Betina Krahn (10 page)

Cole climbed back up the steps, ripped off his coat, shirt, and breeches, and managed to replace them with dry alternatives. Cravits roused from wilt in time to help Cole with his collar and to clean and buff his riding boots.

Shortly, Cole was stalking along the lane, headed for the Ideal Garment Company and the pigheaded female who was responsible for it, and the reason he was there. But as he crossed the village green and neared the factory, he was revisited by the memory of Madeline Duncan’s impossibly blue
eyes and the look on her face minutes earlier. He slowed. It occurred to him that each time he had seen her, she had managed what London’s wiliest prosecutors, magistrates, and high-court judges had failed to do; she had made him lose his temper. He’d have to watch that.

Across from him stood the Ideal Garment Company factory, a rambling architectural nightmare, brick and stone used seemingly at random, pretentious Georgian parapets, oversized windows with unpainted wooden frames, precariously tilted chimneys, and a roof that looked as if it had been struck by lightning—several times. Trenching for the water main had torn up a good portion of the yard, and in the rest, mud had dried in ruts the size of Venetian canals. The place was every bit the disaster he had expected.

At a cry of protest from on high he looked up and spotted a shirtless, muscular young man on the roof, lurching up to a sitting position. Over him stood another brawny, half-naked fellow with a dripping bucket in his hand, laughing. The pair began a raucous game of tag across the rooftop, scrambling over and around gables, dodging holes, and slipping on loose shingles. The chase ended when the prankster disappeared down one of the holes in the roof and pulled the ladder in after him, leaving the other fellow stranded. The victim poured a few choice threats down the hole, then thudded back across the roof to his overturned toolbox and stretched out adamantly beside it to finish his nap.

Part of Madeline Duncan’s “Ideal” workforce, no doubt
.

Cole straightened his coat and headed for the front doors of the factory. Inside, he was immediately required to choose between going up or down stairs. Darkness was below. He chose to go up toward the light. Halfway up the stairs he felt a step giving way beneath him, flailed, and just managed to catch himself on the board tacked as a makeshift railing against the wall.

Hanging on for all he was worth, he slid his free foot to
more solid wood, then extricated his trapped foot from the spongy mass that had once been a substantial stair tread. As he hauled himself hand over hand up the edge of the steps, his knee began to burn, and the sensation spread up his thigh. At the top of the steps he assessed the damage and discovered a nasty scrape up the front of his boot and a tear in his good riding breeches. He glared back at the stairs.

The bloody place is falling down!

Looking around, he discovered he was at the edge of a hall the size of a small cricket field. The light that had attracted him came through a row of huge windows newly set in the thick masonry walls. Above, there were rafterlike trusses supporting cylindrical iron shafts with sundry mechanisms attached. Underfoot were floors of aged oak. Lumber was stacked here and there, and the tools and residue of carpentry work—augers, chisels, and hammers; dust, plane curls, and chips of wood—littered the floor.

He strolled around the space, testing both his aching leg and the sturdiness of the floorboards with each step. A number of partially constructed tables sat at one end of the hall. While giving them a cursory inspection, he noticed a man at the far end sitting on a stack of lumber.

“Can you tell me what is going on here?” Cole called. “What are you building?”

The only response, as he approached, was a soft snore.

Another wretch asleep on the job
.

He cleared his throat as he rounded the stack of lumber, but the fellow was apparently dead to the world. As he bent over him to investigate, he was struck by the sickly-sweet odor of anise on a strong undercurrent of alcohol, and jerked back. He caught the glint of metal in the fellow’s hand—a battered hip flask.

Not merely asleep—dead drunk!

He headed irritably for a nearby door, intent on finding Mad Madeline, but instead found himself in a storage room stacked with forty or fifty identical crates, several barrels, and
what appeared to be schoolroom desks. Poking around in an open crate, he uncovered a sewing machine—spanking new from the looks of it. He mentally tallied up the expenditure this represented if all the crates held the same thing.

Two thousand pounds sterling … sitting idle … like the rest of the cursed factory
.

