Chapter 10
Alice had no idea why, but she had assumed that Deimos would swath her in lace and fans and sparkling ballrooms when she had told him that she wanted to have adventures.
He was doing everything but that and, frankly, she didn’t know what to make of it except for the fact that she was deeply grateful.
Though she had never been in the most upper echelons of society until she had met the Briarwoods, she was fairly familiar with ton life. Few people ever flew as high as the Briarwoods, but there had been those few months when she had joined them.
She had been to many excellent balls, the theater, and tea parties, but this world that Deimos was showing her was one she had no idea existed.
The publishing house, the picnic alone with him in the field where he asked her so many questions about herself and then kissed her.
Kissed her with such passion she had not known where she stopped and he began.
No one in her entire life had ever asked her so many questions about herself with the intent of discovering her hidden talents.
She had not even done that for herself, because she’d never thought to. Young ladies were not supposed to be particularly indulgent in their own interests or question their reason for being or what they were doing.
But here, now, as he led her on his arm to Lady Upperton’s infamously famous salon, she felt a wave of fear.
Yes, fear, because this was a place that she never would have imagined herself belonging. She’d read about it, of course. The most famous minds came here, and those who had power and influence, even if their minds weren’t quite as sharp as others.
The long hall was lined with mirrors and paintings that had been rescued from France during the revolution. Gilding was everywhere. The chairs were delicate, covered in striped blues and pinks. The chandeliers overhead were like elaborately iced cakes, glowing with golden lights.
And conversations were happening everywhere. She spotted several of the most famous poets and politicians, and she could have sworn she spotted a woman who was rumored to be a courtesan.
This was definitely on the cusp of propriety for her.
She clutched Deimos’s strong arm and looked up at him. “Are you sure I should be here?”
“Very,” he said.
He was dressed beautifully. He looked like a prince. Better than a prince.
His dark hair had been styled carelessly about his chiseled face, and his clothes were from the best tailors and hugged his body as if they were another skin.
They probably cost more than most people could earn in their lives. The emerald jewel at his cravat and in his cuffs could have kept a middle-class family for a year at least.
Her own clothes were barely good enough for such a room, where most of the ladies wore gowns they’d had made in Paris or in boutiques where a gown could beggar a woman who reached too high.
She wore an ivory gown with lace ruffles at the edges and little roses embroidered at her bosom and along her sleeves and hem.
She felt almost like a doll beside him because he was so tall, especially next to these fierce ladies who cut through the room in gowns of striking colors and dangerous décolletages.
The gentlemen were dressed in austere blacks and whites. Gone was the color of her childhood for the gentlemen. Gentlemen now looked like sleek predators ready to eat every last little bit of meat off of any victim that they found.
But not Deimos. Deimos looked as if he could fly above it all, and her own heart soared to be next to him. The fact that he really thought she might belong somewhere like this gathering stunned her.
The publishing house she understood, for she loved to read. How dearly she did. But this was a step beyond that sort of use of the mind.
This was a place where dangerous ideas were spoken, ideas meant so shake society and transform the old world order were uttered.
“Come along,” he said gently, holding his hand over hers.
“What if I say something foolish?” she whispered.
“Foolish?” he echoed before he stopped.
Deimos pulled her aside, next to a column behind a velvet curtain, and placed both his hands on her shoulders. “You will never ever say anything like that about yourself again. Do you hear me?”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I know that ladies are sometimes encouraged not to believe that they have as much intelligence as some gentlemen, but you are fiercely intelligent,” he said.
“You always have been, and you always will be. And if you had been given the opportunity, no doubt, you would be able to shout down even the most excellent fellows in the House of Lords.”
She sucked in a soft breath. “Is that how you see me?”
“Of course,” he said. “Don’t you see yourself like that?”
She shook her head.
“Well, you should, Alice,” he said. “Yes, I know you’re gentle and I know you love to laugh, but there is a whip inside that brain of yours, and I do hope that soon you’ll use it. If you choose to, of course.”
