The Desperate Duke

by Sheri Cobb South

  “Most mill workers live in the cottages on the other side of the river.” The lawyer’s apprentice sounded faintly accusatory, as if he suspected Theodore of taking up residence in the boardinghouse for the sole purpose of seducing Miss Drinkard. “They’re closer to the mill.”

  “Then I suppose I’ll have to be sure I get up early enough to walk,” Theodore said blandly, and turned his attention to his dinner.

  This proved to be a dish of chicken roasted with potatoes and seasoned with herbs—hardly surprising, since on his trek to the kitchen in search of water, he had seen the chicken and smelled the herbs. The result was a meal which, though woefully plain to one accustomed to elaborate concoctions devised by French chefs, was surprisingly good. Or perhaps it owed its appeal to the fact that Theodore had had nothing to eat since breakfast that morning. Either way, he addressed his plate with enthusiasm, until interrupted by Mr. Nutley, the curate.

  “Wherever you choose to make your residence, Mr. Tisdale, I daresay you will find no cause for complaint in your employer. Sir Ethan Brundy is, I believe, a very good sort of man.”

  As Sir Ethan had fallen considerably in his brother-in-law’s estimation over the past few days, Theodore offered no reply to this observation beyond a noncommittal grunt. Mr. Nethercote, however, was quick to fill what might otherwise have been an uncomfortable silence.

  “Good leg of lamb?” he scoffed. “Balderdash! Anyone can see it’s a chicken, Nutley. And a very good one, too,” he added as an aside to his hostess.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Nethercote,” said Mrs. Drinkard, turning quite pink with pleasure. “It is not always easy to set a pleasing meal on the table when I am so very pressed for—but never mind that! I shall convey your kind words to the cook.”

  The other diners, seeing how much this small tribute had meant to her, were quick to add their own praises. Once these compliments were conveyed, however, the curate returned to the subject of his original discourse.

  “Yes, a very good sort of man, indeed,” continued Mr. Nutley, blissfully unaware of having touched his fellow diner on the raw. “When Mr. Parsons—the vicar, you know, and very aptly named, is he not?—as I say, when Mr. Parsons made a very casual remark about how the church roof would need repairs before the winter sets in, scarcely a day had passed before Sir Ethan sent over a bank draft sufficient to cover the entire cost!”

  Theodore was unimpressed with this proof of Sir Ethan’s generosity, proving as it did that his brother by marriage might have settled Theodore’s debts without the slightest inconvenience to himself, had he only chosen to do so. Once again, he was forced to bite his tongue in order to resist the urge to air his grievances.

  “The boss, you say? Young Tisdale won’t meet the boss tomorrow,” objected Mr. Nethercote, who had at least grasped enough of the curate’s speech to identify its subject. “Nor the day after that. Sir Ethan Brundy’s gone to London.”

  “To London?” echoed Mrs. Drinkard. “Whatever is he doing in London in November? As I recall, the Metropolis is quite deserted this time of year. Everyone closes their town houses and returns to their country estates, or else they make up shooting parties.” She heaved a reminiscent sigh for more prosperous days now gone forever. “What jolly times we used to have, riding to hounds across the countryside in the morning, and attending hunt balls at night!”

  Miss Drinkard’s eyes brightened at the mention of balls. “I believe Lady Helen Brundy gives a lovely autumn ball every year for her husband’s workers. Not, of course,” she added quickly, seeing her mother’s frown, “that it is a ball in the sense that Mrs. Jennings and Mama will have known them, but—but it is a very nice gesture, is it not?”

  “Nice enough for the mill workers, I daresay, but not the sort of thing you would enjoy at all, my love,” her mother said repressively.

  “No, Mama,” Miss Drinkard said meekly, lowering her gaze to her plate.

  Had she never been invited to these festivities, Theodore wondered, or did her mother not allow her to attend? He resolved to ask his sister to make sure Miss Drinkard received an invitation. Surely there could be nothing wrong with her going to the thing, so long as she was adequately chaperoned. It was clear enough that few pleasures came her way.

