Page 42 of Highland Jewel
“Stop.” She whirled and glared at her brother-in-law. “Stop this right now. Spare me your lecture. I can’t bear it!”
“You’ll not speak to me like that.”
“Like what?” she cried, moving to the desk. Anger rose like a phoenix from her grief. “What kind of doctor are you? Are you completely blind to suffering?”
He looked as if she’d slapped him. He recovered quickly, though, and his eyes narrowed. “I have notime to listen to the dramatic ranting of a willful young woman who thinks she should be at the center of everyone’s attention.”
“If you only knew me, you’d never think so ill of me.”
“I know you. You’ve lived beneath my roof for six years.”
“Six years of living in a house where I receive less respect than the dirt beneath your feet. Six years of callous indifference to whether I am alive or dead.” She planted her hands on the desk, and the words burst out of her. “You know nothing, Dr. Drummond. Nothing about me. Nothing about that man who just left us.”
“You wear your self-indulgent air of injury well, I must say,” he snapped. “But I told you that I’ll not allow you to see Lieutenant Campbell. And yet here he is, in my own drawing room, in spite of my expressed wishes. If you only had half the wit that your sister has, you’d see that bringing him here… that bringing him here…”
“Endangers you? Endangers the entire family? Endangers the men who come to this house every night through the kitchen?”
“Keep your voice down. What do you know of my business?”
“I knoweverythingabout you. Your involvement in the reform movement. I know who the men are that come here. I can tell you every one of their names. I know who these poor souls are that are carried into this house through the garden door to be tended to after being interrogated.”
“This is not a game. Which of your foolish friends have you told?” He grew pale. “Have you breathed even one word of this to that man? So help me God, if this—”
“You see? You know nothing.” She slapped her hand on the table. “You don’t know who I am. Or what I do.You don’t even know that I stood on that same platform with your precious weavers. Ispokeat the rally in the Grassmarket. You don’t even know that we’re allies in this cause.”
He stared at her, suddenly at a loss for words.
“You will never again talk down to me or tell me that what I say is dramatic ranting. You arenotthe only one who sees and recognizes injustice. You arenotthe only one who acts against it. I have been out there in the streets, promoting the same reforms that you and your friends talk about here in your shuttered office.”
For a long moment, he gaped at her. Maisie thought he’d forgotten how to speak.
“Who are you?” Archibald shook his head, a perplexed look on his face.
Maisie knew this was the time to unload the weight that threatened to crush her, heart and soul.
“The Female Reform Society in Edinburgh,” she continued. “Lieutenant Campbell’s sister, Fiona Johnston, and I founded that society here. We now have more than four hundred members, and we’re growing. And don’t you dare think or insinuate that what I do or what I fight for is insignificant.”
Anger had fired up the blood in her veins. The tears threatened to fall, but she wouldn’t allow them. Not while she was in this room. Maisie marched toward the door, but her heart was broken. Finally, she’d told him the truth of what she’d been doing, but it was only a half-truth now, after what happened to Fiona.
“Wait. Speak to me.” Archibald’s voice made her pause.
Maisie wanted to keep going. She wanted to tell him that whatever he had to say, it was too late. But a sliver of hope edged into her. Perhaps he could help. Archibald Drummond had been an activist for all of his adult life.He had to have a clear view of the dangers and how to survive them. His fellow reformers had been taken and held. He knew what to expect. Perhaps he had some idea of what to do now. Perhaps, she thought, he had connections that could be of help to Fiona.
She slowly turned around and pressed her back to the door. Archibald’s face showed a change in him. His eyes were wide open. He looked like a man who’d just woken up after a long sleep.
“How long have you been involved in this?”
“Quite a while.” Maisie told him everything, about the rallies, about her writing, about her belief that women needed to be represented and enfranchised with the vote. “I attended my first protest when I was sixteen. It was on Glasgow Green.”
“Wait.Itook you to Glasgow that week. You and Isabella and Morrigan were with me. I told you all to stay at the inn and not leave.”
She shrugged. “A great many people were heading in the direction of the protest. I had to go.”
“Forty thousand of them.”
“They were demanding a more representative government. An end to the Corn Laws.”
“It was the first time we’d really organized the handloom weavers there. They showed up in large numbers.”
