The Hellion's Waltz Read online

  “Or worse,” Alice Bilton said.

  “Nothing’s worse,” Mrs. Money shot back.

  Alice put her long fingers to her long mouth and chewed her nails grimly. At nine-and-twenty, she was older than Maddie, but her thin frame and general air of nervousness made her seem a decade younger.

  Mrs. Money continued: “Are you sure you don’t want to take that vote again?”

  Maddie understood her skepticism. Mrs. Money had met these girls only tonight. If she’d known them better, she’d know the Library had been criminals for years already. Combinations, such as workers formed to agitate for better wages and working conditions, had been outlawed in England for decades. It was legal for workers to form associations to sell wares jointly, or purchase a set of small rooms like this for lectures, or take up subscriptions for their library of technical weaving volumes and pattern books.

  But they knew if they tried to protest for higher wages or fewer hours, or any softening at all in their working conditions, the law would come down strongly on each and every one of them. As it had in London and Manchester and Birmingham.

  The law hadn’t stopped the girls dreaming about it, though. And it hadn’t stopped them talking, especially when Maddie’s mother had been running things. The late Mrs. Crewe had always said: “There are only two kinds of people, Madeleine. The people you protect—and the people you protect them from.”

  Maddie believed that more fiercely now that her mother was gone.

  So instead of calling for a second vote, Maddie turned to Mrs. Money and asked: “Have you ever heard the story of Jenny Hull?”

  The woman’s head snapped around.

  Maddie couldn’t help but grin. She’d known that would get Mrs. Money’s attention.

  The weavers, long familiar with the legend, snorted and laughed and elbowed one another.

  Maddie began: “Here’s how they tell it. Jenny Hull was a silk weaver in Carrisford back when silk work was good money. She wove beautiful brocades. The best in all Essex, or so they say. One day a mercer tried to cheat her—saying she’d done less work than she had, so he could give her less money for it. Jenny decided it wasn’t right for him to keep a silk he hadn’t properly paid for. So she put on her best dress and found a friend and they pretended to be customers, and went by his shop when he was out. The friend distracted the assistant, while Jenny hid the bolt of brocade in her skirts and strode out—but the mercer came back early, and caught them, and brought them before the magistrates. Jenny’s friend was found not guilty—they couldn’t prove she’d meant to steal anything, when all she’d done was ask to look at the wares—but Jenny was condemned. She was the first woman from Carrisford to be transported to Australia, and the magistrates and the merchants made sure everybody in town heard about it.”

  “Ever since,” Alice chimed in—she’d always reveled in ghost stories, and this was pretty near—“Carrisford weavers have told their daughters: behave, or you’ll walk Jenny Hull’s path. Be good, or you’ll end up where Jenny Hull went. And—well—the children started telling their own versions, after a while.”

  “Don’t stay out late, or Jenny Hull will get you,” Judith Wegg added, curving her light brown hands into claws.

  “Don’t flirt, don’t talk back, don’t ask questions, don’t be ungrateful—” Alice counted off.

  “—or she’ll snatch you up and swallow you down and leave only your boots behind,” Maddie laughed. Mrs. Money was looking rather dumbfounded, and Maddie couldn’t blame her. It was one thing to hear about a local legend—quite another thing to actually become one.

  “They say she was descended from witches,” Alice said, with relish, as Judith quirked an eyebrow at her. “Wicked from birth, and she used to weave spells into her silk.”

  Mrs. Money made a faint sound of disbelief in the back of her throat.

  “So you see,” Maddie concluded firmly, “we grew up certain that the law was ready to punish us for something, someday. It’s just the way things are.”

  “Which is not to say we’re reckless,” Alice hurried to add.

  “Not all of us,” Judith said wryly, making Alice hide a laugh behind one hand and attempt to look innocent.

  Mrs. Money blew out a long breath, carefully smoothing down the fur on her coat collar. “That’s good,” she said bluntly. “For this to work, the worst thing we can be is afraid.”

  “How does it work?” Judith asked. “What is the plan precisely?”

