor daydreaming about handsome young photographers could be counted among them.

Yet when Harriet groaned and announced, "Oh no, here he comes," Callie's heart leapt into her throat. Hadrian St. Claire, he'd come back! She turned about eagerly. But instead of the handsome photographer, it was Teddy walking briskly toward them, his bottle green coat and plaid trousers making him easy to track in the twilight.

Swallowing her disappointment, Callie fixed on a smile. "Teddy, I spotted you earlier. How good of you to come."

"I wouldn't have missed it for the riches of the world." All smiles, he reached for her hands, planting a kiss atop each in turn. "By Jove, that bit about 'uniting to break the yoke of patriarchal serfdom' really had them going."

From the corner of her eye, Callie caught Harriet rolling her eyes. "If you'll excuse me, those placards won't jump back into the boxes by themselves."

As soon as Harriet was out of earshot, Teddy said, "She's warming to me, I can tell."

Callie couldn't help but smile. "I shouldn't hold my breath if I were you."

"Why not, what the deuce's wrong with me?"

Callie allowed herself a brief disloyal glance at his mustache, the tips waxed so that they stood out like handlebars. Every time she'd tried imagining kissing the small pink mouth beneath, she found she simply couldn't. Kissing Hadrian St. Claire, however, required no imagination at all. Thinking of what the press of those firm lips upon hers might feel like, she felt a wave of warmth roll through her in spite of the sharp air.

Thoroughly ashamed, she reached up to check that her veil was still in place. "Not a thing. It's only that our Harriet is a very serious sort and prefers those about her to behave in kind."

"Be serious, so that's the way to win over the old harridan. But what I'd much rather hear is the way to win
you
over. I don't suppose you've any hints in that department, hmm?"

"Oh, Teddy, you have won me--as a
friend,"
Callie said, not bothering to keep the exasperation from her voice for as many times as he'd asked her to be his wife, she still wished she might give him a different answer.

In spite of his garish clothes and effete ways, Teddy was in so many ways the perfect companion, steady and uncomplicated and, she suspected, easily as lonely as she was. Most importantly, he didn't have a cruel bone in his body. And though she suspected what he liked most about involvement in the suffragist cause was that his participation in it irked his straight-laced father to no end, his support of her was as ungrudging as it was unconditional.

As always, he took her refusal with good grace. "Then as a
friend,
I trust you'll allow me to see you home before you catch your death." Turning serious, he added, "Really old girl, you look fit to drop, and Harriet can manage without our help, mine especially."

Relieved to have the awkward moment past, she allowed herself to be persuaded. "In that case, yes."

She hooked her arm through his and together they walked out to the street corner where in short time Teddy hailed a hansom. Leaning back against the cracked leather seat, Callie let her eyes drift closed, vaguely aware of him giving the driver her directions and settling a carriage blanket across her lap.