An Untitled Lady (30 page)

“You side with him?” Moore stood up, hands on the table.

“How can they fight us if we will not fight?” Hunt’s conviction gave Moore pause, but he shook his head.

“This be a mummer’s play for the committee man. You think Quinn as addle-pated as his missus.” Nash wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly, but the faces of the others registered the same shock.

Moore stormed on. “A sweet piece, sure, but simple. Could you nae ha’ done better?”

Nash had had quite enough of people attacking his wife. Here in a room full of idled workers angry at their masters was not the best time to express that opinion.
Cool down
. This was business, not family; it required reason, not passion.

“Mrs. Quinn does the books for the warehouse, and she straightened out the estate.”

Moore’s hand slapped the table. “Either the girl’s simple, or a liar. Cannae trust her.”

Bamford interrupted before Nash could speak. “Moore, what ails you? Kitty is a right good girl.”

“Not Kitty. The other. His wife.” Moore flicked his thumb toward Nash.

Hunt’s jaw dropped; he snapped it shut. “The child you sold is this merchant’s bride?”

“I didn’t sell her.”

Bamford snorted. “No, you traded her for money.”

Nash jumped on this information. “Bamford? Did you know of the case? Maddie has a lot of questions about that time.”

Bamford’s wise eyes flicked quickly to Moore. “I know only what he told me. A story that has changed over the years, and even today sounds different to my ears.”

“If you believe they won’t knock us about, you’re all as addled as his wife,” Moore said.

Nash stood up and stepped toward Moore. “What do you know of my wife? You deserted her nineteen years ago, never wrote a word, never tried to make contact. If that’s how you intend to lead your men and this meeting, the magistrates may as well cancel it. You’ll be gone already.”

Both men lurched toward each other. Bamford, between them, jumped to his feet and pushed each away with a hand, breaking their locked stare.

“Moore. Richard, this isn’t to the purpose. We need Mr. Quinn’s help, not another enemy.” Bamford turned to Nash. “This isn’t like him. I’ve known him these thirty years and more.”

Nash bit down his retort, and nodded stiffly. Hunt appeared at his elbow.

“So, Quinn, you have what you need from us? Neat attire, neat manners, and nothing but neat speechifying. Nothing to argue with.”

It took Nash a moment to unclench his jaw. “Aye.”

“Then let me show you to the door.”

“Please pass along my salutations to your fine wife,” Bamford called behind him, turning to look a stern plea at his compatriot.

“As be mine,” he heard Moore mutter.

Nash said nothing. The rage was too close.

He’d damned well be dead before he passed any message from that cretin of a father to his Maddie.

* * * *

The Saturday before Monday’s meeting, Manchester was bathed in placards, plastered on every wall, post, or slow-moving dog. They promised readers the event would be an afternoon stroll, a picnic, a peaceable assembly, a rally for justice, a blow to tyranny, a call to arms, a danger to the economy, a deadly threat to Christendom. One could read a novel’s worth of words merely walking the quarter mile from the Exchange to the warehouse, if one could stand the whipsawing. Judging by the sluggishness of foot traffic, it appeared many people were doing just that.

As Nash returned from the Exchange, damp from one of the town’s two-minute rains, the carts carrying the day’s final orders rolled past out of the warehouse yard. Jem Smith was just inside the wide door, counting over a much-diminished stock of tins of tea.

“Shipping out a bit late?”

Smith scratched his hip, shrugging. “Some as wanted Tuesday’s stock, as well. Good sign, that.”

“Why?”

“Were me, I wouldn’t have ordered any. If a man thinks his house is about to be burned down, he doesn’t order furniture.”

Nash slapped him on the shoulder, grinning. “That’s the best damned thing I’ve heard all week. As for the sops at the ’Change, they’ve turned tail. Closed till Tuesday.”

“We’ll be shut, then?”

“If the orders are out, why not? Let me check the books.”

Jem had no trouble pivoting on his heel; the leg was nearly whole again. “If’n it doesn’t, I’d like to be off meself.”

“To see Hunt?”

“Just me, I’d go for an hour, but the missus is set upon it, and she’ll be at it all day.”

A boy ran up with a last-minute order for five tins of coffee. Nash watched as Jem tied the tins together so the child could carry them over his shoulder.

“And your boy?”

“Might as well take him. He can cheer the banner she made.”

