MrWarrensProfession
Mr Warren's Profession
Sebastian Nothwell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2017 Sebastian Nothwell
Thanks to Ang, Lou, Olivia, Marcella, Mary, Meagan, Mercutio, and the Rhode Island Romance Writers for the encouragement and feedback that made this book a reality, and thanks to Monica for getting the ball rolling.
Cover art by Sarah Cloutier.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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“Warren? What the devil are you doing here at this hour?”
The voice, though gentle, interrupted the distant drone of the factory like a thunderclap.
Aubrey Warren snapped to attention. His pen slashed a line through a column in his ledger as he whipped his head up to regard the man in the doorway.
The hallway outside the office remained dark despite the weak sunrise fighting its way through the Manchester smog. Yet Aubrey recognised the barrel-shaped body perched on spindly legs as Mr Jennings, mill manager.
“Sorry, sir,” said Aubrey. His broken nib dripped ink between the pages of the ledger. Aubrey whipped out an old rag—already more ink than cloth—to blot the mess.
Mr Jennings shut the office door and hung up his hat, exposing his balding pate.
“What time did you come in?” he said, approaching Aubrey’s desk. “Five o’clock? Four?”
Aubrey held his tongue.
Mr Jennings sighed. “You never went home, did you, Warren?”
"There was work to be done, sir."
“Work ought to be done during office hours.” Mr Jennings clasped his hands behind his back and bent at the waist to peer down at Aubrey’s desk. “That’s Smith’s ledger, isn't it? Why are you working through the night in another man's ledger, Warren? Sabotage, perhaps—should I fear a mutiny?”
From any other man, the stream of questions would be an inquisition. But hearing them in Mr Jennings’s resigned tone, Aubrey didn’t feel attacked, only duly chastised. “No, sir.”
“Then Smith has begged you to correct his work for him?”
Not so much begged as commanded, Aubrey thought. Aloud, he said, “Smith’s work is perfectly adequate, sir.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To confirm its adequacy.”
Mr Jennings didn’t bother to pretend he believed him. “I’d send you home, Warren, but I'm afraid I cannot spare you today.”
Aubrey awaited further explanation. Mr Jennings offered up nothing more, merely ambled away behind the door of his own inner office, set apart from the common clerks. Aubrey returned to Smith's ledger.
Smith himself strolled in at quarter-past eight. While not a notably athletic specimen, he looked like Hercules next to Aubrey. Aubrey’s flat, dark hair was a mere shadow of the light-brown locks Smith waxed into waves. Smith's bright copper eyes far outshone the black-brown of Aubrey’s, and Smith's cheeks flushed warm and pink with life while Aubrey’s sunk into a colour indistinguishable from the parchment he worked on. Though they were of a like age, only Smith carried the aura of youthful vitality. Aubrey, meanwhile, seemed to have died at twenty or so and somehow kept on with the bookkeeping.
Aubrey cast his own attention back down to his desk and tried to ignore the sounds of Smith tossing his hat and jacket onto their respective pegs. The sound of Smith's footsteps coming closer proved more difficult to disregard. The sound of Smith’s voice, impossible.
“What, still at it, Warren?” Smith clapped a hand onto Aubrey's shoulder.
Aubrey watched in vain as the tail end of his 7 veered off into the next row. He lifted his eyes from the ruined page. “So it would seem.”
Smith clucked his tongue in mock reproof and, much to Aubrey's relief, wandered off to his own desk, seeming content to let his ledger remain in Aubrey's more capable hands. Aubrey knew better than to attempt to return it to him. Left up to Smith, the entire mill complex would crumble around their ears.
No sooner had Smith sat down than Mr Jennings reappeared.
“Interesting news, boys,” he said.
Aubrey snapped to attention. Smith deigned to remove his feet from his desk. Mr Jennings fixed the same placid look on both.
“The mill is changing hands,” he continued. “Our new owner, Mr Althorp, requests a tour of the property. Today.”
