The Hellion's Waltz

by Olivia Waite

  Despite the familiarity of the machine, Maddie had learned to hate the loom for the amount of time it stole from her. The soul-numbing hours she had to spend in front of it to produce even an inch of the fabric whose luster was worth infinitely more than the sheen of sweat on her brow.

  Fashions had shifted, and these days power looms ate up more and more of the market for cloth. Like Maddie herself, the loom had grown over the years: the Jacquard machine, new warp threads, the multiple shuttles flying back and forth had all been added by Maddie or her mother’s hands. The late Mrs. Crewe had scrimped and leveraged every London connection she had to get one of the first Jacquard heads in Carrisford—it was a mass of a machine that sat on top of the loom like a bishop in a cathedral pulpit, pattern cards rattling hollowly as their punched holes stopped or let pass the rods that moved the heddles up and down. Expensive, but it let Mrs. Crewe weave complex patterns in a fraction of the time.

  A card punch had come with it, and that’s how Maddie had begun designing her first patterns. Simple to start with, but soon she was doing elaborate brocade and figured pieces, swirls of color and shape emerging from the secrets encoded in the cards.

  Winter was the low season for weaving work, which followed the currents of fashion and so was busiest at the height of summer. A lot of the girls went into service or found other makeshift work; Maddie filled these months in front of a pin block, arranging the thick pins, setting one card on top, and pressing down the open metal guide to puncture the card in all the necessary places. Some of the more elaborate patterns she sold to the cotton weavers who’d had Jacquard looms in their factories for years now. The money from one of these sales was usually enough to get her through the lean times until she could start weaving ribbon on her own loom again.

  She still missed working with her mother, the closeness and company of it. The bright jewel-colored satins they used to produce, before the water- and steam-powered looms came along to make those cheaper from the factories. Maddie still had a bit of one particular weave, a bolt of pure bright gold like liquid sunlight.

  Fabrics that, she was sure, could have competed with anything smuggled into the country from the French workshops.

  She’d find out soon enough, Maddie supposed. According to the newsmongers, the Spitalfields Acts that forbade French silk imports were under siege in Parliament. British dressmakers and drapers would soon be flooded with exquisite French textiles. Everyone knew the first thing the factory owners would do in reaction was to install more power looms. The black silk mourning crepe that Carrisford had been known for was a weave ideal for power loom production.

  Which meant less work for the hand looms.

  The handweavers still had the edge in velvets, but that wouldn’t last forever. Maddie had lived through the decline of Carrisford’s once-robust wool industry a decade ago, when the end of the wars meant wool imports resumed. She’d seen how the wool weavers had struggled to survive on the trickle of jobs that hadn’t moved to the more machine-friendly north.

  She’d worked factories before, and she never wanted to again.

  Fortunately, the newspapers also said that the weavers would soon have opportunities they hadn’t had for decades: the Combination Acts were also careening toward repeal. Workers would be legally permitted to band together for better conditions and higher wages. These combinations would once again be able to put pressure on the factories to be less of a nightmare for those who labored there. They’d even be able to strike, if it came to that.

  But to survive a strike, the Weavers’ Library would need funds. A good amount of money to feed and clothe and house protesting workers until a consensus with the owners could be reached. In times past they’d have had a fund stored up from long-standing member dues and donations—but they couldn’t collect that legally now, even if it would be legal in a very little while. They quite simply couldn’t afford to wait.

  Hence: crime. It was really the only practical solution.

  Maddie worked until she was so tired her eyes couldn’t tell one pin from another. She swallowed the last of her beer and let loose her hair, braiding it gently down her back instead of keeping it pinned tightly back and out of her eyes.

  From around her neck she pulled the one piece of jewelry she owned: a slender silver chain from which hung a two-penny piece, drilled through. One side was Britannia showing off her titties and her trident—the other had been carefully sanded flat and then etched with tiny figures: a woman leaning on a coffin, an anchor linking two hearts, and a ship vanishing into the distance. Thick funereal letters around the edge spelled out a promise: I Love Till Death Shall Stop My Breath.

