Free Cry for Passion by Robin Schone

ligament inside her body demanded, “if this is a girl, that I expect him to name her after her aunt.”
    “It’s not likely, after three boys.” Lucy’s nose, peppered with freckles, wrinkled down at Rose. “But if it is a girl, Derek wants to name her after me.”
    “Lucy Rose has a good sound, don’t you think?” Rose suggested.
    Lucy smiled, Rose’s transgression forgiven, unaware that she herself transgressed. “Lucy Rose it is.”
    Rose dropped the iron key into her reticule and slid her hand through Lucy’s arm. The kick that had imprinted her palm continued to pulse. “Now, let’s get you home. We can stop and have an ice, shall we?”
    Lucy grabbed Rose’s hand and tightly caged her bare fingers. “Will you come home with me?”
    Rose determinedly stared ahead at the future. “Of course.”
    “Will you stay and have a visit with Derek?”
    Gently Rose squeezed Lucy’s gloved fingers. “No.”
    Lucy was not deterred. “Derek talked to Jonathon.”
    A busy intersection loomed ahead, only two blocks away. There they could catch a cab, or an omnibus.
    Rose forced her left foot forward. She would make the distance.
    “What did Jonathon say?” she asked through stiff lips that curled upward in a smile while the palm of her hand burned and throbbed.

    Chapter 8
    Twin oak doors closed behind Jack. The snick of a lock glanced off his skin.
    Perfumed pomade and expensive cologne clogged the corridor. To his left, darkness pressed against stained glass windows. Overhead, brass hall pendants flickered and hissed.
    Two hundred and nineteen men shuffled forward—joking, boasting, politicking—each one familiar with the Noes Lobby, where men met to vote no.
    There was no discussion of the private act upon which they were now called to vote: Their decision—as was Jack’s—had been made before the third reading.
    The body of men merged, MPs filing into a double row between two large Division desks. At the end of the corridor twin oak doors swung wide.
    A masculine voice rang out: “Edward Limpton.” It was immediately followed by another voice, more tenor than baritone: “Brian Dougby.”
    The two lines surged forward. Each exiting member spoke his name.
    It was all that was required to vote no, and to destroy a woman’s dreams.
    Jack stepped up to the Division desk and saw not a scribbling clerk, but a nightgown-clad woman with dark nipples who had opened her door to a stranger.
    The clerk glanced upward, pen poised. “Your name, sir?”
    Rose Clarring would damn him and Parliament for this day.
    Jack gave the clerk the vote for which he waited—“Jack Lodoun”—and strode through the double doors.
    The chill air inside the House of Commons did not disperse the suffocating scent of men and power. Gleaming oak beams and green-leather-upholstered benches crowded his vision.
    “Lodoun,” carried after him . . . caught up with him. “Shall you join us for supper?”
    “I have commitments,” Jack lied, steps not faltering.
    “Right-oh!” A hearty slap jarred Jack’s bones. “Another time, old chap. Dougby, dear fellow. Go ahead! I’ll catch you in the dining room.”
    But Jack had already exited the House of Commons.
    In the Commons Lobby he retrieved his coat and hat, another MP among dozens more shelving their political agendas for a break outdoors. In the Central Hall MPs eager for press wooed reporters.
    “Mr. Lodoun!” echoed inside the domed ceiling.
    Jack kept on walking, wool coat slapping his thighs.
    A man wearing a plaid reefer jacket—dark hair slick with macassar oil—stepped in front of him. “Yesterday you lost against James Whitcox in a civil suit. What do you have to say?”
    Jack recalled that the lobby correspondent wrote for The Pall Mall Gazette.
    “I have nothing to say,” Jack said. And stepped around him.
    The reporter followed. “You lost a criminal trial to Whitcox on the twenty-seventh of April. You then resigned your position as attorney general on the