1. Chapter 1

Chapter one

April, 1920

“Why would they want a woman to make the speech?”

Iris heaved a sigh as she walked into the closet of the guest room at her Aunt Violet’s Notting Hill home. She examined the clothes she had hanging up, wondering if she should wear a lace dress or a suit. The dress was more feminine, but the suit was more modern. And she enjoyed the pinstripes. They flattered her slender frame and made her appear taller than she already was. The suit, definitely. She plucked it off the rack and walked back out to the bedroom.

“Captain Smith’s wife asked me specifically,” she said, holding it up to her body in the long mirror. She swept her golden curls off her shoulder. “Besides, times are changing, Aunt Violet.”

“Not that much,” Violet replied from her seat by the fireplace. Her gray hair, twisted into a proper updo, shifted at the disapproving shake of her head.

“Many of us have the vote now, and before long, we all will. Our voices should be heard.”

“I’m still not convinced the vote was a good idea in the first place. Why does everyone want things to change? We were operating perfectly fine as a society the way things were.”

“I’m not sure many would agree with you there. Especially since the war.”

Violet scoffed. “Communists, maybe.”

“Not true. I disagree with you and I’m not a communist.”

“Well, it’s only a matter of time.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “Come now, Aunt Violet, you exaggerate.”

“Do I? When you were a girl, you were everything an earl’s daughter should be. Polite, demure, aware of your place in the world. Now look at you. Divorced, an arrest record, and wearing men’s clothes.”

She pointed to the suit with her cane. Unable to deny the first two accusations, Iris held up the skirt for her to see.

“You do see this is a skirt, don’t you? Or do we need to have your vision checked again?”

“The pattern is atrociously masculine, Iris, and you know it. And you haven’t even called your maid to help you dress.”

“I was just doing it.”

Iris irritably pulled on the bell to ring for her lady’s maid, a young woman named Beatrice. She was Iris’s third lady’s maid since her first, Sybil, had left her to get married. Iris missed Sybil every day. They were still close friends, but Sybil and her husband, Charles, lived in Liverpool. And Iris spent most of her time between the Yorkshire countryside in her brother’s home and in London at her aunt’s. Without Sybil, Iris never would have had the courage to stand up to her ex-husband and finally divorce him. They had survived that awful man, the sinking of the Titanic , and the Great War together.

Beatrice entered the room after knocking softly. She helped Iris into her blouse and skirt. Meanwhile, Aunt Violet kept talking.

“Surely there are male survivors who can give speeches.”

“Most of the Titanic survivors are women,” Iris said. “But it isn’t only me, there will be men speaking there too.”

On the eighth anniversary of the sinking, Captain Smith’s wife had put together a small fundraiser for the survivors who were struggling. Now that the Great War was over, it was more acceptable to ask people for donations to such a cause. Iris had a speech prepared, talking about the bravery of the women in her lifeboat as they worked together to combine the passengers into other lifeboats. It freed up enough to go back and retrieve people from the water after the ship had disappeared beneath the surface. Iris still had dreams sometimes about the ghostly faces of the people floating. That detail, she would obviously not speak about.

“Well. I suppose that makes it somewhat more suitable.” Violet paused for a beat. “But it’s good to know there will be men there. Hopefully, there’s a bachelor or a widower you can charm and get yourself married again.”

Iris stiffened. “Beatrice, will you go polish my boots? I want them to be pristine for this occasion.”

“Yes, m’lady,” Beatrice said with a curtsy, and she swept from the room.

Iris rounded on her aunt. “I’ve told you every day since my divorce, I am not getting remarried. Not ever.”

Violet straightened her back. “You’re being stubbornly contrary. There’s no reason to write off marriage because of a husband you didn’t care for.”

“I didn’t care for Lewis because he abused me, Aunt Violet. He hit me, called me names, forced me into bed.”

“Can you blame him? You never gave him any children.”

Iris swallowed down the scathing retort that Violet had never produced heirs for her husband either, but she certainly didn’t think that meant Violet deserved to get smacked. Although, this conversation did.

“Besides, every woman is forced into bed,” Violet went on. “When has that part ever been any pleasure for us?”

