An Untitled Lady (15 page)

“I’m sorry you had to see Jem’s fall. We haven’t had such an accident before. The last thing I need is a reputation for carelessness and danger.”

They walked home, which Maddie discovered was less than fifteen minutes from the warehouse. The hack ride had taken nearly that long. “Why didn’t we walk this morning?”

“I wasn’t sure you could take such strenuous activity.” She cast a sidelong glance at him. He shrugged. “We don’t know much about each other, do we?”

“I know I could do what Mr. Perkins was doing,” she ventured. “And that he would rather be at the castle. Where Mrs. Perkins is.”

“You know all that?” He took her arm, protecting her from a less-than-cautious curricle.

“Take me on as a test. If I pass Mr. Perkins’s muster, would you consider it?” She held her breath.

“A wife in trade? Heywood’s lady might think less of you. Then again, she might not.” He rubbed his upper lip with a knuckle. “Why not?” He held out a hand for her to shake, all official. “Welcome aboard.”

Despite the growing overcast of the day and the usual dingy air, in Maddie’s vision, there were sunbeams.

{ 17 }

Over the next few days, they started to build a steady pattern to their lives. While Nash rose at cock-crow, Maddie slept another hour, her eyes protected from morning’s light by the loosely tied bed curtain. At mid-morning, she joined him at the warehouse, easily stepping into Mr. Perkins’s shoes. The man already was talking about returning to the castle by Pentecost.

For Maddie, the bustle of the warehouse, as seen through the open office door, wasn’t so different from the humming of a well-run school. She knew she should soon be forced to cut her afternoons short to start paying her afternoon social calls, but as she had no society to speak of, she hadn’t started doing it yet. That would change tonight, when she attended her first formal supper in town, hosted by the Heywoods.

The hack carried them on a roundabout route. Market Street and Deansgate bustled even at night, rows of small theaters and halls brightly lit. Most of the houses, though, were two-storey or three-storey, similar to theirs. They turned a corner, and she saw a stretch of homes palatial in comparison.

“Mosley Street. Many of the manufactory men, mill owners, and advocates have homes here. The richest also have home farms outside town.”

“The magistrates, as well.”

“No. None live in town.”

“Will we ever live here?”

“Do you wish it?”

Her first impulse was to say yes. Who wouldn’t want to look out the window to a lovely park across the way and another mansion beside it? But she paused. “What would I give in exchange?”

“Freedom, for one. This is a closed society, even more than a girls’ school. Flexibility is the other. If I wish to gamble on a ship from the Indies, but I know I have the weight of a household such as these, I’d think again. That is, were I a rational man of business.”

The houses, with their manicured lawns and large-paned windows, seemed to wink at her. How hard could it be to gain one?

“How do these men do it?”

“A few, like Heywood here, married money and use the wife’s portion to run the household. I used your dowry to seed the Netherlands deal. It wouldn’t have brought much more than the outbuildings on this property, though.”

“The others earned their places?”

“The majority fell in love with the pomp and circumstance. Their homes are the spoils of mercantile wars.”

“So long as they are happy at home.”

Nash laughed. “You’re right to sound doubtful. One of them told me he must keep a large property simply to be able to avoid his wife in its halls.”

He sobered as they stepped up the stair to the door of the middle house in the row. “That is also why some of them are so dead set against any of the workers’ demands. Any slice taken out of their pie puts them at risk.”

“And you?”

“I can withstand most troubles, I believe. Anything that lasts more than a month or two would set me back.”

The largesse of the exterior was matched by the interior, with its vaulted entry hall and candles in sconces that it would take a ladder to reach. The underbutler had an underbutler, both in the multilayered uniform better suited to a duke’s residence. But their shoes were wrong, not dainty slip-ons but sturdy heeled shoes.

“Nash, darling, we had all but given up on you.” A pretty woman with upswept hair and a voluminous carat-folded gown called down to them from the balcony. Twin sets of stairs wound up from the edges of the hall to meet in a rounded balcony.

Nash followed Maddie up the stair. She slowed at the top, and he stepped easily to stand beside her at the top.

“Mrs. Heywood, allow me to present my lady wife, Madeline.”

Maddie dropped into a curtsy, and then raised her eyes. Mrs. Heywood had her arm out, as if she had expected to shake hands. Maddie wavered, then mid-bend, stuck her own hand out. The woman took it, smiling as she pulled Maddie gently back up.