As he rounded the stacks of crates to investigate another door, he came across a burly, graying man engrossed in a book, sitting by a dusty window. The fellow didn’t seem to notice that he was no longer alone as Cole leaned down to read the title on the front of the book … John Wesley’s
Methods of Piety
.

He straightened in disgust. Too bad it wasn’t John Wesley’s
Admonition to Get Off Your Fat Arse and Earn Your Wages
!

He strode back through the hall, now more determined than ever to find and confront Madeline Duncan. He was just deciding whether to brave the stairs again, when he spotted a pair of high-buttoned shoes descending them. A pair of black-cuffed trousers appeared next, then a border of red below an expanse of powder blue. A moment later he was staring into Madeline Duncan’s flushed face.

“Lord Mandeville. I was just about to send Beaumont to find you,” she said, picking her way carefully down the steps and, with a gesture, reminding those coming behind her to do the same. “Did you find ‘suitable’ lodging?”

Her ill-suppressed smile told him that she knew precisely what he had found.

“I have made arrangements. I have a few words for you, Miss Duncan.”

“I’m certain you do. But first perhaps I could show you the progress we’ve made. I was just familiarizing our new head seamstress with our factory. You may come along.” Joining Madeline was a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman in traveling clothes and a dark-eyed young girl with a nubile shape and a flirtatious smile. “Permit me to introduce Mrs. Maple
Thoroughgood and her daughter, Charlotte. They will be teaching our seamstresses to use the sewing machines.”

“About those machines,” he said, fixing his gaze on the slight dent in the tip of Madeline’s nose in an effort to avoid looking into her eyes. “They represent a monstrous expenditure to have sitting about idle.”

“You’ve seen them?” She frowned at the realization that he had been prowling about on his own. “The sewing tables have just been finished, and we still have a few seamstresses to hire. First things first, your lordship.” Without waiting for a response, she gestured to the hall around them.

“I take it, you’ve already seen the cutting floor as well. This is where the fabric will be readied and the pieces cut according to pattern. There are actually three levels in the factory. Storage and shipping are on the ground level; the cutting floor and classrooms are here on the first; and the sewing floor and offices are on the second. We’re in the process of making a number of renovations.”

She led them toward the tall windows overlooking the rear of the factory and into a bath of sunlight. “We’ve replaced all the windows with much larger ones that can be opened for healthful ventilation. I’m especially proud of them—they represent our heartfelt commitment to the well-being of our workers. The carpenters will be painting them any day now. On the far end, as you can see, there are fans in the wall to draw out stale or dusty air. They’re not hooked up yet.” She led them along the edge of the hall and halted to point out the long shafts sticking up from the floor and the mechanized racks and arms overhead. “These are part of a system designed by our engineer, Fritz Gonnering.” Something at the far end caught her eye, and she brightened. “There he is now—Fritz! Fritz Gonnering!”

The fellow snoozing on the stack of lumber at the far end started, snapped upright, and lurched to his feet. As they hurried
toward him, he straightened his clothes and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“Fritz is a pure genius with mechanicals. He has had to invent tools and pieces of equipment for us.” She lowered her voice as they approached him. “He has been working so hard, I fear it may be affecting his health.”

As the fellow stumbled over a greeting, Cole was thinking that one look at those bloodshot eyes, one whiff of that anise-and-alcohol aroma, should have been enough to alert any normal, reasonable person as to what was truly affecting the wretch’s health. Not Mad Madeline, of course.

Despite a dry mouth and intermittent cough, Gonnering managed to explain: “Racks overhead … for moving boltz of cloth. Und die grosser metal shaften in das middle
ist
power supply for cutting tools. Interchangeable parts. Gud idea, ja? Die zewing machines upstairs musst haf power also, und …” After thanking Fritz, she led Cole and the others over to the burly fellow Cole had seen reading in the back room. He was now making a racket with a chisel and hammer.

Madeline ran her hand along the newly planed surface of a table under construction. “These are the cutting tables. When they are finished, two long rows of them will sit above the power shafts. Up to eighteen cutters will work here at a time.”