  “Sir Ethan don’t ride to hounds,” said young Mr. Potts, “so there’s no reason for him to remain in the country for such a reason as that. In fact, I believe he’s gone to London to declare for the next Parliamentary election.”

  “Oh?” said Miss Drinkard, raising her dark eyes to him.

  Finding himself in possession of all Miss Drinkard’s attention, Mr. Potts sat up straighter in his chair and enlarged upon this theme. “Whig candidate. Standing for the Marquess of Cutliffe’s seat. Cutliffe”—Theodore noticed that the lawyer’s apprentice dropped the “Lord” designation, just as if he were personally acquainted with the marquess—“was obliged to give it up once he inherited the title from his elder brother. Peers can’t sit in the Commons, you know.”

  “Who—who is his opponent?” Miss Drinkard asked with a valiant attempt at indifference betrayed only by her heightened color.

  “Fellow named Wadsworth. Baronet, I believe.”

  “Sir Valerian Wadsworth?” asked Mrs. Drinkard. “Why, he was here earlier today, wanting to hire the dining room tomorrow night for a meeting! Can it be a political gathering, do you suppose? But no, he spoke of a meeting for the workers, and they won’t be able to vote.”

  At this recollection, her face fell so comically that Theodore wondered if she’d envisioned herself as a political hostess. It was interesting to note that, although her daughter was not to mingle socially with the mill workers, Mrs. Drinkard apparently had no qualms about throwing open her dining room to them. Sir Valerian Wadsworth must be paying her generously for its use. Still, Theodore would wager Miss Drinkard would be kept well out of sight of the gathering, lest she be corrupted by close proximity to the lower orders. Who the devil did her mother think she was saving her for—Mr. Potts? Mr. Nutley? Or, it occurred to him with dawning comprehension, the Parliamentary candidate himself? For that matter, why would this Sir Valerian Wadsworth have any interest in meeting with his opponent’s workers in the first place? Good God! Just what sort of establishment had he wandered into?

  7

  Half the world knows not how the other half lives.

  GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

  SINCE HIS EMANCIPATION from Oxford two years previously, Theodore had formed the habit of staying out late and remaining abed until noon. It was not surprising, therefore, that he overslept the next morning, and was obliged to scramble into his new garments—new? His tailor would go off in an apoplexy at the sight of them!—before setting out for the mill, stopping in the dining room only long enough to grab a couple of rolls to eat along the way.

  He crossed the stone bridge that arched over the river, giving him a glimpse of the mill that dominated the riverbank downstream, and recalled with mixed emotions that his brother by marriage had offered, more than once, to show him the inner workings of the manufactory that provided employment for most of the village and its environs. On the one hand, if he had taken Ethan up on the offer, he might have some idea of what he was walking into now; on the other hand, it was probably best that he had not, lest he be recognized by the workers. Then again, he had scarcely recognized himself in the vision that had met his eyes in the looking glass above the washstand: a tall, slender young man with unkempt blond hair, a faint golden stubble adorning his chin (he’d had no more time for shaving than he’d had for breakfast) and an unstarched cravat knotted about his neck beneath the limp collar of his loose smock.

  Upon reaching the mill, he tugged open the heavy door and stepped inside. He blinked as his eyes, accustomed to a sun that seemed to smile in mockery upon his present dilemma, adjusted to the dimmer light inside. Rows of machines were ranged along both sides of a central aisle, each one operated by a man dressed very much as Theodore was. A few of the men
looked up at his entrance, and Theodore stopped to address the nearest of these, raising his voice to be heard over the din of the machines.

  “Good morning!” he bellowed. “I’d like to speak to the foreman.”

  The man shook his head, and shouted back, “Won’t find him here. Gone to London, he has.”

  “He might have told me,” Theodore grumbled under his breath.

  “Eh?” the man asked, cupping a hand about his ear. “What’s that?”

  “Sir E—that is, I was told I might speak to Abel Wilkins about a position here,” Theodore said, raising his voice once more.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” He jerked his head toward the rear of the cavernous room. “You’ll find him back there, in the foreman’s office. He’s not the foreman, mind; that would be his son-in-law, Tommy Crenshaw. But Tommy’s gone to London—something about a new hand—lost his own years ago, you know—and so Wilkins is acting foreman until he gets back.”

