Work Text:
Catherine pinned her hat in place while explaining to Mrs Atkinson, one of her fellow suffragists, what she had covered already and that she was taking the proof copy of the pamphlet home to work on later. She then pulled on her gloves and buttoned them up with a neat snap, ready to face the bracing air outside.
"Well, we all knew how it would be," said another of her colleagues beside her, drawing in her breath and giving a mocking shake of her head. "No good could come of marrying a man like Sir Robert Morton. This case of his takes precedence over our affairs now, does it?"
"By no means. Simply that you have no further need of me today, and I can finish proof-reading quite as easily at home as here," Catherine said. "And the morning papers didn't seem to hold out much hope of a favourable verdict for Lord Hacksworth."
"Serve the rotten old bastard right, if you'll pardon my French," chimed in Polly from behind her.
Catherine turned to face the door. She raised her head. "Perhaps, but it would not, in this instance, be justice."
Polly threw a knowing look at Mrs Atkinson. "Oh? Because Sir Robert swears he is innocent?"
"Yes," said Catherine, a faint smile haunting her face. "Because Sir Robert says he is innocent of this crime, with what I know to be very good reason. After all, even the most prickly old peer should have a fair trial, the same as the rest of us. That is rather the point."
It wasn't that Catherine needed to be home at a case's end—she ran a very competent household and her staff were perfectly capable of ensuring that suitable support and sustenance was available to a gentleman not likely to demand it, or to make any fuss on such occasions. Still, when particularly trying cases like this one came to an end, she preferred to be there if she could.
She headed along the street at her usual brisk pace, case in hand, stopping only to pick up the latest newspaper with the verdict blazoned across the headlines—LIBERAL PEER FOUND GUILTY.
"Oh dear," she said, and folded it up. Lord Hacksworth was certainly curmudgeonly, sour-tempered, and not at all enlightened on women's issues. He had bought his peerage, offended at least two-thirds of his family, and worked his way through three secretaries in the last year, but he was also seventy-three, decidedly unwell and in a great deal of pain—and unfortunately for the convenience of everyone—not guilty of fraud and embezzlement.
Once safely in through the front door and able to settle herself down in the rather astoundingly elegant drawing room that was now her own domain, a closer examination of the paper revealed that at least two of the charges against him had been dropped, thanks to the defence. She sighed. Lord Hacksworth had been his own worst enemy in the witness box and just about everywhere else possible, and there it was.
By the time Sir Robert returned, Catherine was busy, frowning over papers that were sprawled over the low table and eating an apple. She balanced its remnant core delicately on a mat as she heard the door shut.
"Might there be grounds for an appeal?" she asked without looking up.
"It is possible." Robert walked across the room to stand beside her. He glanced over her shoulder. "Good Lord," he said, when he caught a glimpse of some of the text. "Is this a plot to bring down the government?"
Catherine gathered up the papers into a neat pile in one, smooth, practised movement, and raised her head. He bent down to kiss her cheek. She caught briefly at his hand, letting his fingers slide out of hers. "Only a pamphlet. Nothing too seditious, darling." She frowned at the topmost sheet and then crossed out a line with a red pencil.
"I'm glad to hear it. Still, it was a bad business, today. Voss was in fine form for the prosecution and I—it seems—was not. However, the judge was at least willing to be lenient as regards the sentence—on account of his age and condition."
"And no doubt his title."
"And very possibly his title."
A smile passed between them, and he moved around the sofa to sit beside her, closer than was good for her working draft of the pamphlet. She deposited it back on the table.
"I'm sorry. Am I disturbing you?"
Catherine met his gaze. "Not in the least. Really, wrestling with any more of Winifred Aylesbury's wild prose and even wilder spelling can happily wait until later. Disturb me all you wish."
"With pleasure." He broke into a full smile, warmth suffusing his face and put an arm around her.
Catherine frowned, her attention on loosening his tie and starched collar. "There."
Of course, it could hardly count as a good deed when one also benefitted from it so thoroughly, but one could not have everything—and Catherine, since her marriage, had considerably more than any one person could need already.
It was not Sir Robert's habit to visit the West London Women's Suffrage Association's headquarters in person. The lady who greeted him when he entered did so politely, but raised her eyebrows nevertheless, before depositing him to wait for his wife in an excessively cramped and stuffy office. He glanced around it and wondered if perhaps it was merely a stationery cupboard. It hardly seemed a fit space in which to expect anyone to work.
The woman had left the door open and he could hear her calling for Catherine, so he merely contented himself with observing a poster on the wall which laid out the advantages of allowing women's suffrage, even though he was by now intimately familiar which each point.
He heard Catherine's brisk steps approaching along the corridor several moments before she arrived in the doorway. "It is you," she said, rather breathlessly. "Polly said, but I—hoped not."
"Yes," he agreed, not at all perturbed by this unwifely statement. She knew as well as he did what the most logical explanation was for his being here when he had expected to be in the Commons all afternoon.
Catherine slipped inside and closed the door, leaning against it. She met his gaze. "It is to be war, then?"
He nodded.
"Well," she said, absorbing the information. She was pale, but gave no other outward sign of distress. "We knew."
"I must return, I'm afraid, although there is little question about the outcome now." He knew what the implications were, not only for the country, but for Catherine's family. Her younger brother was in the Territorials, and her father's health was fragile enough that he ought not to be put under any further strain or anxiety.
Catherine drew herself up. "Will it be very bad?"
They had, several times over the past few weeks, discussed the international situation, and what might happen in the event of a modern war—the warning of the difficulties of the Boer War in particular. "It will be war," he said. "Beyond that, none of us can say. Let us not fear the worst yet."
"Yes, of course." Catherine moved nearer. "You will be pleased to know that we have been deciding on what measures we can take to support the war effort. All very patriotic."
"How novel that must be for you."
"I don't consider our usual activities at all unpatriotic," she told him, with a brief flare of her usual spirit. "What could be more patriotic than trying to help the nation improve itself?"
Sir Robert grasped her hand. "I should not have left, perhaps, but my presence or absence will make little difference at this point and I thought it best to let you know."
"Yes," said Catherine. She squeezed his hand in return and then slipped her fingers free, straightening his coat—a quite unnecessary gesture, but not one to which he made any objection.
He hesitated. "Will you go to your parents?"
"Would you mind?"
"How could I?" He kissed her cheek, then briefly took both of hands in his. "I shall see you afterwards—or, if the session does not go on too late, I could join you there. If I would not be intruding?"
Catherine lapsed into a half-smile. "Yes. Do," she said. "Of course you must. How absurd to think of it as an intrusion, darling. It would be nothing of the kind."
"Quite," he agreed, smiling back at her. "Then I shall join you as soon as I can."
She ushered him out of the box-like room and back down the corridor. "Robert," she said, as the reached the outer door. "Thank you."
Caught in the act of replacing his hat on his head, he tipped it to her before he departed to rejoin far less pleasant conversations in rather more spacious halls of power.