“I didn’t know you to be such a reformist.”

Jem’s brows shot up, startled. “No sir. I work well enough with you. The wife, she has family in the mills. Women who must work to feed themselves and their bairns. Decent folk don’t hire rough women.” He shrugged as they reached the door to the office.

“You think I should hire women?” Nash had never considered it. What could they do at a warehouse? Jem tilted his head toward the door. Nash opened it, and saw his wife on the rolling step, pulling an old ledger from the shelf. Jem was right—he already did employ females.

After the Wetherby skirmish, he’d brought her here just so he could keep an eye on her. She’d been so restless and worried at things when she was alone. She’d been ready and standing by the door every day since, and as Jem preferred the back-shop work, Nash had let her have the run of the office again.

“Quicker at the books, she is,” Jem said softly. “Could be she might draw more trade from the lady manufacturers.”

“All one of them.” At the sound of his voice, Maddie turned, a smile rising to her lips, lighting her face. An answering grin bloomed on his. Her eyes might still carry a haunted cast, but she’d slept through the night last night. He might plump her out yet.

She’d been a good investment, if not in terms of money or time. She didn’t always give good return on love, either. But Nash had found surprising satisfaction in giving love, not expecting a return. That she did return it was pure profit.

“One today,” Jem said. “Tomorrow’s another tale.”

{ 33 }

Deacon’s note said only that he had business in town and would call on Maddie in the afternoon to go for a ride. It said nothing about Kitty’s accompanying them. When her sister arrived on the doorstep at two, breathless and excited, shortly after Maddie’s own return from the warehouse, Maddie could not hide her surprise, or her delight.

Kitty’s smile, though, wavered. “Do you mind I don’t return your dress quite yet?”

“I said you could have it. The blue makes your eyes sparkle.”

“It does.” Kitty smiled, one of her rare rays of sunshine. By the time Deacon drove up to Stevenson Square, the sisters had dressed and re-dressed their hair, argued and made up, and taken tea. Maddie tried not to notice the first piece of bread Kitty buttered had disappeared into the hanging pockets along the folds of the dress. But she ran down to the kitchen to ask Mrs. Willis to get another four-pound loaf to give Kitty when they returned.

Her sister was already in the open barouche, to the far side of Deacon. “I think we all might squeeze onto the facing seat,” he said, reaching down to hand her up and into the coach. “No need for anyone to ride backwards. Save it for the picnic basket.”

Kitty laughed. “You should have seen the faces along the alley when your fancy livery boy knocked at my door.”

“You sent a messenger?”

“Same as for you.” Deacon patted Maddie’s hand, but saved the full wattage of his smile for her sister. Could something be going on there? Maddie chastised herself for over-imagining things already. More likely Kitty was an amusing oddity, a dancing bear, in Deacon’s world, just as Deacon was in Kitty’s.

“So how do my pretty radical relations this fine day? What do you call yourselves again?”

“Manchester Female Reform—not radical—Society. After we heard about the matrons at the Blackburn meeting, we had to show our colors. Now we’re the biggest of the lot, more than a thousand members in just a month.”

“A thousand rebellious misses? Isn’t that a bit, shall we say, profligate?”

“None a bit. We don’t seek glory for ourselves, but ask only for what’s right by our men—and our wee’uns. It’s the small folk need the food we can’t afford to buy, cost of bread what it is and all of us on half-work.”

“And the men?” Deacon’s smile seemed patronizing to Maddie, but Kitty took to it like live bait.

“As for the men, they be needin’ that certain stiffness—in their spine, a’course—that only the support of a good woman can give.”

Deacon laughed. Maddie wished she could do the same. Every little thing felt so life-and-death urgent to her lately. Nash’s saying they wouldn’t suit, the push-pull over Maddie’s bathing, the dread day at the castle, the discovery of a sister and father still living. Everything changed and changed again so quickly in Manchester, she was breathless trying to keep up.

It seemed so easy for the others. Jealousy bit her in the belly. Kitty knew exactly who she was, and she wasn’t afraid to try something new. Maddie had had to screw up all her calm and courage to walk into Kitty’s world, and she hadn’t performed nearly as well in it as Kitty had in Maddie’s world. She wondered if Deacon noticed how Kitty’s accent broadened when she was around him.

They pulled onto Long Millgate, heading north. Kitty slanted her eyes at Deacon. “Where do we go?”

