An Untitled Lady (22 page)

“That unlikely, is it? Water, water. You send out your whites to the washerwoman, right? And the closet uses catch-water, I understand. So, what’s left is only…” She stopped. Her gaze seemed to draw the blush out of Maddie’s skin. The lady looked away. “The ash makes the air sparkle, can you see it? The whole town will be dusted in it.”

Maddie watched the air between her and the pump. Tiny shards of mirror floated by in air still cloudy violet. True sunlight hadn’t yet reached the garden. She hoped Mrs. Willis had shut all the windows at home, or it would be a day of wiping with the damp cloths, another use of scarce water.

“You’ve heard about the Roman baths?”

Maddie frowned. “Are they outside town? I don’t remember seeing any ruins.”

“He hasn’t told you? Center of town, and not ruins, working baths. Whole rooms of water, running water, over beside the Infirmary. Marvelous thing, really, like a tiny sea under a roof and four walls.”

“And one gets clean there?”

“I’ll take you. Not today, tomorrow, that’s a ladies’ day.”

“The ladies have their own day?”

Mrs. Heywood stood up. The men were coming out. Nash looked an overgrown boy in Mr. Heywood’s trousers, too wide at top and inches too short at bottom. He wore the shirt loose.

“It’s a subscription, like the lending library. Nash, dear, why haven’t you taken your wife to the public baths?”

He stopped, thunderstruck, as if she’d asked him how was their trip to the moon.

“Don’t bother the boy, Penny. Can’t you see he’s exhausted?” Heywood bent to kiss his wife on the forehead. Nash watched them, and looked at Maddie, his eyes swollen and red. He made no move toward her.

“The fire is well out?” She asked the easiest question she could think of.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” To Mrs. Heywood, he said, “I’m sorry Madeline has troubled you with our affairs.” Now his face was cleared of soot, Maddie could see how drawn it was, how exhausted.

Mrs. Heywood’s mouth pursed. “Perhaps she sought kinder counsel, is all.”

“I’m not following.” Heywood rubbed at his eyes, displacing the tangle of bristles that formed his brows.

“We’re all overtired, dear.” His wife rested her hand on his shoulder. “I thought I might take Mrs. Quinn to the baths this week.”

Heywood’s grunt sounded more like a snore. “We all need a trip after last night.”

“Not all of us,” Nash muttered.

In their bedroom, Nash peeled off Heywood’s clothing, but instead of hanging it neatly as he always did, he draped the pieces over the trunk. His best suit of clothes, in a sack by the entry, now were fit only for their own burial. He shuffled his feet and dropped onto the bed. The room smelled of ashes.

“Guess I needed a wash, eh, Madeline?” His voice sank in sad resignation. She sat on the edge of the bed as he pulled the sheet over his nakedness.

“Let me rub your shoulders. You’ve worked them so long.”

“I’ll not bother you.”

“It’s not a bother.”

“But it is, wife. You bother the entire household.”

“Rest now. Should I go to the warehouse for you? It’s not a market day, but—”

“No.” He waved her away as if she were a buzzing fly. “Nothing from you. I just want to sleep.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say. Even if she could, there was no air in her lungs to push the words out. She held in what little breath she had.

He turned his head to look at her, his lids so drooped she wasn’t sure he saw anything. He let out all his breath in a sigh, then took it in again. “I like your scent. Honeysuckle? But I’m beginning to think we won’t suit.” His long exhale ended in the start of a snore. He was dead asleep.

Maddie sat still, barely breathing, making sure he slept. He rolled onto his back, one knee bent, its foot in the crook of his other knee. His arms crossed at his breastbone, as if he were a living corpse.

Even sapped of energy, his skin shone with health in the new day’s light. Ruddy brown beard shadowed his cheeks and lips. His lashes were too long for a man’s. His breaths were elastic, pulling at her heart, and then pushing her away.

She tugged the sheet away. His strong chest tapered into sturdy hips, which split into the thighs that had ridden her—was it only last week? Her own thighs throbbed at the memory.

His cock, asleep, was as long as her hand. She longed to cup it. Her hand reached out at the thought, but froze in midair. She shook her head in frustration. He was asleep. Where did this fear come from?

