Page 155 of The Ladies Least Likely

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S ome might say that the Earl of Renwick was drunk.

Not drunk as a wheelbarrow, but definitely in altitudes, and more than a trifle disguised.

Cup-shot; flustered; emphatically groggy.

Ren chuckled to himself as he reviewed the many and varied adjectives that could apply to his current state of not caring very much about anything.

“Ssssomethin’ I’m ‘sposed to be doing,” he slurred to the man slumped on the bar next to him.

Crowds had come and gone that afternoon at the Swan Inn, all of them having something to say to the Earl of Renwick, but Abel Cain had early on staked a claim on the stool beside Ren, and there passed through the stages of intoxication with him.

“Seeing t’ the tackle?” Cain suggested, holding back a belch.

“Beg par-pardon,” Ren said with great dignity, noting that he did not care about his stammer when he was top-heavy. This might be a solution for future dreaded social events, he reflected.

“Keepin’ the cully,” Cain clarified. “The convenient. The peculiar. Yer sweetheart,” he finally said.

“Are you sssuggesting…” Ren caught himself just in time. He wasn’t so corned he would link Harriette’s name to his in such a scenario. “Castin’ ‘spersions on milady,” he said instead.

Cain nodded solemnly. “Aye, that. Truth told, milord, we ne’er thought she’d amount to much, cross-patch bobbletail, she was. But she come back from that girls’ school all gimcrack, with the…” At a loss for proper words, he made a motion toward his waistcoat suggesting rounded breasts.

“Think I ought t’ call you out for that,” Ren mumbled, annoyed.

“Oi, don’t git yer back up.” Cain emptied his bumper of ale. “We all know she’s a duchess or some such, above our touch.” He wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “And yer a rum one, you are,” he went on, squinting at Ren, “if you kin stop the factory owners going on as they been.”

“Can’t promise.” Ren kept his words short, aware his tongue was swelling, his self-consciousness growing as the haze of alcohol began to dim. “Can try.”

He’d spent the past hours being illuminated on the many varieties of poverty and hardship confronting members of the town.

The clothing trade that had run the town for decades was changing.

Instead of taking carding or spinning or weaving work into their homes, where they could watch children and stir the supper and tend to the fields that fed them, men and women and even children were brought to the factories with their fancy equipment run by the power of the river.

The factory equipment caused frequent injuries, and the buildings were notoriously susceptible to fire.

Children too young to work were left at home, untended, and the wages weren’t enough to replace the other ways people had been able to feed themselves, by selling produce, raising animals to trade, or growing or finding their own food.

A working man had to provide for his own family and pay the poor rate that supported the workhouse, where those too young, too ill, or old to work barely kept body and soul together.

Poaching meat for the table could cost a man his life or land him in the Shepton Mallet prison, one of the worst in Somerset for its poor conditions and rampant sickness.

Profits the factory owners made from Parliament’s support of English-made wares never trickled back to the pockets of the workers.

With machines like the spinning jenny coming to replace what meager work they had—the alternatives to starve in the workhouse, the prison, or their own home, watching their family starve beside them—the men of Shepton Mallet had had enough.

Ren burned with shame and the heat of their anger as he listened.

He wanted to protest that he’d never thought about where the fabrics came from that his tailor made into his beautiful, expensive suits.

He’d never once thought about the hands that made the fine white stockings he rolled over the scar on his leg or the lace he hung at his throat.

No more than he thought of the cook who prepared the meals served him at Renwick house or the chambermaid who made up his bed with fresh linens.

He paid for the service; that was all he owed.

Or so he would have said before today, when he was forced to look on the hands that made his fine things, the backs that strained to provide the labor he expected.

And all the other lives, the web of intricate relations that depended on them.

Abel Cain had a wife and three children, though he was barely older than Ren.

Mrs. Oram, who had lost her position when his feckless steward absconded, had Jags to care for.

Harriette had seen all this. She had said much the same over dinner on their journey.

She knew what was happening; she saw the wreckage that the whims of the great and the all-consuming quest for money left on the bodies of the people they exploited.

