Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

Ned shut his mouth. Harcroft was overset. Unhappy. It was inevitable that he feel a bit embittered toward womankind, under the circumstances.

But Harcroft was looking at him with a disbelieving glower. “Surely you don’t believe that women deserve more rights? That they are competent to handle men’s affairs?”

Ned’s father had died in a hunting accident. His mother had raised him practically on her own—choosing his tutors, making sure that he learned the fundamentals of hunting and boxing from uncles and cousins, and the principles of estate management from his grandfather. In his later youth, he’d watched Jenny, the marchioness, handle situations that would have brought lesser men to their knees. Ned knew the prevailing sentiment was that women needed to be protected from the world, but in his personal life, the women he’d known most closely hadn’t had much male protection. They’d still triumphed.

Perhaps that was why he found it difficult to become exercised, as many of his compatriots did, at the thought of women gaining traditionally male prerogatives. In his life, women had always had those prerogatives.

“If you’re worried about how Lady Harcroft will fare on her own,” he suggested gently, “it’s been my experience that women are capable of more than we give them credit for. I am sure she might surprise you with what she has done.”

But Harcroft appeared not to hear what Ned said. Instead, he smacked his fist into his hand. “In fact,” he said, “we should just declare them incompetent as a rule—incompetent to own property, to divest themselves of it, to testify in court against the men who protect them, to avail themselves of any sort of divorce.”

“Married women already can’t own property at law,” Ned said. “They already can’t testify in court against their husbands. And divorce is available to married women only in extreme cases of spousal cruelty.”

Harcroft coughed gently. “Listen to yourself. Don’t tell me you’re a follower of Bentham. How is it that you can recite that pale litany of female complaints?”

Those same points had all been listed in the newspapers, the subject of a handful of political discussions. Ned shook his head wearily.

“Yes,” Harcroft said bitterly. “I should like to see all women declared feeble-minded, as a matter of principle. Then they wouldn’t even be able to dispose of property. They wouldn’t be able to threaten to testify in court at all. They wouldn’t ever leave their husbands, because there would be no recourse for them if they did.”

Ned couldn’t take the sentiment seriously. That spiteful mouthful was just bitter emotion. Harcroft would have warmer feelings, no doubt, once he’d recovered his wife.

He’d met Lady Harcroft shortly after her marriage. She’d been married on the young side of things—at fifteen, if he recalled correctly. She had always seemed a small, timid soul—ready to jump at a single word uttered by her husband, devoted to his comfort—except for the days when she took to her bed with whatever illness afflicted her.

She had often been ill.

But when she had been well, she had fawned over her husband. Harcroft had only to think of crooking his finger, and she would respond. Once her husband had her safely back, he would remember how well his wife looked after his comfort.

But looking at the man—sitting in a chair, staring at the map as if he could flush his wife from her hiding spot with the intensity of his gaze—Ned couldn’t quite make himself believe it. No, he was missing something. He felt as if he’d added columns and columns of numbers, and come up with an answer that he knew must be incorrect.

If only he could ferret out the error.

“Have you had the honor of meeting my mother?” Ned asked gently. “Or the Marchioness of Blakely?” Ned would have added his own wife, if he hadn’t already known that Harcroft was set against the woman. “Neither of them are precisely examples of feeble-mindedness.”

“Perhaps.” Harcroft waved this attempt at reason away. “Perhaps. Well. I’m to bed.”

Ned waved him off and studied the map in front of him. That sense of unease remained even after Harcroft had taken himself off. In the dim light, the pencil marks seemed child’s sketches, failing to capture some basic truth of reality. The numbers still didn’t cast up into a proper sum in his head. Two and two came together, but they only managed to whisper dark intimations amongst themselves, hinting at the possibility of a distant four.

He gave up trying to make sense of it all when his head began to ache.