“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 broughtinvestorsalong 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 so harmful to the eye in sunlight.”
