The Suffragette Scandal (The Brothers Sinister) by Courtney Milan

have seen your hands. Do you ever get all the ink off?”
    She smiled proudly at him. “No. I’m marked for life.”
    “I thought as much.”
    “We have a paper that needs to be on the 4 a.m. mail train. If you’ll excuse me.” She gave him a nod in acknowledgment and then ducked away.
    He flipped his notebook open again. The sketch was definitely missing… something. There must be some trick of the light or expression that had failed him. His drawing of her seemed pallid and insubstantial in comparison with the reality of Miss Marshall in the flesh. He’d underestimated her once; it would be poor tactics to do it a second time.
    He was trying to figure out what was missing, when the main door to the business opened and a man walked in.
    Edward’s attention was instantly riveted. He kept his gaze firmly on his notebook, but he could not help but watch out of the periphery of his vision. The man who went up to Miss Marshall was taller now than Edward remembered. Those muscles he’d developed rowing were new. But it was, without a doubt, Stephen Shaughnessy. Edward could hear the tone of his speech from here. His voice had deepened, but it had that same lilting sound to it, that touch of Irish, a hint of his mother’s accent softened by a life lived in England. It brought back a rush of unwelcome emotion.
    Little Stephen. Annoying Stephen. The clod, he and Patrick had called him, when he was particularly amusing and they’d not wanted to admit it. He hadn’t become any less clod-like if his columns proved anything.
    Calling the other man names didn’t change a thing. Edward still yearned. He didn’t even know what he was yearning for. He’d told himself a million times after he was thrown out of the consulate that he didn’t have a brother, that he didn’t have a family.
    The sight of Stephen put the lie to that. Edward had a little brother after all—maybe not one who was related to him by blood, but a brother nonetheless.
    Stephen bent his head to Miss Marshall. They stood close together, Miss Marshall barely coming up to Stephen’s chin. She tilted her head and pointed a finger at him, and slowly, Stephen raised his hands in surrender. He said something; she laughed.
    Edward looked down and turned the page in his notebook. Every one of Stephen’s features was burned in his mind—that sharp nose, those mischievous eyes, the tilt of his smile. He could almost see him reduced to pencil marks on the blank page before him.
    He wouldn’t sketch him. He sketched to remember, and this was hard enough as it was.
    Get on with you, he thought. Go away. Be safe. I’m dead, but I won’t let my family hurt you again.
    But he didn’t look up at Stephen as he thought that. Instead, Edward shook his head, took out the newspaper, and went back to reading.

    S TEPHEN HAD A ROOM on a building that backed onto the River Cam.
    From the bank of the river, huddled in a bush along a pedestrian footpath, an opera glass in hand, Free could see inside. Mr. Clark had posed no objection to sitting in the leaves and twigs with her.
    She could make no sense of him. He’d lied to her—and he’d cheerfully admitted as much with a smile. He’d tried to blackmail her—but had shrugged complacently when she’d refused to be blackmailed. He was no doubt an utter scoundrel, but he was the best-natured scoundrel she’d ever had call to work with.
    “Did you go to Cambridge?” she asked him.
    He gave her an incredulous look. “What do you take me for? One of those prancing dandies arguing over Latin clauses?” He shrugged. “If you’re going to hold the glasses, keep your eyes on the room. We don’t want to miss anything.”
    He didn’t try to take the glasses from her, though. Free sighed and trained them on Stephen’s room. He’d left a lamp lit, but it was still dark enough that she could miss something if she didn’t pay attention.
    “You’ve been somewhere,” she said. “Somewhere before you lived in France is my