The Missing Boy (Lady Eugenie's School for Girl Sleuths Book 1)

by V. Penley

  “I’m sure she’ll consider it.”

  Phillip laughed again. “Dinner is served at 8:00.”

  Chapter Six: Dinner—and an Argument

  To no one’s surprise, Duke Phillip’s estate did meet with the Marchioness Carlyle’s approval. And she had been most eager to see it.

  Everyone returned at dusk for dinner, trooping back across. The Duke had then taken Marchioness Carlyle to visit his duck pond, where in the fading light he had pointed out interesting features of the landscape, and during which the Marchioness managed to pry out of him details about his other estate—the family one—in Clowdon.

  Meanwhile, Eugenie and Mrs. Todderham had waited inside Clarendon Grange with the two girls, in the library. Mrs. Todderham nestled down onto the sofa, stifling a yawn, while Eugenie looked closer at the book cases. Disappointingly, they contained few books. The volumes available were detection stories, crammed onto one shelf, along with a complete set of the memoirs of Malveaux. Eugenie guessed that Phillip kept these books for his future students. She had half a mind to write down which volumes he had, so that her girls could be as prepared as his students.

  She was disappointed not to see anything of a personal nature. She wondered what he read in his free time—other than Dostoyevsky.

  The valet, who doubled as a cook, arrived in the library to announce that dinner would be served shortly; Duke Phillip and Marchioness Carlyle returned soon after the announcement.

  “Are you hungry?” Phillip asked the Marchioness.

  “Like a lioness.”

  To Eugenie, the dining room seemed smaller in the evening than it had earlier in the afternoon, during the competition. Two tables were now crammed into it: a rectangular table with four plates set, and a smaller table in a corner for the children.

  “Please, sit anywhere,” Phillip said, taking a seat not at the head but across from where Eugenie sat.

  Mrs. Todderham took the Eastern head and hugged her arms in her hands. “This is…cozy.” She had worn only a dress, with bared shoulders. Across the length of the table, she whispered to the Marchioness: “I should have put on that sweater, like you told me.” The Marchioness merely raised an eyebrow in response.

  When Michaels came in shortly with bowls of steaming vegetables and a rack of lamb, the heat in the room increased considerably. Eugenie discreetly wiped her brow with a cloth napkin. Her mother, sitting at the Western head, remained coolly composed.

  “Let me serve you,” Phillip said, standing and taking plates. Michaels came and left, bringing endless bowls of food and casting glances at the Marchioness, who kept her gaze carefully averted and her hands calmly in her lap. It was a miracle that Michaels had managed to cook as much in so little time. The smells, in such a small space, were intoxicating.

  “Please eat,” Phillip said, as he moved to the children’s table to dish out food.

  Eugenie, wearied after a long day (they had left London at 4:30) stifled her own yawn and put the first piece of sizzling lamb in her mouth. It instantly melted, filling her sinuses with its scent.

  “Well,” Mrs. Todderham said, her cheeks rosy. “This is better than what I would have cooked.”

  “Indeed,” the Marchioness said.

  In the beginning, conversation was general. Everyone praised the food as they cleaned their initial plate. But after seconds, Mrs. Todderham had revived with animal spirits and decided to put current events into circulation.

  “What about the Woman Question?” she asked innocently, picking up a spoon to use for her salad. The salad was served after the main course, in the French style.

  “The woman’s question?” Duke Phillip repeated. He chewed thoughtfully and looked at Mrs. Todderham, as if waiting for her to expand. His hands were folded in front of his chin as he chewed a leaf of lettuce. Eugenie knew he was playing dumb. Surely, she thought, a former member of the House of Lords would be aware that women had been agitating for the right to vote. For quite some time, too.

  “The right to vote,” Mrs. Todderham clarified, looking down in wonder at the celery stick her spoon was unable to spear. She then giggled softly to herself and picked up a fork.

  “What do you feel about women voting?” Eugenie asked evenly, laying down her own utensils so that she could focus on his answer. She wasn’t quite yet over her girls losing to his boys earlier in the afternoon. She sensed an opening to make him uncomfortable.

