by Olivia Waite
He left Robbie in charge and towed her into the back repair room. Familiar smells of wood and sawdust, varnish and turpentine and metal wound around her. A large canvas hulked in the back corner; Mr. Roseingrave put one hand on this and smiled at his daughter. “I’ve only just finished this.”
He swirled off the canvas as though raising the curtain on a much-anticipated new opera.
Sophie gasped and clutched her hands to her chest.
She’d forgotten Julia had spoiled this surprise already: a new piano. No, not just a new piano—a new Roseingrave, a grand, with the name and the telltale rose logo painted in gold on the fallboard. The case was fine spruce with a gorgeous varnish the shade of fresh honey, and when she set one hand to the keys and played half a scale her heart soared at the sweetness of the instrument’s voice.
The only other time she’d fallen in love this fast was with Maddie Crewe. “Is this the new action?” she asked, raising the lid to peer beneath.
“It is,” her father confirmed. “With improvements, of course.”
“Of course.” Sophie ran her hands over the case, the wood sleek and slippery beneath her fingers. “Whoever she’ll belong to is very lucky indeed.”
Mr. Roseingrave chuckled. “Sophie, my child,” he said fondly, “she’s for you.”
Sophie could only gape at him.
He laughed again at the surprise on her face. “We may not be able to send you to court just yet, but at least we can provide you with an instrument to practice on until you can get there. Besides . . .” He leaned in. “If the concert goes as well as I hope, we may be sending you away sooner than you think. But!” He pulled up a piano bench. “Until then, you’ll have a piano that’s as worthy of you as anything these two hands can create.”
“It’s far too much,” Sophie protested. But not very hard. She was caught in the full-fledged grip of piano adoration.
“Nonsense,” her father said firmly. “You can’t prepare for a concert if you have no instrument to practice on, and there’s an end. Oh, and I was wondering,” he went on. “What would your Miss Crewe say if I commissioned her to weave a set of programs in silk? We could sell them on the night for a souvenir. People so like souvenirs—even when a concert is not particularly memorable.” He grinned proudly at her. “I have a feeling this one will be the furthest thing from forgettable, though.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Sophie grimaced, as the truth squirmed painfully in her gut.
What would her father say if he knew Sophie was using the concert to cover distinctly criminal purposes? That she hadn’t agreed to the event because she felt she was ready, or because she wanted to perform—she did want to, but that hadn’t been her main motive. Her father thought she was finally ready to face the world as a musician and a composer, after a long and painful year.
He was wrong.
She was doing this because she loved Madeleine Crewe, and that was the plain truth of it. Maddie was persuasive and beautiful and strong, and Maddie had asked for Sophie’s help. So Sophie would give it—even if it meant betraying someone else she loved.
Even if that betrayal felt like she’d swallowed acid and it was slowly burning its way through her from the heart out.
“Sophie?” her father said, peering close. “Is something the matter?”
She couldn’t do it. She had to tell him.
She closed her eyes, and opened her mouth.
The side door of Mr. Obeney’s factory creaked heavily, and thudded shut behind Maddie like a sepulcher stone falling into place. Moonlight crept through the long windows slashed into the roof and turned the support beams skeleton silver. Miss Slight and Mr. Frampton had been working since the afternoon, but Maddie was the first of the weavers to arrive. The others followed shortly, and by the time Mrs. Money came striding in, the factory’s partial resurrection was complete.
Two weeks had passed since Sophie had agreed to a concert and the rest had begun other preparations. They’d set up on the riverward side of the building, where nobody would be likely to see or hear what they did. Half a dozen of the silent old looms had had modified Jacquard heads attached by Miss Slight and Mr. Frampton. The magic lanterns hidden there spilled rainbow light onto the bone-pale threads of the warp, their heat and smoke masked by more visible lanterns placed between looms.
Miss Slight had also thought to add small panes of glass at carefully calculated angles underneath the shed. As the threads moved and the shuttles flew, the glass surfaces sent back flashes of light into the eyes of anyone looking closely: Maddie could stare directly for only a few seconds before her eyes began to water and she had to blink. Like the others she wore a factory-girl’s uniform: at Alice’s suggestion the pinafores had been artfully streaked with watercolor in various hues to imply they’d been working these looms for longer than a single night.
