“Miss.” He was hardly more than a youth, really. His complexion was poor and sallow, and he had rather too much oil in his hair. “All Souls is a gentlemen’s club, miss. You’re in the wrong place.”
Octavia climbed to the next step, and her proximity forced him to adjust his outstretched arm. “Tell me,” she said, “is Mr. Jermyn here this evening? He is the head of the domestic staff, is he not?”
Something of the young man’s confidence leached from his face. “It’s his night off, miss.”
“My grandfather sends him a consideration with his Christmas card. Do you know my grandfather, Mr. Felix Hillingdon? He is a sentimental creature, you see, but rather forgetful, so I keep a list for him. Perhaps I ought to add your name. I imagine he’d be upset if you were overlooked.”
He winced in discomfort as she inched further upwards. “My compliments to the gentleman, I’m sure,” he said. “But he’d tell you the same thing if he was standing here now, same as any member. Ladies ain’t admitted, miss.”
“Perhaps he would.” Octavia edged upwards again, obliging him to stretch his arm still further. “My grandfather is a man of tradition, it’s true. But rules are one thing. An assault on his granddaughter’s person is quite another.”
“An assault on your—”
“Well, indeed.” Octavia rose by another step. Hardly half an inch now separated her uncovered collarbone from his hand, whose slight tremor she could now discern. “I’m afraid I don’t see how else the situation could be perceived.”
The young man swung awkwardly aside, contorting himself so as to keep his salver from tipping over. By the time he had righted himself, Octavia had reached the top of the staircase.
“Come now, miss, please,” he called after her. “The constables will have to be sent for.”
“What a splendid idea,” she said, pausing at the top of the staircase. “No doubt the members would applaud your vigilance. But they may take a different view when the matter is reported in the papers. ‘Constables were called last evening to a scene of disorder at All Souls Club in St. James’s Street, where they found that a young lady, having entered the premises only to seek directions, had been detained below stairs by domestic staff and subjected to improper advances.’ The form of words may vary a little, but you have the idea, I’m sure.”
She turned to look down at him.
“My own paper won’t carry it, of course, since the proprietor and the editor are both members here, but others will be glad to, especially if I have saved them the trouble of drafting the fair copy. My name is Octavia Hillingdon, young man, of the Mayfair Gazette. Do feel free to give the constables my name.”
The dining room, when she located it, proved to be a grand but sepulchral chamber, with the brownish and looming appearance of places where the tastes of gentlemen have gone unchecked. Only two of its tables were occupied, one of them by a fantastically aged creature who sat hunched over a bowl of soup and that morning’s Times, motionless and quite possibly asleep. At the other, just as she had expected, was Mr. Healy.
He greeted her with a bland look when she had seated herself, finishing his mouthful with a show of indifference, then swigging from his claret glass before he spoke. “Miss Hillingdon,” he said. “You imagine this intrusion to be amusing, no doubt.”
“I imagine no such thing, Mr. Healy. I certainly don’t find it amusing. I find it tiresome, since you ask. In fact, since I arrived at your office to submit my article, fully fifteen minutes before the appointed time, I’ve been having an exceedingly tiresome evening.”
Mr. Healy sawed at his beef. “I do employ a deputy, Miss Hillingdon.”
“Mr. Benedict is of a very nervous disposition, as you know, and hardly trusts himself to check the railway timetables. I did ask him to accept my pages, but he would not hear of it. It would not do to interfere, he said, which is just the answer he gave me the last time you missed our appointment, and the time before that.”
“I shall be returning after my dinner, as always. You might easily have waited.”
“Oh, yes, I might easily have perched in that draughty corridor for three hours, watching Mr. Benedict gnaw at his pencils and wondering how many toes I’d lost to frostbite. How very gallant you are, Mr. Healy. In any case, I was in a hurry. I had just got back from the House of Lords, and I have a ball to attend at Ashenden House. One can’t very well write about society if one never ventures into it.”
“What has the House of Lords to do with society? Debutantes have not begun coming out in the ladies’ gallery, surely? Here is the porter, by the way, to bring this bit of foolishness to an end. Did you wish to pass me this article of yours before you are carried out?”
Octavia set her packet of pages on the table, propping it up with a salt cellar. “For fear you should overlook it,” she explained. “Lady Ashenden is giving the ball to honour Lord Strythe, the Earl of Maundley. He has established a benevolent foundation of some kind for injured work girls. I went to Westminster, where a bill on their working conditions was to come before the Lords. I felt I ought to begin by observing the man in his daily element, so that the reader may form her impression of him in the round. Or his impression, come to that. It isn’t unimaginable, I hope, that a man might glance at my page.”
Mr. Healy swelled his cheeks, prodding at the tablecloth with the handle of his fork. “If you are so interested in these work girls, you might think of looking into this Spiriters business. Some of the weeklies have shown an interest, and it has done them no harm.”
“The illustrated weeklies, you mean?” Octavia waved away the porter, who was by now hovering at her shoulder. “Well, quite. One expects no better of those. It is sensational nonsense, Mr. Healy. What has it to do with the lives of working women?”
“What has it to do with working women, she asks, when there are scullery maids and match girls disappearing left and right. Why, it is just the sort of thing your Mrs. Besant has always worked herself up about.”
Octavia straightened in her chair. “Mrs. Besant no longer concerns herself with such things. She has left for Paris, or so I understand, where she has taken up with an occultist of some kind. In any case, the Working Conditions Bill—”
“The Working Conditions Bill”—he gulped from his claret glass, setting it down with clattering emphasis—“is neither here nor there. I have the whole of the paper to devote to the news of the day, and I’m sure our Westminster correspondent will give it his attention if the matter warrants it. As for the readers of the Ladies’ Page, I fail to see how it could interest them.”
She regarded him evenly. “To begin with, Mr. Healy, not all the readers of my page are ladies. I proposed a new title for that very reason, as you may recall.”
“What title?” he said. “The Evening Companion?”
“That was your suggestion, Mr. Healy, and I’m afraid it has a disreputable connotation. Mine was the Spirit of the Age.”
He flapped his lips in contempt, shaking his head as he returned to his beef.
“In any case,” she continued, “it isn’t only the season’s fashions that concern them, or the fitting out of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s barouche. They are exercised by political questions, and by the social ills that we must all confront.”