The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,2

in full. (As we have long known, he is as Eloquent as he is Wise, Good, and Useful to Society, which is to say not at all.)

Dearest Lady,

In your latest screed you call for Parliament to ensure women’s rights, yet you are going about it all wrong. In the time-honored tradition of the feminine sex, you would be more likely to succeed in obtaining your desires if you flirted, cajoled, and petted. Instead you complain, insult, and demand. A man likes above all else a sweet tongue and a soft caress. Offer those and half the men in Government will be yours for the taking.

In guarded admiration,

Peregrine

Secretary, The Falcon Club

Fellow Citizens, if by “complain” he means that I make plain the inequities between men and women, and between rich and poor in this society; if by “insult” he means that I reveal the gross imbalance of power; and if by “demand” he means that I cry out for justice, he is speaking with more Sound Truth than ever before. Alas, he does not mean any of that. Full of masculine conceit, in order to coax me into softness he employs the very tactics he attributes to women: flirtation, cajolery, and caresses. In recommending that I behave with greater attention to my femininity, he himself practices feminine wiles.

I will not be enticed.

Mr. Peregrine, beware. For someday women will enjoy equal rights to men. On that day your arrogance will be stripped naked, your flatteries bared, and you will be forced to meet me eye to eye. When that day comes, pray that you remember how to be a Man.

— Lady Justice

Her grandmother’s eyes were twinkling brighter than they had in weeks.

“Sweet tongue and . . .” Gram drew a rattling breath. “Soft caress?”

“Yours for the taking?” Elle said.

“Stripped . . . naked?”

“And bared. Can you believe it?” Elle clapped her hands onto the page. “Oh, Gram, they are positively besotted with each other!”

“How wonderful it is . . . to hear you laugh, Gabrielle. I feared . . . that I might never hear that sound again.”

Elle dropped the pamphlet and grasped her grandmother’s fragile hand.

“You mustn’t say that, dear. You will be well soon enough.”

“I worry . . .” Her grandmother’s shallow breath did not even stir the coverlet over her chest. “That you will be alone.”

“I am not alone. I have you. And Mineola and Adela and Esme, of course.”

“You have closed off your heart,” her grandmother whispered. Her energy was already gone, even after so few minutes awake, and Elle’s heart did not feel closed off at all. It hurt beyond endurance. “Your mother . . . would not have wanted this.”

“My mother’s heart was far too open to men of poor character.” And Elle had followed naïvely in those footsteps. Now she knew better.

Her grandmother gave no response.

Elle sat with her until she slept deeply, the pleasure she had taken in Lady Justice and Peregrine’s latest brawl slipping swiftly away. The curate, Mr. Curtis, had confirmed her fears: her grandmother’s remaining days were few. And the gift she longed to give her—to run her frail fingertips across the type, to feel the words and pluck out the mistakes as she had done in the governor of Virginia’s workshop for years—was not to be. Tears welled in Elle’s throat, but her eyes remained dry. She never wept. Ever. Not when her mother died, or her grandfather, or when horrid Jo Junior had played her for a fool and broken her heart.

Panic crawled up the back of her neck. She would not despair now, nor weep. Instead, tomorrow before the shops opened she would return to the alley and search until she found every last piece of type. Then she would repair the chase, reset the type, and bring it home for her grandmother to touch—this time successfully.

No heedless, arrogant scoundrel would ever ruin her again.

Chapter Two

“The trouble, Anthony, is that you have not found the perfect woman,” said Charles Camlann Westfall, the Earl of Bedwyr.

Captain Anthony Masinter, late of the Royal Navy, cast a glance at Lady Bedwyr across the parlor.

“Can’t agree with you, friend,” he said gallantly. “Seems to me she’s in this very room.”

Lord Bedwyr turned his attention to his lady, whose head was bent to letter writing.

“The perfect woman for you.” Cam’s gaze lingered upon his wife and his entire bearing seemed to change, to grow at once taut as though he were readying for battle and as languid as the lace cuffs spilling from