Page 121 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

‘Go home where you belong!’

The two women stood up together, and in chorus began to shout, ‘Votes for women!’

And now the back of the hall erupted. The women were grabbed. They struggled, and fighting broke out behind them, with oaths to turn the air blue. Stewards ran down the aisle again, someone fetched in the policeman from the door outside, and the women were dragged bodily away, still shouting, their words quite unheard in the din. One had her hat knocked off, and her hair half pulled down; the other’s sleeve was torn almost from her coat, and Nina could see even from this distance that there was a bruise on the side of her face.

‘What will happen to them?’ she asked Mawes anxiously. ‘Those men will hurt them! Can’t we do something?’

‘There’ll be more policemen outside,’ Mawes said, still drawing madly. ‘They’ll stop them being badly hurt. They’ll be arrested and taken to the police station.’

‘Arrested for what?’ Nina asked. ‘They weren’t the ones causing the trouble.’

‘Breach of the peace, probably. Or obstruction,’ said Mawes. ‘That’s what they usually get charged with.’

‘But it’s not fair!’ Nina cried again. ‘They only wanted to ask a question.’

He looked at her with a faint smile. ‘Very little in life is fair, Nina my dear.’ He flipped his pad closed. ‘Shall we try to leave, before the mob gets moving?’

‘But why can’t women have the vote?’ Nina asked.

‘Oh dear,’ said Isabel, ‘that’s such a large question. Most women don’t want to vote, you know. They don’t understand politics and they’re happy to leave it to their husbands.’

‘You mean,’ said Lepida, ‘that it’s a man’s club and the men don’t want to let women in. They want to keep all the fun for themselves.’

‘It didn’t look much like fun in there,’ Nina said.

‘Exactly,’ said Mawes. ‘It’s a rough business, and any decent man would want to keep the women he loves out of it. And there’s another reason, of course,’ he added.

‘What’s that?’ Nina asked.

‘There are actually more women than men in the country,’ said Mawes. ‘So if they had the vote, they’d outvote us every time. What man could accept that?’

Lady Stainton’s eyes flashed, her nostrils flared. ‘Absolutely not!’ she said.

Kitty wilted. It had taken her a long time to pluck up the courage to speak to her mother-in-law about making a communicating door, and the courage was too newly found to stand up to opposition, particularly when generated by centuries of privilege and a lifetime of being in the right. ‘I – I’m sorry.’ she stammered.

‘Staintons have lived here for hundreds of years,’ said Lady Stainton, icily. ‘Yet what they have always found satisfactory, you have the temerity to object to. A girl barely out of the schoolroom! Not here five minutes and you want to tear the house down around our ears.’

‘Oh, no, it’s a lovely house,’ Kitty faltered. ‘I only thought—’

‘You did not think at all, that’s the trouble,’ said Lady Stainton. ‘I suggest you have the modesty to wait a few years before you begin dictating to your elders and betters.’

‘But—’

‘I will hear no more about it,’ Lady Stainton said, and left the room, ending any possibility of argument.

There was a derelict barn over the crown of the hill, behind the woods, its roof too much fallen in to be useful for storage. As Rachel rode up to it, Victor came out, and stood waiting for her. He caught the rein, and Daystar threw up his head, knowing an inexperienced hand when he felt one. Rachel wished Victor wouldn’t do it, but she knew he thought he was being helpful. She halted, untangled her leg, and let him jump her down.

‘No-one about,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen anyone since I started up the hill.’

She led Daystar into the barn, where Victor’s bicycle was leaning against the wall. There was an old ring and a bit of rope, and when she had tied Daystar and loosened his girths, she was free to turn her attention to Victor. The first thing was kissing. It was a new discovery for her – they had only done it for the first time at their previous meeting a week ago – and it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. They stood for ages, mouths pressed together, while Daystar fidgeted about, scraped the ground with a hoof, sneezed, shook himself, making various bits of harness jingle. When they finally stopped for breath, Victor said, ‘I brought a rug to sit on,’ and took her out through the back of the barn to where someone had assembled a heap of stones at one time, perhaps meaning to effect repairs. He had rearranged them a little, and spread the rug over the pile, so that it was like a sort of sofa, with an unbroken bit of barn wall behind it for a back.

They sat, and Victor took possession of her hand. ‘You got away all right, then?’

‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘I had to hang around a bit. That horrid James was outside, lurking about. I had to wait until he went in.’

‘James?’

‘He was first footman, now he’s my brother’s valet.’