  Everyone looked at Maddie. Twenty-three pairs of eyes, bright and expectant and wary and nervous. Alone they would have been as easy to shake off as scraps of loose thread; twisted together, they bound Maddie to their cause like the ropes that pulled a sail taut against the wind.

  If that made her feel strained and stretched and raggedy as a worn piece of canvas, well, that was just the price you paid for keeping everyone safe.

  “We don’t have everything worked out yet,” Maddie said, “but we have the broad strokes. Here’s how we start . . .”

  Chapter Two

  The Muchelneys’ violin teacher was Mr. William Frampton, a pleasant-faced man with close-cropped dark curls and lustrous brown skin. He and Mr. Roseingrave discovered a mutual passion for mechanical design, and by the time they’d reached the Roseingraves’ shop Sophie and her father had been invited to next Tuesday afternoon’s meeting of the Aeolian Club, a musical and mathematical society that met once a month to perform for one another and discuss topics of artistic and scientific interest.

  On the day, however, Mr. Roseingrave received a note about a possible piano for sale—the first such purchase he would be able to make since opening the Carrisford shop. “But you go on, Soph,” he said to his daughter, with a wink. “You’re a sensible girl. I think Carrisford is safe enough for you to adventure in on your own.”

  The Aeolian Club met in the oldest section of town, in a room with a plaque that read Carrisford Weavers’ Library. It was a small room, clearly well loved and much frequented. Books were stacked haphazardly upon the shelves that ringed the walls, many with samples of textured wool and silk brocade peeking out of the pages. A set of chairs had been drawn into a semicircle around a small dais at the front. The group was some two dozen in number, mostly tradesmen’s sons and daughters like Sophie, with a few of the local lesser gentry. Someone brought cakes and biscuits from the corner bakery, a pot of tea was produced, and mismatched cups with chipped handles were lavishly handed round.

  Sophie sipped her tea and tried to remember names and was able to relax a little into the music during the performance part of the meeting. Miss Mary Slight played several variations on the harp, after which discussion broke out on the subject of whether or not it was possible to build an automaton that could play any stringed instrument. “The Musician built by Mr. Jacquet-Droz played a working organ,” Miss Slight recalled, “but that required only pressure from the mechanical hands. A harp involves a great deal more flexibility in the hand and fingers, and that brings up the question of how to control such complex movements.”

  “The difficulty is not just in the movements,” Mr. Frampton countered, leaning hopefully forward. “The impossible part would be reproducing the real harpist’s extraordinary skill and sensitivity. I’m sure you need no enlightening upon that subject.”

  Miss Slight blushed with pleasure.

  Sophie hid a smile and slipped out to walk home again, leaving her new friend to his flirtation.

  It was a bright morning, if cold, and the streets were thronged with townsfolk eager to get out and about before the snows returned.

  People, Sophie marveled, are preposterously attractive.

  She’d known this in London: from the highborn ladies to the street singers, Sophie hadn’t been able to walk down a single street in town without finding some face or figure that caught her eye and set her heartbeat thundering in her veins. She’d thought it was because she’d been born there, some kind of natural affinity—but she was having the same amount of tro
uble in Carrisford. People here were differently appealing—there was something in the general style that was unlike the inhabitants of London—but the beauty of them all kept Sophie’s appetites ready and ravenous.

  A woman strode by with her hem swirling around slender booted ankles; the movement of those skirts made Sophie ache with envy and yearning. She hadn’t been kissed in over a year now . . .

  Not for the first time, Sophie thought what a shame it was she couldn’t marry a woman. It’s not that men didn’t please her—Sophie liked a strong nose and a well-turned calf and a man who knew what to do with his hands—but there were just so many lovely women around. Such a waste to have to discount them as possible spouses.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t think it was only a matter of it not being legal. Because even adding in the men she’d flirted with and pined for and even kissed once or twice, Sophie had always been the one of the pair to be more tempest-tossed by desire. Nobody had ever seemed to yearn for her the way she yearned for them.

