The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

“If it weren’t true,” Lydia said, “Father wouldn’t have been so furious. But he can’t afford to have the hosiery stand idle.”


“I see,” Minnie said.

Lydia waved her hand at the servants. “We can finish these off,” she said. “Leave us.” The maids stood and vacated the room. Lydia sat before the fire and began feeding the pamphlets in at regular intervals.

Good. Burn them all. Maybe nobody had seen them. He’d used her words.

“Lydia, have you seen Stevens?”

“Just today. After this was distributed, he and my father were closeted together for hours. If there is a strike, after all, Stevens will be the one to put it down. They were arguing about something. And then Stevens left—father told me he was going to Manchester to look into something. Although what he could learn from Manchester about our workers, I don’t know. Perhaps the workers are communicating with one another?”

No. Stevens had read the handbill. He’d remembered that Minnie had once mentioned a discovered attack. And—true to his word—he’d gone to Manchester to look into her background because he believed she was involved. Minnie felt dizzy.

“Do you think my father pays his workers enough? Stevens says if he gives in to their demands once, they’ll just prove all the more unreasonable. But I’d be willing to bet you could think of a way to prevent that. Like what you did with the W.H.C.”

There wasn’t anything she could do about that now. Minnie shook her head, clearing it of her racing fears. “I don’t know,” she said. “But Stevens and your father…”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to talk of Stevens.” She lowered her voice, and then in direct contradiction to her last statement, looked at her. “Do you think Stevens has figured out what happened all those years ago? That these rumors about your background have come about because someone talked about me? We both went to Cornwall. Maybe—maybe he’s found something out there.”

“He hasn’t,” Minnie said.

“But how—”

“I know because he confronted me with his proof,” Minnie said. “There’s nothing about you. It’s all nonsense—something about my mother not being married, some rumor he heard from some silly goose at the end of her life who is losing her memory.”

Lydia let out a whoosh of a sigh.

But it was no comfort to Minnie. Stevens had gone to search out news of Minnie. The room seemed wrapped in cotton batting, swathes and swathes of it surrounding her. Shouts sounded in the distance; muffled shouts. The sound of a great crowd, the blink, as bright sun swallowed her vision—

“Minnie, is everything all right?”

Lydia’s worried voice brought her firmly back to the present. No shouts. No riot. No crowd.

Not yet, at any rate. And maybe…

“I’m well,” she said slowly. “Just…thinking.”

It would take Stevens at least a week to uncover the truth—if he even recognized what he was looking at when he saw it. And Minnie had the duke’s letter. That, along with everything else she had come up with, would prove that she hadn’t been involved.

Lydia watched her carefully. “What was it you wanted to talk with me about?”

Minnie sighed, and looked over at her friend. “At the W.H.C. the other day, Doctor Grantham asked to see you.”

Lydia’s nose went up a notch. “So?”

“So…he wanted to see you.” Although he might have only said it to tweak Stevens. “He’s handsome and young. I rather like him.”

“I don’t,” Lydia said flatly. “He was working with Doctor Parwine when it happened. And ever since then he’s looked at me in the most knowing way.”

“He looks at everyone that way,” Minnie said. “I think he can’t help it.”

“And he’s so sarcastic.”

“He’s sarcastic with everyone.”

Lydia looked away. “I don’t like to remember, and he makes me remember. Every time I laugh, he looks at me, judging me for my frivolity. I can’t stand being around him.”

“I had no notion,” Minnie said, moving over to sit beside her friend.

“I work so hard for my frivolity.” Lydia’s hands were shaking. “How dare he judge me for it!”

Only Minnie knew the truth of that.

“I know sometimes you think I’m not serious enough. That I dream too much. That I should be more rational.” Lydia sniffed.

“I don’t think that.”

“Only the tragedies are great,” Lydia said. “Melancholy is wisdom. Suffering is strength.”

“Lydia…”

“Some people would think me weak, because I was seduced by an older man.”

Minnie looked around—but the room was clear, and her friend spoke in a low voice.

“Because I didn’t know he was married. Because I didn’t truly understand what was happening. Some people would think that I was weak because I asked you for help.”