An Untitled Lady (24 page)

“So’s they say,” Malbanks said. “You heard what happened in Birmingham. They won’t get away with that rabble-rousing here.”

Heywood shook his head, his necklace clanking dolefully. “I don’t see that we can do anything. We must trust that they value their good word.” He held up a hand to forestall their protests. “Nay, Manchester men are strong and proud. They won’t fall in with these radicals from London. They are what makes us strong.”

Malbanks huffed, his peacock chest swelling. “Sooner we replace them with machinery, the better.”

“Listen to yourself.” Nash couldn’t hold back. “Without wages in their pockets, who will buy your broadloom cloth?”

“Parliament may, and hand it out to the parish poor.”

Heywood laughed, breaking some of the brittle tension in the room. “Now you want government in your business? Backing the smokestack tariff now, too?”

Malbanks would not be silenced. “This will come to a bad end, believe me. There can be only trouble when the lower orders collect in one pen.”

{ 26 }

The Black Tulip did not smell like a coffee shop. The well-made sign over the door was plain enough, though. Maddie stepped over the threshold on the fumes of her courage, and stopped.

A crusty bar stood to her left, an orchestra of mismatched tables and chairs to her right. A half-dozen drooping men in ’factory smocks sat scattered about, though the day’s dismal bells had not yet rung closing. Overpowered by generations of beers spilled and baths skipped, she held her breath to regain her balance.

One by one, heads perked up at the sight of her. She shouldn’t have worn her new dress, a robin’s egg blue from Clayton’s mills. She clutched the pocket holding her purse. The money was for the women’s society, for the out-of-work families; no one else must take it from her.

This was all fancy. Kitty wouldn’t have led her to a place where she might be robbed. Maddie pushed her feet to step to the bar. The keep, a woman of faded brass, blinked slowly at her, and then tilted her head toward the far wall. Stairs rain up the wall to a sort of balcony; beside the stair an open doorway led to another room.

Skirting the tables, she was rewarded by the sight of her sister seated in the small room. A well-dressed older gentleman, seated to her left at a round table, rose as Maddie entered.

Kitty rose, as well. “Told you she’d come.”

He bowed so gracefully Maddie curtseyed before she thought better of it. In blue lapelled coat, light waistcoat and wool trousers, he seemed overdressed for a Manchester summer. Perfectly proportioned to his six feet in height, he had only one flaw—a tightness about his thin lips. Even his gray-brown hair, brushed forward onto his forehead and cheeks in the London style, was his own.

Henry Hunt, “The Orator” to his detractors, a prince to the radicals. She’d seen his likeness in the papers, though he presented even better in person. His white top hat, a symbol of the reform, hung on the hook beside her at the door.

“You’ve found me out,” he said, looking in the direction of her gaze.

“The papers say you are in the south.” The royalist papers also said he was inciting sedition across the country, and warned that his coming to town would endanger all Christian folk. To look at him, though, was to see the truth of it. He was just another politician, only of the “broad cloth” people rather than the “narrow cloth” ones, as Jem’s wife would put it. And, no doubt, Kitty.

“I find it’s best to stay a step ahead of the press.”

This must be one of those committee meetings, those formerly clandestine affairs now merely shady and unsavory, according to the
Observer
.

With a shiver of anticipation, she sat down in the chair Hunt pulled out for her.

“I’m ringed by beauty,” he said in silver tones. She smiled, shy at the compliment, and then froze. Small wonder Kitty had made her promise to say nothing of this to Nash. He would never want her here.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. Wasn’t he himself at some sort of committee meeting over at the Exchange? She was merely exercising her right to talk with whomever she pleased, and who could be more intriguing than Orator Hunt? Still, Kitty had been sly. She looked past Hunt to her sister. “A knitting circle?”

“We’ll get to that after. Mayhaps.”

“Tell her the truth, Miss Moore. We’re here to plan the largest collection of the disenfranchised this country has yet seen.”

Maddie’s heart thudded in her chest. “You mean to riot Manchester?”

“Exactly the opposite. We mean to show that the good denizens of this town can meet and petition a redress of their grievances without resorting to violence of any kind.”