Short notice, yes, but Mr Jennings ran a tight ship. Whoever this Mr Althorp was, he would find no fault in the Rook Mill. Not if Aubrey had any say in the matter.
“We've an hour and three-quarters to prepare,” Mr Jennings went on. “Make yourselves ready.”
Aubrey surreptitiously rubbed the stubble on his chin. Mr Jennings returned to his office. The instant the door clicked shut, Smith put his heels back on his desk. Aubrey hoped he'd have the sense to adopt a more professional posture before Mr Althorp arrived. Not that Aubrey looked any better himself. A prickly jaw, ink-stained knuckles, and yesterday's shirt did not add up to a respectable appearance. Nothing could be done about the shirt—he wouldn't have enough time to walk home and back, to say nothing of what the sweat and smog of the return journey would do to a fresh shirt. His unshaven face was another matter.
Aubrey closed Smith's ledger and opened the bottom-right drawer of his desk. There, under a ream of parchment, sat a battered cigar box. Its contents rattled as he tucked it under his arm. Without a word, he deposited Smith's ledger beside Smith's ankles and walked out the door.
The office stood apart from the main body of the mill on the other side of a cobblestoned courtyard, with a water pump centred between them. Most of the water drawn from it went to thirsty mill workers. Several such men gathered around it now, talking amongst themselves. They fell silent as Aubrey approached.
“Good morning,” said Aubrey.
A couple of the men responded in kind. After that, the group as a whole seemed to forget the oddity of a clerk coming down to mingle with the rest of the workforce. They moved back a bit to let him at the pump and struck up their conversation again as if he'd never arrived. Aubrey took no offense. He had little practice in the art of conversation, and work to do besides.
Out of his cigar box came a plain clay bowl with multiple hairline fissures running down its sides. Aubrey filled it with water, then stripped off his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt, and draped them over the pump handle. This caught the workers’ attention again. The youngest one, a lad of fourteen or so, pointed at Aubrey’s pale bare chest, but caught a slap on the back of his head from one of his elders before he could open his mouth to heckle. The rest of the workers turned back to their business.
Aubrey assumed they hoped ignoring him would make him stop being odd in their yard and go away. He wondered how their reaction might differ if they knew he hadn't been born to the middle-class status of a clerk. If they realised his origins were far lower than that, even lower than their own. Still, any shame he felt at revealing his naked flesh was nothing compared to the shame he would feel if he made no effort to appear respectable in front of the mill’s new owner. To that end, he returned to his cigar box and drew out a bar of soap and a razor.
Aubrey knew his own face well enough to shave without a looking-glass. Today he used double his usual allotment of soap—all the while trying not to think about the cost—and pulled the blade over his cheeks with especial care. Once done, he washed his face and hands, beat the soot from his clothes, dressed, and returned to the office. He could still feel the mill hands’ stares on the back of his neck as he left the yard.
He stepped through the office doorway at quarter-past nine. Contrary to his expectation, Smith had moved in the interim—he'd draped a handkerchief over his eyes. It fluttered in time with his snores. Aubrey, knowing Smith would accomplish as much asleep as he would awake, didn’t bother trying to rouse him. Instead, he returned the cigar box to its drawer and took out his own ledger. He had three-quarters of an hour until Mr Althorp arrived. He intended to make them count.
Mr Jennings re-emerged at ten minutes to ten. He took in the sight of the sleeping Smith, then turned to Aubrey with a finger pressed against his inexpressive lips. Aubrey followed him out of the office in silence.
“Sir?” said Aubrey as they walked across the yard towards the mill. “Shouldn’t Smith be present as well?”
“I find the more industrious employees makes a better impression,” said Mr Jennings.
Aubrey thought it might have been a compliment.
Lindsey Althorp boarded the morning train from Wiltshire to Manchester. One short tour of the textile mill to show his father he’d grown into sedate and responsible manhood, university or no university, then he could catch the very next train back to the country house and get on with the urgent business of reading the latest Strand. He would have brought the magazine with him, but reading on the train made him ill.