  “Is that what women are trying to do?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Eugenie said. “Mrs. Todderham wonders your feelings on the subject.”

  “I like women,” Phillip began carefully. “My table would be bereft without women. Quite bare.” He smiled all around; Marchioness Carlyle tittered in response.

  Lady Eugenie did not.

  “So you support the right to vote then?” she asked. She folded her arms. She had not brought a frock to wear, having had no reason to anticipate a meal with someone of the Duke’s standing; therefore, she wore the same blouse and skirt as she had travelled in, but had taken off the trench coat. Now her arms were cold, so she held them in her hands. “You would support Mrs. Davison, who recently ran in front of a horse to secure the vote for women?”

  Phillip dug aggressively into his salad, cutting pieces with a knife and fork. As Eugenie talked, he glanced up at her through his eyebrows, a gleam in his eye. “Did you know Miss Davison?”

  “No,” Eugenie said. “I’ve never met her.”

  “Are you sure? Not at a meeting in London, perhaps?”

  Eugenie began to feel her face color. “I’m neither a suffragette nor a member of the Worker’s Party.”

  “Are you sure?” He forked salad into his mouth and chewed equably, his lips barely moving though the muscles at his jaw stood out.

  Eugenie shook her head. “This isn’t about me, in the event. And you still haven’t answered the question.”

  The Duke sniffed and swallowed his salad down, after which he took a long drink of water, looking at no one. He seemed careful, nervous. Eugenie liked that.

  “Well,” he began, after patting his lips with a napkin. “If you really want my answer to whether the franchise should be extended.”

  “I do,” Eugenie said.

  He smiled quickly to himself, but then straightened his lips. “Well, then I would have to say… I guess I should have to answer…”

  Eugenie leaned over the table, blinking.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. He looked her blank in the face. “I don’t see any reason for anyone to vote, actually.”

  Maisie, sitting at the children’s table, chuckled along with one of the boys. They then eyed each other quickly and returned to their small plates of salad.

  Mrs. Todderham, who had finally picked up her fork, winced at the answer. She glanced quickly at Eugenie and observed that this was not the answer Eugenie wanted to hear, either. Instead, annoyance rose slowly up Lady Eugenie’s face like an uninvited guest up a staircase: first the chin quivered slightly, then the nostrils flared as the eyes glowed; then, at the top of the stairs, her smooth forehead broke into several steps.

  Eugenie fell back, and crossed her arms again.

  “I’m sorry if that upsets a suffragette such as yourself,” Phillip said, smiling as he bit into his salad.

  The Marchioness, for her part, didn’t hear Duke Phillip’s answer—hadn’t even heard her daughter’s own question—because she had been focused on the silverware and the china. Through all the courses, she had managed to upend the bowls and plates to see the imprint on the bottom and was now maneuvering to do the same with the salad plate. Thus far, she had been impressed with the quality of the china. It was as good as the set she and her late husband had once owned. Perhaps better.

  “But you can vote,” Lady Eugenie said. “I don’t see how you’ll be elected to Parliament if no one is voting.”

  Mrs. Todderham nodded at that. Quite right, she thought. “Oh, are you running?” Mrs. Todderham asked.

  P
hillip nodded quickly. “Perhaps at some point. There won’t be another election for five years. But back to—.”

  “Or do you mean only men should vote,” Lady Eugenie said, cutting him off. “Men like yourself. Men of property.”

  At the word property, Marchioness Carlyle lifted her head quickly. But then she groaned, divining the topic of conversation. “Oh my dear,” she whispered, nodding her head in the direction of Michaels, who stood at the door with his hands clasped behind his back. “Let’s not encourage unhappiness with one’s lot in life. Breaches of propriety will only increase if we do.”

  “Quite right, ma’am,” Michaels whispered in her direction. “Quite right.”

  The Marchioness sat bolt upright, frowning.

