Blaze, page 3
As if she needed reminding. She was about to mention that fact, but then thought better of it. She’d gotten what she wanted, and it was undoubtedly best to leave it at that.
“Yes, sir,” she said as she smiled sweetly and then pushed herself up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
He cleared his throat, embarrassed, not at the action, but that someone else been witness to it. Despite his being a loving and affectionate father he was still reserved around others, even Phoebe, who was practically part of the family.
“Yes, well,” he said. “Enjoy yourselves. And try to learn something.”
“We will.”
“Of course, sir, we thirst for knowledge,” Phoebe added a little too earnestly and far too out of character. Artemis wanted to shoot her a warning glance but didn’t dare. Her father didn’t miss much, and Phoebe’s uncharacteristic enthusiasm for learning had already caught his attention.
For a moment, it seemed as though her father might rethink giving his permission, but after a long pause he merely nodded and walked away down the hall.
He’d been distracted and worried lately, more so than usual. She’d asked him about it, but he’d denied there was anything wrong and promptly changed the subject, a sure sign that something was. She knew him too well. Something was bothering him. Whatever it was, she’d figure it out eventually.
Phoebe smiled as she watched him walk away, twirling one of her long blonde curls in idle contemplation.
“He’s very handsome when he’s thinking,” she said.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Artemis wrinkled her nose.
“Well, he is,” Phoebe said with a shrug.
Phoebe was a dear friend, but she was sometimes not quite right in the head. “He’s my father.”
Phoebe arched an indifferent eyebrow, dismissing her argument out of hand. “He’s not your real father. He’s your cousin or uncle once removed or something.”
“That doesn’t make any difference.”
Phoebe started to argue, but Mrs. Perry interrupted, holding out Artemis’s coat.
“If I were you two girls, I would get going while the going is good. It’s not every man that lets his fifteen-year-old daughter go to such a thing. He just might change his mind if you linger.”
As if on cue, the doctor paused at the end of the long hall. But he didn’t turn back, instead digging into his pockets. He pulled out a key and unlocked the door to his private study; his sanctum sanctorum, as he called it. He gave Artemis a fleeting smile before disappearing inside.
One day she was going to find out what was in there. But for now, she turned her attention back to Mrs. Perry and shrugged on her coat.
“You should come with us,” Artemis told her. “There’s a meeting of the WSPU next door to the lecture hall. We’re sneaking in.”
Mrs. Perry looked at her blankly. “WSPU?”
“Women’s Social and Political Union. You know, suffrage.”
Mrs. Perry’s kind face wrinkled into a frown. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t you want to be liberated?” Phoebe asked.
Mrs. Perry gave a throaty laugh. “I’m far too old for that, my dear.”
Artemis was about to tell her she wasn’t, but Mrs. Perry began ushering them out the door. Phoebe’s chaperone, Miss Gorst, whose rigid countenance made portraits of the Late Queen Victoria look positively giddy, glowered sternly out of the window of the carriage.
“Have fun and say hello to old Sour Puss for me,” Mrs. Perry said, giving a jaunty wave to Miss Gorst. It was not returned.
“I will,” Artemis said with a laugh. “See you later.”
Phoebe fell backward onto her four-poster bed, causing the blue silk duvet to puff up around her. “Wasn’t he wonderful?”
Artemis gazed out the window of Phoebe’s upstairs bedroom and stared down into the lush gardens and broad lawn of the Clifton estate. She’d always thought that Phoebe’s house was gorgeous, and the grounds! What she wouldn’t give for a garden even half the size of theirs. Not that Artemis lived in a hovel, but her place on Harley Street was nothing compared to the Cliftons’. Of course, the Cliftons were old money, and she and her father were not. They weren’t even new money.
“Who was wonderful?” Artemis asked absentmindedly as she watched Phoebe’s brother and a friend she didn’t recognize setting up for a game of croquet on the lawn.