Even without it, he had plenty to occupy his mind. He’d never owned a mill before, which leant a novel air to the day’s excursion. (His elder sister, Rowena, had predicted over breakfast he’d grow bored with it before the week was out. Because of this, she had not been invited along.) He’d won the mill off Clarence in a card game down at the club last week. He’d had every intention of giving Clarence the chance to win it back, but Clarence had declined all invitations to play. Seven days later, Lindsey supposed it was his to keep.
Lindsey had never visited Manchester before. He knew people there, or rather he knew people who did business there, or who hired people to do business there for them. But the city itself, boasting no literary significance or sporting society—at least, none Lindsey had ever heard of—did not play to his interests. So Manchester had remained a dull, smoggy haze in his imagination.
But as he stepped off the train in Manchester Central, the dull haze sprang to life with a clang that knocked Lindsey’s preconceptions right out of his head. Manchester wasn’t so downtrodden and depressed as Dickens and Gaskell had led him to believe. The street surged with crowds to match any in London. The air rang with the constant echo of rattling steam engines and screaming factory whistles. The smog of a thousand busy chimneys swirled around the hansom cab carrying Lindsey from the train station to his new mill. It would take more than a good brushing to clean the grime of Manchester from Lindsey’s blue frock coat, but that was his valet’s problem; rather than concern himself with it, he sat back in idle contentment to watch the industrious world go by.
When the cab pulled into the cobblestone courtyard of Rook Mill, Lindsey found himself disappointed. Clarence Rook, the dear old schoolmate who’d given up the mill, was a man of elegance, with a subtle-yet-stylish wardrobe and an impeccable eye for everything from silk waistcoats to horses. The mill’s architecture reflected none of Clarence’s good taste. Of course, Clarence hadn’t built it—his paternal grandfather had designed and commissioned the mill complex, and it seemed the old man's vision had been red brick, as both construction material and inspiration for the shape of the mill complex as a whole, and its individual buildings. Straight lines and right angles dominated the mill, broken up by chimneys spewing dark plumes into the low-hanging smog. A massive clock tower rose up beyond the roof of the largest and most central of the buildings, likewise plain. Lindsey, who’d hoped for something more in the neo-Gothic line, withheld a sigh. Modern architecture might be good for business, he thought, but it did nothing for his soul.
The hansom stopped in front of the largest building. Lindsey stepped down into the courtyard and encountered a bizarre phenomenon. The cobblestones vibrated. He took an experimental step forward. The vibration continued. Lindsey suspected it might bear some relation to the faint roar coming from behind the tall, black, rectangular double-doors of the mill. He looked up at these doors just as the one on the left opened, allowing more of the roar to escape. A voice projected over the rumbling.
“Mr Althorp?”
Lindsey stepped closer. Two men stood in the doorway. The one who’d spoken looked the same age as Lindsey’s father, dressed in a gray suit which matched his grizzled muttonchops. His round bulk kept the second, smaller man in shadow.
“You have the advantage of me,” said Lindsey, sweeping his top hat from his head.
“Mr Jennings, sir,” the gray man said with a deferential nod. “Mill manager.”
“A pleasure,” said Lindsey, not entirely sincere. From architecture to staff, this adventure was proving underwhelming. If Mr Jennings noticed, he disguised it well.
“My assistant clerk,” Mr Jennings said, moving aside to let the other man into Lindsey’s line of vision, “Mr Warren.”
Lindsey stared.
Mr Warren, appearing scarcely older than Lindsey himself, stood a good head shorter. His heart-shaped face held a small, sharp nose, Cupid’s-bow lips, and a spellbinding pair of large, dark, half-lidded eyes. He wore a black wool suit, which offset the china white of his skin as much as it matched the ebony gleam of his hair, combed back to reveal a high, intelligent forehead.
