Page 33 of A Daring Pursuit

Sadly, one couldn’t outrun one’s guilt.

Geneva escaped to her bedchamber and tugged off the lovely white kid gloves and tossed them on a chair. Oh, no. She’d forgotten to leave them with the footman like a true lady. Another breach of etiquette in the face of many. Her tears spilled over even knowing it did no good to brood over the lack of cultivated behavior. What a hopeless case she was. Raising her head, Geneva moved to the vanity with sluggish steps. She took a handkerchief and dried her tears. What a colossal fool she was.

Blast, it was cold. The chill in the chamber had her clutching the hooded spencer tighter about her, and she realized the fire was just embers, presumably because she’d slept away from thecastle the night before. She took up a poker and stirred the fire, tossing on more fuel. The room was too cold for her to remove her spencer.

She paced the room slowly. Partly to keep warm and partly to pull her thoughts together. In the end, she considered, the Clandestine Sapphire Society stood for those who had no voice. For women, for children, for education, the poor, the abused. That wouldneverchange. Not as long as she remained on this earth and was a viable member of the population. She would never, ever give up the fight the CSS stood for.

Geneva strode to the escritoire in the corner of the room and lowered the desk portion. She sat in the hard chair and pulled out the latest article for Hannah. Anything was better than contemplating Lord Westbrook’s disappointment in her. Perhaps worse: Miss Hale’s scathing words, suggesting Geneva would only qualify as a mistress to a man such as Noah Oshea.

The thought of putting herself in such a position sickened her—the lack of self-respect, the disdain of her friends. Her entire life, she’d fought to prove her own worth, from Mrs. Cornett’s thoughtless remarks on a young girl’s desire to read to exacting deference among her peers at Miss Greensley’s.

Even in those days, when the excessively and unduly indulged ladies had mocked and treated her atrociously unfair all because she hadn’t been born and bred in the illustrious confines of Mayfair, Geneva had still managed to find solace in her aspirations and penning them to paper. Those moments of solitude, of which there were many, had been where her dreams of equality for women and those of lesser fortune due only to one’s circumstances had taken root.

That same need to lose herself in her cause raced through her.

She uncapped the inkwell, yanked out a sheet of foolscap, took up her steel nib pen, and tapped it against her lips. Therewere so many issues that failed the women, their children, and the poor, she hardly knew where to begin. But this was her life’s blood.

After a moment, she set her pen to the paper.

To the Women of England (and men, if you dare to listen): When women are entombed in the vortex of poverty and squalor, the mothers of all children, doomed in cycles of economic dependence and exploitation, are denied your right to work, your right to earn a fair wage, and your ability to participate in the greatest economy in the world, you do all women, in fact, a grave injustice. Women, you are undervalued and underpaid for your labor. Women, you are relegated to menial and low-paying positions, denied opportunities to care for your families. This hurts and limits the entirety of economic welfare for all. Therefore, I implore all of you: Demand equal pay for equal work. Insist and create pathways presented to you for the same economic empowerment afforded to men. We. Women. We carry, in our wombs, the future of the world. Without us, men would be left to pound their chests or one another, knowing the end of their world was upon—

Someone tapped at the open door, startling Geneva from her fierce scribblings.

“Miss Wimbley?”

She swallowed a groan. “Mr. Oshea.” She stood so quickly, the chair toppled over. “This is my bedchamber, sir.”

He appeared in the arch holding her bags, a wolfish smile tilting his lips.

A fluttering sensation in her stomach left her wondering if she’d ingested something disagreeable. The chill abated and the chamber grew unbearably warm.

His gaze surveyed her small abode that sent another quivering sensation through her.

“So it is,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to being brushed off in my own home.”

With a prim sniff, she tipped her chin up, her nose in the air, not unlike an expression she’d often observed in Miss Hale. “You should have sent a footman.”

Mr. Oshea dropped the bags on her bed then strolled over and set her chair aright. He turned a grin on her that muddled her ridiculous brain, solidifying the notion of turning it over to scientists for studying after her time expired on this earth. “They are inundated with the flood of arrivals,” he said.

She couldn’t seem to pull her gaze from his curved lips. Her fingertips tingled—

“Miss Wimbley?”

Startled, she glanced down, surprised to find she clutched her pen so tightly, it dug into her fingers. Carefully, she turned and set it aside.

But once the eye contact between them had severed, Miss Hale’s words roared back.I suggested he take you as his mistress.

Pride and fury curled through Geneva. She would rather die in the gutter than become any man’s mistress. She gave him a wary look. “What is it you require, sir?”

He chose to ignore her question. “You’re still wearing your cloak?”

Irritation flooded her. “What has that to do with anything? In case you’ve forgotten, I was not here last night and the fire was not tended.” She marched to the small wardrobe, shucked the spencer, and hung it on a peg.

“Why are you really here, Miss Wimbley?”

“It’s my chamber.” Her impatience blasted through the room. “For the duration of my stay, leastways,” she muttered under her breath.

“You have the most interesting ability to misinterpret a question,” he returned. “You said you were here to take back what my father stole from you. What exactly did you mean? What did he steal?”

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