Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two

by Mary Lancaster

  “Hector?” Jeffrey struggled to place the name, searching his memory for the man to whom his brother might be referring.

  “The man who could make us money, who you so rudely ignored?”

  “Ah, yes,” Jeffrey said, grimacing. “I was hoping to not have to revisit that unfortunate circumstance.”

  He heard Ambrose sniff beside him, angry at his words, but Jeffrey didn’t altogether care. Ambrose had been foolish to even entertain the idea that Jeffrey would consider parting with any funds to such a disreputable source.

  “Well,” Ambrose continued, “I thought it was a fine idea, despite your reluctance, and so I invested some with him anyway.”

  Jeffrey stopped walking then and turned to his brother. His tone was measured and even, but he couldn’t mask the anger from his voice. “You did what?”

  “I invested with the man,” Ambrose said, holding his chin high. “And Hector says the investment is doing well. He just needs a bit more—”

  “Oh, bloody hell, Ambrose,” Jeffrey said, throwing his hands up in the air and continuing his forward progress to where his phaeton awaited, leaving Ambrose behind. As his brother continued to follow him, waxing on of all the benefits of investing in this unfortunate scheme, Jeffrey finally turned to him once more, a finger leveled at his chest.

  “I told you what your options were, Ambrose—the Peterborough estate, a commission with the military, or to continue your education. I have given you enough time to ponder all of this, so tell me now—what do you choose?”

  Ambrose glowered at him, the two brothers locked in a battle of wills.

  “I choose to make my own way.”

  “Fine,” Jeffrey said, his words coming from between clenched teeth. “Then do as you wish. But you will not do so with any help from me. You may live in Berkley House, but your allowance is cut off. You will have what you need to survive, but you will not be wiling away any more of our family funds, do you understand?”

  “You were always so high and mighty, Jeffrey,” Ambrose spit back at him. “But fine, if that is what you wish, then so be it.”

  Ambrose turned and walked off in the other direction, and as Jeffrey watched him, his anger faded, to be replaced only by sadness and some regret.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jeffrey escorted five ladies to the Dennington’s party that evening. While they were each perfectly delightful, and he loved them with his entire heart, he wished that he had another woman on his arm—one that he sought out the moment he arrived at the house that was but two streets away.

  It was not an official event and therefore all of his sisters were in attendance, and Rebecca was determined that she would spend the entire night on the dance floor, that all of the men would be so eager to fill up the list on her dance cards. Jeffrey hoped it was true. His sisters were all beautiful women, but they were also known for causing a bit of trouble—with the exception of Viola, of course. It would be up to him to help them find men who were worthy of them and yet could handle them as well. It wasn’t a task he was looking forward to, but he wouldn’t entrust it to any other person, either.

  Jeffrey scanned the crowd now, looking for the dark, midnight curls of Phoebe’s hair, but while there were many beauties with dark hair, he couldn’t find the stunning woman who so held his attention. He sighed, hopeful she was simply late, as he made his way through the crowds to find a drink. Once his brandy was in hand, the Duke of Clarence found him leaning against one of the four pillars that held up the ceiling, which was painted in a scene of what he supposed was to be heaven.

  “Berkley.”

  “Clarence.”

  They tipped their drinks at one another before taking a sip. They made a bit of conversation about nothing and everything before Jeffrey left to find Viola, hoping she had perhaps seen Phoebe as she traipsed around the room with her friends.

  “Vi,” he said, snagging her arm as she walked past, and he was both intrigued and pleased to see a few scrawls on her dance card.

  She must not have heard him, however, for she continued on, and Jeffrey was waylaid for a moment by acquaintances who wanted a word of hello. By the time he caught up with his sister, she was engaged in conversation with a circle of her closest friends.

  “What do you think of it?” he heard one of the women ask, and a tangle of voices responded, but Jeffrey heard the voice of his sister above the rest.

  “I think it is an intriguing prospect,” Viola said. “To have the Marriage Act changed? Why, the lives of women would never be the same. Women would have responsibility, would have the ability to actually make choices for themselves, without fear of what marriage could possibly mean for them.”

  He heard a rustle beside him, and Ambrose appeared. Jeffrey rolled his eyes but held up a finger to silence him, wanting to hear more of this conversation. For once, Ambrose blessedly did Jeffrey’s bidding.

  “And what did the article suggest to change?” One of the young women asked, to which another responded, “Simply that when a woman marries, all of her possessions must not necessarily be given directly to the man. That she might have her own finances, her own possessions that she keeps for herself. There would still be a dowry, to be sure, but she would no longer have to sacrifice all.”

  “Do you believe that would be wise?”

  “I do,” Viola affirmed. “For then, a woman need not be so fearful of entering into marriage. She would not only know then that a man truly loves her, but she would also be able to build a life for herself and keep it. Think of women who work, who have earned for themselves. They must be so fearful that marriage would take all away from them. They could now enter a union willingly, without that fear.”

