The Duchess War (The Brothers Sinister) (3 page)

“They’re all over town,” he growled. “Someone is responsible for them.” He held up one finger. “You volunteered to make up the handbills for the Workers’ Hygiene Commission. That gives you an excuse to visit every printer in town.”

“But—”

He held up a second finger. “You suggested that the workers be involved in the Commission in the first place.”

“I only said it made sense to ask workers about their access to pump water! If we didn’t ask, we would have done all that work only to find their health unchanged. It’s a long way from there to suggesting that they organize.”

A third finger. “Your great-aunts are involved in that dreadful food cooperative, and I happen to know you were instrumental in arranging it.”

“A business transaction! What does it matter where we sell our cabbages?”

Stevens pointed those three fingers at her. “It’s all of a pattern. You’re sympathetic to the workers, and you’re not who you claim to be.
Someone
is helping them print handbills. You must think I’m stupid, to sign them like
that.”
He gestured at the bottom of the handbill. There was a name at the end. She squinted at it through her glasses.

Not a name. A pseudonym.

De minimis,
she read. She’d never learned Latin, but she knew a little Italian and a good amount of French, and she thought it meant something like “trifles.” A little thing.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head blankly. “What has that to do with me?”

“De. Minnie. Mis.” He spoke the syllables separately, giving her name a savage twist. “You must think me a fool,
Miss Minnie.”

It made a horrible kind of logic, so twisted that she might have laughed outright. Except that the consequence of this joke was not amusing.

“I have no proof,” he said, “and as your friendship with my future wife is known, I have no wish to see you publicly humiliated and charged with criminal sedition.”

“Criminal sedition!” she echoed in disbelief.

“So consider this a warning. If you keep on with
this—”
he flicked the paper in her hands “—I will find out the truth of your origins. I will prove that you are the one behind this. And I will ruin you.”

“I have nothing to do with it!” she protested, but it was futile. He was already turning away.

She clenched the handbill in her fist. What a damnable turn of events. Stevens was starting from a false premise, but it didn’t matter how he found the trail. If he followed it, he’d discover everything. Minnie’s past. Her real name. And most of all, her sins—long-buried, but not dead.

De minimis
.

The difference between ruin and safety
was
a little thing. A very little thing, but she wasn’t going to lose it.

Chapter Two

“M
INNIE
!”

This time, when the voice came across the courtyard, Minnie didn’t startle. Her heart didn’t race. Instead, she found herself growing calmer, and a real smile took over her face. She turned to the speaker, holding out her hands. “Lydia,” she said warmly. “I am so glad to see you.”

“Where have you been?” Lydia asked. “I looked all over for you.”

She might have lied to anyone else. But Lydia… “Hiding,” Minnie returned. “Behind the davenport in the library.”

Anyone else would have taken that amiss. Lydia, however, knew Minnie as well as anyone ever could. She snorted and shook her head. “That’s so…so…”

“Ridiculous?”

“So unsurprising,” her friend answered. “I’m glad I found you, though. It’s time.”

“Time? Time for what?” There was nothing playing beside Beethoven today.

But her friend didn’t say anything. She simply took hold of Minnie’s elbow and walked her to the door of the mayor’s parlor.

Minnie planted her feet. “Lydia, I meant it. What time is it?”

“I knew you’d never suffer the introduction in the Great Hall with all those people about,” Lydia said with a smile. “So I asked Papa to keep watch in the parlor. It’s time for you to be introduced.”

“Introduced?” The courtyard was almost empty behind them. “To whom am I being introduced?”

Her friend wagged a finger at her. “You need to stay abreast of gossip. How is it possible that you do not
know?
He’s only twenty-eight years old, you know, and he has a reputation as a statesman—he’s widely credited with the Importation Compromise of 1860.”

Lydia said this as if she knew what that was—as if everyone knew about the Importation Compromise of 1860. Minnie had never heard of it before, and was fairly certain that Lydia hadn’t, either.

Lydia let out a blissful sigh. “And he’s
here
.
”

“Yes, but who is he?” She cast another look at her friend. “And what do you mean by that sigh? You’re engaged.”

“Yes,” Lydia said, “And very, very happily so.”

One too many
verys
for believability, but as Minnie had never successfully argued the point before, there was no point in starting now.

“But
you’re
not engaged.” Lydia tugged on her hand. “Not yet. And in any event, what does reality have to do with imagination? Can you not once dream about yourself dressed in a gorgeous red silk, descending into a crowd of adoring masses with a handsome man at your side?”

Minnie
could
imagine it, but the masses in her imagination were never adoring. They shouted. They threw things. They called her names, and she had only to wait for a nightmare to experience it again.

“I’m not saying you must lay out funds for a wedding breakfast on the instant. Just dream. A little.” So saying, Lydia wrenched open the door.

There were only a handful of people in the room beyond. Mr. Charingford stood nearest the door, waiting for them. He greeted his daughter with a nod. The room was small, but the walls had been paneled in wood, the windows were stained glass, and the fireplace was adorned with carving. The Leicester coat of arms took pride of place on the far wall, and the heavy mayor’s chair stood at the front of the room.

That was where the few people had congregated—the mayor, his wife, Stevens, a man she didn’t recognize and… Minnie’s breath caught.

It was him. That blond-haired, blue-eyed man who’d spoken to her in the library. He’d looked far too young to be anyone important. More to the point, he’d seemed far too nice for it. To see the mayor dance attendance on him…

“You see?” Lydia said in a low voice. “I think even
you
could dream about him.”

Handsome and kind and important. The tug of her imagination was an almost visceral thing, leading her along paths paved with moonlit fantasies.

