Home > Bringing Down the Duke(87)

Bringing Down the Duke(87)
Author: Evie Dunmore

    10. It took British women and their male allies nearly seventy years to achieve the right for women to vote in Parliamentary elections or to run for the office of Member of Parliament. Why do you think the process was so slow? How does it compare to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States?

    11. Annabelle and her friends organize protests and lobby politicians to fight for their rights. What parallels can you draw to today’s political activism? How has political activism changed since then?

    12. Both Queen Victoria, the most powerful woman in Europe, and Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth, the first warden of Oxford’s first women’s college, were against female political activism and women’s suffrage. Why do you think such influential and educated women would oppose women’s rights? What connections can you draw to present-day politics?

    13. In order for the National Society for Women’s Suffrage to succeed, they needed to gain the support of influential male figures in the government. What role do men play in modern feminism?

 

 

      Don’t miss Lucie and Tristan’s story, coming Fall 2020 from Berkley!

 

 

   London, 1880

   Had she been born a man, none of this would be happening. She would not be left waiting in this musty antechamber, counting the labored tick-tocks of the pendulum clock. The receptionist wouldn’t shoot suspicious glances at her from behind his primly sorted little desk. In fact, she would not be here at all today—Mr. Barnes, editor and current owner of half of London Print, would have signed the contract weeks ago. Instead, he was having her credit and credentials checked and checked again. He had done so very discreetly, of course. But she knew. There were things a woman could do just because she was a woman—such as fainting dead-away over some minor chagrin—and there were things a woman could not do just because she was a woman. And it seemed women did not simply buy a fifty-percent share of a publishing enterprise.

   She let her head slump back against the dark wall paneling as far as her hat permitted. Her eyelids were drooping, heavy as lead. It had been another long night away from her bed. But she was close. Barnes had already agreed to the deal, and he was eager to sell quickly because he seemed in some hurry to relocate to India—some trouble with the British treasury, most likely. If she were serious about keeping the place, the side entrance would be the first thing she’d dispose of. From the outside, London Print had an appealing modern look, befitting an established mid-sized English publishing house: a gray granite façade four stories high on one of London’s increasingly expensive streets. The interior, however, was as dull as the publisher’s editorial choices—desks too small, rooms too dim. And the obligatory side entrance for the only two women working here—one woman, actually, after Mr. Barnes took his typist daughter to India with him—was nothing but a cobwebbed servants’ staircase at the back of the house. That entrance would be the first thing to change.

   The tinny sound of a bell made her eyes snap open.

   The receptionist had come to his feet. “Lady Lucinda, if you please.”

   Mr. Barnes approached in his usual hasty manner when she entered his office. He hung her tweed jacket onto an overburdened hat rack, then offered her tea as she took her seat at his desk, an offer she declined because she had a train to catch back to Oxford.

   More covert glances, this time from the direction of Miss Barnes’s desk in the left corner. Unnecessary, really, considering the young woman had seen her in the flesh before. She gave the typist a nod, and Miss Barnes quickly lowered her eyes to her typewriter. Oh, hell’s bells. One would think she was a criminal on the loose, not merely a figure in the women’s rights movement. Though for most people that amounted to one and the same. Most people gave radicalism a wide berth, lest it might be catching.

   Mr. Barnes eyed her warily. “It’s the board,” he said, “the editorial board is currently trying to understand why you would be interested in taking over magazines such as the Home Counties Weekly and the Discerning Lady’s Magazine.”

   “Not taking over, but co-owning,” Lucie corrected, “and my reasons are the same as before: the magazines have a wide reach within a broad readership, and there is still obvious growth potential. And the fact that you publish the Pocketful of Poems line shows that London Print is not afraid to innovate. Everyone with an eye on publishing is interested, Mr. Barnes.”

   The small format and intelligent marketing of the poetry book had been the one aspect about the publisher that wasn’t dusty, a promising silver lining when one secretly plotted to steer the entire enterprise toward the twentieth century. More importantly, there were only two other shareholders, both owning twenty-five percent of London Print each, both living abroad. She’d have as good as nothing standing in the way of her decision making.

   “All this is quite true,” the director said, “but the board did not know until our last meeting that you were behind the investment consortium.”

   “I don’t see how that changes our deal.”

   “Well . . . because it is you.”

   “I’m afraid I still don’t follow,” she said.

   Mr. Barnes tugged at his necktie. His bald pate had the telltale shine of nervous perspiration.

   Invariably, she had that effect on people—making them nervous. It’s because you always have a plan and a purpose, Hattie had explained to her. Perhaps you should smile more to frighten them less.

   Experimentally, she bared her teeth at Mr. Barnes.

   He only looked more alarmed.

   He took off his small round glasses and made a production of folding them up before finally meeting her eyes. “My lady. Allow me to be frank.”

   “Please,” she said. Frankness was her preferred mode of communication. It was, perhaps regrettably, her only mode.

   “You are quite active in politics,” Mr. Barnes ventured.

   “I’m a leader of the British suffragist movement.”

   “Indeed. And you must know that as such, you are a controversial figure. In fact, a recent article in the Times called you exactly that.”

   “I believe that article used the words ‘nefarious nag’ and ‘troublesome termagant.’”

   “Quite right,” Mr. Barnes said awkwardly. “So naturally, the board is wondering why someone with the aim to overturn the present social order would have an interest in owning such wholesome magazines, never mind a line of romantic poetry.”

   “Why, it almost sounds as though the board fears that I have ulterior motives, Mr. Barnes,” she said mildly. “That I am not, in fact, keen on a good business opportunity, but that I shall start a revolution among respectable middle-class women through the Home Counties Weekly.”

   “Ha ha.” Mr. Barnes laughed. Clearly that was precisely what he feared. “Well, no,” he then said, “you’d lose readers by the droves.”

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