“Sir,” said Mr Warren in a tone as mechanical as their surroundings. He gave Lindsey a clockwork-sharp nod.
Lindsey hardly heard him, though his hind-brain noted the gesture and may have responded in kind. Alternatively, he might have continued staring at Mr Warren with parted lips and furrowed brow. He couldn’t say for certain.
“Mr Althorp?” said Mr Jennings.
“Yes,” Lindsey replied, a half-second before he redirected his gaze away from Mr Warren.
“If I may,” said Mr Jennings, standing back with an invitational gesture. Mr Warren mirrored him in silence. Lindsey stepped up into the mill, and the tour began.
From outside, the ground had vibrated. Inside, the floorboards quaked with tenfold violence. The muffled roar multiplied into the endless, thundering bellow of Leviathan rumbling through the deep. It deafened Lindsey. He hoped the effect was temporary.
The mill interior loomed larger than any ballroom he'd ever danced in. Clattering machines filled it from wall to wall. Lindsey couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. To his eyes, it seemed an ouroboros of cotton and steel. Levers and wheels zipped back and forth, and a thousand criss-crossed threads trembled in the air. Every motion in the mill produced a fresh burst of lint. This lint floated through the room like a flurry of snowflakes. Lindsey inhaled a speck of it, quite by accident, and coughed. He couldn’t hear his cough, could barely feel it reverberate through his own ribcage over the clamour of the room.
Dozens of women and girls tended the mechanical labyrinth, reaching in with narrow arms and small hands to adjust this or that, then retreating fractions of a second before steel came crashing down where their limbs had been. These constant brushes with disfigurement or worse didn’t seem to alarm them. Lindsey turned to Mr Jennings to remark upon this, but found him already in the midst of speech, crisply gesticulating at various points of interest throughout the room. For all Lindsey could hear him, he may as well have merely mouthed his words.
“Pardon?” Lindsey half-shouted. Then, realising half-measures would get him nowhere, he repeated his inquiry at a bellow. Neither attracted Mr Jennings’s attention.
Before Lindsey lowered himself to tapping Mr Jennings’s shoulder like an impertinent schoolboy, Mr Warren’s pale fingers reached out and performed the service for him. Mr Jennings gave a start and followed Mr Warren’s nod to Lindsey.
Mr Jennings said a word. Given the context and the shape his mouth formed, Lindsey determined it to be: “Sir?”
Lindsey repeated his question. To his amazement, Mr Jennings heard him, and rattled off an answer. Lindsey couldn’t hear a word. Still, he nodded as though he understood.
Mr Jennings started down an aisle of the labyrinth. Lindsey looked to Mr Warren for a cue, and for the simple pleasure of looking at Mr Warren. Mr Warren remained stone-faced—no, marble-faced, Lindsey decided, like Michelangelo’s David—as he waved Lindsey onward. Lindsey followed Mr Jennings. Mr Warren took up the rear, much to Lindsey’s consternation.
Mr Jennings attempted to draw Lindsey’s attention to various points of interest, shouting over the constant rattle. Lindsey caught none of it. He considered turning to Mr Warren again, under the pretense of asking for clarification, but then Mr Jennings wanted to show him the winding threads, and the rolling wheels, and a hundred other dreary things that weren’t Mr Warren’s face. Mr Warren remained behind them, or so Lindsey assumed. He dearly wished to turn around and confirm it, but Mr Jennings pointed to the rotating shafts and belts suspended from the ceiling, forcing Lindsey to tilt his head up and behold them.
Like Orpheus and Eurydice, Lindsey thought, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling. Forbidden from gazing upon Mr Warren, he could only trust Mr Warren yet followed him. He wondered if Mr Warren would find the parallels as amusing as he did. Likely Mr Jennings would not; he didn't seem the poetic sort. But Mr Warren was undoubtedly poetic. Surely a marvellous literary mind philosophized underneath his ivory brow. Multitudes of mythological references must teem behind those shadowed eyes. And his mysterious silence—why, he was clearly deep in thought, as far beyond the earthly realm of the mill as Lindsey himself.