  “No, no,” Phillip said. “I think this is a most appropriate topic of discussion. Especially with such a committed suffragette as your daughter, Lady Eugenie.”

  “I am not a suffragette,” Eugenie said. “I am merely attempting to iron out the inconsistencies and contradictions in your beliefs. There are many. Please assist me, good sir.”

  “I would be happy to,” Phillip said, reaching for his fork again. “But I’m afraid I can’t see them.”

  “The contradictions?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want no one to vote,” Eugenie said. “Yet you apparently are comfortable with only men of property voting. I would call that a contradiction.”

  “Are you saying a man of property should not be able to vote?” Phillip cocked an eyebrow.

  “I said no such thing. I am saying that men of property should not deny others the right to vote. It is, as I said, inconsistent to cherish for oneself what one would deny others. Or maybe not inconsistent. What’s the word?” She looked around the table dramatically. “Oh yes. Selfish.”

  “I…I…” Phillip said, leaning back. Some color, on the center of his cheeks, burned through the blond hair there. “I…I reject entirely your line of thought. In fact, I would say that you are completely wrong. And if there weren’t two ladies at my table, I would use stronger language.”

  “I think she’s right,” Mrs. Todderham said, nodding toward Eugenie. She was as surprised as the Marchioness that she said it. With an embarrassed smile, Mrs. Todderham explain herself. “I’m not a suffragette, but it does seem a little…inconsistent.”

  Phillip reached for his own water and drank. No one spoke. Eugenie could see the wheels spinning in his head.

  She waited for him to finish drinking before saying triumphantly: “I’m sorry. I’ve caught you without anything to say.”

  “No, no,” Phillip said, inserting a finger into his collar and loosening it slightly. He ran a thumbnail across his eyebrow and composed himself. The color rapidly left his cheeks and his lips regained their delicate shape.

  “You’ve raised good points. Very interesting.” He nodded. “Both of you. Perhaps there is an edge of inconsistency. But I did not ask to be given property. Nor did I ask be born a royal peer.”

  “Ah,” Eugenie said.

  “But having served in Parliament, I have come to see the beauty of an electoral system in which those with a vested property interest decide how to regulate that property. Those who own property know best how to dispose of it. I should think it rather parallel to your own situation with marriage.”

  “My situation…marriage…” Eugenie shook her head, confused. “I don’t….” This was a devious maneuver, meant to throw her off guard. Keep your wits, Eugenie. Her girls had been outmaneuvered earlier in the day; she would not suffer the same fate at the table.

  “Yes, you and marriage,” Phillip said. “How many women today would agree to have someone else decide for them who they should marry?” He looked at the other women at the table. “Would you?”

  The Marchioness, who was not anti-intellectual, rested her chin on her palm, to watch the exchange. She had no idea who would be the winner, though they looked evenly matched. As best as she could figure, the Duke thought that others shouldn’t tell you what to do with your property. That did seem similar to what the younger women these days said of marriage: “Let me decide.” That was the modern creed. The Marchioness had never seen the parallel until today.

  “I don’t follow the analogy,” Eugenie said. “Are you comparing your estate in Clowdhorn—”

  “Clowdon.”

  “Clowdon. Excuse me.” She took a napkin to wipe her lips; her hand shook slightly. “Are you saying Clowdon is as important to you as my life is to me? Are you saying that no one can tell you what to do with Clowdon because I don’t want to be married off, like some gypsy?”

  “Precisely.” Phillip wiped his own lips with a napkin. His hand did not shake and his eyes held hers evenly. “I think it is an apt analogy.”

  As ladylike as possible, Eugenie returned the look, though allowing it to harden into a stare. “I disagree. The state regulates my body, yet you would deny me a say in how it is regulated?”

  Phillip’s brow creased at the word “body.”

  “That’s hardly appropriate.”

  “It’s the truth,” Eugenie said. “And there can be no politics without truth.”

  Phillip began eating his salad again, not looking up. To someone who had just come into the room, he looked bored, uninterested in the rest of the people at the table. Yet, to Eugenie sitting across from him, his brow looked quite disagreeable, quite ugly.

