Down the Rabbit Hole

“Shall we move along, my lord?” Mr. Arbuckle suggested. “We can walk to Green Park. It’s only a few blocks away, and we can continue the discussion there, if you wish.”


They followed behind Mr. Arbuckle, arm in arm, weaving through crowds that seemed to have grown in the short time they were in the coffee shop. As they walked Alice pressed her point. “All these women we see passing are so much better dressed than I am. Based on what we overheard it’s most likely that they have positions with responsibility outside of maintaining a home.”

“Hmm,” was the only response that occurred to him.

“They could be bankers, shop owners.” As they waited at the light she turned to a well-dressed woman. “I beg your pardon, miss, but would you tell me what you do with your day?”

The woman looked slightly nonplussed, but shrugged. “I’m the manager of an art gallery in SoHo.” As the light changed she hurried off. “Sorry, I’m quite late getting home.”

“There, you see, Wes? Though I am not sure what someone who manages an art gallery actually does, the word ‘manager’ indicates a position of some responsibility.”

As they entered Green Park, Mr. Arbuckle waited for them so they could all walk side by side on the wide path.

“Mr. Arbuckle,” Alice asked, “is it not true that women do all sorts of work now, work that used to be reserved for men in our time?”

“Yes, miss, that’s quite true.”

Weston wondered if the change was one-sided. “Next you will tell me that men are giving birth and nursing their young.”

Even as he spoke, they passed a park bench where a young man was holding a babe and feeding him with a bottle. Weston’s face must have shown the panic he felt, for Alice laughed out loud.

“No, my lord,” Mr. Arbuckle reassured him, “men do not give birth, but they are much more involved in child care now than they were in 1805.”

“How, um, interesting.” Weston did not know whether to be relieved or impressed. “Do men have nothing more important to do than care for puking and mewling infants? Have the women taken all their positions?”

“Oh, Weston, please.” Alice’s tone made him feel like a fool. “Did you not hear Mr. Arbuckle say that they share the responsibility? I imagine that both men and women work, and sharing domestic duties is the only way they can manage.”

Frankly, this struck him as more amazing than cars and computers.

They had come out of Green Park and continued along Piccadilly, arrowing back toward the town house, both of them lost in their own thoughts for the moment.

Weston tried to decide if he would be willing to share “domestic duties” if that meant Alice would marry him. The answer was an unequivocal yes. Ah well, then he was not quite so far removed from twenty-first-century man as he’d thought. But then the problem had never been his willingness to commit to her, but hers to him.

Her obstinate belief that her parents’ divorce and her family’s social ostracism would extend to him had truth at its core, but he was convinced that the two of them could have persuaded the ton that she was as much a lady as any Countess Weston. And it was probably a fantasy on his part to think that the open-mindedness he was seeing in her was something that would travel back with them.





CHAPTER SEVEN




Sorry soul-searching was becoming an unwelcome habit, but Weston was stopped short of further conjecture by Alice’s insistent tug on his arm. “Tell me why all those people are walking into that building. They cannot all have positions there.”

Weston had been so lost in thought he had not even noticed that oddity as they turned the corner. “Yes, I see, and at least as many are coming out. But why?”

“They are not actually going into the building, my lord. The building access is also the entry to the Green Park Underground station. The Underground is a train system that runs in tunnels beneath the city. In London, it’s the most popular method of moving from place to place.”