“None of us have to do it,” Mrs. Bates said. “It would be completely voluntary.”
Voluntary, my foot. Elizabeth saw the fanatic’s gleam in Mrs. Bates’s eye, too. She also saw the disapproval. A true suffragist would gladly starve for the cause. She glanced at Anna and saw only disappointment in her frown.
“Don’t you want to do it, Elizabeth?” Anna looked as if somebody had just told her there was no Santa Claus.
For a few seconds, Elizabeth couldn’t breathe. What was wrong with her? She didn’t care what these women thought of her, so why did their disappointment sting so badly? “It’s not that . . .”
Elizabeth looked back at Mrs. Bates, oddly desperate to get back in her good graces, but Mrs. Bates was already smiling at her. “Oh, I see. Anna, Elizabeth isn’t thinking of herself. She’s thinking of you.”
“Me?” Anna smiled at Elizabeth, too, inordinately pleased about something.
“Yes, and so am I. You’re already painfully thin, my dear. Even just a few days without food could make you quite ill.”
Elizabeth was almost too surprised to take advantage of Mrs. Bates’s mistake.
Almost.
“She’s right,” Elizabeth said. “You shouldn’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”
Anna took Elizabeth’s hand in both of hers. “You are a true friend to be so concerned, but I couldn’t possibly sit by while the rest of you made such a sacrifice.”
“Why not? If we shame them into letting us go, it doesn’t matter if one of us starved or all of us.”
“It matters to me.”
And Elizabeth could see that it did. She turned back to Mrs. Bates. Surely, she could talk sense to Anna. The girl wouldn’t last more than a few days without food.
“You must swear to me that if you become ill, you will start to eat again,” she said instead. Elizabeth wanted to smack her.
Anna smiled sweetly. “Of course.”
She was a much better liar than Warden Whittaker.
? ? ?
Oscar Thornton had dressed carefully this Sunday morning, but not because he was going to church. Going to church was a waste of valuable time. Oh no. He had something much more important to do. He was going to see Miss Betty Perkins this morning. It would be the last time he saw Miss Perkins, and it would be the last time she saw anyone at all, so he’d dressed for the occasion.
Fletcher and Lester would have taken charge of her at the train station down in Virginia, and they would escort her here, to his hotel. Lester’s telegram had estimated what time they would arrive, and when Thornton checked his gold pocket watch, he saw it wouldn’t be long now. His hand trembled a bit with the thrill of anticipation. No one cheated Oscar Thornton and lived to tell the tale.
A woman’s shrill voice raised in protest broke the silence. What the . . . ? He’d told them to keep her quiet. He hurried over and threw open the door. As he’d expected, Lester and Fletcher stood there with a woman between them, but the woman was not Betty Perkins.
“Is this him?” she asked, glaring up at him balefully.
The door across the hall opened and a curious face peered out.
“Get her inside,” Thornton said, standing back so they could enter.
Fletcher gave the woman a shove and she staggered across the threshold. “Hey, watch what you’re doing!” she said.
“Shut up,” Fletcher said.
Thornton closed the door behind them. “Who the hell is this?”
Lester gave him a disgusted look. “Betty Perkins.”
“That’s not—”
“I know, but that’s who they released from the workhouse after we paid the fine.”
The girl was looking around the suite, obviously impressed. “This is all right. I wouldn’t mind staying here myself.”
Thornton turned on Lester, furious. “If you knew it wasn’t her, why did you bring her here?”
“I thought you’d like to hear her story.”
“It’s a good one,” Fletcher added.
Thornton ignored him. He studied the girl with distaste, taking in her garishly red hair, her cheap dress and worn shoes. “All right, young woman, what’s your story?”
“My name is Betty Perkins, and I’m real grateful you got me out of that workhouse.” She tipped her head and batted her eyes in a disgusting attempt at flirtation. “Want me to show you how grateful I am?”
“No.”
This time she blinked her eyes in surprise. “These other two fellows wasn’t so particular.”
“I’m sure they weren’t,” Thornton said, glaring at them. They refused to meet his eye.
“Tell him what you told us, about how you got out,” Lester said.
She sighed, obviously bored with the story. “They’d been coming around for a couple days, calling out for Betty Perkins. They said somebody’d paid her fine and she could go, only nobody ever owned up to being this Betty Perkins.”
Thornton turned to Lester. “Don’t they keep track of who they’ve got locked up there?”
“They told us they didn’t have no Betty Perkins in there. She must’ve used another name when she got arrested.”
“Why didn’t you just go in and look for yourself?”
“They won’t let anybody in to see those women. No visitors at all, not even if we paid.” He said to the girl, “Tell him the rest.”
“So last night, the guard comes around calling for Betty Perkins again, and this girl says to me why don’t I tell them I’m Betty Perkins and they’ll let me go.”
Rage swelled inside him. “What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. Auburn hair, I guess.”
“Blue eyes?”
“I didn’t notice.”
Thornton gestured to Fletcher, who slapped the girl so hard, she fell to her knees.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Why’d you go and do that?” she cried, clutching her face and cringing in terror.
“Blue eyes?” Thornton said.
“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t pay much attention!” She yelped when Fletcher raised his hand again.
“It was her,” Lester said. “She told Sally here to claim she was Betty. Who else could it be?”
Who else indeed? She’d tricked him again.
“Wasn’t no need to hit me,” she said. “I think you broke my jaw.” She felt it gingerly.
For one blissful moment, Thornton considered breaking far more than her jaw, but then common sense prevailed. A hotel was too public a place for that. “Get her out of here,” Thornton said.
“Not so fast,” she said. “They said you’d pay me. I came here and told you what happened, didn’t I?”
“Get rid of her,” Thornton said.
? ? ?
Nearly three full days had passed since O’Brien had sent Gideon back to Washington with the ladies and still no word. Somehow Gideon had expected the case would be heard today, Monday, but if it had been, O’Brien hadn’t seen fit to let them know. Gideon was pacing around the front room of the Woman’s Party headquarters, earning black looks from the handful of women who hadn’t yet left for the day, when Mrs. Young came in.
Gideon rushed to meet her, alarmed at how pale she was. “Are you all right?”
“What? Oh, yes, thank you, Mr. Bates. I . . . I’m just confused.”