Protest
WARNING! EROTICA!
1900 A&A AU. Ariadne is arrested at a women's rights protest. Her husband, Arthur bails her out.
1.
Ariadne smoothed out her piratical black skirt and tried to sit so that her back wouldn't touch the filthy walls of her cell.
Cecilia, Ann and Mary were with her and looked likewise uncomfortable and scared.
"The jailer says we'll be let out tomorrow if our husbands refuse to come and collect us." Mary said reassuringly. She was an older woman, in her early forties. She had been arrested just a few weeks ago for another protest outside of a men's social club.
Ariadne had thought her so heroic at the time. This smart, independent woman who's husband believed that women should get the vote. He even allowed them to hold their meeting in the front parlor until the police showed up one morning to drag one of the members back home to her parents.
It wasn't illegal to have such clubs for ladies. Mary called it the sewing circle, but husbands and parents of grown women didn't like the idea of their wives and daughters talking about politics. Ariadne's own father wanted to shut her away in an asylum for her talk of free will and equality.
It had been a miserable home she had so desperately escaped from almost six months before. Her father had wanted his grown daughter married and happily settled at any cost. Thusly, she found herself wedded to his business manger, Arthur Brandon.
Arthur, at times, had about as much tolerance for women's suffrage as her father. Although he never threatened her with violence or exile to an asylum. He didn't believe women had the right to vote and should be satisfied to be the homemakers, divine providence had indeed them to be.
Ariadne hated the idea that some some police officer was right now explaining to her husband that his wife had had rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at her while she protested. That she had been arrested for disturbing the peace while those men who threw things at them laughed and told them to go home.
Arthur was a proud man and would be very unhappy about her arrest. She had no doubt her husband would come for her. He was many things, but never neglectful.
"Mrs. Brandon?" the jailer said sternly as the groan of heavy metal doors opened and the three women tensed and heard footsteps.
Ariadne stood. Let it be one of the women from her group coming to bail her out, anyone but...
"Hello, dear." Arthur said gravely as she wrapped her arms around her chest and refused to look at him.
"Afraid there was a bit of trouble with the ladies. No fault on your behalf, sir." The jailer said to Arthur as he opened the door so that she could leave with her husband.
"Are you alright?" Arthur asked as she sensed him looking over her once fine clothing, now stained with rotting food those men had thrown at her.
Her normally neatly pinned hair was disheveled and her skin must look awful.
She nodded and didn't look at her husband. Like wise, he kept his distance from her.
"There is another form you must sign to release her to your custody, sir." the jailer said as she took one last look at her friends and fellow protesters.
Mary waved at her and she felt she had to be strong.
"Certainly, sir." Arthur said to the jailer. Ariadne remained quite. This was men's talk and didn't involve her. Her place was to keep silent.
She almost hurt herself from the effort of not saying a word. Not telling the jailer how she was not a child. How it wasn't shameful to demand to be treated with respect and how it wouldn't hurt him at all to show her the same consideration he would show a man.
But that might enrage Arthur even more, and she could sense she was already in trouble.
She knew it was normal for a husband to correct his wife on occasion. Often times there were women who wore black eyes and who's husband's or father's would hit them for their misbehavior. Mary said it was wrong and one of the first laws that needed to be passed was against violence towards women.
"After all, we're not cattle. We're not there for their labor, pleasure or breeding stock." Mary had told them.
It had been a wonderful and scandalous speech. One that had filled Ariadne with wild ideas about what she would tell Arthur when she got home. But, just now, that bravery was gone.
She watched her husband in his neatly pressed suit sign her out.
Mrs. Arthur Brandon.
She didn't even get her own name anymore. She was white washed over into something that wasn't even a real person.
"I've a taxi waiting for us." he said simply to her as she kept her eyes away from him and focused on the floor.
She nodded and started for the front door.
"Wait." he said and put his hand on her shoulder. She tensed up at the contact. Six months of marriage and she still wasn't used to him touching her without warning.
She watched as he shrugged off his long black coat and draped it over her shoulders. Covering her arms and small body completely.
"There's a chill in the air." he explained and secured his coat so that it covered the stains on her clothing. He didn't want people on the street to see her clothing was anything less than perfect.
"Thank you." she said weakly. Her voice so raw from all the shouting she had done that day, she barely spoke above a whisper.
"Ready to go home? Mrs. Marsh has prepared a dinner for you." Arthur said.
"What about Mary and the others?" Ariadne whispered as Arthur put his large hand to the small of her back and lead her out the police station.
"They are not my responsibility, so I didn't ask." Arthur said curtly.
Ariadne stiffened at the insulting nature of what he had said. Just when she thought she knew her enigma of a husband, he reverted to the classical brut she had first thought him to be. The man who ran the bank her father owned. The gentleman he had brought home for dinner and persuaded to court her.
The man she had to marry or be shipped off like a bad girl to some asylum for her radical behavior. It was a fate that happened to many women who didn't act like society wanted. Who couldn't pretend to be happy house wives when they wanted so much more. Who protested their husband's and father's God like rule over their lives as if they were incapable of living them themselves.
"I see." she said as her husband lead her to the waiting carriage.
~ They said little on the ride home. The groomsman was within ear shot and Arthur wouldn't dare let a stranger know his home life was anything but perfect. It was no doubt shameful to him that his wife, a lady from a wealthy family, had been arrested.
She felt she had wounded her husband more than she intended. She didn't think about how it would embarrass him, or hurt him.
"I'm sorry, Arthur." she said weakly. She didn't want to cry, and clutched his coat tighter around her body.
"We'll discuss it, at home." he said in a mechanical voice she knew meant trouble.
With a sinking dread, she wished that the drive would last longer. She didn't want to go home just now. Arthur was too angry, she could tell. She didn't want to face any kind of reprimand or punishment for her actions today.
She turned away from him and watched the windows. Her gaze focusing on a little girl with no shoes on, selling flowers.