  Perhaps she was made wrong, somehow. Perhaps that was what had made her so susceptible to Mr. Verrinder’s poison.

  The wind coming off the river was particularly sharp today, and by the time she reached the high street Sophie’s face was numb and her fingers were chilled stiff even through her gloves. It was only another quarter mile to the instrument shop—but as soon as she arrived there she’d be put back to work. Probably tuning the new Rubini violins.

  It wasn’t that the job was onerous, really, it was just . . . Today, for the first time in a long while, since well before Mr. Verrinder, Sophie had felt like she existed as something more than her responsibilities to her family. No siblings to oversee, no mother to assist, no father to either make proud or disappoint.

  It had been just her. Just Sophie.

  She wasn’t quite ready to let go of herself quite yet.

  Impulsively, she ducked into the nearest storefront. Over the door the silhouette of a bewigged brass courtier proclaimed the owner as Giles & Co., Mercer and Draper, Est. 1794.

  It was a palace of a place. Arched upper windows let the light flow through onto a cacophony of fabric on shelves and tables: chintz and bright-printed calico, cotton and linen and lace. Gleaming silks and satins and brocades poured from rods high on the walls, and one corner was a riot of jewel-toned ribbons, edging, and trim. Gilt thread and silver buttons gleamed beneath the glass of the counter at the far end of the room.

  After the grays and browns of the town outside so much color and pattern seared the eye. Sophie chafed her hands to warm them, then made her way to the corner with the ribbons. The fabric required for new dresses was costly beyond her means at the moment, but she had enough for a little something to liven up a collar or a cuff.

  As a mother and daughter finished paying for their goods and chattered out the door, Sophie reached out to brush her fingers along one bright ribbon: a flight of pink and gold lovebirds woven against a cream background. Something in the flow of it reminded her of musical staves—

  “There’s a story goes with that one,” said a voice very near.

  Sophie flinched and whirled, startled.

  The man who’d spoken laughed, and grasped her elbow to stop her spinning. He had light gold hair and a neat beard running to gray, and his eyes were bright as pennies. Sophie started to tug her arm away—but he held on, though his smile stayed kind, and showed off an appealing set of laugh lines. “Steady, miss, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m the proprietor here—Mr. Giles himself, at your service—and I only wanted to let you in on the secret.”

  He shook her elbow a little, then let his hand drop.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Sophie said, because that’s what one said. The elbow he’d grabbed throbbed slightly, and she wondered if she’d find a bruise there later.

  “Here.” Mr. Giles plucked the ribbon out of the rack and stretched it between his hands like a tightrope for a ropedancer to walk. “My father created this pattern on the day he first saw my mother. She was the daughter of a comte, back in France under the Bourbons. He was a mere silk weaver, only good for making the ribbons she wore around her throat. Nowhere near good enough to marry.”

  He spun the ribbon into a circle and tied it off with a flourish, patterned birds fluttering and writhing as the knot pulled tight beneath his fingers.

  “My mother wore this ribbon to a garden party, and caught the eye of a duc, who asked for her hand. Her father—my grandfather—was delighted, but my mother refused the match. So my grandfather locked her in her room until she chose to be reasonable.” He put one hand through the circle and twisted, so the ribbon banded around his wrist like a manacle.

  Sophie shivered.

  The mercer’s smile flashed a few more teeth. “The Revolution began the next day. My grandfather fought to hold out against the peasants who stormed his estate, but by sunset he had been dragged away to the Bastille. As he was marched to the guillotine, my father ventured into the smoking ruins of his estate and freed my mother, still trapped in her boudoir. They took her jewels and found a ship and crossed the Channel, to England. They wed as soon as they got the license, and were happily in love for the rest of their lives.” He freed his wrist and held out the ribbon, balanced like a coronet on the palm of his hand.

  Sophie hesitated, chewing on her lip. She was used to shop folk being insistent about their wares: it was part and parcel of the trade. And the ribbon was very lovely. But she had the unshakable thought that by taking the ribbon, she would be accepting far more than just a trinket.