And then he took her hand again, tucked it back on his arm, and led her into the company.
Now her shoulders were back. Her head was high, and as he stopped before a group of people, she overheard the conversation and her stomach tightened.
Cassius and she had spent many an hour discussing it and the fine points of the shocking tragedy.
They were discussing the Peterloo Massacre which had happened only a brief time ago. And it had been such a horrifying event that the country was still reeling. And it had acted like a domino in a set of more catastrophes in clashes between the discontent and those in charge.
“Can’t have that again,” one gentleman said, his nose up. “People rising up.”
“France,” said another, who folded his hands behind his back. “Too much like France.”
She waited for Deimos to say something, but he did not. Instead, he was eyeing her.
“Poor people,” a lady said. “You have to expect that they would rise up. Such creatures have no education and have no idea how to better themselves. We must do better so they do not behave as animals again—”
Alice swallowed. “They will continue to behave as animals, as you say, if society forces them too. Education will not change that, for they have no recourse except the mob. Some of the most brutal voices in the French Revolution had magnificent educations. It is the brutality of these people’s lives that make them take to the streets.
” She paused, then added, “And, of course, poor people have no right to vote. Ladies don’t either. ”
One of the gentlemen stared at her and laughed. “Are you suggesting that ladies are like animals too?”
“Almost certainly,” she said, determined not to be bothered by the disdain. “I refuse to take it as an insult. After all, according to science, we’re all animals.”
The other gentleman stared at her, agape. “Science is an excuse for blasphemy. I’m not an animal.”
“Oh, but you are,” she countered. “Biologically speaking, anyway.”
“Good God,” the other gentleman said, his eyes bulging.
“Who have you brought here, Deimos?” the lady said.
“This is Miss Alice Mitchell,” he said, all but radiating pride at her boldness. “A great thinker, as far as I’m concerned.”
And she had been bold. What had overcome her? Perhaps her desire for exactly what she’d set out for. A life like her sister’s! A life unfettered by petty rules.
The lady arched a delicate brow. “She certainly says shocking things.”
“Not that shocking,” Deimos said. “The lot of you are just being terribly stuffy and terrified that the poor will come and take your wealth.”
Another gentleman, his silver hair shining in the candlelight, came upon them. He peered carefully at her. “What was it you said about us being animals? I could have sworn I overheard such a wild thing.”
“Well, don’t you agree?” she said with forced confidence.
“We’re all born animals. We might have higher consciousness than most other animals,” she said, “but I don’t think that makes us so much better.
Aren’t the birds and beasts of the field happier?
They don’t pollute their own homes as we do.
They don’t murder each other en masse. They don’t—”
“Good Lord, this one should read a much happier novel,” guffawed the silver-haired gentleman. “Whatever have you been reading?”
“Excuse me,” she said, swallowing, “but I thought this was a place of thought, not a place of derision.”
“Hear, hear,” declared a voice. “What a treasure you have brought us, Deimos.”
Lady Upperton swept in and took her by the arm. “I will steal you for myself.”
Alice had seen Lady Upperton’s likeness in the newssheets and curtsied, for she was a viscountess. And she went with her without hesitation. One did not easily gainsay a viscountess, and the lady was her host and a legend throughout the ton. Some said she was cleverer than Burke and Voltaire.
“My dear girl,” Lady Upperton intoned, the jewels in her dark hair flashing, “you are still in your first Season, are you not? And yet here you are. You are a risk-taker and how I adore that. I’m a risk-taker too. Come with me and let me introduce you to the rest of the room.”
She swung her gaze back and looked at Deimos. She didn’t want to be taken away from him, but he nodded.
“He’s a good one,” said Lady Upperton as they moved away. “You should claim him immediately before someone else does. Poor thing. He might get shoved into a closet, you know, and then he’ll have to marry whoever traps him. Then you won’t be able have him.”
“I beg your pardon,” she exclaimed.
