DEEDS, NOT WORDS.

@suffraged​

        It’s just Raine and Mags here, with Miss Johanna–Mags keeping back, arms folded across her chest, watching with a silent glower. Best not to involve the rest of the women in all the details; each of them will have only one piece of it, and none will be allowed to know more than her own part. Not that Raine doesn’t trust her girls, but it’s the others, these suffragettes that she knows nothing about. She’s met women of their class before, watched them curl their lips as though they could smell the factory on her, even before she opened her mouth and they heard the Cockney come lisping off her tongue.

        This Johanna’s alright, for all that, and for a foreigner. But then hasn’t Raine always mixed with all-sorts, living in the East End, where all the currents of people run together so thick they make one coursing river, hardly distinguishable from each other? And she’s got a fine head for the work, looking at the hand-drawn map of the assembly hall with dark clever eyes; one would think she’d planned such an endeavor as this before. Gives Raine a little thrill, it does, to have a partner in it, someone not only listening and nodding and yes-Miss-Raine’ing her, but answering back.

        “Trouble with this back entrance, here,” she says, pointing it out, “is it’s got couriers and things running up and down that alley all day, what with the offices upstairs. The girls and I once did some smuggling, like, with a night-soil cart–” Raine’s smile briefly curves her lips, remembering–”but this part of London, you couldn’t manage it, it would be off, wouldn’t it? With toffs strolling outside, taking the air. Someone would complain. I can get a girl in, but I don’t think we should bring in the thing itself.”

         “What I were thinking…” She cocks her head to look at Johanna, watching her face, as she drags her fingertip to the front of the building. “We bring in the device here.” She smiles again, waiting for a reaction. “Under your skirts, like. You pass it off to my girl, sit down and listen to–” she waves a hand, meaning whoever, meaning men, whoever would be speaking at this illustrious assembly of industry–”wait for the signal. Best if you stayed, o’course, so no one got suspicious, but if you want it we’ll pull you out quick, just so nothing falls on your head.”

though she was not, in general, a particularly introspective women, there were times when johanna had to pause briefly to marvel at what her younger self might have thought of where she was now. she would not have ever considered herself weak, even in her younger days, but she had at least been obedient, and that blind adherence to staying obedient had quickly become so ingrained that she balked at the idea of setting a toe even a little out of line. johanna, at nineteen, would have found herself scandalised by skirt an inch too short or a blouse an inch too low. 

the difference now was striking, to say the least. in polite society, she might at least make an effort to remain prim and presentable, but there was no need to keep up the pretence here. with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, lounging back in her seat with one foot up on an empty chair to her left, her posture was more befitting a rake at his club than a high-class businesswoman. raine, she was certain, would not be quick to judge. if the woman trusted her enough to smuggle in explosives, she could forgive a bit of informality between them.