  Theodore could only consider this a good thing, as he vaguely recalled an earlier visit to Ethan and Helen during which he’d been introduced to Tommy and his wife—this man Wilkins’s daughter, he supposed—at church. Church! Good God! Would the vicar remember him?

  Aloud, Theo merely thanked the man and made his way down the aisle and into another room (this one filled with yet another kind of machine that emitted a high-pitched whine) until he reached the rear of the building. One corner had been walled off to form a small room, with unglazed windows cut into its walls to allow anyone inside to look out into the mill itself—and anyone in the mill to look inside the office, where a man sat behind a desk, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up amongst the papers stacked neatly on the surface of the desk. Despite the fact that he might have shouted for the fellow’s attention, Theodore knocked on the door and waited for the man, presumably Mr. Wilkins, to admit him. Not that Wilkins (assuming it was he) appeared in any hurry to do so. He sat upright and spat a wad of tobacco into a spittoon, then heaved himself to his feet and crossed the small room, disappearing from Theodore’s line of sight for a moment before reappearing as he opened the door.

  “Well?” he asked, looking Theodore up and down with an expression of suspicion not unmixed with hostility. “What d’you want?”

  “Wilkins?” Theodore responded. “Abel Wilkins?”

  The foreman—no, acting foreman—folded beefy arms across his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “What if I am?”

  “Ethan—that is, Sir Ethan Brundy offered me a position in the mill.” It hadn’t happened exactly that way, of course, but that was all the explanation Theodore intended to give. “He told me to present myself to a man named Wilkins.”

  “That’s Mr. Wilkins to you,” the older man retorted, having apparently taken Theodore in instant dislike. He looked about him for the spittoon and, finding it absent, spat on the floor instead. “And you are?”

  “Tisdale. Theodore Tisdale,” said Theo, offering his hand.

  Mr. Wilkins looked a bit taken aback by this gesture, but took the proffered hand. “ ‘Theodore,’ is it? Lily-white hands won’t look like that for long,” he predicted grimly. “So, I’m supposed to find a place for you, eh? Oh, all right then, come along.”

  He strode back the way Theodore had come, leaving the younger man to keep up—or not. Stopping at last before the machines Theodore had seen upon first entering the mill, he raised his voice to be heard over the noise issuing from them. “You can start here. Tom here will show you the ropes.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the fellow manning the nearest machine, a middle-aged man with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful disposition, as evidenced by the way he whistled as he went about his task of feeding thread into the machine. “Tom, this here’s Tisdale. Thee-o-dore Tisdale,” he added, making a mockery of a name which, Theodore had to admit, sounded rather too grandiose for his present surroundings.

  “How do you do?” Theodore started to offer his hand, then realized Tom’s hands were occupied, and settled for giving the man a nod. “But please, call me Theo.” He had no desire to assume the title by which he’d been known at first Eton and then Oxford, but neither did he wish to be called by his nursery sobriquet of “Teddy.”

  Tom nodded back. “Pleased to meet you, Theo. I’ll take it from here, Mr. Wilkins,” he added to the other man.

  The acting foreman turned and left them, presumably to return to the office. Tom, watching him go, observed, “Wilkins don’t much like you.”

  “It would appear not,” Theo concurred.

  “Got any idea why?”

  Theo shook his head. “None. If I offered some insult, it was not intentional, I assure you.”

  “Never you mind,” Tom said with a shrug. “With Wilkins, it don’t take much. Still, I’d watch my back, if I was you. It’s not what you’d call healthy to get on his bad side.”

  “Meaning?” prompted Theo.

  “Never mind,” Tom said again, casting a furtive glance ’round, as if he feared Wilkins might be eavesdropping. In quite another tone, he added, “Now, first thing, you’d best get rid of that neck-wipe.”

  “What, my cravat?” Theo asked, his hand going instinctively to the strip of limp white linen knotted about his neck. It had been difficult achieving even this inferior result with an unstarched neckcloth. He wasn’t sure another attempt—and one, moreover, without the aid of a mirror—would be any more successful. He was about to say so when he realized that not one of the men within his immediate line of vision wore a neckcloth at all. Instead, the collars of their shirts were open, each one displaying a bare “V” of flesh that already glistened with perspiration even though the day’s work had scarcely begun.