Mrs. Money looked around and nodded in approval, the feathers in her turban bobbing decisively in the light of the single lantern. The hat had been Maddie’s idea. Feathers were wonderfully eloquent: they made a woman look fussy and flighty and vulnerable. By making them tremble just so, you could undermine any statement you made, giving the listener the opposite impression from your actual words. And Mr. Giles would think it was all his own cleverness in noticing, and would trust it better than any lie her lips could utter.
Each weaver now bound a strip of black muslin over her eyes—Mrs. Money would tell Mr. Giles it was to protect their sight from the effects of the unstabilized dye, but really it was to help make the other weavers less immediately recognizable—and less plausibly culpable.
Maddie wanted nobody at risk except herself.
At Maddie’s call, the weavers set to work. Beaters thumped against the weave and the shuttles snapped accompaniment. Just enough light came through the blindfold to make clear the familiar parts of the loom, though any of them could probably have managed the work with their eyes closed. It had been years since Maddie had worked in a factory, but once you had, the pattern of it became part of you. Her body fell into it without her brain having to direct her limbs.
Alice and Judith began softly singing one of the old songs, the one about a maid well loved; their voices soared above the percussion and sent goose bumps shivering up Maddie’s forearms.
She joined in at half volume, one ear cocked for the arrival of their quarry. But when the knock came, and the door creaked open, behind Mr. Giles’s unctuous greeting were several other voices.
He’d brought friends.
Maddie would have frozen in surprise, the shuttle thunking to a telltale stop, but fortunately the rhythm of the song had her in its grip and her hands automatically kept time with the other girls while her brain scrambled to catch up to events. She wanted to snatch the black band from her eyes to see what was happening, but didn’t want to attract the attention of breaking ranks with the others.
So she had to be content with listening as hard as she ever had in her life.
There was Mrs. Money’s voice, exclaiming in surprise, and Mr. Giles’s smooth tones attempting to plane her distress away like a carpenter smoothing out a knot from a piece of wood. Introductions were made, a series of names Maddie only half caught—but she heard enough of the voices and vowels to know that these were not any of his employees or shop assistants. These were wealthy men, educated, their plummy tones speaking of public schools and private tutors, of lineages as long as the noses down which they’d peer at someone of her lowly status.
In a word, Maddie realized, Mr. Giles had brought investors along with him tonight. Men who sowed money about like seeds, and reaped someone else’s labor as if it were their proper harvest.
Judith brought the song to a close, and did not start another. Maybe she too was trying to listen to what was being said. Maddie could only be grateful.
Mrs. Money was explaining the fake weaving process, while the learned and wealthy men harrumphed in habitual skepticism. “. . . Daytime weaving forestalls the need for blindfolds. The unfixed dye is not s
o harmful to the eye in sunlight.”
At the lower edge of her blindfold, Maddie saw a pair of gentleman’s shoes take several steps back from where he’d been approaching the looms. She bit down on a smile: let self-preservation keep any of them from looking at warp and weft too closely.
“How soon could they have a supply ready to sell?” Mr. Giles was asking. “Mr. Sterling knows of a modiste in London who would be very interested in an exclusive license.”
“The looms produce at the usual broadcloth rate,” Mrs. Money said easily. “With six looms working nights, I should expect you could have half the ladies in London wearing this cloth by Christmas.”
“And what if you could expand the number of looms?” Mr. Giles pressed.
Maddie recognized that tone. That was his I have an audience and now I shall impress them voice. She’d heard it often enough—and she’d learned to dread it. It meant he’d found an opportunity. And whenever Mr. Giles found an opportunity, someone else was bound to suffer for it.
Mrs. Money’s response was quelling, but not too harsh. “It’s somewhat impractical to expand the production line at present,” she said, adding wryly, “especially considering that you own neither the process itself nor the property we’re standing in.”
