CHAPTER27
“Phoebe? What the devil are you doing here?” Jeffrey asked, looking around her to determine if the publisher was approaching. Had Phoebe followed him here? He hadn’t seen her since they made love, and he had desperately wanted to speak with her, but prior engagements — such as this very one — had prevented him. “Would you mind terribly if we spoke afterward? I am awaiting a woman with whom I have long been trying to arrange a meeting. Once I am finished, I will meet you out front.”
She looked stunning, of course, as she always did. Today she wore a fine crimson dress, and her hair was piled high on her head, with a few curls cascading around her chin. However, as much as he could stand here all day and admire her, it would not do to show up with his betrothed in tow, and besides that, he wasn’t altogether sure that the three of them would fit in this room at the same time.
Phoebe said nothing, but advanced into the office, shutting the door firmly behind her. She astonished him by rounding the desk and taking a seat in the ugly green chair.
“Jeffrey,” she said slowly, clasping her hands in front of her on the desk, and he could only stare as the obvious truth of the situation began to seep through and into his mind, as much as he wanted to deny it.
“No…” he began, but didn’t know what else to say as he looked around the office, his eyes lighting upon the shelves once more. There were no books, true, but now he looked again and saw a few things upon the wood — a small magnifying glass, a carved statue in mahogany — items of curiosity very similar to those found in the parlor of her home.
She nodded, and he could have sworn a sheen of tears covered her eyes, or perhaps it was just a trick of the dim light filtering in through the window.
“You wanted to meet with the publisher ofThe Women’s Weekly,” she said, and some part of his conscious noted just how tightly she gripped her fingers together. “Well, here I am.”
She gave a little laugh, but it was so forced it sounded hollow. “I am sorry, Jeffrey, truly I am. I never set out to lie to you. I never thought we would form such an attachment to one another, and by the time I had realized my feelings for you, well, it was too late. With how you feel about this publication, I knew that if you were aware of my involvement, you would no longer want anything to do with me, and it was a difficult thought to bear.”
She took a deep breath. “But once you proposed marriage, you needed to know the truth. I couldn’t say yes until you did, as much as ai wanted to accept. I tried to tell you, so many times, but it seemed something would always happen or we would be interrupted, and I never found the opportunity. So here we are.”
She stopped speaking then, simply sitting and looking up at him, where he still remained standing.
“You’ve got to be jesting with me,” he finally managed, choking out the words, and she shook her head.
“I would never jest about something so important,” she said, standing now, though he was still a head above her. “You have to understand. I always thought that things should be different, that someone ought to do something to push for change. Then one day, I thought, why shouldn’tIdo it? Hardly anyone knows about me, no one cares about my movements, and I have the ability to so. We all cannot sit around wondering whether someone else will be the one to take action. So, here I am, the publisher ofThe Women’s Weekly. Will you not say something, besides the fact that you still believe me to be deceiving you?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Phoebe… this is insanity. You are a lady. You cannot publish a newspaper such as this one.”
“Whyever not?”
He tried to think rationally through the fog that had come to surround his brain.
“Because… it will be difficult to finance such an operation.”
“I was left a fairly significant inheritance when my parents passed and I am using it for a purpose with which I hope they would be pleased. In addition, the paper has been doing much better than I initially anticipated, and therefore we now operate on revenue and the initial investment will soon be recovered.”
“Well,” he said with a whoosh of breath. “How very… fortunate for you.”
“I like to think of it as hard work and the courage to take the necessary action to do what is right.”
“But how do you know that what you do is right? What if you up-end all order?”
“That, Jeffrey, would be the goal. Tell me, what did you want of this meeting, not with Lady Phoebe, the woman you have come to know, but Miss Phoebe Winters, publisher ofThe Women’s Weekly?"
“Well,” he began, contemplating exactly what he should say to her, proud that he was maintaining his calm demeanor while his was in turmoil within. “I did not come with the intention of halting the publication, though that is what some of my colleagues would prefer that I do. I simply hoped that you would, perhaps, be slightly less vocal in some of your more controversial ideas. Like the idea to changeThe Marriage Act, for example.”
“You would prefer to have control over all of your wife’s finances and property?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, and he noticed that she did not refer to herself as his wife, but rather a woman in general.
“Phoebe, there is one aspect of what you are doing that does not make sense,” he said, not answering her question as she continued to stare at him with eyebrows raised. “If you want change within Parliament, giving this notion to ladies is not going to revolutionize anything, as they are unable to make any sort of difference.”
“True,” she countered. “But their fathers and brothers will, and some men listen to the women in their lives. In fact, I have heard on good authority that many men even seek out such advice.”
She gave him a pointed look, and he thought for a moment of himself seeking out his mother’s opinion, or Viola’s, and he could understand her words. But, he realized, as an unrecognizable feeling of dread continued to accumulate in the ball of his stomach, all that they were talking about paled in comparison of a matter of far more importance — that of his heart. For Phoebe had taken his trust, his belief in her and who he had assumed her to be, and broken all of it by keeping such a secret from him, one that was such an essential part of who she was.
“Phoebe,” he said, attempting with all that was within him to keep his voice impassive, as though nothing was bothering him in the least. “There are arguments to be made for and against the content of your paper, I understand that, but that is not what is most concerning to me.”
“It isn’t?”
“Not at all,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I have told you, time and again, how important honesty is to me, how much I have admired it in you. Now I find that you have been completely lying to me for weeks, pretending to be someone you are not.”