He bowed. “Please forgive the lack of formality. My name is Richard Tidd. I am very glad you have come. Mr. Kendall sent word you were in Town and to expect you. He said you have been implementing reforms on your own lands.”
Francesca offered a polite smile. “I have been attempting to, sir.”
“Attempting is more than most do,” the older lady wearing spectacles said with dry approval. “Sit down, my dear.” She patted the seat beside her. “I am Drusilla Hart.”
Francesca sat down, and Nelly took a chair behind her with the air of a sentinel. Francesca did not look back at her, but the knowledge of her presence steadied her.
More people greeted her, not with fawning curiosity but with genuine interest. A man asked about her factories; another asked whether she had found that raising wages decreased theft; a woman asked, quietly, whether Francesca employed young girls to work the looms. Francesca answered as honestly as she could. She spoke of the dormitories and the need for clean water. She spoke of how exhausted men became dangerous men, and how exhausted workers became ill, and how illness spread quickly in confined spaces. She spoke, too, of the resistance she had met from overseers who believed cruelty was the only tool that ensured productivity.
The discussion began formally, with Mr. Tidd introducing the subject: factory wages, hours, and the question of whether improvement must come from legislation or voluntary change. There was argument at once, but it was discussion of those who intended improvement rather than self-interest. Men disagreed without posturing, women spoke without being laughed at or dismissed, and Francesca felt, with a quiet shock, that she had stepped into a world she had been seeking for years.
Nonetheless, when Peterloo was mentioned, she stiffened.
A gentleman in the circle, his voice stable but his hands clenched, spoke of Manchester as though the word carried blood. “We may argue over wages until we are old,” he said, “but do not pretend the matter is merely to do with economics. It is moral. When men marched with their wives and children,seeking reform through lawful assembly, they were met with sabres. The government proved, in that moment, how little it values the lives of those who labour.”
Francesca’s breath caught. She had been a naïve girl when it happened, still believing that violence belonged to wars and not to public squares. Yet she had lived near enough to have felt it, as if the shock had travelled through the ground. Furious and frightened, her father had spoken of it in low tones. She remembered, even now, the way he had looked at her afterwards, as if he had realized the world would be harsher to her than he had hoped.
She found herself speaking before she had entirely decided to.
“I live near Manchester,” she said, and the room’s attention shifted to her with a speed that would have unnerved her in Mayfair. Here it felt like respect.
“When Peterloo occurred, I was… not old enough to understand every consequence, but old enough to understand fear. Men from our village did not return home. There were women who wept for people they had never met because they knew it might have been their husband, their brother, their son. It made an impression upon me that has never left.”
The older lady with spectacles nodded slowly.
Francesca continued, more confident now. “Now that I own factories, I cannot pretend these matters belong only to Parliament. They belong to the owners as much as to the ministers. If we cannot treat our workers as human beings, then we deserve all the unrest we fear.”
A murmur of approval ran through the room. Francesca felt heat rise into her cheeks, not from embarrassment but from that rare sensation of being understood.
It was then, at the edge of her vision, that movement near the doorway caught her attention.
She turned, and saw a figure step into the room with a quiet confidence that did not belong to Bloomsbury.
Major Manners.
For a moment, Francesca was convinced she must have imagined him, because the idea of him in this place was too absurd. He wore a plain, dark coat, not a uniform, and yet the soldier was in every line of him: the straightness of his shoulders, the measured way he took in the room, the way his gaze moved not to admire but to assess. He did not look startled to find himself there, nor did he look pleased. He looked, rather, like a man who had arrived precisely where he had intended.
Francesca’s first emotion was indignation.
Her second was something perilously close to disappointment in herself for having that indignation, quickly followed by awareness.
He was not what she expected. He stood too easily at his leisure, as though London drawing rooms were no more formidable than an officers’ mess, and yet there was nothing careless in his attention. When he spoke to Mr. Tidd in a low voice, near the door, he listened to the response with the quiet, assessing attention of someone accustomed to weighing words for consequence. He was, in short, exactly the man she did not wish to see when she had come seeking a gathering where her mind might be met on equal terms.
He glanced across the room then, and their eyes met.
It was a single instant, and it had the effect of unsettling her composure more thoroughly than any argument about wages had managed. She felt as though he had caught her in the act of being herself.
His expression did not shift into triumph. It did not shift into mockery. It sharpened, just slightly, as if the sight of her there confirmed something he had suspected. Then his mouth moved,as if he were considering a smile but thought better of it, and he turned his attention back to Mr. Tidd.
Francesca picked at a loose string on her gloves.
Nelly leaned closer behind her. “Miss Francesca,” she murmured, low enough that only her mistress could hear. “That is him.”
“I am not blind,” Francesca whispered back, though the words were more brittle than she had intended. “Nelly,” she then added after a breath, “if you say ‘I warned you,’ I shall be obliged to dismiss you.”
Nelly’s silence was eloquent.
The discussion continued, but Francesca found her attention drawn away from it with infuriating persistence. Major Manners took a seat at the far side of the circle, neither pressing forward nor announcing himself. He spoke once, briefly, to answer a question about whether legislation could be enforced in rural districts. His voice, when he did speak, was calm and precise, and it carried an air of experience that made several heads turn towards him with interest.
