The Heiress Effect (31 page)

Free refused to be ruffled. “You appear to
believe it’s acceptable to risk that danger to come and,
uh…
rescue
me.” She rolled her eyes. “I believe it’s
acceptable to risk that danger to come and say that women deserve
the vote. Why is your risk gallant and mine foolish?”

“Damn it, Free. This isn’t the time to chop
logic. We need to get you out of here.”

Free only smiled. “Oh, that’s so lovely. When
I induce you to swear, it’s because I’ve argued you to a
standstill. Cut line, Oliver. You know I’m right even if you refuse
to admit it. And stop being ridiculous; I’m not leaving. If the
crowd turns to violence, I’m safer surrounded by a hundred women
who have discussed the finer points of safety than I would be all
alone with you. What would you do if we were attacked by a
mob?”

“I would—” He paused.

“You would be ripped limb from limb.” She
gave him a beatific smile, completely at odds with her words.
“Don’t worry, big brother. I’ll keep you safe.”

“Damn it, Free,” he repeated.

She laughed and looked back to her friends.
“This is my brother,” she said. “His name is Mr. Oliver Marshall.
He likely won’t leave until everything is over. Where should he
stay and glower?”

“You can’t cross the perimeter,” one of the
women said to him. “Only women inside the circle, and I hope you
can understand the reason for that. But my brother is standing
against that tree there, watching out for us in case anything goes
wrong. If you’d like to go join him, you’d be welcome.”

Oliver shook his head at his sister, and she
grinned at him. “Enjoy yourself, Oliver. The Reform League has
promised Miss Higgins the chance to speak, and I’m sure you’ll love
what she has to say.”

There wasn’t much to say after the rally. The
constables intervened only so far as to suggest that people vacate
the park before dusk fell, and by then, nobody seemed to object to
this suggestion.

The mood was jubilant. The government had
promised to quash the demonstration with all its might; the people
had promised to quash the government’s quashing of their
demonstration.

The people, it was generally agreed, had won.
Decisively.

Free’s friends relinquished her to Oliver’s
care with reluctance. The cabs were overrun; the streets crowded
with foot traffic. There was no chance of taking a carriage.

Instead, they walked. For the first fifteen
minutes, Free was cheerful, burbling about the crowd, the mood, how
much fun she’d had and how she couldn’t wait to do it again. All
her energy made him feel old and weary.

“Where are you taking me?” Free finally asked
after they’d traipsed through a handful of dingy streets. “It looks
like we’re going to Freddy’s.”

Oliver blinked and turned to his sister. “I
thought you liked Aunt Freddy. You write to her every week. You’re
her namesake.”

Free rolled her eyes. “For the last four
years, Oliver, I have only been writing her
angry
letters,
and she has been answering them with just as much vituperation. You
never pay attention to anything. We are arguing.”

Had it been four years since he’d last spent
any significant time at home? Oliver totted up the time…and then
swallowed.

“You argue with everyone,” he finally said.
“I didn’t pay that any mind.”

“She’s going to lecture me. Do you know what
Freddy will say when you tell her what I was doing?” Free’s eyes
narrowed. “Is that why you’re bringing me to her? Because you want
her to say—”

“Honestly, Free.” Oliver looked skyward. “I
was bringing you to Freddy’s because I thought you would like to
see her. I can take you back to Clermont House, if you’d prefer,
but the last time you were there you complained that you didn’t
know anyone and there was nothing to do. I hadn’t thought about
Freddy’s lectures, and if I had, I wouldn’t have brought you. I
don’t know what it is about Aunt Freddy, but the instant she tells
me
not
to do something, I find myself most wishing to do
it.”

Free’s lips twitched up reluctantly.

“And she never used to lecture
you,
in
any event. Not like she did the rest of us.”

Free sighed. “That’s changed. I told you, we
are arguing. We’ve spent the last Christmases pointedly talking
about each other, loudly, to other people so that we can be
overheard. How did you not notice?”

Aunt Freddy was so prickly that it was
difficult to tell when she was actually upset and when she was just
making noise about something or other to try to make some
ridiculous point. She’d been making dire predictions of gloom as
long as Oliver had known her. None of them had ever come true.

“What did you argue about?” Oliver said. “Or
do I want to know?”

“She needs to go outside.”

Oliver took a deep breath. “Oh.”

If Freddy knew what they were doing
now—walking on regular city streets—she would have complained of
palpitations of the heart. If she’d known they were doing it with
crowds about, she would have fainted.

When he was younger, he’d accepted as fact
that his Aunt Freddy refused to leave the tiny flat that she
inhabited. His mother said that she had once gone out—briefly—to
the market, but even that had ended once she’d found someone to
deliver the necessities of life. It had just been the way of
things, an immutable characteristic inherent to Freddy.

“She didn’t like my manner of telling her to
go outside,” Free said, “and she told me to apologize. So I told
her that I was very sorry for my hasty words, and what I had meant
to say was that she should be going outside
every day.”

“Oh,” Oliver repeated, shaking his head. “You
know, our aunt is the one person who is too stubborn to be bullied
by you.”

Free shrugged. “She told me I was an
impertinent little baggage, and so I told her that if she could
lecture
us
on how we should be living our lives, I would
lecture
her
on what she was doing. That if she could sniff
and say, ‘it’s only for your own good,’ I could do the same.”

Oliver let out a sigh. “Free,” he said
quietly, “I don’t really understand what is wrong with Aunt Freddy.
But I really don’t think she
can
go outside. If she could,
she would have done it years ago. Spending three decades cloistered
in one tiny room is not something someone chooses to do in a fit of
pique.”

