The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

She blinked. She looked down in contemplation of her food. “We,” she finally said. “Who is this that is encompassed by your we?”


“Why, didn’t I say? Sebastian Malheur.” Robert gave her a smile. “Why do you think I asked him down?”

Her eyes widened. “That man!” she hissed. “He has already called on me, and…” She hissed in displeasure. “He wouldn’t know propriety if it came up and shook his hand. It is all very well for you to associate with him out of some sense of familial loyalty, but to actually treat him as an intimate—”

“Don’t worry, Your Grace,” Robert cut in. “Oliver Marshall is here, too, and he’ll lend—”

“That is the company you keep? A reprobate and a bastard?”

Robert nearly sprang to his feet, his temper rising at that. But shouting had never got him anywhere. Slowly, he exhaled his anger, letting it flow from him until the serenity of ice returned.

“Ah,” he finally said. “Insults.”

She snorted.

“It appears that I take after you, despite everything. I hope you’re not too horrified by the discovery.”

But she didn’t look upset. Instead a faint smile appeared on her lips—the first he’d seen from her since her arrival.

“I knew that already,” she said. “Why else do you suppose I am here?”

Chapter Eleven

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THESE LAST DAYS?” Lydia asked. “I sent a note over two nights ago, but your great-aunts returned that you were ill.”

Minnie glanced at her friend. Lydia was smiling; she didn’t look worried. Instead, she’d linked her arm through Minnie’s and was conducting her to the back of the Charingford house.

“I wasn’t ill.”

“I know that, silly.” Lydia patted her hand. “If it had been serious, you’d have insisted I be told. And if it wasn’t serious, you’d have written yourself. Now, what was it?”

Minnie looked about. There were no servants nearby, nobody to hear what they said. Just the wood-paneled wall of the hallway. “I really can’t tell you everything. But I’m involved in another strategy right now.”

Lydia’s face went utterly blank.

“Not like that,” Minnie hastened to add. “Never like that.”

“Oh, God. You scared me. Look at my hands.” She held them out; they trembled.

“If it had involved you,” Minnie said, “I’d have told you first thing. This one…” She grimaced. “It’s someone else’s secret.” Lydia accepted this with a small shrug, and opened the door to the back sitting room. It was, to Minnie’s surprise, occupied. Occupied and very, very warm.

Three servants sat at the hearth, which blazed a cheery orange, flames licking high enough to tickle the chimney. The servants were balling up papers and feeding them into the fire one by one, so as to keep the blaze under control. The air was heavy with the scent of burning fibers.

“What is this?” Minnie asked.

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Lydia said. “Some group of radicals is leaving handbills all over town. They left a huge stack outside Papa’s hosiery. He had to rip them from the workers’ hands himself. He spent the entire morning trying to round them all up.”

Minnie looked at her friend. “They’re that dreadful?”

Lydia gave her a cheeky smile and stepped into the room, rescuing one crumpled sheet from a servant’s hands before the flames could take it. “See for yourself.”

Minnie glanced at the page her friend held out. She took it, scanned it—

And ran into a paragraph that brought her hand to her mouth.

…Stopping work is something of a discovered attack. First, you give your concerns a real voice, one shouted out with a volume lent by a thousand throats. Second, you vacate the factories in which you labor—thus leaving the shrinking pocketbooks of your masters as a vehement counterpoint. Be aware of where you are, and the space you’ll leave behind.

“It’s talking about a strike,” Lydia said, “is it not?”

Stopping work is something of a discovered attack.

Minnie felt all the blood in her turn to ice. “Perhaps.” She was actually a little dizzy. “There’s still a long way between talk and organization, and between organization and turning out.” She put a hand against the wall for support.

Be aware of where you are, and the space you’ll leave behind.

Those words were familiar—too familiar. That last sentence was almost a direct quote from Tappitt’s On Chess, an obscure volume. She’d quoted it to the Duke of Clermont thinking nothing of the words. He’d confessed to ignorance of the game, after all.

She’d used those words before, too. She’d said something almost identical to Stevens just a few months ago when they were talking about the Harley street pump. Small surprise; the words of chess strategy had been part of her lexicon ever since she could remember. Her first memory was sitting at a chessboard, her father before her.

This, he’d said, is a discovered attack. See? One move, two threats. Can you show me them?