Phoebe sat up. “Who? Oh, Em. Mister Rouse, of course. I think he’s very distinguished.”
Horace Rouse had been all right, but she was still disappointed they hadn’t been able to get to the suffrage meeting. A note on the door had announced its cancellation.
“He has a very attractive chin, don’t you think?” Phoebe went on, idly playing with the small cameo choker about her neck. “All ….” She shuddered in delight. “And did you see that young man in the front row?” she added with a sigh. “Positively dreamy.”
Artemis grinned inwardly, schooling her features to an expression of concern. “You know, Phoebe, I think you might actually be suffering from nymphomania. I read about it in one of Father’s journals.”
“Do you think so?” Phoebe’s eyes lit up in worry and excitement. “What is it?” She sat back on her heels a little. “Is it catching?”
Artemis laughed and sat down in the window seat. “No, and I was only joking, but you are boy crazy.”
Phoebe grinned. “Isn’t everyone?”
Artemis shook her head. She loved Phoebe, and they’d been the best of friends for nearly all of their lives, but all she thought about these days was boys.
Phoebe moved to the edge of the bed. “Of course, not you. No, Artemis Schäfer is too busy taking ballet and fencing and learning about chemistry. Chemistry! What good will any of that do you when you’re married?”
“Who’s getting married?” Artemis asked, feigning shock.
“You, unless you want to be an old spinster like Miss Gorst,” Phoebe said, sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes.
Artemis turned to look out the window again. She honestly hadn’t put much thought at all into marriage. Unlike Phoebe. Artemis had so many more important things to occupy her mind with, like social injustice and the lack of an equitable franchise for women. Phoebe could spend her time learning to sew or prettily play the piano, but Artemis wanted to put her mind and body toward something that mattered. The idea of preparing herself for marriage was the last thing on her mind. She wanted to do something, to be someone. Someone that was more than just Mrs. So-and-So. Besides, what good did it do to think about something so far away anyway?
“I’m not even sixteen yet.”
“Yes, but your birthday is only two weeks away! You’ll be eighteen before you know it. You have to start planning early, considering potential candidates. I have several on my list.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Phoebe pushed herself off the bed and joined her at the window. “And you should, too.”
Down on the beautifully manicured lawn below Phoebe’s brother and his friend finished setting the course and started their game of croquet.
“Besides my brother, of course,” Phoebe said with a smirk.
Artemis flushed and nudged her friend with an elbow.
“What? You’ve had a crush on David since forever.”
Truth be told, she had, and for a long time. David was handsome and kind and didn’t ignore her like everyone else. But it had been just that—a crush. A childish thing that didn’t really matter.
“I hate to be the one to tell you,” Phoebe said, “but he’s got his sights set on Rosalind.”
“Deighton?” Artemis asked, surprised, but not really.
Phoebe leaned against the window frame dramatically, putting the back of her hand to her forehead in a faux swoon. “He’s deeply, madly in love with her. It’s wonderful and horribly disgusting.”
“I’m happy for them,” she said, but it sounded false even to her own ears.
She looked down at David, frowning, though she couldn’t blame him. Rosalind Deighton was rich and beautiful. Not that Artemis was ugly; she knew she was pretty, but she was … different. And different wasn’t high on anyone’s list of desirable attributes, except hers. Everyone worked so hard to fit in, to make sure they did the things they were supposed to do, the way they’d always been done. Someone like Artemis, who didn’t conform to their ideas and ideals, wasn’t invited into the inner circle. So, she’d stayed on the periphery, an outsider looking in.
It didn’t help that she and her father weren’t of the right stock. Their family back in Denmark was well enough off, she supposed, but not of the same tier as the Cliftons. Besides, her father had lived in England for all of his adult life, doing something a Clifton would never do—work. He was respected and admired as a doctor, but he still worked for a living, and that put them in a different class. A lesser class.