“Ah,” Mr. Giles breathed, as Maddie strained to hear. “But what if we did?”
A long pause, as the Jacquard punch cards rattled like boxes full of bones. “I am afraid I don’t follow,” Mrs. Money said.
“I intend to make Mr. Obeney an offer on his factory,” Mr. Giles said.
Maddie sucked in a breath, the sound masked by the hiss of the shuttle from one side of the loom to the other.
“Oh?” Mrs. Money put just the right amount of interest in her voice: affected, as a business partner must be, but not outraged or opposed or strident. Maddie wasn’t sure she could have held onto her control, in the face of such shock and provocation.
Mr. Giles, a factory-owner? In charge of the work and wages of hundreds of people, mostly young women and girls? Mr. Giles had been bad enough as a draper and an employer—as the master of a place the size of this one, his control would be inescapable.
And the first thing he’d do would be eliminate his enemies. Band together with Mr. Prickett, who was quite terrible enough on his own. Force independent hand weavers like herself—and Alice, and Judith, and so on—out of business any way he could. They’d all end up back in the factory, she could feel it coming, like a storm just cresting the horizon.
It was a thought to chill the soul.
“Do you think,” Mrs. Money was saying, “that Mr. Obeney is likely to sell?”
Mr. Giles scoffed contemptuously; Maddie jerked twice as hard on the shuttle handle. “Certainly, if we offer him a high enough price.”
“I wasn’t aware that you had such a fortune at your disposal.”
“That is where these gentlemen come in,” he purred back. “They are men with a wealth of financial experience, who know a good opportunity when they see one.” The investors murmured approval of this flattery. Mr. Giles finished up: “Fortunes favor the bold, madam.” More approving murmurs from the investors, then: “Gentlemen, now that your curiosity has been answered, shall we retire somewhere and finalize the terms?”
“A moment, Mr. Giles,” Mrs. Money put in.
“Of course.” The investors rumbled out the door to their carriages, promising to wait. “I hope you’re not having second thoughts, Mrs. Money.”
Mrs. Money gave a light laugh that had the perfect amount of false anxiety in it. Maddie could almost see the feathers trembling on her headdress. “In fact . . . I was thinking I ought to raise my price, since it is now clear you will be making rather an adventure of this.”
“Come now,” Mr. Giles said, smooth as syrup. “Your late husband was a brilliant chemist—but you are still a grieving widow, unsuited for the rough world of business and the cruel nature of competition. You have only to accept your reward, and then take a well-earned rest from all this tedious labor.” The sound of rustling paper. “I have written a letter of credit for the Carrisford Bank where you may draw upon—”
“No,” Mrs. Money interrupted.
Maddie was all but holding her breath. This was the tricky part, the money: they’d spent a long, long time arguing about it. Banknotes were numbered, and could link the crime to the person who tried to spend them; cash was untraceable, held its value, and could be disbursed as needed to workers on strike in need of funds. It would be easy enough for Mrs. Money to redeem any paper for hard currency and give the cash to the Weavers’ Library—but if they did that, they’d have no opportunity to create the kind of public scene that would send Mr. Giles running far, far away.
Until Judith Wegg had laughed and said: “If we need both, why don’t we just ask for both?”
“My price has now doubled,” Mrs. Money said.
Mr. Giles’s syrupy tone crystallized a little with irritation. “Madam, I cannot believe you would change the terms of a bargain made in good faith—”
“I also emphasized the importance of secrecy, did I not?” She harrumphed, a sound of such petty, irritating fussiness that Maddie had to choke back a hysterical giggle. “I do not appreciate my private business being made known to so many strange gentlemen. Especially,” she went on, “when I know my Horace worked so hard to keep it from his rivals. So now the price is: one thousand pounds for the factory key, which will get you the looms, the color-changing equipment, and the remaining stock of silk you’ve seen demonstrated. Play it right, and Mr. Obeney will never have to know you started the work before you bought the place.” A jingling sound, as she extracted the key from her purse. “And another thousand pounds for my husband’s notes—which include the chemical formula for the dye, and complete instructions for the fabric process. And you’ll have to make your choice quickly, Mr. Giles. I intend to miss as little of the London Season as possible this year. Particularly since I want to be there to witness your miracle fabric take the ton by storm.”