  Ambrose snorted beside him, and Viola turned quickly, catching both of them in her gaze. Jeffrey felt his face warm slightly at being caught eavesdropping, but nonetheless, he smiled at his sister.

  “Good evening, ladies,” he said to the other women, all who stared at him with doting faces. The title of a marquess did bring that about. “Vi,” he said, leaning toward his sister, “I do not suppose you have seen Lady Phoebe this evening?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Nor have I heard that she is to be in attendance. Now,” her look darkened as she glared at her brothers. “Will you kindly stop listening to my private conversations? You, Jeffrey, have developed a very un-noble habit of eavesdropping as of late.”

  She was absolutely right, and he felt like a chastised schoolboy for having been caught. He continued on his way with Ambrose trailing behind him, and he wondered what it was his brother wanted. Ambrose had clearly not been pleased with him the other day, though Jeffrey doubted he was here to beg his forgiveness.

  “I hope you are making progress in bringing down that awful newspaper,” Ambrose said, once they were a fair bit away, and Jeffrey turned to him with surprise.

  “I was not aware that you had an opinion on the subject either way,” he said, and Ambrose shrugged.

  “Can you imagine a woman keeping funds to herself? Whatever would she do with them? Purchase more hats and ballgowns? It is laughable, really.”

  Jeffrey was silent for a moment. The words coming from the mouths of his siblings tonight—first Viola’s sensible thoughts and now Ambrose’s bluster—had him thinking. The opinion Viola brought forth on The Marriage Act was actually somewhat valid, as much as he didn’t want to admit it. It would cause uproar were anything to ever change, that was true, but it would not altogether upset the order of society. Another point of discussion to be had with this publisher, he thought ruefully, and Ambrose narrowed his eyes at him.

  “You are following through, are you not?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, which was not a lie. He was following up on the situation. He just didn’t know to what extent. “In fact, I have a meeting with the publisher tomorrow.”

  “Oh, good,” Ambrose said. “Give him—or her—hell, Jeffrey.” He placed a hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder, looking at him with eyes that
were like a reflection of his own. “It’s what father would have wanted. He’d be proud of you.”

  And with a wink, he was gone, leaving Jeffrey to wonder what his brother was up to.

  Ambrose had been right. His father would be proud to know he was taking down such a paper. But his mother—would she feel the same? Or his sisters? And most of all, Phoebe?

  He sighed and downed his drink, lamenting the late hour and the fact that Phoebe hadn’t yet arrived, meaning she likely wouldn’t at all. It was going to be a long night.

  *

  Jeffrey knocked on the door of 53 Fleet Street the next day at precisely two o’clock, and the grey-haired woman—Mrs. Ellis, if he remembered correctly from the day before—ushered him in. Her face was pleasant, but it certainly didn’t seem as though she were smiling at him, but rather was, perhaps, a bit anxious. Clearly, she didn’t believe his story from the other day of becoming a supporter of the paper, and nor did he blame her. He knew he wasn’t overly convincing.

  She didn’t say much as she led him down the short corridor, stopping in front of the small room he had entered during his previous visit, the office being that of the publisher. Mrs. Ellis extended her arm, gesturing for him to enter the small office. There wasn’t much to look at, its owner clearly not having occupied it for long. A square window let some light in through the glass, which had obviously been scrubbed, though streaks remained, apparently resisting the effort. This time he noticed the ugliest chair he had ever seen in his life sitting behind the scarred oak desk, while a chair so rickety he didn’t dare chance it sat in front of the desk. An old, lopsided bookshelf in the corner held stacks of papers and a few odds and ends.

  Mrs. Ellis caught his gaze and smiled slightly. “We haven’t been here long and this furniture remains from the previous tenants,” she said, slightly apologetically. “We are awaiting the new furnishings to arrive.”

  He nodded in understanding.

  “The publisher will be with you in just a few moments, my lord,” she said, then turned and continued down the hallway, her footsteps echoing behind her, and as Jeffrey waited, he contemplated what he was going to say. Initially, when he had begun this quest, he had been determined to shut down this damn paper. He still felt that it was somewhat of a nuisance, but between Phoebe and his sisters, he had become swayed toward the idea that perhaps it wasn’t entirely fair for him—or any man really—to take away the opportunity for women to have something of their own. As his sisters had pointed out, there were articles within the paper regarding fashion, advice, and other endeavors that gentlemen would hardly be interested in.

  It was the articles that incited change, that suggested women should challenge the very fabric of society that had held them together for years, that bothered him somewhat. If he could reason with the publisher, convince her to be slightly less controversial, then all could co-exist peacefully, could they not?

  Jeffrey stood waiting, his hands behind his back, as he heard footsteps advancing down the hall ever so slowly, and he waited impatiently. What was taking the woman so long? For he assumed the publisher was a woman.

  The oak door, which Mrs. Ellis had left slightly ajar, was pushed open wide. And Jeffrey could only stare in surprise.

  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?”