Cole studied the planks and leg pieces scattered around the floor. “And when will that be?” He just managed to keep from suggesting:
the next century
?

“Soon enough,” she answered tautly, as if she had heard his thoughts. Catching the eye of the graying, barrel-chested fellow who was creating joints for the table legs, she waved him over and introduced him. “This is Harley Ketchum, the Ideal carpenter. He and his sons are doing the repair work and renovation. When the factory work is done, they will begin renovating the cottages, to make them more habitable.”

Harley’s broad smile and extended hand caught Cole off guard, but no more than the stupendous bellow he aimed at
the rafters. “Ketchums!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Get down ’ere!” Then he stalked to the nearest window and roared the same thing outside.

At the commotion overhead, Cole looked up and was startled to see two young men scurrying deftly through the wooden rafters and dropping to the floor. Another swung in through the window and still another came sliding down a set of ropes inside a metal cage in the far corner. In a wink, four muscular young hulks with sun-burnished faces and tousled hair, varying shades of blond, were lined up before Cole, staring with fascination, not at him, but at the fetching, dark-eyed Charlotte Thoroughgood. Cole recognized two of them as the ones he had seen playing “tag” on the rooftop.

“These here be my boys, yer lordship,” Harley declared with a broad, toothy grin. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Calvin. The wife—bless her sainted heart—named ’em. She were a Methodist. Say yer respects, boys.” He gave the nearest a jab in the ribs.

Their spines straightened, their chests swelled, and they hurriedly swished hands back through their shaggy hair. Appreciative grins appeared as their eyes continued to drift toward Charlotte’s curves and coquettish smile. They each mumbled something on the order of “it be an honor, yer lordship.” Their father scowled, sensing the waywardness of their thoughts.

“That’ll be enough o’ that. Get back to work, the lot of ye!” He had to give the nearest one a shove to get them moving. One by one they disappeared the same way they had come, with a display of brute strength and agility. Cole stared after them in disbelief. He could only hope Mad Madeline wasn’t paying them by the pound.

They toured the classroom, the room just off the cutting floor, where the sewing machines were being stored. Here, Madeline explained, training and worker meetings would be held. As she explained to Maple Thoroughgood her ideas of “worker participation,” Cole made a noise of
disgust and strolled over to one of the newly installed windows. He rubbed a clear spot on a dusty pane and peered out over the rear of the factory. There, under a tree, two men were lying … to all appearances napping … with shovel handles clasped in their hands.

More “Ideal” workers,
he thought.
Was everyone in the bloody place asleep at the tiller?
When he turned back, he caught Madeline’s eye and gave her his most sardonic smile.

They toured the lower level, which contained dryers and pressing machines, shipping crates, Fritz Gonnering’s workshop, and an old dyeing room filled with ancient stone vats. Then Madeline led them up a short flight of steps to the yard at the rear of the factory: “Here is where we will have the gardens,” she announced.

“Gardens?” He scowled.

“The area closest to the factory will be primarily flowers and herbs”—her expressive hands conjured a lush vista—“with a background of flowering trees and shrubs. I’ve had plans drawn by a master landscape architect in France.”

“A pleasure garden?” He was a bit annoyed by his own surprise. “In a factory?”

“Creative people need stimulating surroundings to enhance their productivity. William Morris fervently believes that improving the aesthetics of the work experience will ultimately improve the products. And I agree.”

She led them down a narrow, weedy path toward the center of the yard. “Farther out we will have kitchen gardens, which the families will each donate time to tend. In return, each will receive a share of the produce.”

As Cole followed her, he found himself scrutinizing the movement of her bottom half beneath that voluminous blue smock. Appalled by the direction of his thoughts, he focused instead on wondering how she would react at discovering two of her precious workers asleep under a tree.

But Madeline called ahead: “Algernon! Roscoe!” and by the time they arrived, the two were not only on their feet,
but had managed to work up the appearance of exertion. The pair stood by a modest hole, leaning on their shovel handles and mopping their faces. All around the weedy yard were strings tied to stakes, crisscrossing each other, creating a maze that Cole and the others had to mind their feet to navigate.