“We’re nowhere near so formal as all that. And we are so louche as to drink ale with our cheese course.”

“I hear the Duke of Bedford does the same. Perhaps you set the trend.”

Mrs. Heywood patted her arm. “Nonsense, love. We are safely a step behind. Let the tall men like your husband blaze the trail. Those buttons are lovely. I see he’s already made a merchant’s manikin of you.” She winked.

Mrs. Heywood crinkled as she led her into a sitting room drenched in yellows. “Like my crinoline? My William has a stake in the manufactory that makes all the lady’s drawers for miles around.”

“But he only ever wants to get in yours.” A hatchet-faced woman rose to greet them. “I can see why, with all the folderol the young misses think of to talk about.”

“Mrs. Quinn, this is Mother Blayney, my parent. Mother, Mrs. Madeline Quinn.” Maddie didn’t know whether to curtsey or hold out her hand, so she did nothing. Apparently that was what the lady expected, for she continued without censuring Maddie.

“Your maiden name was Wetherby, if I am not mistaken.”

“Yes.” Maddie paused, and the lady’s gray feathered brows shot up. She knew she should say more, but what? Yes, but they weren’t my parents? Yes, they were my adoptive parents?

Mrs. Heywood stepped in. “Such a tragedy. I mean, to lose both parents at once like that, and a brother. You must have been heartbroken.”

“It did change my life.”

“And Ellspeth’s. Let us hope this trip to London sets her straight. An earl! The presumption.”

“To be sure.” Mrs. Blayney scowled. Maddie reflected for the first time how fortunate she was that Nash’s mother was neither harpie nor virago, and how perhaps her having no living relations might be seen as an advantage to a prospective husband. Perhaps that’s what sold him on her.

“Look about you, Mrs. Quinn. Do you catch my meaning?” Mrs. Heywood waved her hand, gilded by a white gold bracelet. “There is Mr. Malbanks, whose cravat is the finest Mancunian lace, and his coat a coarse but more expensive weave. Mrs. Clayton, there, shows on her sleeves and that lovely front panel the best Mr. Clayton’s mill workers can do. As for me and Mother Blayney, it’s crinolines and leathers.”

“Your boots are gorgeous. Such a rich color.” Maddie had never seen boots dyed to match an evening dress.

“My father’s shop, rest his soul. Blayneys are boot makers to royalty. You must allow my brother to make you a pair. He measures your foot in six places.”

Mother Blayney harrumphed. Now Maddie could see the odd thick ribbon trimming her dress was superfine strips of leather. “You, Mrs. Quinn, had the good fortune to marry a man who trades in all goods. You’ll never grow tired of just wearing leather.”

“Nor find yourself unable to sit because the style is to overstarch one’s crinoline.”

Maddie held out her arms. “Today it’s buttons.” She plucked at the pearled ornaments running along the underside of her lower arms.

“They make the sleeve look the part of a fancy lady’s glove. You might start a trend.”

“I believe that’s the idea.” She was glad she’d talked Mrs. Willis out of sewing them up the back of the dress. Not only would they have competed with the laces, but she would have had to turn her back on everyone to show them to advantage.

“Your new husband also makes a handsome manikin.”

Maddie followed her hostess’s gaze to the knot of men beside the tall front windows, and caught her breath. Nash had looked well in the simple dark suit he wore for their wedding, but in his dinner finery he shone. His smart midnight blue jacket, and a lighter blue vest, complemented her dress. The crisp white of his shirt and deceptively simple cravat offset the dark browns of his already curling hair and steamed brown of his eyes. His dark trousers slid into a pair of what must be Blayney short boots.

“Lucky woman,” her hostess breathed. Then, at a signal from a servant, she clapped her hands to call them all to supper.

They did not follow any precedence Maddie understood on their way into the dining room. What was the proper precedence here?

Everyone talked across the table, and Mother Blayney seemed to talk down to everyone equally. Maddie felt the loosening of proper society’s strictures as a form of freedom. When the conversation turned to business and politics, she listened attentively rather than making small talk with quiet Mrs. Clayton. Mr. Clayton noticed her attention, and turned to her, his spectacles sparkling in the good candlelight.

“So, Mrs. Quinn,” He twirled one of his moustaches. “What do you think of our Manchester?” Maddie weighed her words.

