Maude gave her a bland look. “I’ll be fine, Miss Atkinson. It isn’t anything I haven’t done before,” she added, but her matter-of-fact tone couldn’t hide the hollow look in her eyes.
Will then took Phoebe by the elbow and led her toward thedoor. Since neither of them had any desire to return downstairs, Maude directed them to the servants’ staircase at the end of the hall that would bring them to the mews behind the house. They exited the building without incident and climbed into Will’s waiting carriage.
Maude’s resigned expression in the face of the earl’s callous cruelty would haunt Phoebe for a long, long time. She knew such things occurred with distressing regularity—one only needed to open a London paper to learn of all the horrible ways people treated each other—but seeing it with her own eyes, and feeling so helpless in the moment, was unfamiliar.
“Phoebe.” Will’s voice cut through her desperate thoughts. She met his eyes in the low light of the carriage. “It will be all right.”
She couldn’t help laughing at the certainty in his voice. “For whom?”
Will’s lips thinned in a grimace, but he didn’t answer. Phoebe looked out the window as the shadowy city passed by. “I suspect Maude and Alice have a relationship,” she began, desperate to focus on a problem she at least had a chance of solving. “Something more than what she let on. She said that Alice came to her looking for work. But then why did Mr. Cartwright see her coming by the flat more than once? And why did she know so much about me if they were only neighborhood acquaintances?”
Will nodded slowly as he mulled this over. “It’s certainly possible. But would that relate to Alice’s disappearance?”
Phoebe let out a sigh and leaned her head back against the seat. “I don’t know. But why bother to lie about it if it didn’t matter?”
Will was silent for a moment. “Well, whatever it is, Maude will never tell you. That much seems clear. I doubt the Inquisition could pry the truth from such a tenacious woman.”
Phoebe smiled a little. “I suppose she would have to be to survive in her world. I doubt I could.”
Will narrowed his eyes slightly. “It almost sounds like you admire her.”
“Perhaps I do, in a way. And she certainly made a good point about the school.” Will shot her a questioning look. “We give these girls the kind of education we received, thinking it’s part of some noble endeavor on our part. But their lives are so very different. What’s the point of reading Shakespeare if you still can’t find work?”
“Then do something about it,” Will said. “But don’t discount the work you’re doing in the meantime. Things like literature, music, and art should be for everyone. Not everything has to be commodified.”
“That sounds dangerously close to the teachings of Karl Marx, Your Grace,” Phoebe said with a wry smile.
Will laughed. “Yes, well, I haven’t entirely forgotten my more radical beliefs.”
“I still remember the time you came to dinner and got into an argument with Father about the importance of men in positions of power publicly supporting workers’ rights across industries.”
The subtext beingmen like him.
Phoebe had long considered that evening to be an intellectual and physical awakening of sorts—and was one of the reasons why she had found his new life so distasteful. But oh how she had clung to the memory of a valiant young Will leaning across the table to meet Father’s wall of condescension head-on with his razor-sharp insight.
The upper classes are only able to accumulate extreme wealthbecause there are so many others who earn far less. It isn’t the natural order of things. It is the product of a deliberate system.
“There is no one quite so self-important as a young man who has just discovered a political theory,” he said with a groan.
“No, you were wonderful,” Phoebe insisted. “And what you were saying was true. You taught him something that night.” Will let out a dismissive huff, but Phoebe would not relent. “You did. He won’t invest in companies that don’t allow their workers to unionize. Not all of the workers choose to, of course, but he makes it clear that if management hamper any attempts he will pull his funding.”
Will looked dumbfounded. “Oh. Well, I’m very glad to hear that. Thank you for telling me,” he added with a modest dip of his head that Phoebe could feel all the way down to her bones. God help her if he kept behaving this way.
As if on cue, Will gave her a penetrating look. “And yet, I got the impression that things are strained between you.”
Phoebe let out a sigh. “They are, but that isn’t anything new. He’s never approved of my occupation. Thinks I’m wasting my time teaching when I could be helping him and Alex make more money.”
Will’s smile was rueful. “It’s not just that, you know. Your sister can be quite egalitarian in regard to the businesses she chooses to fund.”
Phoebe managed a reluctant nod. “Yes, I’ve heard it many times over: ‘It’s all about the idea.’ But it’s a business, not a charity, so they only invest in things that will turn a tidy profit.”
“Fair point,” Will acknowledged. “And you would rather they invested in schemes that improved society in some way?”
Phoebe shrugged. “Not exclusively. I understand the need to generate a profit. But it would be nice if they considered more than the monetary value of a project in their assessment.”
Will appeared to mull this over. “Have you said this to your father? Or Alex?”
“No,” Phoebe replied as the corner of her mouth curved up. “I’ve only just put it together here talking with you.”