“I know plenty of women who enjoy sharing a bed with their husbands,” Iris said.

Sybil, for one. When she reconnected with Charles, who had been her childhood friend, they had shared several moments of passion aboard Titanic . And since then, she’d continued to thoroughly enjoy the marriage bed. Sybil often told Iris things that made her blush and giggle, especially once they had opened a bottle of wine.

“But it doesn’t matter,” Iris continued. “I have no desire for any of it. I’m much happier without a man in my life.”

“You shouldn’t resign yourself to spinsterhood, Iris.”

“You did!”

“I was fifty-seven when my husband passed, far beyond child-bearing years. With any luck, you’ve got some left in you. How old are you now?”

“Thirty-five.”

Violet swallowed. “Hm. I don’t see why—”

“Aunt Violet, I don’t want it!” Iris cried, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “I don’t want a husband or children or any of it!”

“Whatever do you want, then?” Violet asked with a frown.

“I want a life that is my own!” Iris paused, drawing a deep breath and putting a hand on her chest to ease the pinched feeling inside it. “Ever since my divorce, I’ve been able to pursue the things that matter to me.”

“The so-called women’s issues, you mean?”

“Yes. Many women have the vote, but there’s still work to be done. I’ve been writing to Molly Brown about creating sister organizations between England and America to help women being mistreated by their husbands.”

“And who is funding this? Your brother?”

“Hugh funds only my necessities. I’ve been saving the maintenance I get from Lewis to go towards this.”

“So, that’s what you want to do with your life?”

“Yes. I want to help people, if I can.”

She’d been visiting poor houses all over Yorkshire, doing research on what the women there needed, what resources would be useful to them, and what situations brought them there in the first place. And she hoped to take the opportunity while in London to find out what it was like for women in the big cities. Her position in society granted her the ability to leave her husband and land on her feet. She knew most women were not that lucky.

Violet sighed. “I wish you would be more realistic, Iris. I thought you’d gotten all this crusading out of you when you were out getting arrested at those suffragette riots.”

“Not riots, protests,” Iris corrected. “And if anything, being with those women has opened my eyes to how much farther we still have to go.”

She remembered the first time she got arrested at a rally in Liverpool. She was staying with Sybil and Charles, who posted her bail, with the promise Hugh would pay them back, of course. Iris sat in a cell next to a prostitute. That woman offered her a cigarette while they waited, which Iris accepted. It gave her a surge of satisfaction to imagine the expressions on her peers’ faces when the story broke.

“It’d be easier if we all simply remembered our place,” Violet said stubbornly.

Iris ignored her, knowing a lost cause when she saw one. She picked up the jacket of her suit and slid her arms through the sleeves. She went to button it, but one of them was loose. She shrugged it off and took a seat at the vanity, retrieving her needle and thread from the side drawer.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Violet demanded.

“Reinforcing the button,” Iris said. “Sybil taught me.”

“Did she want to be out of a job? The foolishness!”

“Aunt Violet—”

“No, I’ve heard enough. The whole world’s gone topsy-turvy. A lady mending her own clothes? This, I will not watch you do.”

She pushed herself to her feet and shuffled out of the room, leaving Iris snickering to herself.

With her buttons secure, Iris allowed Beatrice to help with the finishing touches of her outfit, and then they were out the door. Aunt Violet had adapted to modern technology, if not modern ideas, so she had a car waiting for them on the street. The fundraiser would be in Hyde Park, and thankfully, the weather was clear enough. As they rolled out of Notting Hill, Iris peered out the window at the shops and restaurants and homes they passed.

That was where she spotted it. A poster with the latest haircut for women plastered on the window of a salon. The chin-length bob she’d seen on stage and in pictures, but never in person. Until a woman walked out with a radiant smile, looking effortlessly fabulous. Iris’s heart leapt.

“Beatrice,” she said. “On the way back, we’ll be making a stop.”

Beatrice must have seen the gleam in Iris’s eyes. “Are you sure, my lady?”

“Oh yes. Before I head back to Yorkshire, I want to send Aunt Violet through the roof.”