Anna Jacobs by An Independent Woman Page B

Fleming had, as well as a business colleague.
    Sure enough, Fleming came home that afternoon in a towering rage, his eyes glinting like shards of ice. “Hammerton tells me you were at the polling station!” he snapped as he strode into the parlour.
    She looked up. “Yes.”
    “I thought I forbade you to vote.”
    She could only look at him, feeling as if her voice was hiding somewhere deep inside her, afraid to come out.
    “What were you doing there?”
    She had never heard him shout like this. Her heart began to thump nervously and she sounded breathless when she at last managed to reply. “Voting.”
    He slapped her face hard. “How dare you disobey me? You know I don’t believe in votes for women and I expressly forbade you to join in that circus.”
    She jumped to her feet, letting her embroidery fall to the floor. He had never raised a hand to her before, not even when she was a child. “It’s my legal right to do so and I decided to exercise that privilege.” For a moment they stood glaring at one another and she wondered if he was going to hit her again.
    When he didn’t move, she picked up her embroidery and put it in the bag, then walked towards the door without a word.
    He put his arm across the doorway, not touching her but spearing her with a chill gaze. “ My daughter does not vote. If you ever disobey me again, I’ll turn you out of the house with only the clothes you stand up in and see how you manage to live then. That I swear.”
    Then he took a deep breath and turned away, moving towards the dining room as if this encounter had not even happened. After a moment pride made her decide not to hide upstairs in her room, so she set her embroidery on the hall stand and took her usual place opposite him at the table. She’d always wondered what would happen if he let his anger loose and now she’d found out. Her cheek was sore but she wasn’t going to rub it and give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her.
    He ate his dinner in complete silence.
    With his chill gaze resting on her from time to time, Serena found it hard to eat, but forced as much as she could down, for appearances’ sake.
    When he had finished his usual hearty meal he said, “Don’t forget to bring your mother’s jewels with you when you come to my office tomorrow morning. And don’t even think of disobeying me about that. I’ve decided to make allowances for today’s violation of my rules because of your mother’s recent death and your recent bout of influenza, but I shan’t do so again.”
    She bowed her head and let him take that for assent if he wanted to. She couldn’t understand why he was so emphatic that she hand over the jewellery into his keeping. The pieces weren’t particularly valuable, though some of them were quite pretty.
    As soon as she could, she escaped to her bedroom, locking the door and standing with her back against it. She began to shake and stumbled across to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing her cheek which was still sore. It was a while before the shaking stopped and she could pull herself together. Getting up, she wrung out a cloth in cold water and held it to her cheek, sighing with relief at its cool comfort. When she looked at her cheek in the dressing table mirror, she could still see the faint imprint of his fingers.
    Could she really get her own way against him? Was it worth the risk of even trying? He could be ruthless, she had seen that time and time again, a maid dismissed on the spot, her mother reduced to tears over a trifle and abjectly begging his forgiveness, once a competitor deliberately driven to bankruptcy, though she had only found that out by accident. And she’d heard rumours of other things too, rumours she hadn’t believed true but now wondered about. He had looked so different this evening, so vicious.
    Perhaps she should have got married years ago, escaping in the only way he would have tolerated? But her mother had always told her only to marry for love,