“I don’t know.” He tried to consider the question rationally, but he knew his ability to be rational could not be trusted, not when it came to her. “I was raised to believe it a sin, as I’m sure you were. More importantly, most other people think it is—and that goes straight to the heart of it. We are both unmarried. In everyone else’s eyes—if not our own—an affair between us is fornication, and unspeakably immoral.”
“When you touched me, Henry, I did not feel immoral.” She looked at him, her face softened and lovely, calling to the devil inside him.
He persisted, as much to remind himself as to explain to her. “The consequences would be dire, especially for you. You’ve been accepted into society through your grandfather, and if anyone found out we were intimate, you would instantly become soiled goods. You would come to bitterly regret it, and I would hate that—”
“I would not,” she interrupted. “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I could ever regret a love affair with you, Henry.”
The tenderness in her voice was almost his undoing, and he worked to push her further away before he gave in to this unspeakable idea. “Such lofty sentiments are easy to say, but what of your family? What happens when the world finds out, you are disgraced, and your family is disgraced along with you? What happens when your competitors splash your ruined name across their papers and discuss our sordid affair with relish? Do you think they wouldn’t?”
“Well, of course we’d have to be extremely careful! I shouldn’t like anyone to find out, for Clara’s sake. And for yours.”
“But not for your own?”
She smiled, as if her own ruin was a trivial concern. “Society isn’t going to accept me either way, Henry. These two weeks have been more enjoyable than I had ever thought they would be, granted, but this sort of thing can’t last, not for me. I run a scandal sheet newspaper. I have a career. I am a suffragist. How long do you think it will be before Ellesmere finds out I have no intention of giving up these things or my radical views? Clara will be all right. He’s taken a shine to her, and she can still benefit from his good will and that of your family, regardless of the outrageous things I do.”
“I’m not sure how much use my family will be in regard to protecting your sister once Mama marries her Italian. But of course, we would do what we could for both of you.”
“As I said, it’s wasted on me. Society, I fear, will never accept me, regardless of whether anything happens between us or not.”
“That doesn’t have to be the case. As we discussed before, you’d have to avoid flaunting your profession, and you’d have to soften your views, but—”
“Soften them how? By not doing work I love? By abandoning a cause I believe in? I won’t, not for you, not for my father, not even for Clara. I am working to form a union with other women to petition for the vote, and when that happens, my competitors, I have no doubt, will take great delight in writing accounts of my unwomanly doings in their papers, especially when I’ve been arrested and the police have dragged me to jail.”
“Oh, God,” he groaned, terribly afraid that prediction might one day come true.
“So you see? I fear condemnation and ruin are inevitable for me, one way or another, and I do not want to miss this chance with you in order to avoid what is inevitable. Such an association between us is also a risk for you, however, so if you . . .” She paused, looking suddenly uncertain. “If you don’t want me under those conditions, I would understand.”
Not want her? God, that she could think such a thing, even for a moment. Didn’t she know by now he’d crawl to the devil on his belly in order to have his way with her? But it wasn’t only about him and what he wanted. He knew that well enough. He forced himself to remain on honorable ground.
“There are different kinds of ruin, Irene.” He paused, considering how best to say it, but there was no delicate way to conduct an indelicate conversation. “Even if we are discreet, even if can conceal our affair from all prying eyes—which is difficult enough—there is always the possibility of a baby to consider. At that point, discretion goes to the wall.”
She blushed again, and he hoped perhaps he was finally making her see sense, but her next words told him otherwise. “Yes, well . . . ahem . . . I’ve already thought of that.”
He was never, he decided, going to understand this woman. That fact, alas, did not dim his desire for her in the slightest degree. “You have?”
She gave him a look of reproach. “Well, really, Henry, I may advocate following one’s passions, but I’m not an idiot.”
“Of course,” he agreed at once, not knowing what else to say. “But you are an advocate of free love, apparently. What of the love children that accompany it?”
“Well, as we’ve been discussing, I do think people ought to be free to love whom they choose, as long as it truly is a choice by both parties and neither are already married to someone else.”
Despite the damnable circumstances, he couldn’t help a laugh. “You realize your view on this is completely opposite that of society? Among my set it’s perfectly all right for married people to have affairs, just not the unmarried people.”
“All the more reason your set has its priorities completely backwards. But as to children, no, given society’s strictures, bringing children into such a situation would be cruel. For they would be illegitimate and condemned for what is not their fault.”
“And, therefore . . . ?”
“I seem to recall at the last suffragist meeting I attended, there was mention of . . . of . . .” She stopped, her gaze veering away as she touched a hand self-consciously to the back of her neck. “Ways to . . . umm . . . prevent that . . . ahem . . . particular eventuality.”
Two weeks ago, Henry would have been shocked all out of countenance that a young lady would know about such things, that anyone would tell her about them or that she would be talking about them, especially to him. He’d have been appalled to learn he’d be discussing openly such topics as illegitimate children and free love, or that he would be considering the possibility, even theoretically, of deflowering a woman to whom he was not married. Even with Elena, he’d at least waited until after the wedding to claim that honor. Having an illicit affair with a heretofore innocent, unmarried woman was so far beyond the pale, it was unconscionable. But his conscience, he knew, was weak as water where this particular woman was concerned. As for her, he was coming to accept that Irene was a law unto herself. She had a way of blowing all his notions of proper behavior to bits. Rather like dynamite.
Perhaps he was suffering from some form of shell-shock as a result, because his brain was not willing him to slam down this topic and make his body walk out the door. And since he was well past the point of refusing to discuss it altogether, there was no point in dancing around what she meant with the use of silly euphemisms. In for a penny, in for a pound. “You are talking of prophylactics,” he said bluntly. “Granted, they prevent pregnancy as well as disease, but they are also illegal. You know that, surely?”
“Well, yes. Which is why you’d have to be the one to procure them. You’re a duke. The police would never arrest you.”
That, he was forced to admit, was true. “You seem to have given this a great deal of thought,” he said slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “I have. Oh, Henry, you said yourself it’s proving impossible for you to stay away from me, and you must know that I am finding it every bit as hard to stay away from you.”