  Inside the hearts, in letters so tiny they were almost invisible, were written two names. One: Marguerite Artus, who would later marry and become Marguerite Crewe.

  The second name: Jenny Hull.

  After the trial Marguerite had had two of these coins carved, one to keep with her, and one to send across the sea with her condemned beloved. She hadn’t told her daughter the same Jenny Hull stories the other parents did: hers were stories of long evenings by the river, or summer rambles through the forest outside of town. She told stories of tricks played on cruel parish officers, of thefts that kept families from starving, of respectable villains and lying heroes and the kind of justice that happened in spite of the law.

  Marguerite Crewe had died trying to create a more just world. Her daughter was determined to follow suit—and then Jenny Hull had returned under a new name, with a new fortune, and one old token of a dead woman’s love, to match the one Maddie wore like a saint’s medal over her heart.

  Grief had recognized grief, and two lost souls found a shared purpose in plans for revenge.

  The edged letters sparked in the candlelight as Maddie hung the love token from the nail in the wall. She blew out the candle, pulled the blankets tight around her, and was asleep before the thin trail of smoke stopped rising from the wick.

  Chapter Four

  Sophie’s father had indeed found a secondhand piano to purchase from the late Dr. Abernathy’s estate. It was a beautiful instrument.

  Or, more accurately, it had once been beautiful. Sophie could see it in the curving lines of the case, clean and sleek and true, and the lovingly burnished letters that proclaimed Dewhurst and Ffolkes as the makers. Short of Roseingrave, Dewhurst and Ffolkes were the names she most liked to see on a piano for sensitivity and richness of tone.

  Unlike Mrs. Muchelney’s demilune instrument, designed to hide its true nature, this grand piano had been built to flaunt exactly what it was. The cover, when opened, hovered at an angle that seemed to beckon the viewer to move closer and peer inside at the strings that spread out tense and quivering as a wing in flight.

  Now all Sophie and her father had to do was put new felt on the hammer pads, replace the rusted bass strings, fit new hinges on the lid, see if the pin block was still solid enough to hold the tuning pins in place, put new tops on the white keys, refinish the mahogany case, and install a newer, smoother action that didn’t rattle like a skeleton in a charnel house. And then, of course, to tune it.

  Sophie struck one key and thought about hands, as the off-tone wailed and wavered in the air.

  You could tell a lot about a person by watching their hands. How they moved, how they held still, what they fidgeted with and what they reached out to grab for themselves.

  Mr. Giles’s hands had been fluid and graceful, sure and confident—but they’d snatched and tugged; they’d spun Sophie around and twisted expensive ribbon into knots. They’d moved like Mr. Verrinder’s hands, gesturing toward what he wanted everyone to see. Hiding what he didn’t. When Mr. Giles had seized her wrist, his grip had banded tight as iron.

  She ought to have paid more attention to Mr. Verrinder’s hands, all those months ago. He’d claimed to be an inventor, but his hands hadn’t shown any workmen’s marks or calluses. They’d been the deft, deceptive hands of a card sharp, or a pickpocket, or a forger of other me
n’s signatures on letters of credit and counterfeit banknotes. Sophie had been dazzled by their confidence and grace, the teasing way his fingertips brushed the back of her hand when he watched her practicing at the keyboard. The way they seemed to stroke an unspoken apology for the coldness of the iron contraption he insisted would make all of their fortunes in the future.

  He’d sold that future several times over, while Sophie was ensorcelled by his flattery, and Mr. Roseingrave distracted by construction of half a dozen pianos that went unpaid for. His hands had coaxed away everything valuable and left only debts and empty promises behind.

  Sophie hadn’t gotten a good look at Miss Crewe’s hands. She’d been too far away in the draper’s shop—and then, outside the church, the woman had been wearing those mittens. Even so, when Sophie had mentioned that blue silk, for whatever reason: her grip had noticeably tightened.

  Even through her thick mittens, Miss Crewe’s hands had given her away. They were the most honest things about her.