This state of affairs continued up all four floors of the mill, down the steel spiral staircase, and out the same doors they had entered hours earlier. Lindsey’s whole skull rang in the absence of the industrial roar. He turned back to the mill and, much to his relief, found Mr Warren standing there, with Mr Jennings beside him.
“Have you any further inquiries, sir?” said Mr Jennings.
At last, an opportunity to break Mr Warren's silence. Lindsey would have delighted to hear, in the relative quiet of the yard, the sound of whatever voice might issue from Mr Warren’s beautiful bow-shaped lips.
“How many persons does the mill employ?” asked Lindsey, his attention fixed on Mr Warren’s perfect, yet immobile face.
But Mr Warren’s shadowed eyes flicked away to meet Mr Jennings, and it was the latter who replied, “One hundred and sixty-six at present, sir.”
Lindsey made a second attempt. “And when was the factory complex built?”
“1844, sir.” Mr Jennings again.
Lindsey racked his brains for a question which Mr Warren could answer but Mr Jennings could not. At length, his mind produced a suitably subtle solution. He withheld a triumphant grin, and asked, “How long have you been employed here, Mr Jennings?”
“Some six-and-twenty years, sir.”
Lindsey hummed thoughtfully, then offered up the piece de resistance of his cunning plan. “And you, Mr Warren?”
Mr Warren’s dark eyes widened. He looked to Mr Jennings, who raised his eyebrows. Mr Warren’s expression flattened again. He turned back to Lindsey.
“Eight years, sir,” he said.
Lindsey ruminated on this new information. He supposed the earliest a lad could start clerking in a textile mill would be fifteen. Add eight to that, and Mr Warren was at least twenty-three, to Lindsey's twenty-one. What he might do with this information, Lindsey couldn’t say, but it was more of Mr Warren than he’d known five minutes ago, so he cherished it.
“Was there anything else you wanted, sir?” said Mr Jennings.
An excellent question. From Mr Jennings, nothing. From Mr Warren, everything. However, the two men had one thing in common.
“May I see your offices?” asked Lindsey.
After a good three second’s pause, Mr Jennings replied, “The offices, sir?”
“Yes,” said Lindsey. “I presume you and Mr Warren clerk in an office?”
“Of course, sir,” said Mr Jennings. “Warren?”
Mr Warren nodded briskly and dashed off—the precise opposite of the outcome Lindsey had hoped for.
“If you’ll follow me, sir,” said Mr Jennings.
Lindsey did his best to disguise his crushing disappointment.
This was the conclusion Aubrey drew as he sprinted across the yard. Mr Jennings, ambling along on his twiggy legs, would slow Mr Althorp down, but even so, Aubrey estimated he had mere minutes to get the mill office in order. He threw the door open and faced his first obstacle: Smith, still at his desk, still asleep.
Aubrey stopped in the doorway. The sound of the door alone ought to have woken him, and yet here they were.
“Smith,” said Aubrey.
Smith snored. Aubrey didn't have time for this.
“Smith,” he said again, louder.
Smith smacked his lips.
Aubrey dared not shout. Mr Althorp might arrive any moment now, and it wouldn't do for him to overhear Aubrey berating his fellow clerk. He considered chucking the apparently-comatose Smith out the window, but that was mere fancy. Smith’s broad shoulders would never fit through the window frame. Besides, Aubrey didn’t think he could lift him.
Smith mumbled something in his sleep.
Aubrey looked over the office for a solution and came across a crumpled paper ball by Smith’s wastebasket. Having missed the bin, it flew a truer course to Smith's forehead.
Smith started awake. “What!?”
“Mr Althorp is here,” said Aubrey.
“Already?” Smith rubbed his face and looked to the clock over the door.
“Yes,” said Aubrey. “He wishes to see the office. Mr Jennings is leading him here as we speak.”