Ren was the factory owner, concerned mostly for the income that his investment yielded.

Or at least he had been until today, when he had sat down ready to give the workmen a chance to air their complaints, convinced he could ultimately make them see reason, the benefits of progress, and their own self-sabotage in not accommodating themselves to the new ways.

Harriette wouldn’t have needed such persuasion.

He had no doubt where she would stand on any of these stories.

Ren pushed away the new glass that the publican set before him.

He had to find Harriette, tell her what he had learned, and have her help him decide what to do next. Harriette would know what to do.

“Ye kin promise, King Queer Pins, an you kin try,” Cain said, contemplating his empty glass. He swiped the bumper Ren had declined and examined its contents with one half-shut eye. “But the men are ready to do somethin’ about it. There’s a mobility brewin’ this evening, make no mistake.”

“Did you call me?—”

Ren put the complaint aside. There had been no acrimony in Cain’s tone.

He was acquainted with the habit among some men to refer to their friends with insults, saving worse acrimony for those they truly detested.

Cain had welcomed him back as though they’d been chums all along, as if Ren had never fled him and his cronies in fear for his life. “There’s a what brewing?”

“A mobility. Fancy word for a mob,” Cain explained.

“Where?”

“Bunker’s Hill, I heard. I’d be there meself if you hadn’t come along. Old Hoppin’ Giles.” He snorted into the foam of his beverage, then drank deeply.

“Where is the sheriff? A constable? A—a watch?”

Ren wasn’t familiar with the peace-keeping apparatus of small villages like this. Would a magistrate get involved? A justice of the peace? The Lord Lieutenant of the county or any of his deputies?

“Oi, ye can lay odds there’s gentlemen of the peace about tonight.” Cain nodded knowingly, tapping the side of his nose. “But they’s wise enough to lie low till they see which way the wind’s blowin, aye?”

Ren looked around for his walking stick. The pleasant feeling of not being concerned with much about him had evaporated. “Bunker’s Hill—that s-s-south of here?”

“Aye.” Cain’s head wobbled. “But if they get ambitious, they’ll march up the ‘igh Street t’the Market Cross, and then down th’ river t’ the fact’ries, looking to make a racket.” He yawned, his words running together, then smiled as if he relished the thought.

High Street was where the duchess’s funeral procession would take place.

Ivy Cottage stood at its south end. The market square with its huge Buckland Cross was but a stone’s throw from the churchyard of St. Peter and Paul’s, where the duchess would doubtless be carried.

Harriette would be directly in harm’s way if an angry mob began marching north to take their anger out on the factories ruining their lives.

“I’mun go,” Ren slurred, groping for his hat.

“Where, then?” Cain peered at him over his glass.

“Funeral.” Ren located his tricorne and placed it firmly on his head, which felt heavier than usual.

Cain thunked down his bumper, staring. “Ye ain’t dressed fer a funeral, man!”

Ren snorted. His companion was sanguine about the possibilities of enraged workmen passing through town, but shocked at the thought that Ren might attend funeral services without proper attire. “Know of a s-shop open, do ye?” he challenged.

Cain peered around the room. Ren was surprised to note that lamps had been lit, the flames shining against the oilcloth over the windows.

Dusk had fallen without his noticing. Funeral processions commonly happened at dark, at least among those who felt their own importance and could pay for torchbearers to light their way.

Death being a solemn occasion and the body going to an even darker place, the cover of night was considered the appropriate venue for laying the dearly departed to rest. It was another reason women were not encouraged to be part of funeral proceedings, a nicety he was sure Harriette would continue to ignore in her effort to make up for missing her mother’s deathbed.

“Oi! Spratt!” Ren startled as Cain unleashed a full-throated bellow. A man sitting at a far table jolted to attention and craned his head about.

“’is lordship requires yer hatband and gloves,” Cain ordered as the man approached.

His attire was that of a gentleman, the touches of mourning dignified but not overdone.

Ren wondered if he was involved in the clothing trade, and if, out of solidarity, Ren should warn him of the danger the clothiers were currently in from the men they’d been quietly robbing for years.