“Lady’s pleasure.”

“Middleton, then. I hear the posies are a’bloomin’.” Deacon directed the driver. Maddie noticed he hadn’t checked with her first—or at all. As they crossed the river, though, he did search her face, and press her gloved hand. “Nash writes that you are recovered. I think he might overestimate from love.”

“The sun will do me good, and the country air.”

“My thoughts exactly.” He winked, surprising a laugh out of her. He raised his voice. “Sister Maddie, what do you think of this new breed of female, the reformer?” Kitty leaned forward to look around him for her reaction.

“I’m of two minds. I must admit, it all feels a little…masculine. I’ve been reading those tracts of Cobbett’s, though, and he reminds us of our queens and noblewomen who blessed the knights of old, with banners and tokens. Even proclamations.”

“We be queens. Princesses of the worker class.”

“But these are men, not warriors,” Deacon said.

“They fight for what’s right.”

“Fighting assumes violence.” Was Deacon playing devil’s advocate?

“Not a bit. Peaceable protest, that’s all we’re about.”

“Might I continue?” They both turned such guilty faces to Maddie she had to laugh. “Also, did not Mary Wollstonecraft argue thirty years ago—or was it forty?—that as women are equal to men, they should have the vote, too. So why don’t our reformers ask for it all?”

Deacon leaned forward. “Don’t look at me, I’m doing all I can for the women in my life. Look here, fresh rolls and jam, delivered by mine own hands.” He pulled the basket to his knees.

“Aye, but who made it?”

“Believe you me, pretty Miss Kitty, you don’t want my clumsy hands anywhere near the kitchen fires. Just ask Cook.”

The rolling hills were drenched in posies, tiny bits of color adding up to a blanket of white and reds against the greens of the grasses. They passed many women, with and without children, walking out of the town.

“Trading day,” Kitty said past a mouthful of bun. “They start at dawn, trade their finished pieces for new yarn at the merchants, and then return home by mid-afternoon. Nearly a day lost for working, but it’s fine to be outside.”

Maddie watched a woman turn and beckon her dawdling son. “A lost day for them. Someone should arrange a cart to carry them, once a week.”

“That’s a day lost for the carter, then.”

The horses slowed of their own accord as they drew up Cheatham Hill. Maddie thought she could see the pocket hamlet of Middleton, a half-mile or so away. Before she could look more closely, the action on the ridge captured her attention.

Hundreds of working-men stood in rows and columns in the field, seeming to march in place. A single man headed each of four squares with another two on the sides to keep the order. Deacon had the driver pull to the side of the road. Maddie lost count as she tried to track the lines across the meadow.

“Can you hear the drums beat?” Kitty clapped in time.

“Are they military men?” They looked too strong and healthy to be of the army, which had fallen on hard times after the war.

“Weavers and mill workers. By Monday’s meeting, they’ll be sharper than even the coves in the school parades.”

The men already stepped tight in rhythm with one another, Maddie could see. Some carried sticks, but most swung arms empty-handed. “They do look well. They must have taken time away from their work, for practice.”

“It’s that important. The papers are always on about us being clumsy, dirty mobs. This time, we’ll be in our Sunday best and stepping in time. Let the naysayers find fault with that.”

“They look like they are preparing for an invasion.” The bite in Deacon’s voice surprised Maddie, but then he shrugged it off. “They should practice dancing in the line. That would truly impress the magistrates.”

“You’d have us minuet for your pleasure?” Kitty shot him a glare.

“My pleasure? Darling, I want nothing from you. You might consider the consequences of your actions, though. How they sound—and look—to others.”

“Such fatherly advice. You treat us like children.”

“Do I now?” Deacon’s lilting voice carried a harder edge. “Perhaps you shouldn’t throw so many tantrums.”

“If you think meeting lawful-like to discuss our grievances is throwing a tantrum, you’re not worth talking to.” She jumped out of the coach.

“Kitty, come back.” Maddie stepped carefully off the side-runner and followed her.

“I’d rather walk than listen to another lecture.”

Deacon clapped slowly. “A fine performance.”

Kitty tossed her hair and kept moving, taking them away from the carriage and toward the marchers across ground throbbing in rhythmic sympathy with the drums. “Maddie, do you hear him? That’s how they all are.”

“Nash isn’t like that.”