“Oh, splendid,” said Smith mildly.
Aubrey didn’t reply, being far too busy emptying wastepaper bins into the corner stove, where yesterday’s coals still smoldered. The papers flared up. An ember landed on Aubrey’s thigh. He hurried to pat it out and brush it away, muttering oaths under his breath. A cursory examination showed minimal damage to his trousers; the ember hadn't stayed long enough to burn, and the black wool helped disguise charcoal smears. Still, Aubrey would know the blemish existed, and the knowledge had already begun driving him mad. Smith wasn't helping.
“So,” said Smith, who remained seated at his desk, though he had finally put his heels back on the floor where they belonged. “What’s Althorp like, then?”
Based on first impressions, Aubrey had determined several facts regarding Mr Althorp. First, he was young, much younger than Aubrey had expected—though according to rumour, the previous owner, Mr Rook, was of a like age. Mr Althorp was also aristocratic, judging by his crisp public-school accent and the long, aquiline features that seemed to come standard with a peerage. Such a lineage might explain his peculiar mannerisms; the staring, the selective hearing loss, the general air of sleepwalking.
“Warren!” said Smith. “Are you deaf?”
“Tall,” said Aubrey.
“What?”
“He’s quite tall,” Aubrey elaborated. In fact, he thought Mr Althorp bore strong resemblance to a lamp post. A tall, narrow pole topped with bright blond curls like a yellow gas flame.
“That’s all you know?”
Aubrey opened his mouth to retort. A muffled voice outside the office cut him off. He rushed to the door. In that instant, the door swung inward. Aubrey scampered out of the way to admit Mr Jennings, who held the door open for Mr Althorp.
The look on Mr Althorp’s face suggested he saw something very different from the dreary chamber Aubrey toiled in six-and-one-half days per week. Indeed, according to his awestruck expression, one might suppose he'd entered a great palace or cathedral of ancient times.
Smith had jumped up from his chair when the door opened and stood at the ready beside his desk. It took some time for Mr Althorp to notice him. It might never have happened at all if Mr Jennings hadn’t intervened.
“My other assistant, Mr Smith.”
“How do you do, sir,” said Smith in the smooth tone of an actor reciting from memory. He played the part of a contented servant well, Aubrey thought, when he bothered with the effort.
Mr Althorp didn’t respond, his attention focused on the lint- and soot-smeared window on the opposite wall. When he did turn in Smith’s direction, rather than look Smith in the eye, his gaze dropped down to Smith’s desk, then wandered over to Aubrey's far cleaner one.
“And who works where?” said Mr Althorp to no one in particular.
“I set up shop here, sir,” said Smith. He rapped his knuckles against his stained blotter, then jerked his chin towards Aubrey’s desk. “Warren sits there.”
Mr Althorp’s manner transformed from bored to bright in an instant. “Does he, indeed?”
Aubrey tensed.
Mr Althorp approached his desk, folded his hands behind his back, and bent forward at the waist to examine Aubrey’s work. He stood in silence for a long, uncomfortable minute, then moved a bit to the left and cocked his head to one side, inspecting the desk from all angles as if it were an artifact of some long-deceased civilization which he couldn’t touch for fear it would crumble to dust. Aubrey resisted the impulse to offer Mr Althorp a magnifying glass.
“And what do you do here, Mr Warren?”
Aubrey restrained his expression of surprise to a raised eyebrow, which he wrestled back into its original position posthaste. “I assist Mr Jennings in keeping records of our raw material input, finished material output, orders filled, the accounts to which we sell, the persons we employ, and the expenses incurred in maintaining the mill. Mr Smith does the same,” he added hastily.
But Mr Althorp’s attention remained fixed on Aubrey. “Could you furnish me with a copy of these records?”
It took Aubrey a half-second to swallow his shock.
Mr Jennings, ever the consummate professional, required no such pause to collect himself before he cut in. “All of them, sir?”
