“Ah.” The smile died in his eyes and he turned away from the bed. “I don’t wish to spoil our present amity so if you don’t mind I’ll decline to answer that.” He walked to the bathroom.

Petra’s unease flared anew. She frowned at his retreating back and decided to bite the bullet. “Does it have anything to do with the WSPU?”

For answer he gave her only the sound of running water. They couldn’t go on tiptoeing around the subject. Last night, he had openly declared his opposition to women’s suffrage and had all but forbidden her maid from participating, but nothing definitive had been said. It was clear as day now that any open discussion would be acrimonious and Petra couldn’t decide whether she was ready for that or not.

She drank her tea, considering her next move. There were men who supported the idea of enfranchising women. There were men who marched with the suffragists. Surely, given time and calm tempers she could get Guy at least to see why it meant so much to women like her. Surely they could agree to disagree on something so vital.

Guy came back into the bedroom and went directly into his dressing room. Petra got out of bed and began to pick up her discarded clothing from the previous evening. Usually she would have rung for Dottie, who would have brought her tea and tidied up the bedroom, but she thought it unwise for Guy and Dottie to be maneuvering around each other at the moment. She shook out her crumpled stockings, laying them over an ottoman, following them with the rest of her undergarments.

“Do you never wear a corset?” Guy asked suddenly, appearing from the dressing room, knotting a tie at his throat.

Petra looked down at the heap of underclothes on the ottoman and then up at him in surprise. “No, of course not. Why are you asking this now? You’ve never mentioned it before.”

“It didn’t seem appropriate to express a preference on your choice of undergarments before I gained a husband’s prerogatives,” he said.

“And dictating whether I wear a corset or not is a husband’s prerogative?” she asked, momentarily dumbfounded.

He shrugged. “Not dictating, no, of course not. But, as I said, expressing a preference.”

Petra stared at him, astonished. “Do you know what such constriction does to one’s insides?”

“I know what it does to a woman’s outsides,” he commented with a smile that she found infuriating. “And I have to say, my dear, that in general I approve.”

The image of Clothilde Delmont’s elegant hourglass shape popped unbidden into Petra’s head. Every inch of the woman was molded by a corset, the outthrust shelf of her bosom, the minute, nipped waist, the curve and projection of her hips and rear, all designed to draw the predatory male eye, a tantalizing feast put on for his delectation.