“At least I would have known! I honestly thought you might have been dead.”
“You did?”
“Yes! Until Lord Norbury mentioned that he’d heard from you. When was that? November? Who knows. The point is that you decided I wasn’t worth your attention.”
“I did not decide anything like that. Events…happened.”
“Oh, events happened, did they? Now there’s an explanation any woman would wait a year for.”
“Poppy, it’s complicated.”
“And I’m too simple to understand it?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What do you mean, then? I don’t understand you. At all.”
“My time and my life isn’t my own. Not fully.”
She crossed her arms. “Well, I do understand that. Women’s lives are entirely given over to others. First parents, and then husbands. But you’re a man.”
Thank God she’d noticed. “I still owe a lot to my family. They depend on me for a good amount of work with shipping goods. That keeps me busy enough. On top of that, I do what I can for Santo Domingo.”
“Again, any woman would grasp the desire for self-rule instantly.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Compare my entire island’s struggles to your annoyance that women aren’t free to visit coffeehouses alone.”
“Oh, please. As if the two are different.”
“They are!”
“In scale. Not in essence. Everyone should have the right and power to make their own decisions about their lives, so long as they hurt no one else. You want your society in Santo Domingo to be fair. I wish the same for mine in England. In fact, I bet I’m more revolutionary than you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, let’s imagine that your effort succeeds. Santo Domingo gains its own authority, like the United States did before. Other nations recognize your flag and offer it the same respect as any other.”
“Yes, that’s the goal.”
“And what of the women? Will their lives become any freer when the French and British leave? Will the laws change to give them rights to inheritance? Property? To stand up for themselves in a court of law? Or is your great revolution just a way to keep everyone’s taxes and tariffs on your side of the Atlantic?”
Carlos could not believe Poppy just told him he was only half a revolutionary. “You think I’m doing all this for money? That I fought battles and lost friends and took a bullet just to send the family’s taxes to a local office?”
Her eyes widened. “You took a bullet?”
“Yes. In my side. Two years ago. I’m fully recovered, by the way. Thank you for asking.”
“How many friends?”
“What?”
“How many friends have you lost?”
“Too many. And I’ll lose more before this is over. My brother Mateo…”