“Is that possible?”

“Not only possible but probable. Surely you saw our request for a permit in the papers. The magistrates cannot deny us a meeting.” He looked to Kitty for confirmation, and she sat up a little straighter.

“Aye. That’s what we’re waiting on—our men to come back from the parlay.”

He nodded. “Like the promising citizens they are, they’re man to man with the leaders of this great town.”

Nash’s committee. Well, if he could stick his nose in the swirl of the most interesting event in Manchester this summer, she could stick her toe in. After all, she wasn’t a member of this committee, just an observer.

Hunt leaned toward her. “What does your husband have to say about the rally?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” He frowned. Maddie searched for something to please him. “He is at the committee meeting.”

Hunt brightened. “Then when we see you next we can have his version of it, as well as that of our men. They’ll be here soon.”

Not a minute later, she heard a murmuring grow louder toward them, and a trio of men entered. Maddie was reminded of the three pigs: One was older and gruff, one barely past his childhood, and one just right.

Could he be Richard Moore, her father? Her throat swelled as if to burst, and she had trouble swallowing. But it was the older man, his black eyes blazing in a pale face fringed by a thin wreath of hair, who couldn’t stop staring at her. And when his gaze snapped to Kitty, who nodded yes, Maddie was sure of it.

“Linen, or cotton?” His words rasped, as if his throat were sandpapered.

“Cotton, of course,” she said. Linen in this style would mean it had been made overseas, a slap in the face to these men. After her encounter on the streets, Maddie had sent all her offending dresses to Shaftsbury, destined for dusters or charities in the south.

At the sound of her voice, the other two men looked at her dress, then her face. They snapped their heads around to her sister, and back to her. The young man whistled.

“Quite the likeness, Kitty.”

“Nothing like, George Swift, you’re barely off your mother’s teat and blind as a babe.”

The older man hadn’t stopped staring. But it was the other who came to sit beside her.

“Sam Bamford of Middleton, weaver and seeker of justice, ma’am.” He held out his hand and she remembered to shake it this time. “It’s been a long time.”

She dropped his hand in her shock. “You knew me?”

“A speck of angel’s hair, you were. And just as lovely now you’re grown.” He patted her hand where it had fallen to the table. His deep-set eyes and forgiving mouth appealed to her, even as his diminished hair and bulb-tipped nose offset his general good looks.

Kitty spoke up. “Sam, how go the rushes?” She motioned to George Swift to sit beside her, leaving the place opposite Hunt for her father. Maddie’s father. She concentrated on the set of his chin, as high as she could trust herself.

Finally, his gaze slipped away from her, chin wobbling. The arch of his eye matched Kitty’s. He hadn’t acknowledged Maddie.

Her heart sank to her knees. He didn’t wish to know her. How could she have been so foolish? She didn’t belong here, this was all wrong. Her breath raced away from her, but Bamford’s second touch on her hand brought it back.

“A cheap season this year, I’m afraid. Saving the blunt for the meeting. New banners, new sashes, and the rushcarts will go to good use then.”

“No rushcarts.” Hunt tapped the table with the edge of his hand. “This is to be a simple march and meeting. That is, if it is allowed. What did you hear, Moore?”

“Allus the same. They’ll consider it ‘til they deny it.” He sucked a tooth, as if to prevent himself from spitting.

“They can’t. It’s not illegal.”

“Magistrates say as what’s legal here. Arrest today and let the courts decide tomorrow, they say.”

“They did suggest we wait a week.” Bamford shrugged. “Put a new announcement in the papers, and do it proper.”

Hunt nodded. “A good plan. We must be in everything peaceful and legal. On the day, we’ll start first thing in the morning to head off any unnecessary imbibing. We’ll wear white and carry nothing.”

“We need a few pikes. Cudgels, of course.” Kitty’s voice sounded shriller than usual. “Streets aren’t too safe even on fine days.”

“Nothing. Just a spirit of peaceableness, the likes of which this town and its people have never seen.”

Bamford grimaced. “I don’t know as I like the idea of having nary a tool at hand. What if the good volunteers of the yeomanry take affront to my behavior?”

