The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister 1)

“I have never liked crowds,” she heard herself say. “Not even then. I was not well-known as a child.”

“Hmm.”

“I was really so young when I left that I’m afraid I can be of no help. I scarcely remember Manchester at all. Great-Aunt Caro, on the other hand—”

“But it is not your great-aunt who worries me,” he said slowly. “You know that keeping the peace forms a part of my duty.”

Stevens had always been a serious fellow. Even though the militia had been called on only once in the last year—and then to assist in fighting a fire—he took his task quite seriously.

She no longer needed to pretend to confusion. “I don’t understand. What does any of this have to do with the peace?”

“These are dangerous times,” he intoned. “Why, I was part of the militia that put down the Chartist demonstrations in ’42, and I’ve never forgotten how they started.”

“This still has nothing to do with—”

“I remember the days before violence broke out,” he continued coldly. “I know how it starts. It starts when someone tells the workers that they should have a voice of their own, instead of doing what they’ve been told. Meetings. Talks. Handbills. I’ve heard what you said as part of the Workers’ Hygiene Commission, Miss Pursling. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”

His voice had gone very cold indeed, and a little shiver ran up Minnie’s arms. “But all I said was—”

“I know what you said. At the time, I put it down to mere naïveté. But now I know the truth. You’re not who you say you are. You’re lying.”

Her heart began to beat faster. She glanced to her left, at the small group ten feet away. One of the girls was drinking punch and giggling. Surely, if she screamed—

But screaming wouldn’t do any good. As impossible as it seemed, someone had discovered the truth.

“I cannot be certain,” he said, “but I feel in my bones that something is amiss. You are a part of this.” So saying, he thrust a piece of paper at her, jabbing it almost into her breastbone.

She took it from him reflexively and held it up to catch the light emanating from the windows. For a second, she wondered what she was looking at—a newspaper article? There had been enough of them, but the paper didn’t have the feel of newsprint. Or perhaps it was her birth record. That would be bad enough. She retrieved her glasses from her pocket.

When she could finally read it, she almost burst into relieved laughter. Of all the accusations he could have leveled at her—of all the lies she’d told, starting with her own name—he thought she was involved with this? Stevens had given her a handbill, the kind that appeared on the walls of factories and was left in untidy heaps outside church doors.

WORKERS, read the top line in massive capital letters. And then, beneath it: ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE!!!!!

“Oh, no,” she protested. “I’ve never seen this before. And it’s really not my sort of thing.” For one thing, she was fairly certain that any sentence that used more exclamation points than words was an abomination.

“They’re all over town,” he growled. “Someone is responsible for them.” He held up one finger. “You volunteered to make up the handbills for the Workers’ Hygiene Commission. That gives you an excuse to visit every printer in town.”

“But—”

He held up a second finger. “You suggested that the workers be involved in the Commission in the first place.”

“I only said it made sense to ask workers about their access to pump water! If we didn’t ask, we would have done all that work only to find their health unchanged. It’s a long way from there to suggesting that they organize.”

A third finger. “Your great-aunts are involved in that dreadful food cooperative, and I happen to know you were instrumental in arranging it.”

“A business transaction! What does it matter where we sell our cabbages?”

Stevens pointed those three fingers at her. “It’s all of a pattern. You’re sympathetic to the workers, and you’re not who you claim to be. Someone is helping them print handbills. You must think I’m stupid, to sign them like that.” He gestured at the bottom of the handbill. There was a name at the end. She squinted at it through her glasses.

Not a name. A pseudonym.

De minimis, she read. She’d never learned Latin, but she knew a little Italian and a good amount of French, and she thought it meant something like “trifles.” A little thing.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head blankly. “What has that to do with me?”

“De. Minnie. Mis.” He spoke the syllables separately, giving her name a savage twist. “You must think me a fool, Miss Minnie.”

It made a horrible kind of logic, so twisted that she might have laughed outright. Except that the consequence of this joke was not amusing.

“I have no proof,” he said, “and as your friendship with my future wife is known, I have no wish to see you publicly humiliated and charged with criminal sedition.”

“Criminal sedition!” she echoed in disbelief.

“So consider this a warning. If you keep on with this—” he flicked the paper in her hands “—I will find out the truth of your origins. I will prove that you are the one behind this. And I will ruin you.”

“I have nothing to do with it!” she protested, but it was futile. He was already turning away.

She clenched the handbill in her fist. What a damnable turn of events. Stevens was starting from a false premise, but it didn’t matter how he found the trail. If he followed it, he’d discover everything. Minnie’s past. Her real name. And most of all, her sins—long-buried, but not dead.

De minimis.

The difference between ruin and safety was a little thing. A very little thing, but she wasn’t going to lose it.

Chapter Two

“MINNIE!”

This time, when the voice came across the courtyard, Minnie didn’t startle. Her heart didn’t race. Instead, she found herself growing calmer, and a real smile took over her face. She turned to the speaker, holding out her hands. “Lydia,” she said warmly. “I am so glad to see you.”

“Where have you been?” Lydia asked. “I looked all over for you.”

She might have lied to anyone else. But Lydia… “Hiding,” Minnie returned. “Behind the davenport in the library.”