Worse still than their lack of wealth was the fact that her father was progressive. She hadn’t had a governess since she was eight. Their maid, Mrs. Perry, took care of her when her father couldn’t. And for the last few years, she’d been allowed out on her own without the shelter of an adult. Hardly the sort of thing most found proper.
Then there was the endless parade of special tutors. While other young ladies were taught the finer points of posture—and really, how many points could there be—and what fork to use with fish, she was taught science and Latin and how to fence and play tennis. To the outside world she was a rogue beast, allowed to study traditionally male subjects and roam London without a chaperone like some wild animal or, worse, an American.
Her father thought it was wasteful to treat girls as glass figurines only fit for sitting on a shelf to be admired. She was a person with a mind and a will just like any man.
“There are so few good minds in the world,” her father was fond of saying. “We cannot afford to waste one.” Unfortunately, the rest of society still clung to the repressed morality of Victoria’s reign. King Edward was trying to change things, but Artemis knew change happened at a glacially slow pace. She’d likely be dead and gone long before anything really changed, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.
She looked down at David as he played a brilliant jump shot and sighed. Despite what she’d said earlier, she wasn’t happy for him. She wanted to be, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d always held out hope.
It was a childish fancy. She knew she never really stood a chance with someone like David, but hearing that he was “madly, deeply in love” with someone else still hurt.
“I hope they’ll be very happy together,” she said, hoping she sounded more sincere than she felt.
“Oh, they won’t,” Phoebe said. “He’s not good enough for her.”
“What?”
Not good enough? That was impossible. David was practically perfect: handsome, well-educated, from a fine family, and far better than the Deightons deserved.
Phoebe shrugged. “That’s what her parents said. You know she debuted this year? She went to Court and everything.” She crossed the room on tiptoes, pretending to be an elegant lady but looking more like a stork. She curtsied with a deep flourish, wobbled, and then popped back up. “Can you imagine?”
“I’d probably fall flat on my face,” Artemis said.
“You? You’re as agile as a cat. I, however, would probably collapse from the sheer joy of it. In Court! In front of the King!”
She walked over to her vanity table and looked at herself in the glass. She pinched her cheeks for color and lifted up her long blonde curls into an adult-like hairdo. “I can’t wait to be launched into society.”
“Not me. I’m not a ship. I don’t want to be launched.”
While Phoebe yearned for the time she was old enough to debut, Artemis shuddered at the thought. Not that her father would make her endure such a thing anyway, but the idea that a woman had to be shown off like a prized poodle to find a husband was preposterous, as was the fixation on finding one in the first place.
Phoebe seemed genuinely concerned when she asked, “If you don’t, how will you find a husband?”
“Maybe I won’t,” Artemis replied, looking back out the window. She didn’t know and, frankly, she didn’t care. The world around her was far too concerned with planning out her life for her, dictating what she should do and when. She was a young woman, not a child. Why couldn’t things just simply happen in their own time, according to her desires?
Down in the garden, David lost his ball in the rose bushes.
“Well, don’t worry,” Phoebe said, putting an arm around Artemis’s waist and sighing theatrically. “When you’re old and infirm and alone—you might even have scurvy—I’ll come visit you in the convalescent home.”
Artemis couldn’t keep a smile from tugging at the corners of her lips. “Very kind of you.”
“I’ll bring the twins, my grandsons, Binky and Bunky.”
Artemis laughed. “Binky and Bunky?”
“You don’t like the names?” Phoebe asked, snorting.
There was a knock on the door and Phoebe tried to stop laughing long enough to answer it.
“Yes?”
Miss Gorst appeared, her severe expression drawing even tighter in counterpoint to their merriment.
“It is time for your afternoon constitutional, Miss Phoebe.”
Like clockwork, the outside world clamped back down and treated them like children who didn’t have enough sense to plan their own days. Knowing Miss Gorst, she’d probably push Phoebe around in a pram if she could. The image made Artemis laugh, winning another disapproving glare from Miss Gorst.
