The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(5)

When she could finally read it, she almost burst into relieved laughter. Of all the accusations he could have leveled at her—of all the lies she’d told, starting with her own name—he thought she was involved with this? Stevens had given her a handbill, the kind that appeared on the walls of factories and was left in untidy heaps outside church doors.

WORKERS, read the top line in massive capital letters. And then, beneath it: ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE!!!!!

“Oh, no,” she protested. “I’ve never seen this before. And it’s really not my sort of thing.” For one thing, she was fairly certain that any sentence that used more exclamation points than words was an abomination.

“They’re all over town,” he growled. “Someone is responsible for them.” He held up one finger. “You volunteered to make up the handbills for the Workers’ Hygiene Commission. That gives you an excuse to visit every printer in town.”

“But—”

He held up a second finger. “You suggested that the workers be involved in the Commission in the first place.”

“I only said it made sense to ask workers about their access to pump water! If we didn’t ask, we would have done all that work only to find their health unchanged. It’s a long way from there to suggesting that they organize.”

A third finger. “Your great-aunts are involved in that dreadful food cooperative, and I happen to know you were instrumental in arranging it.”

“A business transaction! What does it matter where we sell our cabbages?”

Stevens pointed those three fingers at her. “It’s all of a pattern. You’re sympathetic to the workers, and you’re not who you claim to be. Someone is helping them print handbills. You must think I’m stupid, to sign them like that.” He gestured at the bottom of the handbill. There was a name at the end. She squinted at it through her glasses.

Not a name. A pseudonym.

De minimis, she read. She’d never learned Latin, but she knew a little Italian and a good amount of French, and she thought it meant something like “trifles.” A little thing.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head blankly. “What has that to do with me?”

“De. Minnie. Mis.” He spoke the syllables separately, giving her name a savage twist. “You must think me a fool, Miss Minnie.”

It made a horrible kind of logic, so twisted that she might have laughed outright. Except that the consequence of this joke was not amusing.

“I have no proof,” he said, “and as your friendship with my future wife is known, I have no wish to see you publicly humiliated and charged with criminal sedition.”

“Criminal sedition!” she echoed in disbelief.

“So consider this a warning. If you keep on with this—” he flicked the paper in her hands “—I will find out the truth of your origins. I will prove that you are the one behind this. And I will ruin you.”

“I have nothing to do with it!” she protested, but it was futile. He was already turning away.

She clenched the handbill in her fist. What a damnable turn of events. Stevens was starting from a false premise, but it didn’t matter how he found the trail. If he followed it, he’d discover everything. Minnie’s past. Her real name. And most of all, her sins—long-buried, but not dead.

De minimis.

The difference between ruin and safety was a little thing. A very little thing, but she wasn’t going to lose it.

Chapter Two

“MINNIE!”

This time, when the voice came across the courtyard, Minnie didn’t startle. Her heart didn’t race. Instead, she found herself growing calmer, and a real smile took over her face. She turned to the speaker, holding out her hands. “Lydia,” she said warmly. “I am so glad to see you.”

“Where have you been?” Lydia asked. “I looked all over for you.”

She might have lied to anyone else. But Lydia… “Hiding,” Minnie returned. “Behind the davenport in the library.”

Anyone else would have taken that amiss. Lydia, however, knew Minnie as well as anyone ever could. She snorted and shook her head. “That’s so…so…”

“Ridiculous?”

“So unsurprising,” her friend answered. “I’m glad I found you, though. It’s time.”

“Time? Time for what?” There was nothing playing beside Beethoven today.

But her friend didn’t say anything. She simply took hold of Minnie’s elbow and walked her to the door of the mayor’s parlor.

Minnie planted her feet. “Lydia, I meant it. What time is it?”

“I knew you’d never suffer the introduction in the Great Hall with all those people about,” Lydia said with a smile. “So I asked Papa to keep watch in the parlor. It’s time for you to be introduced.”

“Introduced?” The courtyard was almost empty behind them. “To whom am I being introduced?”

Her friend wagged a finger at her. “You need to stay abreast of gossip. How is it possible that you do not know? He’s only twenty-eight years old, you know, and he has a reputation as a statesman—he’s widely credited with the Importation Compromise of 1860.”

Lydia said this as if she knew what that was—as if everyone knew about the Importation Compromise of 1860. Minnie had never heard of it before, and was fairly certain that Lydia hadn’t, either.