The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(22)

Robert looked away. One of the overseer’s first cost-cutting mechanisms had been to replace the original boot-blacking with a formula that was less expensive—but far more dangerous for those who had to stand with their hands immersed in it on a daily basis. Money couldn’t make up for that, but he’d had to try.

“Yes,” Robert said. “And I’ve explained this isn’t for your work at Graydon Boots, but for your experience in organization.”

Finney simply shook his head sadly. “You’re a young lad. You wouldn’t understand. I learned my lesson, then, about keeping to my place. No more turning out. No more association with that sort of thing. Especially not now. I hear the Duke of Clermont’s in town.”

“He is,” Miss Pursling put in.

Finney spat on the ground. “It all started when he acquired Graydon Boots.” His hands, liver-spotted with age, trembled. “More hours worked for less pay. Then came the strike-breakers, the convictions. He’s a beast of a man, and I’ll never—”

“Nathan Finney,” Mrs. Finney interrupted, “that’s dangerous talk. You were taken from me once. Did you not learn to think before you speak?”

“No, no,” Robert said. “You needn’t hold your tongue on my account. I am quite in agreement.”

Miss Pursling took two steps into the room. “You are, sir?”

She clearly thought he was here on a whim.

He turned to her. “I’ve gone through the records of what Clermont did,” he said softly. “Is it so wrong to want to make matters right again?”

She turned her head away. “I question only your methods.” A trace of a frown flicked across her face. “Your motive…I do not yet understand.”

“But my motive is simple. I think privileges are wasted on the peers,” Robert replied. “They have the right to be tried in the House of Lords. Think, Mr. Finney, what that would have meant for you. The Lords would never have heard a case of criminal sedition based on the evidence presented against you. The law is too clear; they’d protect their own.”

“Too true, too true,” Finney echoed.

“I think,” Robert said, turning to Miss Pursling, “that if the Duke of Clermont, for instance, were to write handbills saying what Finney here had said back in ’58—now, he could speak the truth and nobody could stop him with threats of imprisonment based on a perversion of the law.”

Miss Pursling had tilted her head at him. “Could he?” she asked.

Finney nodded. “All too right, Mr. Blaisdell.”

“But peers use that privilege not to speak truth, but to suppress it. Think, Mr. Finney, what could you do with a seat in the House of Lords?”

“Me, sitting in the Lords?” Finney laughed. “I should like to see that.”

“So should I,” Robert said. “If I had a chance to be a part of this nation’s governance, I’d not waste it protecting my prerogatives and interests. No. I’d find every last way that the deck was stacked to allow people like Clermont to poison his workers, and to punish them for voicing complaint when he did so. And I’d eradicate them all.”

He was surprised by the vehemence in his voice.

“Now that,” said Mrs. Finney, “that is sedition, and best not to say those words no matter how safe you think you are. You’re young, Mr. Blaisdell. We were all once young. But take a deep breath and put such talk away. It’ll do nobody any good.” She glanced warily at Miss Pursling. “Besides, Miss Pursling, have you not met the Duke of Clermont? You do travel in those circles. Sometimes.”

Mr. Finney subsided in his chair, somewhat embarrassed.

Miss Pursling looked away from Robert. “I have.”

“And how is the old bugger?” Finney asked. “One can only hope—”

“Shush, Mr. Finney.”

“I believe,” Miss Pursling, “that this is the other man’s son.”

Finney brushed this off. “Seen one duke, seen ’em all. Am I right, Mr. Blaisdell, am I right?”

Robert didn’t answer. He simply watched Miss Pursling. She’d scarcely shown any emotion at all as he spoke, not even a furrow of concentration on her brow.

She shook her head now. “He’s tall. He’s wealthy. He’s handsome, and those things rarely bode well for a man’s character.”

Robert winced.

But she wasn’t done. “I very much doubt he understands what it means to be a working man, and I suspect that all his life he’s had anything he wanted handed to him, just for the wishing.”

It was a harsh judgment, made harsher still because it was the truth. Robert burned in his seat.

“Men who have only known easy times often cannot comprehend hard ones,” Miss Pursling said.

Amazing how deeply facts could cut. Robert couldn’t even be angry with her. It was no more than he’d told himself of an evening.

“And yet…” She trailed off, shaking her head, and Robert leaned forward, desperate to hear what she might say of him.

Her voice was so quiet, and yet the room seemed quieter still, waiting for her to fill the silence.

“And yet,” she said, without once looking Robert’s way, “I think he is not at all like his father. I don’t know what to make of him.”