Robin Paige - Death in Hyde Park

But what was she to do when he-as she knew he would-began to make love to her? Should she tell him she had found the photograph, and that it had changed the way she felt about him? Or push him away, letting him think what he might? Or simply leave, without explanation?

She’d told him, of course, that very first evening, when he’d come back with fish and chips and tea for their supper. She was too forthright, too honest and candid, to do anything else. For a moment he’d stared at her, his eyes dark, his lower lip thrusting sulkily, and then he’d laughed, a short, hard laugh that felt almost like a slap.

“Well, you’re a straight-shooter,” he said. “I’ll give you that, damn it.” He turned away from her and flung himself on his bed. “I don’t love her, you know,” he said gruffly. “She understood that when we got married.”

“Then why in the world did you marry her?” Lottie asked wonderingly. It was a very real question. She could barely imagine marrying someone she thought she loved and accepting the restriction of her freedom that came with it. To marry someone she did not love was unthinkable.

“Because I wanted the restraint laid on me,” Jack said sourly. “I was drifting, and when I’m drifting, it’s hard to write. Bess was solid, solid as a rock. I thought she’d be a weight, holding me down, giving me a rule to live by, imposing some order on my life. And she does,” he added bitterly, half to himself. “Entirely too much.”

His answer almost dumbfounded Lottie. He married because he needed restraint, when marriage seemed to her to be entirely too restraining? Could the man not see that it was his obligation as a human being to restrain himself? And if he felt he was drifting, could he not find some anchor within himself to lay hold of, without looking for it in his wife, whose anchoring, restraining qualities he was bound, sooner or later, to bitterly resent?

But Lottie doubted that he was capable of answering these questions, so she merely shrugged and said, “Well, then, you got what you wanted, didn’t you? A rule to live by. Order in your life.” She could not quite keep the sarcasm out of her tone. “You should be happy.”

“Well, I’m not,” Jack said sulkily. “I want you, Lottie. We’re meant for each other.”

Ignoring the last sentence, with which she reluctantly had to agree, she rose and unfolded the newspaper wrappings from the fish and chips, sniffing appreciatively. “Smells good.” She held out the package. “Here. Have some supper.”

Jack regarded her sullenly. “Bess has a peasant’s mind. She talks of nothing but the baby and the household. No imagination, none at all. She stifles me.”

“No doubt,” Lottie said, putting the package on the table and helping herself to a piece of fish. “But you’re not being very consistent, are you? You want her to be an anchor, but you complain that she holds you down. Right?” In Lottie’s view, it was dishonorable for a man to marry a woman to suit his own purposes and then condemn his wife when she fulfilled the role for which he had chosen her. Adam Gould would never think of doing such a thing.

“You don’t need to be cruel about it,” Jack said. He held out his hand with a seductive smile. “We can be friends, can’t we? Come have a nice cuddle, Lottie.”

“Not that kind of friends,” Lottie said firmly. “And I’ll only stay in this room on your guarantee that there will be no talk of cuddling or love. One word, and I’m out the door. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Jack said in a resigned tone. Then he flashed her a boyish grin. “But I’ll bet a quid you’ll change your mind.”

“Don’t have a quid,” Lottie said.

“I’ll loan it to you.”

“Never a borrower nor a lender be,” Lottie replied smartly, and ignoring his dark look, carried her feast of fish and chips to her own bed, where she made herself comfortable and ate hungrily until every crumb was gone.

In a way that she could not quite describe, Lottie felt relieved, as if the fates had kept her from mistakenly choosing the wrong path, which, once taken, might have led to enormous complications. And so she was able to sleep without difficulty in the same room with this very attractive man, and was easily able to ignore his glance, dark and passionate, which followed her as she moved around. Jack might be as sulky as a scolded child, but Lottie felt easy in herself. She had done what she felt right, without regret, and she was pragmatist enough to put aside what she couldn’t or shouldn’t do and focus instead on what she could.

So when Lottie saw the article on the front page of Freedom on Thursday morning, she began to get a glimmering idea of how she could help Adam, who was now much on her mind. After all, if he had not been at the Clarion to take her to lunch, the police would not have arrested him, so it was up to her to see that, somehow or another, he was rescued.

The article reported that at the request of counsel, the three Anarchists accused of bomb-making had been granted a continuance to the fourth of September, which was a fortnight away. They would be transported from Holloway Prison, where they were being held, to the Old Bailey, where they would stand trial. The article urged all London Anarchists to attend the trial and show, by their presence, their support for their comrades, who, whatever they had done, had done it out of their belief that all governments were oppressive, and that the only path toward freedom was to end the rule of tyranny.

Lottie had, of course, told Jack why she was hiding from the police, and what had happened at the newspaper office, and all about Yuri Messenko and Ivan Kopinski and Pierre Mouffetard and Adam. Now, she thought for a few minutes, shaping her idea. Then she looked over the top of her newspaper. “Listen to this, Jack.”

“I’m working,” Jack replied, around his cigarette.

“Then stop working and listen,” she commanded, and read the article out loud. When she was finished, she put the newspaper down. “Something must be done, Jack,” she said urgently. “Those men are innocent. They must be freed. ”

“Freed?” Jack turned around, a cigarette hanging from his lips. It was warm that morning; the window was open and he was wearing an undershirt that revealed his chiseled muscles-wearing it deliberately, Lottie suspected, hoping that the sight of his masculine torso might tempt her to change her mind. “You mean to infiltrate the jury, I take it,” he remarked sarcastically. “And just how do you reckon to do that?”

Lottie tossed her head impatiently. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way to infiltrate a jury. Our men will be found guilty, of course. I mean to find a way to free them from prison.”

Jack’s blue eyes glinted and he smiled, as if in spite of himself. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re beautiful when you’re passionate?”

She scowled. “Be serious, Jack. This is serious business.”

“Serious? It sure as hell is,” he agreed. He turned around and straddled his chair backward. “I’ve been in jail, and I know. And I’ll tell you, Lottie, it ain’t no easy thing to get a man out of jail, once he’s behind bars.”

“You’ve been in jail?” Lottie put her head on one side, regarding him thoughtfully. Jack had told her-endlessly, it seemed-about his adventures as a seaman, a gold-seeker, and a Socialist, but he had not mentioned jail.

“It happened in the Depression of ’94,” Jack said, launching into what Lottie had come to think of as his storytelling mode. “I was travelin’ with Coxey’s Army, a rabble-rousin’ bunch of the unemployed who marched on Washington to try to get things changed. But I got fed up and deserted when we got to the Mississippi River. Hopped a freight headin’ east. I ended up at Niagara Falls and got one good look at the river before John Law pinched me for vagrancy, along with a couple of other hoboes. They shoved us into a big iron cage and then hauled us off to a courtroom, where the judge gave us thirty days apiece without allowin’ any of us so much as a word in our defense.” Jack’s voice grew hard. “Trial was a farce. I was denied not only my right of trial by jury but my right to plead guilty or not guilty. Got my American blood up, I’ll tell you.”