“Took long enough to change his mind, and he’s not full one of us now.” They had reached the outer ring of spectators, women, children, and old folks sitting on blankets in the sun. Kitty paced back and forth behind them.

“They’ve set it up so we cannot win, Maddie, when all we want is the same voice they have.”

Maddie could see her passion and her point, but Nash’s view made sense to her, too. Must one be in the wrong for the other to be in the right?

“Can’t you see how terrifying that might be to them? No one wishes to give up power, and how can you obtain some if not by taking power away from another?”

“We’d not take anything from them. Our voices would be additions.” Kitty’s body twisted with her logic, her arms swinging open as if to encompass the entire field. “Every man—every woman—should have a say in how the world is run. Oh, I don’t know. Leaders should be leaders, aye, but they should at least be required to listen to their followers. Not treat them as mindless sheep.”

She stopped directly in front of Maddie, striking her fist into her palm like a gavel. “Sister, you’ll march with us?”

Maddie took a step back. Could Kitty be serious? Panic raced her heart. She looked at the marching men, at the children playing at marching, at the women laughing and gossiping. What was the right answer? She stalled, her mind careening.

“You wish me to join you?”

“Are you not voiceless, too? Wear white, step in time, and demand your due.”

“I don’t think Nash would approve.”

“Your lord and master?”

“He doesn’t own me.”

“He took you in trade, for five thousand pounds, courtesy of that pretty lordling over yonder. Told me himself.”

“That’s not how it was.” Did everyone think her marriage truly such a sham? They were wrong, weren’t they?

Kitty waved a hand in her face, and wrenching her thoughts back to the present. “Maddie, it’s just a meeting.”

“If it’s just a meeting, why should I bother?”

“Why stick your neck out, you mean.” Kitty grabbed her arm, nearly hurting her. She pulled their foreheads to almost touch. “Reform for us is life or death. Our people starve in this land of plenty. If we don’t gain reform, we’ll resort to riot. We must eat.”

She let Maddie go, and turned to look at the men as they pivoted in the drill. Maddie looked at the children. She so wanted to be a mother, but how could she bring a child into a world where he might well die hungry? Her own life had held no guarantees. If she could do something to make sure these children, already living, could eat, shouldn’t she?

“Call it just a meeting. But it would mean the world to our Da.”

Maddie’s gaze snapped back to Kitty. “Why?”

“It would show you aren’t ashamed of where you came from, wouldn’t it? Prove you ain’t ashamed of him.”

“I’m not. Why would I need to prove it?”

Kitty took both her hands, gentler this time, swinging her arms in time with the tattoo of the drummers. “Join us, Maddie. It will be a grand day, the likes of which none in Manchester has seen. A day to remember, and tell your wee bairns about.”

She dropped her hands and stepped back. “Show your mettle. Are you a mouse or a Moore?”

Maddie longed to reach for Kitty’s hand again, swing circles like the littlest girls on the blankets. It might not be wise to join this march, but whom would it hurt? No one. Whom could it help? Her family. Herself.

“I’ll do it.”

“Excellent. We can march together. I’m to join with this clan, from Middleton. They lead in Orator Hunt himself.”

The incessant drumming was making Maddie’s head pound. She had to get away. “Let’s return to Shaftsbury. I need to get back to town.”

“I told you, I’m not riding anywhere with the likes of him. Although you may thank him from me for the ride out here.”

“I thought you enjoyed flirting with him.”

“It’s flirting with the devil. He is nice enough in the moment, and then you find yourself covered in brimstone.” She puckered her face, making Maddie laugh.

“You can walk this far?”

“Twice over. You saw the porter-women? I do that route, too, twice a week sometimes. Don’t you worry about me.”

Maddie gave her the small purse she’d made up, and left her to cheer the trooping weavers.

When she reached Deacon and the barouche, he was pacing and the horses were stamping, restless. “Call your sister, and we’ll go.” He reached out to hand her up.

“She stays here.”

“Nonsense.” He turned and scanned the rows of women.

“Don’t follow her. She’ll only spit at you.”

“Then you’ll have to hit me with a tankard, like poor Wetherby.” He stepped up to the seat again, sobered. “Wetherby deserved everything he got, and more.”

Amen
, Maddie added silently. As the driver maneuvered the horses to face back to the town, she imagined the view from Deacon’s eyes. “Do you really see these men as a new army?”