Vanquished (11 page)

"You suppose?"

Her hesitation helped to peg her as exactly what he'd been hoping for, a toffee-nosed society bitch who considered the so-called "lower orders" to be almost a separate species. Ruining her--he just might enjoy it after all.

"For a woman who is otherwise so firm in her convictions, you demonstrate a delightful ambiguity when it comes to relations between the sexes. On one hand, you say women should choose for themselves who and how they shall love and yet when that freedom leads them astray, you assume they must have been seduced against their wills."

Her eyes glittered, her cheeks flushed. She was looking very angry now and, it occurred to him, very beautiful. "I made no such claim. You are twisting my words."

"On the contrary, I am but mirroring them much as a photograph depicts only that which the camera lens sees."

"I believe our session is at an end. I really must be on my way." She looked past him to the shop door as if willing it to open.

He backed up. "I have enjoyed our conversation, Miss Rivers. I have enjoyed it immensely. If nothing else, our discourse has served to show just how far off the mark my thinking still is. You have quite a challenge ahead of you; I trust you see that now. I confess I cannot wait for our next session."

"Another session!" She paused in collecting her things to stare at him, mouth falling open. "But surely two hours suffices to make a single portrait?"

He shook his head. "Photography is not merely a medium for artistic expression and documentary, Miss Rivers. It is a process for uncovering truth. To do so, we mustn't exhaust ourselves--or in any way attempt to hurry that process along. I will spend this evening developing the images we've taken thus far, but I have the innate sense that today was but the beginning of our journey. We shall require several more sessions at least before I arrive at a composition that will do you justice."

"Several more!"

He nodded. "Indeed. Still, I suspect you are not comfortable here, not yet, at any rate. And I rather fancy capturing you as I first saw you, brisk and busy in Parliament Square, not posing amidst a contrivance of painted scenery and props. Fortunately, I can set up out-of-doors easily enough."

"But it is winter."

"As it was the other day, when you and your suffragette sisters held your frosty vigil. Unless, of course, you are worried to be seen in public with me. I wouldn't want to sully that sterling reputation of yours, after all."

She lifted her chin, a habit of hers; or so he was coming to see. "What nonsense . . . though I can't come tomorrow as I've meetings all day."

"The day after, then?"

She hesitated, and then nodded. "Very well, then. I believe I am free on Wednesday after ten o'clock? Will that do?"

Feeling much like a cat with a very delectable canary in its sights, Hadrian could barely conceal his satisfied smile. "Excellent. As it is winter, midmorning is when the light is at its best."

The London Women's Suffrage Society had its headquarters at Langham Place. Accustomed as Callie was to coming in to the clicking of typewriter keys and the ringing of the telephone, she walked in to find the office quiet as a tomb.

Sober-faced, Harriet descended on her before she had the chance to get her coat off. "Callie, there you are. I was on the verge of sending someone out to search for you."

Callie glanced over her shoulder to the women volunteers, usually so brisk and busy, sitting silent and sullen at the conference table. Heart sinking, she turned back to Harriet. "Something's gone terribly wrong, hasn't it?"

"I'm afraid so." The secretary nodded to the folded newspapers stacked on Callie's desk. "You'd best read for yourself."

Callie drifted over to her desk where she spent the next few minutes perusing the articles recounting the recent rally and her last night's speech. Reading on, she felt her face flushing, not with embarrassment this time but anger. They'd been skewered by the
London Times,
the
Globe,
and the
St. James's Gazette,
but as they were staunchly Conservative publications, she'd half-expected that. It was the lukewarm coverage in the Liberal
Westminster Gazette
that really set her blood to boiling. A pity Hadrian St. Claire wasn't about now. Were he inclined to embroil them in one of the sparring matches he seemed to thrive on, she would have been more than ready to take him on.

Slapping her gloves down on the desk's scarred surface, she let out an unladylike oath. "Bloody, bloody,
bloody
hell!"

Coming up beside her, Harriet waited for the storm to settle before reaching out to take her coat. "How did it go with the photographer chap this morning?"

Callie hesitated. Her session
a deux
with Hadrian St. Claire had been the most stimulating few hours she'd spent in a long while, but she could hardly say so. "It seems I'm not a terribly good portraiture subject, otherwise we might have finished today."

Harriet turned to hang her coat on the rack by the door. "I still think you should have taken someone along with you."

In no mood to be criticized, Callie reached up to unpin her hat. "I fail to see what taking two people away from our work would have accomplished when there's so very much of it to be done. At any rate, I'm too old to require a chaperone. I've been on the shelf for years." Glancing back at the conference table where the women had resumed working, she dropped her voice to a low whisper and added, "Mr. St. Claire is a professional. He photographs any number of respectable ladies, and I can't think he ravishes them all."

True enough and yet his slightest touch while posing her had rendered a rush of sexual heat so hot, so scalding, she'd walked back to the office rather than taking a hansom, glad of the bracing winter air.

Harriet turned back to her, looking less than convinced. "I only hope that is so. With a man like that, one never knows."

Declining to press what precisely Harriet meant by "a man like that," Callie said, "Have no worries, I can more than manage Hadrian St. Claire."

What she didn't say, indeed would have dissolved with shame to admit, was that the person most in need of managing was herself.

