Bringing Down the Duke (A League of Extraordinary Women, #1)(3)

The lady’s sharp gray gaze shifted to her. “Why, yes.”

Clearly there were good ears on this one, something to keep in mind.

Annabelle clutched the ends of her shawl against her chest in a frozen fist. The rough wool offered little protection from the chilly London fog wafting across Parliament Square, certainly not from the cutting glances of passersby. Parliament was closed for the season, but there were still plenty of gentlemen strolling around Westminster, engineering the laws that governed them all. Her stomach plunged at the thought of approaching any such man. No decent woman would talk to a stranger in the street, certainly not while brandishing pamphlets that boldly declared The Married Women’s Property Act makes a slave of every wife!

There was of course some truth to this headline—thanks to the Property Act, a woman of means lost all her property to her husband on her wedding day . . . Still, given the disapproving glances skewering their little group, she had tried to hold her pamphlets discreetly. Her efforts had been demolished swiftly the moment Lady Lucie, secretary of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, had opened her mouth for her motivating speech. The lady was a deceptively ethereal-looking creature, dainty like a china doll with perfectly smooth pale blond hair and a delicate heart-shaped face, but her voice blared like a foghorn across the square as she charged her disciples.

How had these ladies been coerced into attendance? They were huddling like sheep in a storm, clearly wishing to be elsewhere, and she’d bet her shawl that none of them were beholden to the purse strings of a stipend committee. The red-haired girl next to her looked unassuming enough with her round brown eyes and her upturned nose, pink from the cold, but thanks to the Oxford grapevine, she knew who the young woman was: Miss Harriet Greenfield, daughter of Britain’s most powerful banking tycoon. The mighty Julien Greenfield probably had no idea that his daughter was working for the cause. Gilbert certainly would have an apoplexy if he learned about any of this.

Miss Greenfield held her leaflets gingerly, as if she half expected them to try and take a bite out of her hand. “Identify, approach, smile,” she murmured. “That’s simple enough.”

Hardly. With their collars flipped high and top hats pulled low, every man hasting past was a fortress.

The girl looked up, and their gazes caught. Best to give a cordial smile and to glance away.

“You are Miss Archer, aren’t you? The student with the stipend?”

Miss Greenfield was peering up at her over her purple fur stole.

Of course. The grapevine in Oxford worked both ways.

“The very same, miss,” she said, and wondered what it would be, pity or derision?

Miss Greenfield’s eyes lit with curiosity instead. “You must be awfully clever to win a stipend.”

“Why, thank you,” Annabelle said slowly. “Awfully overeducated, rather.”

Miss Greenfield giggled, sounding very young. “I’m Harriet Greenfield,” she said, and extended a gloved hand. “Is this your first suffrage meeting?”

Lady Lucie seemed too absorbed by her own ongoing speech about justice and John Stuart Mill to notice them talking.

Still, Annabelle lowered her voice to a whisper. “It is my first meeting, yes.”

“Oh, lovely—mine, too,” Miss Greenfield said. “I so hope that this is going to be a good fit. It’s certainly much harder to find one’s noble cause than one would expect, isn’t it?”

Annabelle frowned. “One’s . . . noble cause?”

“Yes, don’t you think everyone should have a noble cause? I wanted to join the Ladies’ Committee for Prison Reform, but Mama would not let me. So I tried the Royal Horticulture Society, but that was a miss.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s a process.” Miss Greenfield was unperturbed. “I have a feeling that women’s rights are a worthy cause, though I have to say the very idea of walking up to a gentleman and—”

“Is there a problem, Miss Greenfield?”

The voice cracked like a shot, making both of them flinch. Bother. Lady Lucie was glaring at them, one small fist propped on her hip.

Miss Greenfield ducked her head. “N-no.”

“No? I had the impression that you were discussing something.”

Miss Greenfield gave a noncommittal squeak. Lady Lucie was known to take no prisoners. There were rumors that she had single-handedly caused a diplomatic incident involving the Spanish ambassador and a silver fork . . .

“We were just a little worried, given that we are new at this,” Annabelle said, and Lady Lucie’s flinty gaze promptly skewered her. Holy bother. The secretary was not a woman to mask moods with sugary smiles. Where a hundred women clamored to be domestic sun rays, this one was a thunderstorm.

Surprisingly, the lady settled for a brusque nod. “Worry not,” she said. “You may work together.”

Miss Greenfield perked up immediately. Annabelle bared her teeth in a smile. If they lobbied but one man of influence between the two of them, she’d be surprised.

With a confidence she did not feel, she led the girl toward the busy hackney coach stop where the air smelled of horses.

“Identify, approach, smile,” Miss Greenfield hummed. “Do you think this can be done while keeping a low profile, Miss Archer? You see, my father . . . I’m not sure he is aware that working for the cause is such a public affair.”