“I have seen only a little, but I do rather like it. It does seem odd that Mr. Quinn must cover the windows of his warehouse, though.”

Clayton laughed, hiding his mouth with his hand. “Don’t get me started on the follies of London, ma’am.”

“London?”

“We are the biggest manufacturing city in the nation, but have no direct representation in Parliament. So we must solve our troubles on our own, with our hands tied behind our backs. Inane machinations and unreasonable taxation are inflicted upon us by Government and Commons alike. Taxing a man’s windowpanes! Incredible.”

“Come now, Clayton.” Mr. Heywood signaled for the next course. “We all support the Government here.”

“To be sure. But who speaks for our interests? And don’t men of business always shoulder the blame for all manner of ills, from childhood deaths to bad water?”

Mr. Malbanks set his fork down and cleared his throat. The shortest man, and the finest dressed, he seemed to command their attention at will. “They blame manufactories for the smoke in the air, when everyone cooks with coal. And the measures to prevent it only succeed in making criminals of all the owners. No one can follow the law, or he’d be out of business in a month. And now we must work in the dark, or pay a tax on the sun.”

“Is that why the workers must see their pay cut?” Maddie’s skin goose-bumped as the air in the room seemed to ice over. She wished she could take the words back. One did not speak of cutting pay, but reducing costs.

Before she could incinerate in mortification, Nash spoke. “The problem isn’t capital, it’s trust. Government and manufactories. Merchant, master, and man. How does one build trust where none exists? It’s hard enough man to man. Between classes of men, it’s nigh impossible.”

Clayton nodded. “Yet it must be done, or we’ll all sink. These are hard times.”

“I’ll not sink, and I thank you to leave my men out of this.” Malbanks took a moment to drink from his wine glass. At the fourth course and on at least his fifth glass of the stuff, his cheeks blotched tomato. Maddie hoped the Heywoods had not adopted the society habit of offering a full ten courses.

Clayton pounded him on the back as if he were choking. “Think you’re safe from the strike? Yours is the only trades group that has even set it to vote.”

“To vote, as if they were deserving of suffrage.” Malbanks rolled his eyes. “At least
habeas
corpus
was reinstated.”

Maddie frowned. Clayton leaned closer to her, his moustaches dancing. “Means the government can hold a man as long as it likes without trial. Suspended this winter, that and the meetings act stopped both workers and owners from gathering in groups larger than us at this table. The Government feared the mob, as if English peasant stock were no better than the French. Nothing came of it, nothing but the odd riot foisted on those soft-minded weavers who fell for Oliver the Spy.”

Nash nodded. “If the crown had not planted the spy, it wouldn’t have had its foment, its blanketeers, its cries of revolution. A more cynical man might call it a presumptive attack.”

“Prevention is nine-tenths of the law,” Clayton quipped.

“Radicalism is treason in disguise, whatever shape it appears in.” Malbanks nearly slammed his glass down. “If we cut it down as the snake is a’borning, we need not fight it when it’s a full-grown adder.”

Mrs. Heywood tapped her own glass, a bell. “Peace, Mr. Malbanks. You’ll spoil our taste for the next course, and Cook is rightly proud of her eel pie.”

Maddie didn’t feel as out of place as she had feared. If these
nouveaux riches
liked to behave beyond their station on the social ladder, why not? These people lacked for nothing. Their want was not intellect, energy, or even education. It was only standing, under the feudal system of government they had all inherited. And if they did rattle on about commerce, who could blame them? It made for interesting conversation.

After dinner, the men did not leave the ladies for long. Soon, it was time to take their leave.

“We married men can’t stay out too late,” confided Mr. Heywood in a loud voice to Maddie.

Mrs. Heywood took the bait. “Married to the manufactory, more like. That’s why you need rise so early.”

“I thought you liked my rising early, Mrs. Heywood.”

“It’s whether you can stay up all day that’s the question.”

Maddie tucked her arm into Nash’s; the Heywood’s ribald laughter followed them down the stairs and onto the street.

“I like your friends.”

“They will make a good start for you.”

They found a hack immediately, and were soon home and washing for bed. This part of the day was becoming a comfortable habit, as well. Maddie washed her face, neck, front, back, arm, arm, midriff area, leg, leg, feet, and hands. The well-choreographed routine took about ten minutes.