  Sophie spread her own hand out over the keyboard and played—well, not precisely a chord. There were a few too many jangly notes, snarling out when they ought to have been blending, soft as velvet. She itched to reach for the tuning hammer.

  It was only as the jangle died away that she realized she’d played without feeling her fingers were imprisoned.

  Of course, as soon as she realized, the iron came back. She tried shaking it off, but hadn’t managed it by the time her mother came out to the front of the shop.

  Mrs. Roseingrave was soft and round and a little shorter than Sophie, but had the same brown hair and eyes, the same old-parchment shade of skin. “Sophie, dear,” she asked, tilting her head so her good ear was slightly forward, “are you terribly busy with that piano?”

  Sophie clenched her cold fingers hopelessly, and sighed. “No,” she said, with a shake of her head to make sure the message got through. Tilting her face toward the light, so her lips could be clearly seen, she faced her mother and asked, “How can I help?”

  Mrs. Roseingrave smiled, her eyes fixed on the movements of Sophie’s mouth, compensating for her troubled hearing. “The twins have grown again,” she said, “so I’ve made a bundle of some of their old things. Our neighbors have told me Mrs. Narayan’s shop is the best for secondhand clothes—will you take them there for me? And find a few things to bring back with you?”

  “Of course,” Sophie said, nodding, and her mother hummed a little in relief.

  Mrs. Roseingrave had been a singer as well as a piano tuner, before she lost enough of her hearing range that performing and tuning became impractical. Between the shared talents and her resemblance to her eldest daughter, sometimes Sophie felt as though she were staring into one of those enchanted mirrors from a fairy story, looking forward through the years to her own future.

  It was a perfectly acceptable future, she tried to assure herself. A husband, a shop, a family. Comfort enough for the most part, and an abundance of love to go around. These weren’t unpleasant things, not at all—in fact they were often considered the very best things in life.

  But Sophie was greedy—and deep inside, to her secret shame, Sophie was ambitious. She’d helped raise her siblings while her mother performed, helped her father build pianos and keep the books. She’d lived this life already for over twenty years.

  She wanted, desperately, to see what other kinds of life there were. In other places, with other kinds of people. Who weren’t so . . . ordinary.

  Sophie felt steeped in ordinariness, the dregs of it left too long in the cup, turning her bitter.

  Mr. Verrinder had promised the Roseingraves an extraordinary future. But even the shock of that betrayal had not cured Sophie of her ambition. It still pulsed inside her, fluttering its wings and beating at the lock on its cage.

  This surely meant she was a selfish person. So she did as her mother asked, and went shopping for her siblings.

  Mrs. Narayan’s shop was two streets away, part of a row of clothing shops on the edge of Carrisford’s Jewish quarter. The buildings here were a bit older, a more somber stateliness than the fresh paint and plaster flourishes of the high street. Sophie found the sign that read Noureen Narayan, Clothing Bought and Sold, Fine Tailoring. She stepped in and took a breath—and for a moment it was just like being back in London.

  Mr. Giles’s shop had smelled new: the bite of fresh dye had puckered the air. His cloth and notions had been dazzling, but they weren’t garments yet—he sold the promise of clothing, the potential of something to become a gown or a coat or a cloak.

  Here, though, was the soft, human scent of clothing that had been worn and washed and worn again, often by more than one person during its lifetime. It reminded her of the secondhand shops the Roseingraves had known in London. Everything here had to be taken as it was—or nearly, at any rate. A signboard behind the counter listed prices for different types of alterations: hemming, taking in, letting out, mending seams.

  A young woman with dark hair and gold-brown skin sat behind the counter, stitching a seam along a chalked line bristling with pins. She glanced at the bundle under Sophie’s arm and set her work aside. “Good afternoon—have you brought those to sell?”

  Sophie nodded and placed the bundle on the counter. Miss Narayan—the shop owner’s niece, as she introduced herself—went through the twins’ clothing quickly, tugging to test the strength of seams and checking for marks or damage.