“If your behavior is gentlemanlike, they’ll have nothing to criticize,” Hunt said.

“That’s putting a barrel of faith in a bunch of drink-heavy layabouts,” Bamford retorted.

“My faith is in the Crown and her laws. We will be yards within the law.”

George Swift cleared his throat, but his voice still squeaked. “Will we elect an MP? Like Birmingham?”

“Gods no,” Hunt said. “This town is not ready for such a thing. We need to prove our peaceable intent. Manchester will be a model for the country. To those who say we’re nothing but a muddy, unkempt rabble that don’t deserve the rights of suffrage, we’ll present a clean, sober, respectful disproof.”

Maddie tried to listen, but it was all buzzing to her ears. She sat only a foot or so from the man who helped make her. Her eyes soaked in every detail, from the slouch of his posture to the toughness of his fingernails. He did not look at her again.

“No pikes.” Bamford scratched the calluses on his hand. Maddie thought she saw the same calluses on her father’s hands, until he snatched them off the table and rested them in his lap. “I’ll present it to my committee. I may need you to explain it better to them, though. It might fall hard on their ears.”

“I am at your disposal.”

“Also, one of the coves at the ’Change wants to act as parlay with us.” Bamford leaned toward Maddie. “Your husband, ma’am. Quinn?”

Her father slammed the table with a fist. “Parlay? Spy, as more like.”

“We can meet him and judge for ourselves,” Hunt said.

“Do it in the wide open, and be bloody chary what you say.” He pushed up to his feet so quickly he was nearly to the door before the others could react. He didn’t spare her a glance as he stormed out of the room. Soon after, the meeting broke up.

“That went well,” Kitty said, taking her arm as they left the room.

“How’s that?”

“If he met you here, he couldn’t well pitch a fit, could he? Worst he could do was walk away.”

“Which he did.”

“Aye, but he finished his business first. I call that a bloody good sign.”

* * * *

Maddie couldn’t contain herself. She couldn’t sit still to read the
Register
and the pamphlets Mr. Bamford had pressed her to take. She certainly couldn’t simply go to sleep, with all these feelings and thoughts swirling about. Could she confide in Nash? Their days lately had been temperate, their nights calm. Dare she try him on her family again?

What sort of rickety bridge of a marriage would it be if she could not? She had to try. She also could try to stack the deck in her favor.

That night Maddie was the first to initiate intimacy. Pressing herself along the length of him in their bed, she started in. “I have something to tell you.”

“You need me primed first?”

“It would help.”

He groaned. “Fire away, before I do.”

She looked into his eyes, a glint in the shadow. No help there. Her nerve faltered, and she tucked her head into the crook of his arm.

“That bad?” His whisper singed her ear.

“I met my father today.”

It was as if his body had turned to stone. Maddie curled up tighter, wrapping her arms around her knees. Finally, he took in a long breath, let it out slowly, and squeezed her tight. “As did I. Where?”

“My sister told me to meet her for a knitting circle.”

“Sister? Surprise, surprise.. She took you home?”

“A coffee shop, she called it. The Black Tulip.”

“The radical hole. You talked sedition?”

“Is that what your committee was talking about?”

Nash turned her to face him. “My committee?”

Maddie flashed fear. But he wasn’t hurting her, just searching her with his dark gaze.

“I think so. Some of the men had just returned from the magistrates’ caucus, but they had precious little to report.”

Nash pushed away, falling to his back on the mattress. “Wasn’t my doing. I said we should tell what we could, if we couldn’t tell all. Bloody idiots in charge.”

“Who is right?”

“The men have a point, but the manufacturers have a better point. Thing is, if they worked together, they would both get what they wanted.”

“How?”

“This isn’t pillow talk.”

She leaned over him, taking his mouth in a slow, languorous kiss that stole the breath from both. She pulled away, and sense returned slowly. Nash stretched an arm out for her, but she leaned out of his lazy reach.

“How?”

“Wench. Everyone has problems, see? The men need steady work at good pay. The manufacturers need steady orders at a good price.”

“Sounds like the same thing.”

“Nearly. But what they both need, more than anything, is a voice in government.”

“Suffrage.”