The Upper Reading Room of the Bod was largely empty, few students were present during term break. None of the usual glances followed her as she steered toward a desk. She sat down quietly and opened the first journal, a freshly sharpened pencil at the ready for note-taking. Opponents of the Cause rarely changed their mind based on facts alone, but when they found just a single fact wrong in a petition, they used it to bash the credibility of the Cause itself. Hours later, she had a pile of notes, and she was parched. She went to the fountain on the floor below. The water was nice and cool in her throat, and she lingered a moment while her mind whirred and shifted recently acquired information around. The writ for restitution was a vile piece of legislation. It claimed lives; apparently, a woman from Suffolk had perished in prison because she had refused to return to her marital home as decreed. Catriona curled her hand, still damp from the water, over her nape. They built women’s colleges far from the ribald town centers and surrounded the dorms with walls that were topped with broken glass, but there were no walls to keep a woman safe in her own home.
Approaching noon, she had a first draft to lobby a generic man of influence:
Dear Sir To the honourable
I’m appealing to you today on the matter of a policy that abjectly affects the safety and dignity of married women in Britain: the Writ for Restitution of Conjugal Rights.
The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878 allows a wife to apply for a legal separation from a physically abusive husband. Nothing demonstrates the necessity for such a law more clearly than The Report on Brutal Assaults, compiled for the Home Office in 1875, which showed that according to court records, over the course of five years, over 6,000 cases of the worst possible offences had been committed against women by their own husbands. This equates to 1,200 cases a year, or over three cases a day, a figure which does not include common assault (which is estimated to be 25 times higher than the figures reported to the Home Office).
However, wives still find their plea for a separation frequently rejected by a magistrate, and the moment a wife takes her fate into her own hands and separates without a legal decree, she is guilty of desertion. Her husband may take out a writ for restitution against her, and a wife forfeits all access to her own children and property if she ignores it and might be made to choose between the gaol or an unsafe home.
Therefore, abolishing the writ for restitution is keeping in spirit with the Matrimonial Causes Act, which you have supported which your noble friends supported . . . It could in fact be considered a necessity for making the act fully operational.
The letter felt concise and factual to her, which meant it was too blunt. She would have to soften it and dress it with a bow; make it appealing to a man’s sense of honor or his vanity so that he would consider saving the damsel instead of becoming defensive on behalf of his entire sex. The prettifying would deplete her more than a whole day of research ever could. Annabelle would have to help her; Annabelle was naturally tactful and too pragmatic to indulge in Weltschmerz.
She left the Bod shortly after noon and went across the street to Blackwell’s to treat herself to a cup of tea and a scone. Her place next to an upper-floor window provided good views over busy Broad Street below. Carts rumbled over cobblestone; people were running errands. A nanny led two children on strings. All of these busy people had a mother somewhere. Her mind drifted to the inevitable, the man who stalked her dreams these days. How would Elias Khoury treat his wife behind closed doors? For the wife’s sake, she hoped he was truly as calm and charming as she had perceived him during her embarrassing carriage episode. Much like the Catholics, Maronites were not allowed to divorce.
She reread her draft while nibbling on the scone. Why did women do it, marry? Pecuniary pressures and the need for respectability drove most of them down the aisle, but there were plenty of independent suffragists who said I do. Look at Lucie. No one was safe. Elissa of Carthage, grandniece of Jezebel, had outfoxed a tyrannical king, founded a city, and ascended to be its queen, only to end herself because her lover had left her—as Virgil recorded: But the queen, long since smitten with a grievous love-pang, feeds the wound with her lifeblood, and is wasted with fire unseen. Oft to her mind rushes back the hero’s valour, oft his glorious stock . . . Rome’s greatest enemy, still obsessing over a cad.
She put her glasses up on her head and rubbed her eyes. She knew why she did it, fall in love. She knew, and annoyingly, it didn’t stop her. She had deciphered the pattern a few years ago, while tutoring Peregrin on hieroglyphs: bright, charming, carefree, if not careless, he had instantly appealed because he embodied something she lacked. People like him danced through life and radiated light, while she carried a dark void inside her. She stayed well away from the edge, but the awareness that her own mind had the potential to swallow her whole never left. A Charles or Alexandra or Peregrin never ran such a risk. There were limits to their depths. At first, she had thought if she peeled back their layers, she’d eventually uncover familiar abysmal complexities, but much like an onion, some people’s layers were the substance, not the cover for a core. She couldn’t help but like it. She’d burn herself on their flame for the promise of some easy warmth. Some closeness. Some fun.
She put down her scone when a grim vision struck her: What if this inclination never went away? What if all the intellectual prowess in the world would never close the void? Forty years from now, she might be an acclaimed professor, but also a perpetually nervous elderly lady who tittered when a young charmer helped her from the carriage . . .
The decision was made very quickly, then. Perhaps she had already made it days ago and she had just been too anxious to give marching orders. She looked at her pocket watch. If she hurried, she might make it back in time for a chess match.
* * *
—
“I’m not certain this is wise,” MacKenzie muttered when they arrived at St. John’s Senior Common Room.
Catriona paused with her hand on the doorknob. “You know what they say, MacKenzie?”
“I’m sure ye’ll tell me.”
“There are three kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey; a stranger comes to town; and a man hunts a whale.”
MacKenzie put on her polite you-are-the-lady-and-I-am-but-a-simple-woman expression.
“Where are we women in this?” Catriona asked. “Women rarely leave town. Our stories tend to begin with the arrival of the stranger.”
“Yer hunting plenty of white whales in yer study,” MacKenzie said under her breath. “There’s yer story, no need for an entanglement with an outlander.”
An entanglement was the opposite of her desires; immunity was the aim.
“We are just playing a game,” she said, and opened the door.
The Senior Common Room was a calm space with dark wood paneling and low-legged leather furniture. The sweetish smell of coal fire and the low murmur of male voices permeated the air. Elias Khoury was the only man she saw. He had chosen a table in a bay window nook and was in the process of setting up opposing armies with practiced efficiency. At her entrance, he looked up. A pang of feral excitement hit her belly. He stood. When she arrived at the table, the corner of his mouth tipped up.
“You have decided to play,” he said, his voice low and husky. His eyes were more green than blue in the soft light. Thinking of him as an experiment helped to hold his gaze, as if someone else was doing it in her place.
“I have,” she said. “Prepare to be checkmated.”
Chapter 9
Lady Catriona surveyed the table he had prepared. “We don’t have a clock.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact, but the nervous blush on her cheekbones stood out like two pink flags. Elias found the contrast very charming.