  In truth—if truth was what she was truly after—Lady Eugenie had hardly thought about the suffragette movement at all. She had been born a daughter of privilege herself. She was quite sure that her background precisely paralleled Phillip’s. Her father a Marquis, Eugenie had been born to a family that could trace its lineage back to the Domesday Book. The family’s estate had grown for centuries until it had embraced entire townships. Though it had shrunk over the past hundred years, it had maintained its income during Victoria’s reign, with key investments made by her businessman father, who would have been wealthy in his own right had he been born a commoner. Eugenie had never felt, as a child, anything less than secure; and she had spent her formative years touring Switzerland and the Low Countries.

  But when her husband had died—suddenly, keeled over his office desk—and she had lost her home, it was as if she had missed a step. Now her days were focused relentlessly on survival: getting enough food, keeping heat in the school, driving her girls toward academic progress. Her everyday concerns pressed round her. Eugenie moved from a state of privilege to one of near poverty in almost an eye blink, and she had missed that intermediate step—of being a professional woman married to a professional man—where most of the London suffragettes seemed to be located.

  Had she been given the right to vote, Eugenie didn’t know if she would even exercise it. And how meaningful were rights if they weren’t exercised?

  But Phillip, sitting across from her in his own beautiful house, wearing his beautiful clothes, projected such an easy air of security that she felt compelled to defend the right to vote. People who had everything—such as he—should be charitable. She was certain of that truth. They should be charitable especially when they had proved themselves superior teachers of detection.

  She needed to find a weakness—and she thought she had. Phillip, continuing to eat, cleaned his plate and reached for his glass, but it was empty of water.

  Eugenie pushed across her own glass, which she hadn’t drunk from yet. The gesture gave her an opening to start again.

  “So what did you do in Parliament, if it wasn’t to support a women’s right to vote?” Eugenie smiled weakly, trying to appear teasing. Instead, she was laying a trap. “In the papers, one reads of this vote and that vote. Of speeches. I should imagine it is a veritable bee hive of activity. How did you contribute to the hive?”

  He finally looked up but left her water glass halfway between them.

  Oh no, Eugenie thought. He doesn’t look that upset.

  “Well, I did many things,” he said, nodding. He sat up str
aighter, and included the Marchioness and Mrs. Todderham in the discussion of his time in Parliament. “I was only in there less than a year, you must understand. Before Asquith rammed through the Parliament Act, which stripped the Lords of their power. But in my time I managed to sponsor several bills. Such as the creation of the new children’s hospital in Clowdon. Increased funding for the poor. I also introduced a bill to fund family planning.”

  He waited for Eugenie to respond to that.

  She didn’t.

  Phillip continued. “I was also fortunate to join the Honorable Charles Cottington of Bumbridge in petitioning the Prime Minister to contribute relief funds for the situation in India.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Todderham said.

  Phillip nodded. He continued to tick off several other accomplishments. Despite the quip earlier in the day that he had never passed a bill, he certain had been busy, and he gave the name and substance of each bill he had introduced.

  After ticking off each act, he looked openly at the two elderly women for approval, which was promptly given. They gazed at him adoringly. Then he glanced slyly at Lady Eugenie, whose approval was less forthcoming. She sat attentive but unmoved.

  Yes, Eugenie thought, I have found his weakness.

  It was his vision of himself. A vision that he was a man of the people. Phillip didn’t want anyone to touch his property or to help decide how to dispose of it—that was quite clear. But he also wanted to serve the public. Eugenie didn’t doubt this in the least. He did want to help. He did care about the poor. What he couldn’t give up was control. He wanted to act for other people’s benefit without ever hearing from them.

  It wasn’t the worst fault someone could have, Eugenie reasoned. She had certainly met men, of all ages, with far, far worse.

  “And women don’t have an interest in society?” Eugenie finally asked. The anger had left her, but a sentence came to mind and she repeated it before thinking: “It will be Britain’s women who return the Empire to its highest glory.”