Page 166 of The Ladies Least Likely

“Would if it paid anowt to keep body ‘n soul together,” Bram grunted. Beneath the same black mop of hair he’d had as a boy, his adult features had grown coarse, his nose broken, his pores large in the manner of a man accustomed to drink. A belly filled out his fustian jacket.

“Gil Roper!” She recognized the second man, the third in the triumvirate who had made Ren’s life miserable that summer. “You are employed here as well?”

“Them’s all buy they rope elsewhere, ‘stead of repairin’ it,” Gil Roper said, shrugging a shoulder. “So what’s to do?” He, too, had grown massive, his shoulders as broad as a bull’s. His knuckles, she noted, were scraped raw, and a jagged cut ran across the back of one hand.

“And so you live on the salary of a man you once taunted mercilessly as a youth,” Harriette murmured. She could hardly say she was surprised.

“Aww, that’s all fun, miss,” Bram Wright said. He was missing a few teeth, displayed by his embarrassed grin.

Fun? Ren had feared for his life. It was poetic justice, in a way, that he now held their livelihoods in his hands. And he had shown mercy, which proved the kind of man he was. Harriette’s heart swelled with pride.

“’Er’s a ladyship now, ye great clod,” Gil Roper informed his friend. He looked Harriette up and down, judging the shape of her. “’Ow’d ye get to be a duchess, we all’d like ta know?”

“Born that way,” Harriette said shortly.

She watched Ren move carefully and with measured step through the congratulatory throng.

He used his cane as if it were merely for show, a fashionable gentleman’s accessory.

Her insides warmed as he took her arm, staking his claim before the other men.

Were it any other man, she would have immediately objected to such a territorial move.

With Ren, she melted, glad to be claimed as his.

“Renwick,” she said briskly, shaking off her foolishness, “can you but fathom? These are your old chums, Bram Wright and Gil Roper. We saw them everywhere that summer you lived in Shepton Mallet, didn’t we? And now they work at your factory! What a very small world indeed.”

Ren looked at each man in turn. He was taller than they, his elegance and refinement as obvious in his manner as in the contrast between their garb.

Renwick was expensive, well-bred, and well-fed, while these men grasped for every penny they made and faced lives of constant danger and uncertainty.

Harriette imagined they snarled and hoarded everything they had, lashing out in anger at the slightest threat, real or perceived.

While Ren was and could afford to be generous, holding no grudge.

He held his hand out to each man in turn.

“I recall that summer,” Ren said. “I w-learned to fish. I hope you are treated well here, and Mr. Fw-Fripp rewards hard work and diligence?”

The men shuffled and mumbled in response to this, fumbling with their caps. “Times we had!” Bram Wright said heartily. “Did’n we have fun wit ‘is lordship, Gil?”

Harriette saw no need to draw out their embarrassment. Ren had told her how Abel Cain sat at his side yesterday, drinking steadily and filling Ren in on the background of every man who spoke. How he’d ribbed him as Runtwick as casually as if they were equals, which they would never be.

She wondered if part of the boys’ cruelty that long ago summer had been resentment toward a boy born so high above them in class, a boy born to the kind of wealth and security they would never know save by glimpsing it drive past their town from time to time.

Perhaps they’d felt a boy with his imperfections didn’t deserve such a lucky fate.

Or perhaps they’d simply turned on a weaker creature as many animals did to ensure their own survival.

“Those were certainly times,” Harriette said. “Fare well, Bram, Gil. I am stealing his lordship away now.”

“Stealing me where?” Ren asked with interest as they exited the factory and headed toward the old part of town.

It was a pleasant walk, though Ivy Cottage was at some distance.

They had agreed they would visit his factory first, then call on Mrs. Demant.

There were discussions to be had, the business of death to dispense with.

“I wonder what it will do to your factory if you don’t modernize.

” Harriette linked her arm with Ren’s on his good side as they walked along the street with its line of cloth factories.

Passersby who were out to survey the damage nodded and lifted their caps as they passed.

Work was already being done to repair broken storefronts, remove debris from the street, and resume business.