“Sometimes,” Minnie said, “if you believe in the impossible…”

She had been so young, when her father had been liked well enough that he was invited everywhere. Vienna. Paris. Rome. He’d had little to his credit aside from an old family name, an easy style of conversation, and a talent for chess-playing that was almost unsurpassed. He’d dreamed of the impossible, and he’d infected her with his madness.

All you have to do is believe,
he’d told her from the time she was five.
We don’t need wealth. We don’t need riches. We Lanes just believe harder than everyone else, and good things come to us.

And so she’d believed. She’d believed him so hard that there had been nothing to her but hollow belief when all his schemes had broken apart.

“If you believe in the impossible,” Lydia said, jerking her back to the present, “it might come true.”

“If you believe in the impossible,” Minnie said tartly, “you let go of what you have.”

There were no moonlit paths that led to this man. There was only a gentleman who had spoken kindly to her. That was it. No dreams. No fantasies.

“And you have so much to lose.” Lydia’s voice was mocking.

“I have a great deal to lose. Nobody points at me and whispers when I go down the street. Enraged mobs do not follow me seeking vengeance. Nobody throws stones.”

And strange men were still kind to her. He was unfairly handsome—no doubt that explained the gleam in Lydia’s eye. From what Lydia had said about importation, he was involved in politics. A Member of Parliament, perhaps? He seemed too young for that.

“So serious,” Lydia said, pulling a face. “Yes, you’re right. You could be spit upon and hailed as a complete monster. And perhaps you might be eaten by dragons. Be reasonable. Nothing of that ilk is even remotely possible. Since you can’t envision it for yourself, I’ll do it for you. For the next minute, I’m going to imagine that he’ll turn around and take one look at you…”

There was no need to imagine. He, whoever he was, turned at that moment. He looked at Lydia, who was bristling with excitement. She sank into a deep curtsey. Then his eyes rested on Minnie.

There you are,
his gaze seemed to say. Or something like. Because a spark of recognition traveled through her. It wasn’t something as simple as seeing his face and finding it familiar. It was the sense that they knew one another, that their acquaintance ran deeper than a few moments spent together behind a davenport.

The man’s eyes traveled right, lighting on Lydia’s father standing by them. He took a few steps forward, abandoning the people around him. “Mr. Charingford, isn’t it?” he asked.

As he came closer, he caught Minnie’s eye once more and he gave her a slightly pained smile—one that tugged at some long-hidden memory.

If Mr. Charingford’s agitation hadn’t given her a hint, that smile would have convinced her. This man was someone important. It took her a moment to place that curious expression on his face—that small smile, paired with eyes that crinkled in something close to chagrin.

She’d seen it eight years ago on Willy Jenkins’s face. Willy Jenkins had been bigger than all the other boys his age—alarmingly so. At just fifteen years of age, he’d been six feet tall and almost thirteen stone in weight. He had the strength to fit his size, too. She’d seen him lift his two younger brothers, once, one in each hand.

Willy Jenkins was big and strong, and the other boys would have been frightened of him were it not for his smile.

Mr. Charingford gave an obsequious bow, so low that he almost doubled over. He scarcely choked the words out. “Might I present…?”

Mr. Charingford didn’t even assume that this man would
allow
the introduction—seemed to think that it would be perfectly good manners if he said no.

“By all means,” the man said. He met Minnie’s gaze; she looked away swiftly. “My circle of acquaintance is never so large that it cannot include more young ladies.” That apologetic smile again—Willy’s smile. It was the one Willy gave when he won at arm wrestling—and he had always won at arm wrestling. It was one that said:
I’m sorry that I am bigger than you and stronger than you. I’m always going to win, but I’ll try not to hurt you when I do.
It was the smile of a man who knew he possessed considerable strength, and found it faintly embarrassing.

“So considerate,” Mr. Charingford said. “This is my daughter, Miss Lydia Charingford, and her friend, Miss Wilhelmina Pursling.”

The blond man bowed over Lydia’s hand—a faint inclination of his head—and reached to take Minnie’s fingers.

“Young ladies,” Mr. Charingford said, “this is Robert Alan Graydon Blaisdell.”

His eyes—a blue so lacking in color that it put her in mind of a lake in winter—met hers. That smile curled up at the corners, more chagrined than ever. His fingers touched hers, and even through their gloves his hand felt overly warm. Despite every ounce of good sense, Minnie could feel herself respond to him. Her smile peeked out to match his. In her imagination, for just that one moment, there
were
moonlit paths. And that silver light painted every bleak facet of her life in magic.

Beside her, Mr. Charingford swallowed, the sound audible at this distance. “He is, of course, His Grace, the Duke of Clermont.”

Minnie almost yanked her fingers back. A duke? A bloody
duke
had found her behind the sofa? No. No. Impossible.

Charingford indicated the other man by his side. “And his, uh, his man of business—”

“My friend,” the duke interrupted.

“Yes.” Charingford swallowed. “Of course. His friend, Mr. Oliver Marshall.”

“Miss Charingford. Miss Pursling,” the duke said, nodding to Lydia over Minnie’s shoulder. “All the pleasure in the introduction is surely mine.”

Minnie tipped her head slightly. “Your Grace,” she choked out.

The entire night was conspiring to destroy her. Her best friend’s fiancé thought she was engaging in sedition, and the Duke of Bloody Clermont could ruin her with a single word. That for her treacherous imagination. That for moonlit paths. That for even a moment’s contemplation of romance. Dreams failed, and when they fled, they left reality all the colder.

His Grace met her eyes just before Minnie took her leave. And once again, he gave her that sheepish smile. This time, she knew what it meant.

She was nothing. He had everything. And for what little it was worth, he was embarrassed by his own strength.