“Your job’s always safe, Dottie,” Petra said. But she knew what the maid meant. Working-class supporters of the cause were particularly vulnerable if their support became known to their employers, who were more likely to be against the idea of women’s suffrage than in favor of it. Petra wasn’t even sure where her mother stood on the subject, or indeed her father. Her best guess was that they were probably totally indifferent to the whole issue. Politics had never engaged either of them. Their only son’s political aspirations were a puzzle and when Joth was elected to Parliament they had offered bemused congratulations, thrown a dinner party in his honor, and as far as Petra knew never mentioned the matter again.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

“Interesting choice of footwear, darling,” Diana declared as she entered the small parlor in Brook Street that Petra had appropriated as her own.

Petra laughed, extending a leg and wriggling her toes in the soft furry slippers. “My feet need coddling,” she explained. “I abused them badly last evening.”

“Oh, tell me more.” Diana, sensing a good story, cast aside her straw hat and gloves and took a seat in a deep armchair opposite the sofa where Petra sat.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Petra said ruefully. She reached behind her for the bellpull on the wall beside the fireplace. “Let’s get coffee.”

Fenella arrived with the parlor maid and the coffee. She too looked askance at her friend’s slippers.

“Thank you, Mary. Leave the tray here and I’ll pour,” Petra instructed the maid. “Well, here’s the story of my stubborn idiocy,” she said, taking up the silver pot and pouring a fragrant stream into the three cups.

“I suppose, if Guy hadn’t inserted himself so autocratically into the situation, I would have hailed a cab sooner,” she finished. “And if he hadn’t forced me into the cab I probably would never have accused him of lack of chivalry and opened that whole can of worms.”

“Are you sorry you did?” Fenella asked, leaning forward to refill her cup.

Petra shook her head. “Not really.” She had told most of the truth of the previous evening’s events, but not quite all. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss her inconvenient physical reaction to the baron’s kiss and the host of sensual memories it had evoked. “It’s actually a relief to have let it go finally. It was a rancid resentment that I’d been holding for too long.”

“Mmm,” Diana murmured. “So you’ve given up thoughts of revenge?”

“Not exactly,” Petra confessed. “But it doesn’t feel so grimly vengeful. I just feel like giving him a taste of his own medicine, but more as a game rather than something deadly serious. If you see what I mean.”

“Absolutely,” Fenella said. “And a little gentle payback seems a much healthier plan, rather than a full-blown Shakespearean vengeance.”