The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(21)

It had taken Robert far too long to try to make amends. But in his defense, he’d only recently discovered what had gone wrong.

In front of him, the resident—a thin, coughing man by the name of Finney—pulled his coat around him.

“Graydon Boots.” Finney pushed back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. “Now that is a name I’ve not let myself think in years. I last worked for them back in…’58, was it?”

“That is what the records say,” Robert told him.

The man pointed his pipe at Robert. “And you’re telling me that after all these years, after Graydon Boots has been gone for over a decade, that some high Muck-a-Muck wants to award me a pension. Me.”

Robert nodded.

“Mr. Blaisdell, I spent four months in prison. It ruined my health, but my mind still works. I’ll not be believing that, I won’t. There’s some kind of trick.”

There wasn’t a trick. Robert’s grandfather had given the factory to his father as part of a devil’s bargain. His father—who had known nothing of industry—had handed the factory over to an overseer and ordered him to extract as much profit from it as he could get. Robert had only discovered the place while looking over his grandfather’s records from decades before. His father’s books, incomplete as they generally were, hadn’t even mentioned it.

“Mr. Finney,” Robert said, “I am not telling you that Graydon Boots is awarding you a pension. That would be absurd. The charity I represent has been looking into the events of that year. They’ve decided you were unfairly imprisoned.”

“I’ve been saying that for years.”

“In fact, Leicester has a curious history in that regard,” Robert said. “Did you know that more people have been convicted of criminal sedition in Leicester in the last decade than in the entirety of England?”

Another thing his father’s overseer had started, as best as Robert could tell, and that hadn’t ended when the factory went under.

“We speak our minds here, we do.”

Robert set the papers on the table. “Speaking your mind is only illegal if your words are intended to create disaffection with the government. Not with your masters; with the government.” At first, Robert had only wanted to try to make right what his father had destroyed. But the closer he’d looked, the more he’d found. He’d eventually gone through the records of those trials, and it was clear that the jury had not been correctly charged with the law. “You should never have been convicted simply for organizing a union.”

Finney looked at him, shaking his head. “As you say. But the masters get what the masters want. I don’t want to be involved any longer. I’ve my hands full with the Cooperative, I do.”

As if to emphasize this, the door to the tiny room opened. Two women stood in the doorframe. One, a thin elderly woman in a sagging brown gown had a sack of groceries. She shoved at a yellowing cap that was slipping from her head, and gestured to her companion. “I just don’t think it will work, is all I’m saying.”

Her companion was Miss Pursling. She seemed a picture of severity, her honey-brown hair pulled tightly up, with only a few tamed curls at her neck.

The two women were focused totally on one another.

“Mrs. Finney,” Miss Pursling was saying, “I’ve talked to every chemist in town. You’re my last hope.”

Mrs. Finney unwrapped her shovel. “But the Cooperative sells food. Not any of that other nonsense.”

“But the advertisement—”

“Miss Pursling, I do like you, but how can I bring this before the Board?”

Miss Pursling looked down. “You have no idea how the rest of the Commission will scold if I come back a failure.” She did meek well, her head bowed, her hands clasped in front of her. “Please.”

“Well.” Mrs. Finney set her shawl on the entry table. “I suppose. Maybe. I might say something.”

“Thank you,” Miss Pursling said. “Thank you.”

That was the moment when her husband intervened. “Mrs. Finney,” he called. “We have a guest. You’ll never believe what he is saying.”

The two women turned to Mr. Finney. Miss Pursling’s gaze fell on Robert. Her eyes widened and she took a step back.

“It’s a gentleman from London,” Mr. Finney said. “Mr. Blaisdell, my wife. And Miss Pursling. He’s a solicitor, I believe.”

Miss Pursling didn’t bat an eye at that. “A solicitor,” she repeated. “How curious, Mr. Blaisdell.”

“Merely a representative,” Robert returned.

“Mr. Blaisdell here is saying that there’s a fund that has established pensions for men who have devoted themselves to unions, who find themselves in poor straits for it.” Mr. Finney laughed.

Mrs. Finney simply frowned. “Well, then what could they want with us?” She looked around. “There’s only the two of this in this wide, big room, and we have meat on the table three times a week. We’re not poorly off.”

Robert blinked at this and looked around the room, trying to see it with her eyes. Not poorly off?

“They’ve offered me a pension!” Finney laughed. “Me! When the only service I did for Graydon Boots was to get everyone to turn out after Jimmy died of poisoning.”