“You’re not a modern man at all, Guy,” she snapped. “You have the most outdated ideas. You’re not even that old to be so old-fashioned.”

His expression darkened and there was an unmistakably dangerous spark in his eyes. His voice was frigid as he said, “You’re on very thin ice, my dear. I suggest you take a step back from whatever line you’re about to cross.”

Petra felt suddenly cold. She turned away and went into her own dressing room, carefully leaving the door slightly ajar, unwilling to exhibit a display of anger that could have been accused of childishness by slamming it as she wanted to. She sat down on the daybed fighting with her fury. Somehow these two bones of contention were connected. His opposition to the WSPU and his outdated desire to see her constricted, constrained, dominated by the whalebone prison of a corset.

How could he possibly want that? She heard the bedroom door close and waited a few more minutes before venturing from the dressing room. The bedroom was empty. Petra began to pace the room, muttering to herself as she gave her outrage free rein in the safety of solitude. It was absurd that they should be fighting over such fundamental issues now. The time for that was before they got married, not after. She had known what he was like after all. Why had she been so blind to the real dangers of his naturally controlling instincts? She had blithely thought she could manage them . . . manage Guy.

And that was a piece of idiotic arrogance, she thought. Guy wasn’t manageable. She’d assumed she’d be able to work around any truly impossible beliefs and behavior and that somehow love and lust together would lift them above any mundane differences of opinion and belief. But these issues were far from mundane, they were essential to what she believed and the only way she could honestly live her life.

After five minutes her pace slowed and her anger died, but it was replaced by a fierce desire to convince Guy that he could not order her life as he pleased. An up and down fight wasn’t the answer, she wouldn’t win it. Neither would he, but the damage to their marriage could be irreparable. And it certainly couldn’t be allowed to fall apart because of a corset.

Except of course that the whole corset business was merely a symptom of what was really the issue. Guy’s assumptions about a husband’s prerogatives. It was the first time she’d heard anything about those. She’d certainly never heard Diana or Fenella discuss them. And then she remembered what Elinor had told her. Presumably Guy’s father had had his own ideas on the subject and had imparted them to his son. Confrontation was definitely not the way to get her own views across.