“The ton,” he echoed, with a little gasp at the end.
Oh, well played, Maddie thought. It was an image impeccably designed to fire the mind of a man with commercial ambition and envy of the aristocracy. Blindfold be damned: she could see him yearning for it, visions of duchesses and debutantes swirling across the parquet, all wearing the silks he sold them, their gowns flashing from pink to blue to gold to green in a rhythm to match the steps of the waltz . . .
“As a pledge of good faith,” Mrs. Money said more softly, “I will give you the key right now, in exchange for the letter of credit that you mentioned.”
“Well,” Mr. Giles said at last. “Perhaps you are not so unsuited for high finance as I’d implied.”
“Heaven forfend,” Mrs. Money said, and only Maddie heard the wry note beneath the mask of feminine reticence. “Do we have a deal, Mr. Giles?”
Maddie waited for his answer, her shuttle thumping left-right, right-left in front of her like an anxious heartbeat, the rhythm echoed by the other girls’ looms unseen in the darkness around her.
And then: “Done,” Mr. Giles’s voice said. A single note, so low it was almost lost in the thrum of machinery.
The rush of success sent the blood soaring through Maddie’s veins; she only dimly heard Mr. Giles take his leave. Mrs. Money waited at the door until the rattle of horses and carriages showed the investors and Mr. Giles had all departed. “All right, girls—you’ve done it,” she called out, and as one the weavers let go the handles of their flying shuttles, and pulled the black cloth from over their eyes.
Maddie blinked against the rainbow lights from the colored lanterns, which was searing after so much darkness. Alice was chattering happily to an amused Judith about how well the illusion had worked, as she began taking down the magic lanterns from the Jacquard heads. The other girls were drifting toward the spot where Mrs. Money stood in the pool of ordinary lantern light by the door. The looms would have to be stripped of
their silk, but that could wait for the moment.
“Who were those other men?” Mary Fisin asked, twisting the blindfold nervously between her hands.
“Nobody good,” Mrs. Money said grimly. “Not if they’re interested in a deal as underhanded as this one.”
“I don’t know if I can afford any more enemies,” Alice said.
“They won’t be enemies,” Maddie said. “They’ll be quite helpful to us, even if they don’t realize it.”
Everyone spun to stare at her: Judith with arms folded, Mrs. Money blinking in surprise, Alice squinting from the coruscation of the magic lantern in her hands, the other members of the Weavers’ Library.
Maddie smirked, her mind pulling scraps of thought into a pattern, as the threads of the looms around her shimmered like harp strings. “We are going to invite these men to the concert. You said yourself, Mrs. Money, that we need to embarrass him publicly. We’d planned on doing that already. Now if we make sure his investors are in the audience, we’ll have some very interested eyes when Mr. Giles’s true character is revealed. If they think he’s lost all their money . . . Won’t they demand he pay it all back?”
Alice began to grin, and Judith with her. Mrs. Money nodded, and even anxious Mary Fisin’s eyes brightened.
Maddie rubbed her hands, anticipating. “Time for one last performance, everyone.”
Chapter Fifteen
Maddie had been glad of the commission for the concert program, since it let her put to use the cream silk they’d bought for the false factory demonstration. Her loom had been warped properly for the work and the design punched onto the Jacquard cards—but today, instead of weaving more of the delicate design, Maddie was taking a day to help finish preparations for the other, secret performance that they were planning.
Mr. Samson had been to London and back, and now he had brought his finds to Maddie’s—along with Miss Narayan. The Narayan shop had always been a bit too costly for Maddie, but she knew they had the best reputation for tailoring in all of Carrisford. “So nice to meet you,” she said, shaking the slim brown hand Miss Narayan held out to her as Mr. Samson introduced them. “And we very much appreciate your help with this.” She led them into the front room, and turned. “Did Sophie—did Miss Roseingrave tell you what we needed your help for?”