“Hear, hear!” he roared, driving back the darkness threatening to steal over him again, and he began passing out pamphlets to the onlookers, who were positively stunned at his presence.
He focused on those shocked faces.
The truth was, a duke was a veritable god amongst the people, and they were all staring, surprised that he had come down amongst them.
Usually, he did go directly from Parliament to his coach, because sometimes he could be mobbed if he was not careful, but here, standing with Beatrice, he felt right.
And so, embracing the change, he passed out more and more pamphlets. He even took up a few of her slogans, using his loudest House of Lords voice.
Eager hands took them and immediately began to read the words, gossiping and chatting with one another.
He found himself chanting, “Rights for ladies! Support rights for ladies!”
Beatrice beamed at him, and that was all the reward he needed.
If ladies were able to attain their rights because of his support, he of course would be thrilled, and he was going to have to do a great deal more than pass out pamphlets to help Beatrice make that happen.
Men were going to stand against him. That note dimmed his pleasure. But he did like seeing the joy upon her face.
That? That was a great thing indeed.
He paused for a moment and looked about. She needed more resources and opportunities to reach more people. Will leaned over to her and said above the bustle and noise, “Perhaps next time you can tell me when you’re going to do this. I can build a stage for you, and you can make speeches.”
She laughed. “That sounds a bit grand.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said honestly. “You would be perfectly capable. I think you would make a tremendous orator.”
“Why thank you, Your Grace,” she said. “I take that as the highest compliment.”
“You had best not start calling me Your Grace now that we are more intimate than ever,” he whispered against her ear.
She flushed red, but then she lifted her chin. “All right, William.”
He burned at the sight of her flushed cheeks. Marriage still felt like a minefield. A negotiation he wasn’t entirely certain of. But this didn’t feel like defeat. This felt like victory.
Clapping his hands together, he declared, “Now, where the devil are more of those pamphlets?”
Chapter Twenty
If it had not been for the fall of night, Beatrice might never have known that she was married.
William was so busy that she scarce saw him from sunup to sundown.
And she, too, was so consumed by all her new tasks and opportunities to further her present causes that he scarce saw her.
She marveled at the fact that they both had such full schedules.
As the Duchess of Blackheath now, she found there was no moment to spare. There was so much to run, and she relished it. She’d bought several large ledgers and had them placed in her office. And in that office were quills, and ink, and more books than she had ever hoped to acquire. She’d spent several hundred pounds on books ranging from poetry, statistics of London populations, philosophy, science, politics, to, of course, Shakespeare.
Yes, her own office.
It was absolutely magnificent.
At her uncle’s house, she’d had a shared library that she’d done most of her work from. But here in William’s expansive townhouse, she had her own suite of rooms, and it was sheer perfection. Here she could scatter pages out and work with them all about her, picking up what she needed and then putting it down in a system that made sense to her and few others.
And there was no one to make comments about her unique methods.
Her own library had cheerful azure silk walls meant to lift her spirits. The furnishings were functional and beautiful. She had selected her favorites from the hundreds of paintings in the house and hung several Turners.