Mr Althorp pursed his lips. Aubrey, refusing to believe anyone could give serious consideration to such a request, held his breath.
“No,” Mr Althorp said. “Just the last month's will do.”
Smith made a choking noise. Aubrey shot him a disapproving glare. It went unnoticed.
“Of course, sir,” said Mr Jennings. “Mr Warren will be delighted to copy them out for you.”
Aubrey, who’d assumed the task would fall to him the moment Mr Althorp had suggested it, put on a polite smile for his benefit. He couldn’t imagine it looked at all sincere. But true delight lit up Mr Althorp’s face.
“Would you really?” he said, looking between Aubrey and Mr Jennings as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune. To see his grin, one would think they’d offered him a stable full of fine racing horses, or whatever it was rich young toffs desired most. Aubrey didn’t pretend to know. Regardless, Mr Althorp’s visage glowed almost as bright as his hair as he declared, “Splendid!”
The corner of Mr Jennings’s mouth twitched. Behind Mr Althorp’s back, Smith covered his mouth as faint hiccups fought their way out of his throat. Fortunately, Mr Althorp continued to not pay him the slightest attention.
“They should be ready by the end of next week,” Mr Jennings continued. “We’ll have them delivered to your residence.”
“No need for that,” said Mr Althorp. “I'll just drop by again to retrieve them.”
Mr Jennings betrayed his astonishment with a slow blink. “Very well, sir. Will that be all?”
Mr Althorp’s smile dimmed a little. His eyes flicked over to Aubrey just long enough for Aubrey to realise how astonishingly blue they were, like pure indigo dye. Before Aubrey could recover his senses enough to smile, or bow, or do anything intelligent, Mr Althorp spoke.
“Of course,” he said, as if in answer to Mr Jennings’s question. Then he added, “Good day, Mr Warren.”
Aubrey couldn’t stop his eyebrows from shooting up to his hairline, but he managed to echo Mr Althorp’s sentiment aloud nonetheless. Mr Althorp beamed at him. For a moment it seemed as though Smith would be forgotten again, but Mr Althorp turned and offered him the same words of parting. Smith responded with a bow deep enough for Aubrey to suspect mockery in the gesture. If Mr Althorp noticed, he took no offense.
Mr Jennings led Mr Althorp out to his waiting hansom cab. Smith showed restraint for once in all the years Aubrey had known him and waited until they were out of earshot before he spoke.
“What d’you think, then?” said Smith. “Daft, or just stupid?”
Aubrey feigned hearing loss as he returned to his desk and started copying out a month’s worth of accounts. With his head full of numbers, it would be far easier to forget the sight of those blue eyes.
Upon his return to the country house in Wiltshire, Lindsey exchanged his morning suit for evening attire, then retired to the library. Hundreds of books sat on mahogany shelves, matched by a mahogany reading table, with an entire south-facing wall of ceiling-high windows for illumination. In the far corner stood a Wardian case full of ferns, installed by Lindsey’s mother, the late Lady Althorp, some twenty-five years earlier. At the moment of Lindsey’s entrance, the library’s only occupant, apart from the ferns, was his sister.
Rowena Althorp, almost as tall as her brother and just as blonde, could have passed for his twin. In fact she was three years his senior and had spent much of their childhood reminding him of it. Now, she sat half-curled in on a settee next to the hearth, her skirts hanging down off the edge, and her gaze cast down into a magazine.
“How was the factory?” she asked, not raising her eyes from her reading material. Nor did she raise herself from the settee. In Lindsey’s lifelong experience with her, this constituted a warm reception.
“Marvellous!” Lindsey answered her.
“I’m glad to hear it," she said, looking up at last. “Though I wonder what marvels one might find in a cotton mill.”
“Oh, hundreds, I'm sure.”
Rowena gave him a slow blink, a habit Lindsey thought she’d acquired from a particularly uncanny kitten she’d had as a girl. He supposed he should elaborate.
