The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister 1)

“Don’t get any ideas,” Minnie warned.

So he looked at her. It didn’t mean anything. He spoke without thinking, didn’t consider the consequences of the things he did. He likely looked without intending anything by it, too.

“He was just being…” She trailed off, not knowing how to finish. Gentlemanly? Annoying?

She was leaning toward the latter, given that he’d used her words directly in his handbills. But she could remember him looking at her after the Workers’ Hygiene Commission had let out, his eyes so intense. And that surprised smile, when she’d said she liked his friends. It had felt as welcome as a sunrise.

“He sent a note around,” she finally said. “He suggested we meet tomorrow afternoon. It will be me, Marybeth Peters…”

“And the Duke of Clermont.” Lydia smiled. “I have such a feeling about this, Minnie.”

Look up.

Minnie put her arms around herself. “Don’t. Don’t feel. I can’t let myself.”

Lydia simply shook her head. “Of course you can’t. That’s why I have to feel for you.”

Chapter Twelve

IT TOOK MINNIE NO EFFORT on the next day to maneuver the Duke of Clermont into a nearly private conversation. After all, handbills were best put up in pairs—and once that had been established, Lydia latched herself on to Marybeth Peters and marched across the road, paste and paper in hand, leaving Minnie alone with the duke.

Not truly alone. They were on a public thoroughfare, for one, and Lydia and Marybeth were within shouting distance on the other side of Haymarket. People drifted down the streets. A man was selling chestnuts on the corner; some boys had made a fire on the pavement, one that they carefully fed with bits of rubbish.

And Minnie didn’t know what to say to him. What was he up to? He’d given her that letter. He’d told her he wanted her, and she still felt shivers down her spine when she remembered the look in his eyes as he said those words. And then he’d used her words in a pamphlet, darkening the cloud of suspicion that followed her.

Instead of trying to sort all that out, she handed him the pot of paste. “What do you know of manual labor?”

“Um…” His eyes twinkled at her. “I’ve read about it. I toured the factories I inherited from my grandfather. I’ve made it a point to talk with workers when I have the chance.”

“But you’ve never done it.”

“Not…as such.”

Minnie handed the duke a wooden stick. “Congratulations,” she said. “You are about to lower yourself to new depths.”

“I can hardly wait.” He took the clay pot in bemusement and followed her down the pavement. She stopped at the first corner and held up a handbill.

“What do I do?” he asked.

“You take the paste,” she explained, “and you put it on the handbill. Then I put the handbill on the wall.”

“Just like that?” He unscrewed the top from the pot, dipped the stick in, and clumsily glopped the white mess onto the handbill Minnie was holding.

“You are an untidy paster.” She turned from him, slapped the paper against the brick, and marched on.

She didn’t think he’d meant to cause her problems. He looked at her as if nothing had happened. And for him, nothing had changed. They’d smiled at each other on the train, and she’d told him she liked him.

When she turned away, she caught his smile at her words. His smiles were like flashes of lightning come at night, swift and fleeting, lighting up the entire landscape for a few moments before vanishing once again. Smiles like that, she reminded herself grimly, might look pretty, but they could still leave heaps of smoking rubble behind.

“Well,” he said, just behind her, his voice low and amused. “You know what they say. ‘Paste not, want not.’”

She blinked. “Puns,” she said, without turning around, “are the lowest form of humor.”

“Not when a duke utters them.”

She held up a handbill for him to paste and then slapped it against the wall, holding it for a moment to be sure that it would adhere. “Are you a duke?” she asked. “I had thought you were a dead man.”

His Grace, the Duke of Clermont, showed no sign that he’d heard her. Instead, he held the paste pot in his hand and smiled. “Shall we proceed to the next corner? Miss Peters and Miss Charingford are already outpacing us.” His eyes slid to hers. “Outpasting us,” he corrected.

She was not—absolutely not—going to be seduced into laughing with him and making inappropriate jokes about paste. Minnie compressed her lips and stalked down the street.

He followed. “Is something…wrong? Did you read my letter?”

“Yes,” she said. “I read everything you wrote. And I’m furious with you.”

“Now, now,” he admonished, “don’t be pasty.” He gave a chuckle—one that terminated as she turned to him and he caught sight of her expression. The smile slid off his face. “Oh. You really are angry. Did I do something wrong?”

Did he do something wrong? She wanted to punch him. “Your latest masterpiece. I cannot believe what you said.”

His nose wrinkled. “Why? Because a strike would hurt your friends? Because you don’t care about the conditions under which workers labor? Or do you think I shouldn’t have written them? That I should keep silent, stew in my own thoughts—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said in exasperation. “If I thought you shouldn’t be writing those damned handbills, I would already have shown your letter to the town magistrates. Sometimes, I want to scream, too—scream as loudly as I can, and never mind who hears me. I’m angry because you used my words in your latest endeavor! My words.”

He blinked. “Oh.” He bit his lip. “That. Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose I did. Why wouldn’t I? They were good words.”

“Don’t split hairs. Did you not hear Stevens talk? He has already accused me of radical sentiment. Why would you use a phrase you heard from me? Don’t you understand how impossible my life will be if suspicion falls on me?”

With the workers in the factories until the evening whistle sounded, the streets were calm. A few women were out, trudging to the greengrocer; a harried laundress marched by with a sack on her shoulder. The rhythmic rumble of the machinery a few streets distant somehow made the streets seem quiet, blanketing all other noises.