Ignoring it, she wound her arm through Phoebe’s. “Come along, dearie. Mustn’t keep the world waiting.”
Artemis loved London, although she wasn’t sure the feeling was mutual. Though she hadn’t traveled extensively, she had seen enough of the world to know that there was something about London, perhaps because the city was a study in contrasts. Conservatism meeting a wave of progressiveness, the old establishment clawing against the evolution, venerable institutions challenged as society began to transform under the dawning of a new century.
The ashes of the past would be swept away and a new, promising future would blaze in its place.
Electric lamps lit the way toward the future, twice as bright as gas. Telephones connected vast distances, and the faint echo of women’s rights had become a chorus. Change was happening all around her. Sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully, but always inevitably. It was a marvelous time to be alive.
Glancing at the men and women who strolled along the promenade, though, she knew change would come much more moderately than she wanted. The establishment of London would resist with every fiber of its being. But no one could stand against the tide. Not even Lord Elderberry, she thought, as the rather portly gentleman tipped his shiny top hat in greeting as he passed by.
It was a beautiful autumn day, and the trees in Regent’s Park were just beginning to turn. Thankfully, the recent cold snap had passed and the afternoon sun was warm on her face as she and Phoebe walked toward the inner ring of the park.
“Do you think your father bought you that Brodeur gown we saw in La Mode for your birthday?” Phoebe asked. “Oh, I hope so.”
“Don’t hope too hard. I doubt it. It’s not exactly practical.”
“Dresses aren’t supposed to be practical, that’s what makes them so wonderful.”
“You know my father. It’ll probably be a new chemistry set or something.”
Her father’s gifts were always thoughtful, but they also tended to be pragmatic, without extravagance or impracticality. They were, as he often reminded her, not made of money. And that dress would be well beyond mere extravagance.
Artemis might not be one for fripperies, but on her birthday, it might be nice, just once.
Phoebe slipped her arm through Artemis’s as they walked. “Well, don’t you worry. My present is totally and utterly impractical. And completely wonderful.”
Artemis laughed. Utterly impractical and completely wonderful described Phoebe perfectly. They’d been friends as far back as Artemis could remember, although how she’d managed to be best friends with a Clifton was still a bit of mystery. It wasn’t as though their families traveled in the same social circles. As near as she could tell, she and her father had no circle at all. It was more of a triangle. Artemis, her father, and Mrs. Perry. Not that Artemis minded. She loved her little triangle. Even if it was a bit small sometimes.
Phoebe pulled Artemis closer. “And it’s beautiful, I might add. Like you.”
Artemis smiled. Phoebe always knew just what to say when she was feeling a bit down, which she had been for some reason ever since hearing about David.
It was silly, really. David wasn’t ever going to be more to her than the brother of her best friend, but somehow hearing about his interest in Rosalind hurt. Hurt more than it should. While Artemis didn’t have boys constantly in the forefront of her mind, it didn’t mean she didn’t think about them at all. David seemed to be the only boy who saw her for who she was, not who he wanted her to be. Maybe someday she’d find someone else like that. Not that it mattered. She didn’t need a boy to make her happy.
They walked on for a bit in companionable silence, Miss Gorst trailing along far enough behind them to give them privacy but close enough to keep a watchful eye. Artemis didn’t know how Phoebe put up with it. Having someone observe her every move made her nervous, as though she were doing something wrong even when she wasn’t.
“What’s going on over there, I wonder?” Phoebe asked, drawing Artemis’s attention to a small group that had gathered by a bench just ahead.
One woman helped another smaller, stout woman to stand on the bench. The lady on the bench straightened her tam o’ shanter and addressed the crowd. Artemis recognized her from a photograph in the newspaper. It was Fiona McPhee, one of the suffragettes she’d been reading about. Like the WSPU founder, Emmaline Pankhurst, who was currently in Holloway Prison, Mrs. McPhee espoused a more aggressive stance to achieve women’s right to vote.
