The Duchess War

He held out the chair for Lydia. He acted the perfect gentleman, his manners so uncontrived that she almost doubted her own instincts. He rang a bell—tea on two trays, he said, when a servant ducked her head in. While they were waiting, he set one hand in the small of Minnie’s back and walked her to the window. It was the tiniest point of contact—just the warmth of his hand against her spine, muted by layers of fabric—yet still she felt it all the way to the pulse that jumped at her throat.

It was so unfair she could scream. He was rich, handsome, and able to set her heart beating with a mere tap of his finger. She was here to blackmail the man, not to flirt with him. Out the front window, she could see the square outside.

Squares were less common in Leicester than London. This one was badly kept. There was one tree, so spindly it was scarcely fit to be called by the name. The grass had long since perished, giving way to gray gravel. But then, this was one of the few neighborhoods in Leicester where there were squares.

The most successful tradesmen made their homes a short ways down the London road in Stoneygate. The gentry lived on great tracts of land on estates in the surrounding countryside. Everyone with real wealth and position made their homes outside the town.

But the duke had not. Minnie fingered the paper in her pocket and added that to the list of strange things about the man. When dukes came to the region, they situated themselves in Quorn or Melton-Mowbray for the fox hunts. He, however, had leased a residence that stood mere blocks from the factories.

“How may I be of assistance?” he asked.

There was too much that didn’t fit. He was lying. He had to be. She just didn’t know why. A chessboard was set up on the side table. She tried not to look at it, tried not to feel the inevitable tug. But…

White was winning. It was six moves to checkmate, maybe only three. She could see the end, the pincer made by rook and bishop, the line of three white pawns slicing the board in two.

“You play chess?” she asked.

“No.” He waved a hand. “I lose at chess. Badly. But my—that is to say, one of the men here with me plays chess by correspondence with his father. This is where he keeps the board. You’re not going to challenge me to a game, are you?” He smiled at that.

Minnie shook her head. “No. An idle question.”

The maids came with the tea. Minnie waited until they left. Then she reached into her skirt pocket and removed the handbill that Stevens had shoved at her on the previous evening. The edges, wetted by last night’s rain, had curled and yellowed as they dried, but she held it out to him anyway.

He didn’t take it. He glanced at the paper curiously—long enough to read the block-letter title that took up the first quarter of the page—and then looked back at her. “Am I supposed to take an interest in radical handbills?”

“No, Your Grace.” She could scarcely believe her audacity. “You don’t take an interest in radical handbills. You write them.”

He looked at the paper. Slowly, he looked at her and arched his eyebrow. Minnie looked away, her innards twisting under his intense perusal. Finally, he picked up a bun and broke it in half. Steam rose, but the heat didn’t seem to bother his hands.

He didn’t even need to respond. Her accusation was laughably absurd. He sat in his comfortable chair surrounded by furniture that was waxed and polished on a daily basis by servants who had nothing to do but leap on motes of dust as soon as they dared to appear. The Duke of Clermont had taken a house and hired twelve servants for the space of two months. He had estates scattered across England, and a fortune that the gossip papers could only breathlessly speak of as tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. A man like him had no reason to publish radical political circulars.

But then, she already knew he wasn’t what he seemed.

As if to underscore all that, he casually ate a bite of bun and gestured to her to do the same.

No chance of that. Her stomach cramped when she even thought of sipping tea. Just when she thought he was simply going to freeze her accusation into oblivion by refusing to address it, he reached out and adjusted the paper.

“Workers,” he read. “Organize, organize, organize, followed by a great many exclamation points.” He made a dismissive noise. “I abhor exclamation points, for one thing. Why do you suppose I have anything to do with this?”

She had no real proof to offer, only the feel of the way the pieces fit together. But still she was sure of it. The worst case was that she was wrong. Then she would embarrass herself in front of a man she would never see again. She folded her hands in her lap and waited. If he could make her uncomfortable with silence, she could do the same.

And indeed, he spoke first.

“Is it because I’ve just arrived in town, and you don’t want any of your friends blamed?”

She held her tongue.

“Because I look like a rabble-rouser?” There was a wry tone to his voice. He looked—and sounded—like anything but. His voice was smooth and fluid, drawling out syllables in the queen’s best English. He had a faint smile on his face, a condescending expression that said he was humoring her.

“Or is it because you’ve heard stories of my radical proclivities?”

There were no such stories. His reputation was that of a statesman, a man who was both shrewd and soft-spoken.

“Why are you here?” Minnie asked instead. “I’ve heard what’s said, but a man of your stature who was thinking of investing in Leicester industry would send a man of business, instead of arriving himself and overawing everyone.”

“I have friends in the vicinity.”

“If they were such good friends as to necessitate a visit, you would be staying with them.”

He shrugged. “I hate imposing on others.”

“You’re a duke. You’re always imposing.”

He grimaced, looking faintly embarrassed. “That, Miss Pursling, is why I hate doing it. Have you any substance to your accusations?”

She picked up the paper. “If you must know, there are two paragraphs in this circular that convince me it was written by you.”

“By all means.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Read them, and expose me.”

Minnie took her spectacles from her pocket and found the right place. “‘What do the masters do to earn the lion’s share of the pay? They supervise. They own. And for that task—one that takes no thought, no labor—they are paid sums so large that they need not even lift a finger to dress themselves. Their daughters, instead of toiling from the age of fourteen, are free to do as they wish; their sons need worry only about the degree of their dissipation.’”