The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(92)

“If you know I wrote those handbills,” Robert asked, “why did you indict Mr. Marshall?”

Charingford’s eyes dropped. “There was enough evidence to support his involvement. And…”

“And Stevens asked you,” Robert filled in.

Charingford bit his lip. “You know about that?”

“Don’t lecture me on sense,” Robert said. “I asked to see your factory, and you agreed to show me. Let’s get on with it.”

Charingford gestured and a footman opened the front door. As he did, the dull vibration that came from the factory across the street accelerated to a roar.

“If you will,” he said grimly. “Your Grace.”

The clatter of the machinery was almost overwhelming as they crossed the cobblestones of the street. The factory doors had been newly painted a gleaming green, standing out against the coal-streaked brick of the walls. The noise surrounded them, a cacophony of shrieking and shaking. Mr. Charingford ushered him inside with a series of gestures and then, when they’d made their way up a small staircase to stand on a metal platform that overlooked the operation, turned to face him.

“This is the main room,” he shouted, straining to be heard over the clatter of the machines below. “Here’s where the yarn is knitted into hose.”

He pointed down into the factory below. A woman, her white-streaked hair tied back in a careless bun, operated a machine that wound yarn onto metal bobbins on one side of the room. A handful of men strolled from one circular frame to the next, moving pieces when necessary, replacing bobbins, handing the products off to boys who scampered with them into an adjacent room. They moved with an economy of motion that seemed to spring more from weariness than expertise.

“Each machine can produce two pairs of stockings in nine minutes,” Charingford shouted. “And the men are needed only to take the work off the stitch hooks at the end and to reset the cylinder that guides the shape of the stocking. Look at them, Your Grace. They don’t even have to make decisions in their daily work. How could we trust them to decide the future of our country? To understand the workings of industry?”

Robert simply tilted his head, listening over the racket of the machines. “They’re singing,” he said. “Why are they singing?”

Mr. Charingford paused and put one hand to his ear, listening. “They’re happy to be at work, Your Grace. They’re singing a hymn—praise to God.”

Robert was a man looking down on a factory floor from above. All he had to do was look, while the workers below turned and wound and cut.

Lucky you, he could hear Minnie say, that you can consider the future without terror. He didn’t think he could even understand what it meant to stand down there, to toil in this unrelenting noise for day after day. All he knew was that it wasn’t as simple as gratitude and hymns.

Over the short course of their marriage, he’d never been farther from Minnie than he was at this moment. He’d lied to her, and tomorrow he was going to break his promise to her and hurt her. And yet he could hear her right now over the thunder of the machinery.

“I don’t pretend to understand what it means to be a working man, Mr. Charingford, but I am a factory owner. I inherited a good bit of industry from my grandfather. And when I look at your factory floor, I don’t see men who are happy to be at work.”

A woman on the floor looked up at them as he spoke. There was no hatred in her eyes, no contempt. Just a soft look around the edge of her eyes—a quiet yearning.

Perhaps she had once been a genteel young lady who failed to marry. Maybe she’d had no choice but to take on work until her hair grayed before her time and her skin turned to leather. Still, she looked up. Like everyone else, her lips moved in song.

“Well?” Mr. Charingford said. “What is it that you see instead?”

“I see Minnie.” His voice caught. “I see who she might have been in ten years, when her great-aunts’ health faded away.”

Mr. Charingford drew in a sharp breath.

“I see your daughter if the market for hosiery should vanish.”

“Not Lydia,” Charingford said in shocked tones. “Surely not…” But he trailed away unhappily.

“I see who my brother might have been if another man hadn’t stepped in to raise him. I see my childhood cook, if I hadn’t pensioned her off. The only person I don’t see is myself.” He let his hands trail over the catwalk. “I have never been there, and I never will. The only thing I understand now is that I cannot comprehend what it is like to stand on a factory floor and look up and sing.”

Mr. Charingford tilted his head and looked at him, really listening now.

“I’ve a goodly share of faults. I rush in, where I should tread carefully. I speak, where I should listen. But when I hear them sing, I don’t just hear a hymn. They’re singing to God because they haven’t found anyone else who will listen.”

Charingford spoke cautiously. “Stevens says that if we listen once, we’ll only stir the workers on to greater unreasonableness.”

“Have you found that Stevens becomes more reasonable the more you give in to his demands?”

Charingford looked away.”

“How much has he asked of you, Charingford? You’re a magistrate. Has he said he won’t help you if you don’t do as he says? Has he asked for money? Or did he simply demand that he be awarded the hand of your beautiful daughter in exchange for his efforts?“