Chapter Twenty-Seven
“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 of The 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 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’t I do 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 of The 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 of The Women’s Weekly?”
“Well,” he began, contemplating exactly what he should say to her. “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 change The 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 important—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.”
“That isn’t true at all!” she said, her words much more heated than his own, though he felt the same emotion as she. “I am the same woman I always have been. In fact, the words you heard me uttering to my friends on the very night we met are the same as those you will read in my paper each and every week. I have simply taken this opportunity and made it into something much bigger than myself, something of which I am awfully proud. You made your opinion abundantly clear, and it was not as though it seemed you would change your thoughts just because you came to know me. What was I to do? For to tell you would have only meant you would have tried to bring about the paper’s ruination that much sooner, would it not have?”
He ran his hand through his hair, not knowing what to say. For much of what she said was true, that was certain. And yet, she had still lied, and that rankled deep within him.
Jeffrey paced back and forth, his emotions fraught, every nerve seemingly on edge. She had taken him off guard, and he needed time to process all of this, to think through her revelation.
Now that he knew the truth, his own stupidity rankled. It all made sense. Phoebe’s opinions, her proclivity to say whatever she felt, her determination to make a difference, to change the world. Her frequent daytime outings not entirely in keeping with a woman of her station. He knew the publisher was likely a woman, and she signed her very name as “a lady.” Why had the thought never even occurred to him?
Because he wouldn’t have wanted to accept the truth, even subconsciously, he admitted to himself. He wanted to marry her, and how could he be married to a woman who not only supported, but actually published, such a scandalous newspaper?
He groaned aloud as he sat in the rickety old chair that creaked dangerously under his weight, and placed his head in his hands as he leaned onto the old desk. Phoebe took a seat across from him, saying nothing for a moment, as she allowed her words to resonate with him.
“Do you see now?” she asked gently. “If I had told you from the moment we met, what would have happened? You would have wanted nothing to do with me, and we would never have had the opportunity to develop … feelings for one another. I am still the same woman you wanted to marry, Jeffrey, and I have so badly wanted to accept your proposal, but I couldn’t. Not with this secret between us. I am well aware of how this may change your feelings toward me, but please know that I am still the same woman you asked to marry you, the same woman who would like to agree. My ideals have never changed—simply the fact that I have actually taken the step to do something about them.”
“Would you cease this production if we were to marry?” he asked.
He wasn’t sure that he would actually ask her to do so—in fact, he wasn’t altogether certain of anything at the moment. But it would surely tell him just how much she actually cared for him—if it was more than this blasted publication.
“I—I would not want to,” she said, dropping their locked gaze for a moment, looking down at her hands. “I would hope that you would not ask it of me. However, if it was a condition of marriage to you … I would consider leaving it, but not destroying it. I would ensure that it remained in good hands.”
“I see,” he said, leaning back in his chair now, crossing his arms once more and nodding his head. It was not the answer he had been looking for, but nor was it an outright rejection of him. “At least you are being honest with me now.”
“I never meant to be dishonest!” she cried. “How could I have told you the truth? Once I learned that you were the one who was trying to find the publisher of The Women’s Weekly, to destroy the newspaper that I worked so hard to build, I knew that if you became aware of what I was doing, you would do everything you could to bring me—this—down.”
He looked intently at her then as her words stirred a thought within him.
“That’s when you began to pursue me,” he said, standing once more and leaning over the desk, looking deep into her eyes, studying her face to determine her reaction to his words. “After you knew that I was the lord who was interested in learning more of the publication. Before that, you hated me. You slapped me! And then this sudden interest. Your appearances at events I frequented, where I had never seen you before. Your coy looks, your slightest touches, your apparent interest in my life, my family.” He paused for a moment as he read the guilt in her eyes. “By God, you used me.”
“I—it wasn’t—”
“You intended to be close to me. You wanted to know what my actions were, of what I was aware. Not only that, but—perhaps unknowingly, I’ll grant you—you distracted me from my goal. And like a fool, I fell for your games, for your lies. You are not only a talented writer, Phoebe, but you are a clever actress as well.”
Horrified, he stepped back from the desk, the realization of his complete and utter stupidity draping over him like a cloak he could not pull from his body.
“I thought your dishonesty was simply that you did not tell me of your role here, but now I realize it is far, far greater than that. Our entire relationship is a lie.”
“Jeffrey,” Phoebe finally cut in, desperation written all over her face and tears pooling in her eyes as she stood and rounded the desk. She raised her hands up toward him, but he pushed them away, not able to stand the thought of her touching him at the moment.
“Jeffrey, what you say … well, I cannot deny it. There is certainly truth to your words. Except for the fact that I have been attracted to you from the moment we met, even during that awful conversation we had in the Earl of Torrington’s drawing room. And yes, it is true that I did want to be aware of any progress you were making in your investigation as it were, but once I began to know you, the man you truly are—aside from your nonsensical beliefs regarding women—then I became far more than attracted to you. I began to fall for you, Jeffrey. I never thought you could want anything to do with a woman like me for more than a flirtation, so trust me, no one was more surprised than I over the fact that you not only courted me but then asked me to wed you. Every time we have been together, I only…”
Tears began to fall down her face, and he steeled himself, determined not to give in to her dramatics. For that’s what they were, were they not? More dishonesty as she attempted to make him feel sorry for her?
“You only what?”
“I only fall more in love with you.”
He looked at her, at her tear-stained cheeks, her ink-stained hands, her stunning face that he had come to care so much for, and could only think of how it had all been a lie.
Jeffrey shook his head despondently, turned from her, and before she could say another word, slowly strode out the door.