  Her hands, Sophie couldn’t help noticing, were efficient and remarkably quick, the fingers small but strong and sure.

  They agreed on a price for the trade, and then Miss Narayan showed Sophie to the precise shelves where she would most likely find the sizes and garments she needed: dresses for Julia, trousers and shirts for Jasper.

  Sophie was going through a stack of linen shirts at the front of the store when movement caught her eye. She looked up and there, across the street, was Miss Crewe. Auburn hair, mischievous smile, enchanting figure, and all.

  Sophie was fixed in place by twin spears of righteous anger and irresistible lust.

  Miss Crewe was in her gray gown again. She stood chatting with a man holding the reins of a trader’s wagon, paint gleaming in the winter sun. He was slender, and the deep blue of his coat made his dark hair shine.

  As Sophie watched, Maddie held out her hand—those mittens again—and the man shook it, black leather dark against that bright blue wool. They made a beautifully matched couple: blue and blue, dark hair and red. Sophie’s belly clenched with jealousy.

  “Do you know her?” asked Miss Narayan.

  Sophie swallowed. “We’ve met. That’s Madeleine Crewe, a ribbon weaver.” She glanced at Miss Narayan. “I don’t suppose you know the man she’s speaking to?” Was he also involved in whatever Miss Crewe was planning?

  Miss Narayan nodded, though her eyes never left the couple across the way. “That’s Mr. Micah Samson. His father is an old-clothesman. He must be on his way here—he usually stops in around this time.”

  And indeed, Mr. Samson was handing the reins to an earnest young groom to hold. Sophie’s hands clenched in the fabric of the shirt she held. “He’s very handsome, isn’t he?”

  “I’ve often thought so.” Miss Narayan began refolding the stack of shirts Sophie had disrupted, smoothing out the fabric, then smoothing it out again.

  Not very efficient. Her jealousy set up a sympathetic chime in Sophie’s breast. Miss Narayan’s lovely lips were pressed thin, her smile a little pinched. She flicked one glance up to the couple across the street, then dropped her eyes again. But that one glance had seared. “They look well together, don’t they?” the young woman said lightly.

  Sophie’s stomach twisted again. “Yes,” she rasped. “But then, I can’t imagine Miss Crewe not looking well, no matter whom she was standing next to.”

  Miss Narayan’s hands stopped moving.

  Oh dear. Sophie’s heart thumped, and she concentrated on breathing normally, even though she wanted to suck in ai
r out of panic. Had there been too much obvious longing in her voice? Had she not hidden herself properly? She’d known, in London, who it was safe to say such things to—but she’d forgotten for a moment she was in a new place, among new people.

  Miss Narayan looked at her, her mouth relaxing enough to lift one corner in a rueful smile. “Isn’t it rude how some people are too beautiful to resist, even when you most want to?”

  Relief, pure and sweet, poured over Sophie like spring water. “Especially when you most want to,” she replied, with a small laugh. “There must be some magic to it, don’t you think?”

  Miss Narayan’s smile turned sly. “It’s only magic if you don’t know how it’s done. I know quite a few tricks—I was a lady’s maid in London until this past summer.” She turned to the dresses behind her, a riot of color and pattern. “If you’re looking to balance things a little in your favor, I have a few things presently that might help you turn the tables . . .”

  She spread out one skirt: muslin dyed forest green, trimmed at the hem and bodice with buds and blossoms made from ribbons of rose-colored silk.

  It was lovely in a quiet, inviting sort of way, and Sophie’s heart ached to wear it. She’d had to sell most of her best gowns before they left London. “Maybe another day,” she said wistfully. “I’m not here today for myself.”

  The door swung open, letting in a rush of air that cooled Sophie’s heated cheeks. Mr. Samson stood poised on the threshold. “Miss Narayan,” he said warmly, and gave a little nod acknowledging Sophie. Oh yes, he was definitely worth looking at closer up: light brown eyes that looked as though they were laughing, an expressive mouth that gave away his every thought.

  A lot of those thoughts seemed to center on Miss Narayan, if the intensity of his gaze were any guide.