She reached out again, just a finger to feather up his shaft. The hot panic swelled from her belly to her forehead, as if her body were fighting her mind. But she was in the sun, safe, and slowly her finger started to move again. She stroked up his shaft, the lightest touch.

He stirred in his sleep, rolling away from her. She considered waking him by doing that trick with her hand he always seemed to like. But he was exhausted. And unpredictable. And he couldn’t have made himself any clearer.

We don’t suit
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{ 24 }

The streets reminded Maddie of Christmastide, the soft snow blanket today sharp ash. Her half-boots kicked it up no matter how carefully she walked. She’d lain in that bed for an hour, wide awake, before giving in and getting up. Even in the downstairs drawing room, she’d felt suffocated. Mrs. Willis thought she was going to church to give thanks the blaze had claimed no lives, but Maddie was more selfish than that.

The flakes of gray-black floated like oversized dust motes, and just as elusive. When she reached for one, it seemed to pulse away, but as she walked, more and more fixed on her. The parasol protected her head and shoulders, but her skirts slowly turned from blue to light gray, streaked with black.

After all this time, she knew not to expect Kitty would be there. When her sister came up beside her as she paid her respects at her mother’s grave, she could not feel surprise. Today was already too much.

“You be persistent.” Her bonnet and skirts, already black, took on sheen from the soot. She was coated in it, even her sharp chin streaked. Maddie wondered if her own chin could take on as hard an aspect as Kitty’s. Her lids were half-closed, her blinks slow, but her eyes carried that same unearthly crystal blue.

“You could not sleep, either?”

Kitty shrugged. “No work today. Any cloth as goes out of doors is ruined for sale.”

“Did you see the fire?”

Kitty’s gaze tried to read her. “Did your husband tell you so?”

Nash had said nothing at all about the fire, Maddie realized. “Were you there?”

“Heard it first, nothing like that sound. Then the light, pouring down our streets. You don’t see that but once a lifetime.” She tapped their mother’s grave marker as if for luck.

“A blessing no one was killed.”

“But no one will be working there no more, either. More like a slow death for some.”

Not her! Before she even thought of it, Maddie reached out to touch her sister. She jerked her hand back, but not before Kitty had taken a half-step away from her.

“Don’t worry for us. We’ve some saved. Hard times are forever on the way, you need be ready. Besides, this month it gives me more time to help with the banners for the meeting.”

“The reform meeting? You know the reformers?” Maddie couldn’t hide her shock, or her interest. Nash and the others were always going on about them as if they were devils, and Kitty might have spoken to one.

“I’m one myself. Treasurer of the Women’s Reform Society, allies with the Manchester Patriotic Union, although we have far more cheer than coin.”

This time, it was Maddie who took a step back. Knowing someone who knew of a reformer was one thing, consorting with one herself was another.

“I won’t infect you, if that’s what you think. Especially seeing as your master is one with the magistrates. Da said to stay wide of him.”

“Did your father agree to see me?”

“Not yet. He’s thinking it over, though.” Kitty’s voice rang carefully neutral, but her words sent Maddie to the depths and heights alternately.

“Truth is, he doesn’t know what you want.”

“Only to meet him once. Perhaps to see him from time to time. I could help him.”

“That’s the part worries him.”

“Why?”

“We don’t need your blunt. He’s worried of what you might do to him.”

“What could I do to him?”

“Why, you’d unman him, wouldn’t you? Make servants of us. We earn a good living, most times. We do fine on our own.” She was nearly shouting.

“I have no thought of that, I swear. I might help you, if you need it, but I would never force you to take anything. I would never force him to do anything. I would rather hope he might, he might…” She couldn’t get the words out.

“He might love you?”

Maddie nodded, her heart almost too full to speak. “I don’t expect it.”

“You do hope.” Kitty looked out toward the street. Through a slow drip of tears, Maddie watched her sister, her face so like, mirror the same shifting emotions that buffeted her. Fear, joy, terror, dread, anger, pain, loss.

“I hope, too,” she whispered.

Maddie grasped at this lifeline. “I don’t expect it.”

“Well you shouldn’t.” Kitty’s gaze sharpened, and she drilled it into Maddie. “Still, I don’t see why you shouldn’t give us a hand, now and again. Quiet-like.”

