The Duchess War

“Wait,” he said, reaching after her.

But the door had already slammed behind her. He was still staring at the space she’d occupied when the conductor blew the whistle. He grabbed his bag and ran.

She liked his friends. She liked his friends? It was odd, to have all that embarrassment turned around. He found himself grinning madly, gleefully, as he caught up with Violet and Sebastian and the rest of their entourage. They were crowded around Violet’s notebook, peering at the pages.

“What are you two giggling about?” he asked suspiciously.

Violet snapped her notebook shut. “I was keeping score,” she said. “I hate to inform you of this, but your Miss Pursling won the conversation.”

He still had that stupid grin on his face, and it wasn’t going away. “Yes,” he agreed. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

Chapter Ten

THE OMNIBUS DROPPED MINNIE a half mile from her great-aunts’ farm. She pulled her valise under one arm and began to walk the rest of the way home.

When she’d left the few clustered houses behind her, she pulled out the letter in her skirt pocket and awkwardly—she had only one free hand, after all—broke the wax seal.

The letter was dated two days past.

My dear Miss Pursling, he had written. I want to make clear what I meant the other day when we encountered one another at the Finneys’ residence. Writing handbills is not some sort of a whim on my part.

You told me the other day that you had looked high, and that you had been battered down. You’re not alone. It is the nature of English society to do precisely that: to keep the lower classes low and raise the upper classes even higher. It is lucky of me indeed to be able to look where I wish.

My most ardent wish is that you, and everyone like you, will look up. That you’ll do so and never be beaten into the ground again. I write handbills because I can write those words without fear of reprisal—because if I am discovered, the House of Lords will never prosecute me. I write because those words must be written. I write because to not write, to not speak, would be to waste what I have been given. I keep it secret because otherwise, anyone who associated with me would become the target for an investigation.

You are undoubtedly my superior in the matter of tactics. As proof, here you have a letter in my own hand, admitting what I have done. Use it to expose me, if that’s what you think will get you your good marriage to an ordinary man who wishes nothing more than to have a quiet wife. Use it, if you must, or keep it and say nothing. You told me the future terrified you. I can’t change the whole of it, but I can change this much.

Or you could look up. You could put that superior mind of yours to real use and fashion a different place for yourself entirely. You could be more. You could be much, much more.

Anything else would be a criminal waste of your talents.

Your servant,

Robert Alan Graydon Blaisdell.

No title. But then, the only title he’d chosen for himself in his writings was De minimis—a small thing. Not so small a thing, though. Minnie could feel the tide of his hope lifting her up with every step.

You could be more.

She’d tasted more once—just the tiniest nibble, but enough to make her life now seem dreary indeed. It was like eating nothing but unsalted gruel every meal, but smelling sausage and pastries all day. After all this time spent choking down tasteless glop, someone was offering her meat.

She couldn’t think logically. She couldn’t analyze. She could think of nothing but her hunger.

I could be more.

She had no idea what her future contained, but even the little hint of relief she’d felt at his admission—one less thing to fear, one worry put off after these last days of worry—seemed to ease her burden.

That feeling of false comfort stayed with her through the walk home. It buoyed up every step, elevated every breath. It buzzed through her as she greeted her great-aunts, as she went and washed and prepared herself for the evening meal. And it changed nothing. It only made the burden of reality feel all the heavier when its full weight descended on her shoulders.

By the time dinner came, Minnie found she couldn’t taste the soup.

Her great-aunts sat before her, eating steadily, conversing as two good friends who had spent decades in one another’s company were wont to do. The conversation ranged from the production of turnips to the uses for the far field come spring.

They chattered on as if nothing had changed, and she hated them because nothing had. Because on that fateful day when her life had upended itself, they had been the ones to come get her from London. They’d pointed her down this path.

If you come with us, Great-Aunt Caro had said, Minerva Lane will die forever. You will never say that name. The person who you are today? She will simply vanish.

Gruel. Nothing but gruel—and the fear that one day, there’d not even be that.

“Did you know that Billy is courting?” Great-Aunt Caro said.

“No! He cannot possibly be old enough.”

“He’s eighteen,” Caro said. “And heaven help me if I know when that happened. Why, it seems as if it were just last month that he was born…”

She couldn’t attend to the conversation. Minnie hadn’t just taken on a new name when her great-aunts took her away; she’d taken on a new personality. She hadn’t even known how to walk like a girl at first. For that initial year, her great-aunts had constantly corrected her behavior. Don’t contradict. Don’t speak up. Don’t step forward. Anything that drew attention was absolutely forbidden; she’d found herself shrinking smaller and smaller until a walnut could have encompassed her personality—and left room for it to rattle around.

She’d been small and quiet. Having known so much more, her frustrated, pent-up ambition had chafed. She’d seized on what little charity work was allowed to women, but it wasn’t enough. And now she faced a lifetime of this affliction—of being forced to make her soul as small and as tasteless as possible, in hopes that it would fit into the confines of her life.

You have steel for your backbone and a rare talent for seeing what is plainly in front of your face. I could make everyone see that.

Damn his eyes. Damn his letter. Damn that smile, the one that made her want to kiss him back, just so she could know that she’d put that light inside him.

Anything else would be a criminal waste.

Damn him, because even if he didn’t mean it—even if it was all a way to try to fog her mind and lead her astray—he had made her believe that she could change things. And that this time, when she did…