  These were the kind of warning thoughts she was trying to pay better attention to.

  “Come, come,” Mr. Giles said. He grasped her at the wrist and turned her hand over, setting the ribbon in the middle of her palm, where it tickled her fingers into closing around it.

  His other hand held longer than she liked, wrapped around her wrist.

  Behind him, the door swung open. Mr. Giles dropped her hand and turned toward the door, a little too quick.

  A woman walked in, and Sophie forgot about everything else.

  This woman was breathtaking.

  Auburn hair that gleamed gold where the light caught strands slipping free of their pins. Hazel eyes that sparkled with more gold in their rich depths. A perfect pink bud of a mouth, high cheekbones, roses blooming red against the cream of her complexion. A cheap dress of worn gray wool, soft as moonlight—but beneath it a figure that had Sophie’s hands curling with the need to shape it, her musician’s fingers playing over every curve and contour.

  She shook herself. Useless. Sophie’d been with a few pretty girls, but never one so pretty as this. She might as well have tried to pluck the moon from the sky.

  This woman was how she’d imagined every cruel heartbreaker in every old ballad she’d ever heard. If you were lucky, you pined away for love of her. If you weren’t lucky, you won her, lost her, and were damned.

  Here was Sophie, craving damnation.

  “Miss Crewe,” said the mercer.

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed. His tone was cheerful enough, but there was a note out of tune.

  Miss Crewe nodded her glorious head. “Mr. Giles,” she said in return.

  Oh dear heavens, beneath the leisurely vowels of her local accent, her voice was low and sweet and just a little bit raspy. Sophie clutched a hand to her heart. She would never make it out of this draper’s shop alive.

  She pressed herself back into the shadows, the better to be overlooked.

  “Have you come with ribbons for me at last, Miss Crewe?”

  “Not today, Mr. Giles,” the woman replied, matching his tone so precisely that Sophie instantly suspected her of mockery. “I have something else you ought to see instead.” The woman heaved up the fabric she had under her arm—Sophie’d missed that detail, too enraptured by the sweet angle of Miss Crewe’s cheek—and dropped it onto the sunniest spot of the counter.

  Blue silk—but something was odd about it. Sophie held her breath and
craned her neck. The blue had other colors running through, just one or two threads at a time. Gold, silver, red, and yellow stood out and made a clash against the hue.

  Mr. Giles came around the counter to take a corner in his expert hands. Judging by his face, he approved of it even less than Sophie did. “A satin, Miss Crewe? And with such an . . . unusual color palette? It hardly looks deliberate.”

  Miss Crewe shrugged, a hypnotic rise and fall of one elegant shoulder. “It’s not my finest work, I’ll admit, Mr. Giles—but you might take it off my hands, if you like. For half-pay rates.”

  Mr. Giles narrowed his eyes and folded his hands on the countertop. “Have you started taking in half-pay work, Miss Crewe?”

  She snickered. “Not hardly.”

  “Then the price you’ve offered me isn’t entirely legal, is it?”

  Miss Crewe laughed conspiratorially. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Mr. Giles snorted. His eyes flickered to Sophie, who hurried to feign a deep fascination with the ribbon rack.

  Miss Crewe’s voice was a low throb in the quiet of the shop as she leaned forward. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said to Mr. Giles. Sophie shivered at the musical purr of the sound. “I’ll leave this here with you for a bit. I know the fabric looks odd, but believe me: it has a way of growing on you. I’ll come by again this evening and if you still don’t want the silk, I’ll take it back, and happily.” She straightened, and smiled, and swanned out the door the same proud way she’d entered.

  There was no sign she’d noticed Sophie, heartsick among the ribbons with her fingers tangled up in lovebirds.

  Mr. Giles, however, now remembered her—his gaze pinned her in place, though his smile stayed charming. Sophie worked in a shop: she knew the difference between charm and sincerity.

  Or she thought she had, before Mr. Verrinder.

  “Shall I wrap that ribbon up for you, miss?” Mr. Giles purred.

  Sophie blinked down at the coronet in her hands.