Maddie nodded. She could help her father, and he wouldn’t need to know.

“What sort of straits are you in?”

“Same old.” Kitty’s legs twitched, as if she was tired of standing. “I have an idea, though, how you could help, and not just our poor, piteous family. Can you pay a call in two days’ time?”

“To your home?” Her hopes were a rising balloon burst by another of Kitty’s sharp glances. Maddie’s throat burned with ash.

“No, an inn. We’re holding a sort of a meeting there.” Kitty’s hands grew animated. “A charity sewing party. Help some of the folks put out by the fire.”

“I would be honored to help.”

“And you’ll say nothing to your Mr. Quinn?” Maddie shook her head no, not really a promise, more an intention.

Kitty nodded. “Then come by the Black Tulip, up Long Millgate at Millers, around four. Can you do it?”

No one wanted her at home, and here was an opportunity to do good for others who needed it right now. A Christmas sewing circle come early. Maddie didn’t think twice.

“I’ll be there.”

* * * *

“Sidmouth’s mouthpiece calls it sedition.” The boyish committee man from Ashton pounded the table at the Star Inn. Nash tried not to roll his eyes. He was losing a lovely Saturday afternoon to this?

“Sit down, Mr. Trefford, thank you.” Heywood’s crisp diction washed the spirit out of Malbanks’s lackey. Nash was surprised to see Malbanks seated in his usual spot. With his manufactories boarded up, the man could go on holiday. Heywood jostled his arm, reminding him to take the floor.

“Mr. Trefford and I have differing readings of the current instruction from London. The Home Office, you’ll remember, including Lord Sidmouth, advised to arrest the Oldham delegates and prosecute the speakers at Ashton, and we did neither.”

“How could we?” Malbanks glared at him. “Sacrifice our spies to prosecute some low-lying fruit?”

“As you said at the time. The meetings here and at Stockport came off with no loss of life, property, nor apparent sedition. The latest meeting, in Birmingham, also was peaceful, though Wolsey’s nomination worries London.”

Clayton snorted. “I should say so. Electing a legislatorial attorney, my ass. It’s pure National Convention, and you know how poorly that served the French.”

Malbanks stood, leaning over the table toward Nash. “I tell you we have revolution on our hands.”

“And I tell you we don’t. London agrees with me. Look at the instruction: ‘Watch and report.’ Nothing of arrests; nothing of sedition.” Nash leaned in, glaring at the man. Why wasn’t he in Bath? Or Plymouth? Or Spain, which would win the Portuguese trade now that he’d toppled Manchester’s chances.

Heywood nodded. “We should have started arresting the rabble-rousers in Oldham. Now we’re deep into marching season. There’s no stopping them.” Silence settled as each of the dozen men considered his personal stake in peace and order.

Heywood turned to Malbanks. “What do our spies tell us?”

“Our men see conspiracy, but they can’t put their finger on it.”

Clayton patted the man’s hand, not unkindly. Malbanks stared at the hand, then the bespectacled man, with something like wondering disgust in his face.

Clayton lifted his hand. “Spies are paid only when they discover conspiracy. It’s in their interests to push one along.”

Nash still stood. “Or create it wholesale, as did our friend Oliver.”

Malbanks turned back to him. “Oliver didn’t create the Pentrich rising. That was local men, acting alone.”

Clayton gave the man’s hand one last pat. “Then why did Oliver have to flee?”

Nash tapped the table. “Gentlemen, please. I’ve heard that plans are under way for another meeting, here in town, even bigger than February last.”

“Who’s your spy?” Malbanks pulled his arms in and crossed them.

“No spy, a young man who attended an open meeting up in Middleton. He says organizers sent an invitation to old Major Cartwright, but he’s ill, and now they are asking Hunt.”

Clayton tapped his chin. “Hunt was well-received last winter. In summer, he could easily draw thousands.”

“Cut them off at the root,” Malbanks urged. “Nothing good can come of thousands storming the town.”

Nash pushed off the table, disgusted. “You put thousands out of work. They ‘storm the town’ every day now.”

“It’s too bad about your precious merchant cartel, but true gentlemen need to do what’s right for England.”