A riot, a bloody explosion of long-simmering anger, and then life went on much as it had—save for the two men who died, and the families left without them.

“Fripp says many of the owners are like to cave to the demands of the mob and not install the spinning jenny,” Ren commented. “I won’t be the only one.”

“So Shepton Mallet may stay as it is,” Harriette said, looking at the row of factories that lined the river.

“But meanwhile other places may adopt the new machinery and make rivals for us. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it?

Adopt the new machines and put men out of work to make the factory prosper, or lose the factory to competitors and put everyone out of work. ”

“I don’t fear losing it any time soon,” Ren said, doffing his cap to a constable who trundled by, frowning. “But I don’t see another choice.”

“Find a way to install the machines and keep the men employed,” Harriette said, wondering about the women and children as well.

It seemed cruel to require hard labor of children.

“But I don’t know how to make that work with men like Bram Wright and Gil Roper.

” She squeezed his arm. “They’ll never admit they were cruel to you, will they?

They’ll never apologize. In fact, I wonder if, to them, it was even cruelty.

Or simply the way of the world as they know it.

How does it feel knowing you govern the fate of these boys who once taunted you? ”

“How does it feel looking Gil Roper in the eye when you gave him a blinker that one time they surprised us on the Fosse Way?” Ren asked in return, smiling.

“You could have unmanned Bram Wright if you’d aimed differently that day by the river, the day we met.

I imagine they both have families now who depend on them, wives and?—”

He stopped in the street, hauling Harriette up short. “Rhette,” he said, and she recognized that strangled quality to his voice.

“What?” she asked in alarm.

“Babes,” he managed after a moment of working his lips fruitlessly.

He stared at her, oblivious to the busy traffic about them, the flowing river, the slate grey of the cloudy sky, the relentless churning of the mills powering the great looms. “Did you—we might…” He groped for words while she waited, wide-eyed.

“I never had to th-think about it,” he said finally, his voice rough. “The women I paid took care of it.”

“And so did I.” She tried to keep her voice light as she tugged him onward. “Princess taught me one or two of her courtesan’s tricks. I thought ahead,” she assured him.

“So there is no…” He limped into step with her, recovering himself.

“Such things are never guaranteed, but I do not care to bear an illegitimate child,” Harriette said. “Or bring another man’s child into my marriage.”

He said nothing, though his labored breath told her he wanted to.

For her part, Harriette clamped down on a sudden inward pang of loss.

She’d said again and again she didn’t want children.

So why did the thought of bearing a child with Ren fill her with such sudden, visceral longing?

To think that the exquisite pleasure they’d shared might result in new life, a child they could both love and wonder at, teach and watch and care for?—

She felt as if her insides had been temporarily removed. She knew she would have to bear children to Franz Karl, to produce heirs for the duchy. But she didn’t want children with any man but Ren.

Harriette held silent as they returned to the Demant house, with its black wreath on the door and black ribbons still at the windows, though now the drapes were pulled back to admit light into the once darkened rooms. Harriette was grateful for Ren’s company, for his advice on what must come next.

She had no idea what her mother had left behind, what she would be expected to take care of, what debts she would be demanded to discharge, what directives her mother had left. There was so much to think about, and?—

Mrs. Demant met them at the door, flinging it open and giving them both an accusatory stare. Harriette felt flattened, sure that the other woman could see on her face how she had spent the evening, and it was not in quiet prayer or the contemplation of grief.

“This came for you,” she snapped, thrusting a letter with a wax seal in Harriette’s direction. She held one corner as if the paper might carry the plague. “Express from London. Your aunt wants something, I suppose.”

Harriette broke the seal and opened it at once.

All of the questions that had just been filling her head—and all of the sweet, unspoken fancies about more time with Ren, meals with Ren, bed with Ren—swirled up into the air and away as if caught by the wind.

It was her aunt’s handwriting, scrawled in haste with her usual dramatic flourishes.

Franz Karl here in London. Come at once. If you care for Renwick at all send him to the Continent in fear for his life, for my great-nephew has promised to kill him.