  “Too great a risk of it being grabbed and pulled into the loom. Trust me,” Tom added darkly, “you don’t want that to happen.”

  Theo did not have to be told twice. Suppressing a shudder at the grisly possibility raised by Tom’s warning, he untied the floppy knot and stuffed the strip of cloth into the waistband of his breeches—in the back, where it would be safe from the hungry maw of the power loom. He might look a bit ridiculous—rather as if he had a tail—but surely this was better than the alternative. In any case, he had the lowering conviction that he would make a bigger fool of himself than this relatively minor infraction before the day was over.

  Tom proved to be as good as his word, instructing Theo in the most efficient way to feed the flying shuttle without getting his fingers pinched or, worse, his hair or clothing trapped. Even while he absorbed this information, however, Theo’s thoughts returned to his brother by marriage. Whatever else might be said of him (and Theo had said quite a lot over the last few days, none of it flattering), Ethan was a shrewd judge of character. It seemed unlike him to leave his mill in the charge of a bully-boy whose subordinates seemed to tread in fear of him. Did Ethan not know? Perhaps Wilkins showed the owner of the mill quite a different face than the one the men beneath him saw; perhaps the workers were afraid to let on, for fear of reprisals once Ethan returned to London. Should Theo somehow get word to him, and let him know how things stood?

  He had not long to ponder this dilemma, however, for once Tom returned to his own machine, leaving Theo to fend for himself, that young man had all he could handle just keeping up with his work. The loom was much faster than he had expected, grabbing the thread as fast as—or faster than—he could feed it in. By the end of two hours, the pads of his thumbs and the sides of his index fingers were reddened and sore from the cotton fibers sliding between them; by the end of four, several blisters had formed. When he was finally able to stop for a midday meal, he realized with some chagrin that, in his haste to reach the mill on time, he had neglected to provide himself with anything to eat.

  As the workers left their stations and filed into an adjoining room furnished with long tables and benches, Theo followed in their wake, trying to act as if he was not hungry at all. He took a seat on the nearest bench, sitting with the
table at his back so that he might rest his spine against it. Unfortunately, it soon appeared that his seeming nonchalance did not fool anyone.

  “Never mind, lad, it gets better with time.”

  Turning to identify the speaker, Theo found him in the man seated on the opposite side of the table. He might have been any age between fifty and seventy, although if his wrinkled face and missing teeth were anything to judge by, Theo thought it was nearer the latter. Still, in spite of his unprepossessing countenance, his eyes were kind, and his smile (gap-toothed though it was) held nothing of mockery.

  “I hope you’re right,” Theo said, hoping even more fervently that he would not remain at the mill long enough to find out if the old man’s prediction was correct. He swung his long legs over the bench and underneath the table, the better to offer his hand to the encouraging stranger. “How do you do? Theo Tisdale’s the name. And you are—?”

  “Benjamin Yates. But you can call me Old Ben. Everyone else does.” He glanced down at the blistered hand clasping his. “You’ll want to get some bandages on those before tomorrow. Won’t do to have you bleeding all over the cloth.”

  Theo grinned mischievously at him. “I don’t know about that. It might serve—well, never mind that,” he amended hastily.

  Old Ben cast a quick glance around the room and then leaned forward, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Might serve Wilkins right? Aye, maybe it would, at that. But you don’t want to go setting up his back, you know.”

  In fact, Wilkins had not been uppermost in Theo’s thoughts, but it recalled to his mind the circumstance he had wondered at earlier. “No, of course not. Tom said as much. But tell me, why has no one mentioned the matter to E—to Sir Ethan Brundy? He wouldn’t—that is, he doesn’t seem the sort of man who would tolerate such a thing, if he knew of it.”

  “Aye, you’ve the right of it there. But Wilkins’s nose was put out of joint when our Ethan”—Theodore noticed Old Ben didn’t bother to use his brother-in-law’s title—“up and married the daughter of a duke, when he’d had hopes there for his daughter Becky.”