“Our men need work.” Nash closed his eyes. He needed this man’s agreement, or at least his neutrality, to make his plan real. “Listen. I can set up a parlay, a meeting between some of us and some of the more-moderate reformers. Perhaps we can agree to delay the meeting, or kill it outright.”

Nash could sense their interest. No one had pitched this idea before. Even old Pedersen, nodding off, shook himself awake.

Malbanks crossed his arms. “What man would parlay with us? Seditious bastards, all.”

“Bamford, from Middleton, Knight you know. One or two others.”

Clayton puffed out a chain of smoke. “The older crowd might listen to reason. What would we give them in exchange for their docility?”

“Information. We tell them why wages are depressed and agree to revisit the issue come winter.”

Clayton nearly dropped his pipe. Malbanks laughed out loud. “You mistake them for rational creatures.” Pedersen smiled, and then nodded back off. A few others snickered behind their hands or their pints. He was losing them, but he had to keep trying.

“They see us making profit now, while they suffer. Even an irrational man can see the imbalance.”

Heywood rapped the table. “I agree that to tell them our trade is foolish. Simply sounding them out might serve us as well. At the least we know how they will argue their case and we can prepare a good defense of our position.”

Malbanks waved an arm wide. “So we parlay. Let it be not some token group, though. Let all of us stand before this rabble, and see how bravely they come to meet us then.”

Nash could just picture it. Not a cordial introduction, laying the groundwork for a continuing conversation, but a parade of battleships meant to awe and cow. Malbanks had twisted his plan to sink it. The man would put his own pride ahead of an entire country’s livelihoods.

Nash wished he’d never come up with the idea. Of course, it might still work.

Just as there might be another virgin birth.

* * * *

The Roman baths were all Mrs. Heywood had promised. A city block long and wide at Piccadilly and Portland streets, the series of baths weren’t even a decade old, yet their style called to mind the aqueducts in Bath. Mechanical rather than natural, they were far more reliable.

The whitewashed stone walls gleamed even in the dusky haze of a heavy manufactory day. And they were full of lovely, steaming bathwater. Of course, she couldn’t have it all the time. Ladies and gentlemen took turns, morning shift or evening. Pay the ten-shilling subscription fee, and come as much as you like.

Once she’d seen how delighted Maddie was with the place, Mrs. Heywood had paid her first month’s subscription then and there. “No need to bother your busy husband about it just now.” Maddie could have kissed her.

Even the prospect of attending the baths on her own didn’t frighten her. Mrs. Heywood came only rarely, with that cottage bath of hers. Once Maddie made acquaintances, she wouldn’t feel so lonely, either. Even if she did, it was so, so worth it.

On her second visit, she nearly skipped the eight blocks from the cemetery and still had plenty of wind to greet the baths’ proprietress, a tall no-nonsense woman wearing a practical cotton dress and Roman sandals. Of the four styles of baths, Maddie preferred the swim pool, which ran nearly the width of the building.

After a quick rinse and in her new swimming outfit, a woolen singlet, she stepped into the rooms full of waters, humming with the sound of their movement. She’d forgotten the taste of the waters at Bath, its murmurs and gurgles. Only a handful of other women lined the edges of the pools, most content to float, eyes closed, or chat in whispers. Once their hair had fallen free or been tucked into neat caps, she couldn’t tell which were the great ladies and which the merchants’ families. Did workers come here, as well? Kitty would love this.

Maddie spent two entire hours in the baths, first a cool, bracing one. Then she slowly swam lines in the larger pool, reveling in the sleekness of her body as the water rolled around it. Finally, she soaked in the warmest bath, relaxing muscles just starting to feel the strain of her new exercise.

She could be clean every day, clean down deep. It was a dream come true. Best of all, it cost Nash nothing, just the pin money already allotted to her.

After the serenity of the baths, the streets seemed to shout with activity. Nash would be at the meeting all afternoon, so there was no need to rush or take a hack. Maddie glided through the halting, teeming stream of human beings, seeing them as flashes of gray, brown, blue in the heavy afternoon light. There were always more people milling about now, walking slower, as if they had lost their purpose. After months in town, her own steps had taken on a force and direction that matched the flow of traffic, but now her steps seemed too fast. It was summer, and there was little work.