Lady Upperton shrugged. “Well, it has happened in the Briarwood family. People have been forced to marry, you know. They’re caught in closets and secret rooms, and a lot of people are after him. And the way he looks at you, my dear. I would conquer that gentleman quickly.”
“I thought we wished to speak about ideas,” Alice protested, dismayed they’d turned to marriage talk.
Lady Upperton replied with a smile, “Oh, this is the very nature of all ideas. We are talking about the nature of men and women. Didn’t you say that we were animals, my dear? Every animal seeks to find its mate, do they not?”
“I suppose,” Alice replied warily.
Lady Upperton snapped open her fan as they wove through the richly dressed crowd. “The two of you will be like swans or wolves. I do hear wolves mate for life.”
“Why would you say such a thing?” Alice said, struggling to understand.
“Dear girl,” Lady Upperton sighed, “I am glad you are here, and you clearly are ready to train your mind to set down such fools as I must invite sometimes. It was a delight to watch them squirm under your logic. I’m so sorry that they were so terribly boorish.
They’re new and have yet to be trained on how to properly speak, and certainly their ideas are most dull, but yours are not.
People like you could bring them around, I think.
What do you truly think of what happened at Peterloo? ”
She swallowed. The truth was she read many happy books. She had to read many happy books, because if she did not, her heart would break at the misery of humanity.
“I think that we went to war for a very, very long time, and we used up people as if they had no importance, and then those men came back from the war. Those that survived, at any rate. And our country had no plan for them, no recourse, no way to heal their broken nature. And then, of course, everything is going wrong right now in our country. Food is impossibly expensive. Rent is even worse, and people cannot live. And if people cannot live, they will fight, even if it means they risk their own lives.”
Mrs. Upperton nodded. “You speak very well.”
“It is only common sense,” she said.
“It is not common,” Lady Upperton said. “And quite frankly, it needs to be heard more. Will you perhaps consider speaking for our crowd one night? You say the most interesting things in unique ways, and I think people might listen to you. You have the face of an angel, and so I think many of these men might take it better coming from you than from me. They see me and think I’m a screaming Valkyrie come to lecture them, and men hate being lectured. But I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”
“Truly, you think I could speak about such things?” She started to shake her head, all the rules she’d known swimming to the surface. “Young ladies aren’t supposed to—”
“Oh, young ladies, my dear, aren’t supposed to do many things, but if you marry, you could do whatever you want.”
Lady Upperton winked and gave her a knowing look.
“Or if you don’t care about your reputation, of course, you can go ahead and do whatever you want.
It’s just that you must decide what kind of woman you want to be.
There are rewards and costs to both, but I think it’s very clear to me that you and Deimos would shine best together.
So I’d take the married route, if I were you.
Now, I must go speak to my other guests. ”
And Lady Upperton swept off, leaving her standing still for a moment. A glass of champagne was pushed into her hand by Deimos. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
She took the cool glass and took a drink, her nose tickling at the bubbles. “I’ve just been told to get married, but it was not something I thought to hear here.”
He laughed. “Lady Upperton told you to get married.”
“Yes, to you.”
He blinked. “By God.”
“I know,” she said. “Do we really look at each other like that?”
“What did she say?” he asked.
“That we’re wolves.”
“Wolves?” he echoed. “Are we supposed to start howling?”
“Apparently, they mate for life,” she said, stunned.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind,” he whispered back, “mating with you for life.”
She let her jaw drop. “I’m not sure if I should be scandalized or not.”
“I don’t really care, but I have to tell you the truth, and I don’t want to pretend anymore. Every day I’m with you, I admire you more, Alice. I wish you’d let me protect you.”
She winced. “Of course. You’re so good.”
She drank her champagne and turned from him, hiding the tears in her eyes.
Of course that’s all it was.
Deimos was so good, so very good. He always had been, and he always would be.
He’d protected her once before, he’d protect her again, and he wanted to protect her for the rest of her life.
She was grateful. So very grateful. Lady Upperton was right.
She should marry him. But she wasn’t sure that was the only thing she wanted.