Saints and Sinners

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Rosen Estate

Sanibel Island

Florida

Grace Palmer watched Nora Buckingham settling herself on the bench, fussing over the full skirts of her dark green linen gown and finally removing her bonnet. Grace had heard all about Miss Buckingham after she interviewed her uncle, just after he left the White House in the January, so she been expecting the gown. And she had donned a pair of shorts and a tee shirt for the interview, quite deliberately. She could tell that her guest was not particularly impressed, but she did not care. Her new activist persona was very liberating and she was in her own home, after all, getting her mojo back, making plans and stepping out of the shadows of her immediate past.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me, Miss Palmer?" Miss Buckingham said, after placing her recording device on the table between them. "Or are you still using your married name of Stoddart?"

"I think you know the answer to that one, Miss Buckingham?" Grace replied, not rising to the bait, getting used to dealing with the press. Ever since her uncle had used her as a prime example of abuse taking place on American soil, with her permission, she had been in some demand for interviews and opinions. Mostly positive demand, because the more conservative publications did not want to give her complaints any airtime. She would not have described the New York Times as conservative, exactly, but Nora Buckingham was, so she was sort of expecting a fair hearing and a rough ride, all at the same time.

"Are you ashamed of yourself, Miss Palmer?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well...many Christians would be...you have broken your wedding vows...and now you are waging war on your presumably former religion...accusing the people you once lived happily amongst of what your uncle described as abuse?" Nora said quietly, saying the words without emphasis, as if that would make them less provocative.

"My husband ended my marriage the moment he forced me onto Air Force One and took me to Britain against my will...and forcibly equipping anyone is abuse?" Grace pointed out in kind, sitting with her hands in her lap, as she had been taught to sit, mirroring Nora's demure pose. Nora was clearly not a Reformist, as Sean had told her. He had said that she was a Baptist, originally hailing from Charleston in Georgia, once the buckle on the bible book, as her father put it.

"Not if that person signs the waiver, Miss Palmer?"

"I signed it after I had been equipped, Miss Buckingham...I assume that you have never experienced the effects of punishment chips set to level five?"

"But that is just your word against that of the clinic, isn't it?" Nora suggested with a rather annoying smile. "And your keeper, who refutes your claim?"

"Yes...which is why we are finding it hard to bring a civil action against them...but my husband was aware of my objections and he still chose to move me to London?"

"But the interesting thing is that you agreed to visit the clinic, didn't you? You had agreed to be equipped?" Nora pressed and Grace nodded, because she had told the whole truth. She sighed, looking out across the lake for a moment, trying to find the right words.

"I was coerced...for the sake of his career, which, as a loyal wife, I had been working hard to support ever since we moved to Boston...but I changed my mind, right outside the clinic as it happens...I just woke up a little late?"

"And now you are dressing like a west coast good time gal and campaigning for women's rights, Miss Palmer?" Nora sneered and Grace fully understood why her beloved uncle had taken against the journalist. But like Sean Fletcher, she bit her tongue and stuck to her game plan, because column inches in the New York Times would be good for the cause.