Free looked even more rebellious. “Maybe she
can and maybe she can’t, but she
should.
And even if you’re
right, why can she not just tell me that? Instead, she refuses to
talk about it—always by pointing out my flaws. It’s not fair that
she can tell me how I need to use lemon juice to get rid of my
freckles, and I can’t even tell her to get some fresh air.”

Oliver shook his head as they came to the
building where his aunt lived. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not
fair. I suspect it’s even less fair that Freddy can’t go outside.
Have a little compassion for your aunt, Free. Since we’re here,
maybe this is a good time to apologize to her.”

“Why would I apologize? I’m not wrong.”

Oliver sighed again. “Then you can come up
and say absolutely nothing. That will be fun for you both.”

Oliver passed a few pennies to a flower girl
on the corner in exchange for a bouquet, and they marched up the
stairs of the building. There was a bit of rubbish nestled in the
corner of one landing—weeks-old rubbish, by the looks of it. Oliver
made a note to talk to the owner once again. If his aunt was going
to spend all her time here, it should be as nice as possible.

He knocked on the door and waited.

“Who’s there?” Freddy’s voice sounded a
little more quavering than Oliver remembered.

“It’s Oliver.”

The door opened a crack, and he caught a
glimpse of his aunt peering at him. “Are you alone?” she said. “Has
the city erupted in flame? Are there riots?”

“No,” Oliver said. “The gathering was
orderly.”

She opened the door wider. “Then come along
in. It’s so good to see you, love.” She began to motion him inside.
But as she did, her eyes landed on Free, standing a foot behind
Oliver.

For a second, Freddy’s face transformed. Her
eyebrows lifted; her eyes lit. She swallowed, and her hand twitched
out to Free. But then she seemed to catch herself back, and that
transmutation happened in reverse—happiness turned into obstinate
denial.

Argued, indeed. They were two of the most
stubborn women that he knew—possibly why they cared for each other
so much, and certainly why they’d been “arguing” for four years
when they clearly loved each other. Oliver shook his head. “Can we
come in, Aunt Freddy?”

“Everyone
respectful
can come in,”
Freddy said, her eyes darting to her niece.

“Well, then,” Free said. “That settles it. I
suppose I’ll just wait here in the hall while you finish up with
her.”

“You can’t—” Freddy’s mouth pinched, and in
that moment Oliver realized that his aunt looked awful.

Her skin was sallow and sagging. There was a
slight tremor to her hand. And there was something else about her,
something that made her seem thin and fragile. She was only a few
years older than his mother, and yet anyone seeing them together
would have imagined Freddy to be the elder by decades.

Freddy took a deep breath. “Oliver, tell your
sister that she can’t wait in the hall. Laborers live above me now,
and heaven knows what they would do if they found her here. They’re
likely all excited from whatever it was they’ve done today.” She
said the word
laborer
in a low voice, as if it were somehow
filthy, and then frowned. “You weren’t at that…thing, were you?”
She glanced at Free as she spoke. “Even
you
would not be so
foolhardy.”

Free tossed back her head. “If you hear me
screaming, Oliver, I hope you can come to my aid. I know Freddy
won’t, as I’ll be out in the hall, and that’s two feet too far for
her to bestir herself.”

Freddy’s eyes flashed.

“Maybe,” Free tossed off, “I’ll go outside.
There’s a park two streets away. I might sit on a bench. It’s not
that dark.”

“Free,” Oliver said, “can you manage to be
civil for a few moments?”

Her nose twitched.

“You might as well have her come in,” Freddy
muttered. “I can’t have her death on my hands. She’d make the most
uncivil shade ever, and I refuse to have her haunting my
hallway.”

Free actually smiled at that—as if the
thought of being an extremely rude ghost pleased her—and she came
in. Freddy closed the door behind them and locked it carefully.
Then she did up a second lock. Oliver and Free took seats at her
tiny table.

“Oliver,” she said. “It’s good to see you.
Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“I don’t want to hear ‘no’ for an answer.
You’re a—” She paused. “You’re not a growing boy, are you? But
other people here might still be growing, and there’s nothing like
tea with milk for retaining one’s health.” She glanced over at
Free. “Even if
some people
here don’t care for their own
health. And
clearly have not been
wearing their bonnets, no
matter how often they are told of the danger.”

“Oh, yes. In my future, a man will control
all my possessions if I marry him, I shan’t be allowed to vote, and
I won’t be given the opportunity to earn a living by any means
except on my back—but by all means, the most dire threat I face is
freckles. Maybe I should just spend all my time locked in a room.
That way, I won’t freckle at all. It will be
lovely
for my
health.”

Freddy’s lips tightened. “Tell your sister I
take my exercise,” she snapped. “I do twenty circuits of my room
every day. I’m fitter than she is.”

Free looked Freddy up and down. She probably
hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and the changes were even more
dramatic, Oliver supposed, spaced out over that many months. Free
was no doubt cataloging the stoop in their aunt’s shoulders, the
shallowness of her breath, the thin bones of her wrist.

Her eyes glistened, and she sniffed. “Tell
my aunt
that I’m so glad that she’s in such formidable
health.” Free’s voice shook. “That I see that her choices are
excellent.”

“Tell your sister that it’s none of her
business if I die early.”

Free jumped to her feet. Her eyes glittered.
“It’s none of my business if you die early? How hard is it for you
to accept that we love you, that you’re killing yourself like
this?”

Freddy folded her arms and looked away.
“Remind
your sister,”
she repeated, “that I’m not speaking
to her until she talks to me civilly. Until she apologizes for
every harsh word she’s spoken.”

“What, like telling you that I hate seeing
you like this? You want me to apologize for saying that you need to
bestir yourself? You want me to apologize for caring about you?
Never. I am
never
going to apologize. You are wrong, wrong,
wrong, and I hate you for it!”