The Duchess War

Over the short course of their marriage, he’d never been farther from Minnie than he was at this moment. He’d lied to her, and tomorrow he was going to break his promise to her and hurt her. And yet he could hear her right now over the thunder of the machinery.

“I don’t pretend to understand what it means to be a working man, Mr. Charingford, but I am a factory owner. I inherited a good bit of industry from my grandfather. And when I look at your factory floor, I don’t see men who are happy to be at work.”

A woman on the floor looked up at them as he spoke. There was no hatred in her eyes, no contempt. Just a soft look around the edge of her eyes—a quiet yearning.

Perhaps she had once been a genteel young lady who failed to marry. Maybe she’d had no choice but to take on work until her hair grayed before her time and her skin turned to leather. Still, she looked up. Like everyone else, her lips moved in song.

“Well?” Mr. Charingford said. “What is it that you see instead?”

“I see Minnie.” His voice caught. “I see who she might have been in ten years, when her great-aunts’ health faded away.”

Mr. Charingford drew in a sharp breath.

“I see your daughter if the market for hosiery should vanish.”

“Not Lydia,” Charingford said in shocked tones. “Surely not…” But he trailed away unhappily.

“I see who my brother might have been if another man hadn’t stepped in to raise him. I see my childhood cook, if I hadn’t pensioned her off. The only person I don’t see is myself.” He let his hands trail over the catwalk. “I have never been there, and I never will. The only thing I understand now is that I cannot comprehend what it is like to stand on a factory floor and look up and sing.”

Mr. Charingford tilted his head and looked at him, really listening now.

“I’ve a goodly share of faults. I rush in, where I should tread carefully. I speak, where I should listen. But when I hear them sing, I don’t just hear a hymn. They’re singing to God because they haven’t found anyone else who will listen.”

Charingford spoke cautiously. “Stevens says that if we listen once, we’ll only stir the workers on to greater unreasonableness.”

“Have you found that Stevens becomes more reasonable the more you give in to his demands?”

Charingford looked away.”

“How much has he asked of you, Charingford? You’re a magistrate. Has he said he won’t help you if you don’t do as he says? Has he asked for money? Or did he simply demand that he be awarded the hand of your beautiful daughter in exchange for his efforts?“

Charingford’s hands closed on the metal rail in front of him. He closed his eyes. “That,” he said. “He did—all of that.”

“I have found,” Robert said, “that in the long run, paying my workers enough that they do not consider the future with terror costs far less than employing men to terrorize them.”

“You sound like Minnie,” Charingford muttered. It sounded like a complaint.

Robert simply smiled and shook his head. It was, perhaps, the sweetest compliment he’d been given.

A young boy darted across the floor below, conveying a full bobbin to a man who had turned to one of the machines.

“If you don’t look carefully,” Robert said, “the men and women on the floor fade into indistinguishable browns and grays. You don’t have to see them as anything except the working arms of the machines, flesh and blood instead of steel and iron. Drawing wages, instead of being purchased upfront. But machines don’t sing. Machines don’t hope. And Charingford, I don’t think we could stop them, not with a thousand copies of Captain Stevens. I don’t intend to try.”

“You’re a radical.” There was no heat in the accusation. Charingford looked out over the factory. But now, his gaze stopped here and there—on women who bound the hose up in paper, on men who worked the machines.

“I know,” Robert said.

“If you’d talked to me when first you arrived, instead of writing handbills…”

“I’m growing up. And my wife, it appears, is having some effect on me.” Robert shrugged. “You never know. By the time I’m thirty, I might actually start making a difference.”

Chapter Twenty-five

IT WAS LATE WHEN MINNIE’S HUSBAND returned home—so late that all the servants except one solitary footman had gone to bed. Minnie heard the front door open and then close behind Robert. She could imagine him taking off his things—greatcoat, frock coat—and handing them to the footman. She waited to hear his footsteps on the stairs, but as the minutes ticked by, they didn’t come.

Minnie slowly stood and tiptoed out of their room. The house below had been doused in darkness. The only reason she could find her footing on the great staircase that led to the entrance was that a hint of light was coming from some room in the back. She followed that path of golden light down the hallway.

The door at the end was ajar. Robert sat at the table, a plate in front of him filled with the cold remains from dinner. He wasn’t eating; he simply held his fork in one hand, staring blankly off into nothingness. His head was bowed a fraction, as if he were supplicating the beef before him for some great thing. While she watched, his hand crept to the corner of his eye and brushed against it—almost as if he were swiping away a tear.

He wasn’t crying. He didn’t reach for a handkerchief. But his hand stayed there, next to his eye, as if to ward off any other emotion.

Her own breath caught.

She retreated down the hallway, cursing her soft silk slippers. He hadn’t even heard her coming. Loudly, she opened the door to the parlor and retrieved the package that she’d obtained earlier that day. Even more loudly, she slammed the parlor door shut.

It was impossible to scuff slippers against carpet, but she did her best. By the time she got to the door, he’d set his hand down. That look of intense bleakness had faded, and he even managed to manufacture a little smile for her.

“Minnie,” he said. “I didn’t think you would be awake.”

As if she would have been able to sleep, thinking of him and worrying about his brother. The trial was scheduled for tomorrow. She could see the toll the strain had taken on him. There were dark circles under his eyes, worry lines grooved on his forehead.

“I had a hard time sleeping without you,” she answered. She set the package on the table near him.