"Whether we consider that women ought to be especially devoted to what is beautiful or to what is good, there is much work in the interests of either to be done in politics; and if the ladies were only to take schools, workhouses, public buildings, parks, gardens, and picture galleries under their special protection, and try to send to Parliament a few members who would work efficiently at such subjects, the rest of the community would have cause to be glad of their help . . ."

--H
ELEN
T
AYLOR,
The Claim of Englishwomen to the Suffrage Constitutionally Considered,
1867

S
etting up in Parliament Square, Hadrian congratulated himself that moving his second session with Caledonia out into the open was nothing short of brilliant. The air was cold, more brisk rather than bitter; the sunshine, though tepid, sufficed to keep the damp at bay. And of course the square was but a short stroll from his studio, a critical consideration given that seduction was his game. The spoiler was that he must use passion as a weapon to destroy, to
vanquish
as Dandridge put it. Were it not for that, he couldn't have rushed Caledonia Rivers back to his rented rooms quickly enough. "Mr. St. Claire, hullo there."

He finished unfolding the legs of his tripod and looked up to find his quarry hailing him from the other side of the park. Watching her approach, he found himself admiring the manner in which she carried herself. Shoulders back, spine straight, steps neither mincing nor hurried but well, purposive. How she would move once he got her out of those oh so cumbersome clothes and into his bed was a delicious discovery waiting to be made. The prospect alone set his groin to aching.

"Good day." Reaching him, she extended her gloved hand as a man might, an idiosyncrasy he was coming to view with a certain degree of fondness.

"It is, isn't it?" He enfolded her slender hand in his, holding on a second or two longer than was strictly necessary.

She had on another of her hideous hats, but of course he'd known she would. A few wisps of hair had escaped and standing in full-on sunshine as she was, he saw that what had looked to be near black indoors was shaded with strands of rich mahogany. Even the woman's damnable hair color was complex, confounding, and not exactly as it appeared at first glance.

Remembering himself, he pointed to the statue of the great American president and emancipator, Abraham Lincoln; along with being situated in a fortuitous spot of sunlight, the obvious parallel appealed to him. "I thought we might begin by standing you over there."

"Right, then." She walked over to the bronze and turned about, arms held out at her sides as if to embrace the day in all its glory. "Like this?"

"Let's have a look, shall we?" He slipped beneath the camera cloth and brought the aperture of the lens to focus on her head and shoulders.

Hers wasn't, strictly speaking, a beautiful face, at least not in a classical sense of strict symmetry and form, but there was beauty in it, a subtlety, a nuance, a
passion
that spoke to his artist's soul. He especially fancied her chin, rather too square for fashion but softened by that slight and rather beguiling cleft. The other day in his studio when she'd lifted it to dress him down, he'd imagined putting his thumb there, just
there,
and gently drawing her face upward so their mouths might meet.

"I don't suppose I could persuade you to part with the hat?" he called out though it was a foolish question. He well knew what her answer would be.

She responded with the anticipated shake of her head. "It
is
winter, Mr. St. Claire."

Ah, well, it was worth a try. At least she'd left off the spectacles. That was something, he supposed. "In that case, do pull back the veil . . . yes, that's the way, only a bit more like . . ."

He ducked out from behind the camera and came toward her. Reaching out, he smoothed down the one side of the netting that had lifted with the wind and caught a whiff of some delectable scent, rosewater and cinnamon, or so he thought. Just a light touch, he fancied, and likely dabbed behind the shell of that delectable ear. It took only a handful of seconds for him to pin the veil back in place and yet standing close to her as he was, it was all the time needed to make him hard.

He stepped back, grateful for the concealing folds of his overcoat. "There, much better now. You've beautiful eyes as I've said before. It's a pity to hide them."

She arched a brow. "You're a master of flattery, are you not?"

Annoyed, he turned and walked back over to his camera. Never in his life had he met a woman so averse to compliments. Over his shoulder, he tossed off, "The customary response to a compliment is thank you. You might try it sometime."

She opened her mouth to reply when children's laughter had her turning away toward a trio of small boys kicking about a rugby ball. Hadrian had noticed them earlier when he'd arrived to set up but other than the proximity of their play and its potential for disruption he hadn't given them much thought. But now he looked back at Caledonia. Judging from her rapt expression and soft smile, she must genuinely like children--yet another paradox since it seemed she'd chosen not to have any of her own.

The ball bounding between them caught the leg of the tripod, catching him off-guard and nearly knocking the camera to the ground. For a split second, the sight and sound of a shattering camera lens ripped through his memory, resurrecting a sharp, primitive pain.

One of the boys rushed up to Caledonia, damp blond hair sticking to his flushed cherub's cheeks. "Crikey, miss, I'm that sorry. We didn't mean it. We was only playing."

Hadrian whirled to confront the pintsized offender. "Mind what you're about, you little bugger," he shouted, rather louder than he ought, although already the anger was ebbing, leaving in its wake the familiar soul-sinking emptiness.

The boy stopped in his tracks. Bottom lip trembling, he backed up to Caledonia just as his two mates approached. The other two boys took one look at Hadrian and halted.

Over the top of the child's towhead, Caledonia sent Hadrian a scorching look. "Really, Mr. St. Claire, it was an accident. They were only having a bit of fun, weren't you lads?"