Devil in Spring

“Glue?” he echoed after a moment, his mouth close to her temple, grazing softly.

“For his kites.”

“Ah.” He paused while a wave retreated. “Joiner’s glue, I believe.”

“That’s not strong enough,” Pandora said, relaxed and pensive. “He should use chrome glue.”

“Where would he find that?” One of his hands caressed her side gently.

“A druggist can make it. One part acid chromate of lime to five parts gelatin.”

Amusement filtered through his voice. “Does your mind ever slow down, sweetheart?”

“Not even for sleeping,” she said.

Gabriel steadied her against another wave. “How do you know so much about glue?”

The agreeable trance began to fade as Pandora considered how to answer him.

After her long hesitation, Gabriel tilted his head and gave her a questioning sideways glance. “The subject of glue is complicated, I gather.”

I’m going to have to tell him at some point, Pandora thought. It might as well be now.

After taking a deep breath, she blurted out, “I design and construct board games. I’ve researched every possible kind of glue required for manufacturing them. Not just for the construction of the boxes, but the best kind to adhere lithographs to the boards and lids. I’ve registered a patent for the first game, and soon I intend to apply for two more.”

Gabriel absorbed the information in remarkably short order. “Have you considered selling the patents to a publisher?”

“No, I want to make the games at my own factory. I have a production schedule. The first one will be out by Christmas. My brother-in-law, Mr. Winterborne, helped me to write a business plan. The market in board games is quite new, and he thinks my company will be successful.”

“I’m sure it will be. But a young woman in your position has no need of a livelihood.”

“I do if I want to be self-supporting.”

“Surely the safety of marriage is preferable to the burdens of being a business proprietor.”

Pandora turned to face him fully. “Not if ‘safety’ means being owned. As things stand now, I have the freedom to work and keep my earnings. But if I marry you, everything I have, including my company, would immediately become yours. You would have complete authority over me. Every shilling I made would go directly to you—it wouldn’t even pass through my hands. I’d never be able to sign a contract, or hire employees, or buy property. In the eyes of the law, a husband and wife are one person, and that person is the husband. I can’t bear the thought of it. It’s why I never want to marry.”

The little speech was astounding. It was the most transgressive talk Gabriel had ever heard from a woman. In a way, it was more shocking than any of his mistress’s most salacious words and acts.

What in God’s name had Pandora’s family been thinking, encouraging such ambitions? Granted, it was hardly unheard-of for someone like a middle-class widow to run a business inherited from her late husband, or for a milliner or seamstress to have her own little shop. But it was well nigh unimaginable for a peer’s daughter.

A high-waxing wave rushed at Pandora from behind, impelling her against him. Gabriel steadied her, his hands clamping at her waist. When the water had retreated, he put a hand at the small of her back and guided her back toward the shore, where his sisters were sitting.

“A wife trades her independence in return for a husband’s protection and support,” he said, his mind bristling with questions and arguments. “That’s the marriage bargain.”

“I think it would be foolish—no, stupid—of me to agree to bargain in which I would be worse off after I agreed to it.”

“How could you be worse off? There’s precious little freedom in long work hours and endless worry over profits and expenses. As my wife, you’ll live in security and comfort. I’ll settle a fortune on you, to spend any way you wish. You’ll have your own carriage and driver, and a house full of servants to do your bidding. You’ll have a position in society that any woman would envy. Don’t lose sight of all that by focusing on technicalities.”

“If it were your legal rights at stake,” Pandora said, “you wouldn’t dismiss them as technicalities.”

“But you’re a woman.”

“And therefore inferior?”

“No,” Gabriel said swiftly. He had been raised to respect the intelligence of women, in a household where his mother’s authority was heeded no less than his father’s. “Any man who chooses to believe women’s minds are inferior is underestimating them at his own peril. However, nature imposes certain domestic roles by making the wife the bearer of children. That being said, no man has the right to run his marriage as a dictatorship.”

“But he does. According to the law, a husband can behave any way he likes.”

“Any decent man treats his wife as a partner, as is the case with my own parents.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Pandora said. “But that’s the spirit of their marriage, not the legal reality. If your father decided to treat your mother unfairly, no one could stop him.”

He felt a tiny muscle in his jaw twitch irritably. “I would stop him, damn it.”

“But why must her welfare be left to his or your mercy? Why can’t she have the right to decide how she should be treated?”

Gabriel wanted to argue with Pandora’s position, and point out the rigidity and impracticality of her argument. It was also on the tip of his tongue to ask her why millions of other women had willingly agreed to the marital union she found so offensive.