“I found it a trifle difficult to hear the finer points of the tour over the sound of the machinery,” he said. “Mr Warren will clear matters up later.”
“And who is Mr Warren?” asked Rowena.
“A clerk,” said Lindsey.
“I see,” said Rowena, in a tone suggesting the opposite. She fixed him with a queer look. “Are you quite well, Lindsey?”
“Tolerably so, I think. Why?”
“You’ve been home for nearly an hour and you haven’t asked after The Strand.”
“Oh!” said Lindsey. “Yes. Right. Where is it?”
Rowena lifted her magazine to put its cover within Lindsey’s line of sight.
“Ah,” said Lindsey. “So it is.”
“Do you want it?” she said, replacing it in her lap.
“Later, perhaps.”
“Later? Isn’t it what you came in for?”
“No, no,” said Lindsey. “I’m here for the encyclopaedia. Got to read up on textile manufacture, engineering, that sort of thing.”
“Engineering,” Rowena echoed, her voice flat.
“Yes, precisely that. There’s rather a lot for me to catch up on.” He approached the shelves and began his search. “Now that I think of it, do we have any books on engineering specifically?”
“Are you suggesting there’s a single book in this room with which you’re not intimately familiar?”
“You exaggerate,” said Lindsey. He drew his fingertips along the assorted leather bindings for the sheer pleasure of their texture. “I only gave the works of Dr Johnson the most cursory glance. I’m sure there are many other volumes I’ve not yet skimmed.”
“If you say so,” said Rowena, and resumed reading The Strand.
Lindsey found the E volume of the encyclopaedia easily enough. He encountered difficulty when he flipped to the entry on engineering. He knew enough maths to keep track of his own expenditures, but this business confounded him. Furthermore, nothing on the page resembled anything he’d seen at the mill. He frowned down at it. This didn’t help. Yet he kept at it, long after Rowena had tossed The Strand aside and left to dress for dinner. He was still trying to decipher it when a footman came in to call him to the dining room.
Dinner in the country house was served à la Française at the unfashionable hour of six. Rowena was already seated when Lindsey arrived, as was his father.
Sir Geoffrey Althorp, a tall, thin man of some sixty years with a close-trimmed grey beard, sat at the head of the table. In times gone by, his thick white hair had been a match for Lindsey’s in its golden hue. Overall, father and son bore a great resemblance, differing in only three areas: age, athleticism (though Sir Geoffrey had been a ripping sportsman in his youth, rheumatism made him no match for Lindsey’s effortless energy), and temperament. Lindsey owed his sentimental nature to his dearly departed mother. Likewise, Rowena’s indifferent sarcasm derived from their father.
“Busy day at the mill?” said Sir Geoffrey after he carved the roast and dispensed it to his offspring. “Didn’t work you too hard, I trust? Learn anything?”
“Indeed, sir,” said Lindsey. “Thought not so much as I’d hoped.”
Sir Geoffrey gave a sardonic smile. “You'll simply have to go back again tomorrow.”
“I intend to,” said Lindsey.
Sir Geoffrey paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. He lowered it and fixed Lindsey with a look of icy inquiry.
Lindsey hurried to explain himself. “That is to say, not tomorrow, but soon. I’m waiting on word from Mr Warren.”
“Who?” said Sir Geoffrey.
Rowena piped up in her sweetest, most-helpful, least-natural tone. “The clerk.”
“And why,” said Sir Geoffrey, “is my son waiting on the word of a manufacturing clerk?”
“Because,” said Lindsey, “he will be providing me with last month's records. Shipping and receiving and the like. Thought it would be best to keep an eye on things from the outset. Wouldn’t want to do anything rash.”
“I see,” said Sir Geoffrey in the same unconvinced tone Rowena had used in the library.
“I do hope you hear from him before Saturday next,” Rowena broke in. She held her chin high, but kept her eyes cast down on her plate as she cut a ladylike bite of roast. “It would be a terrible shame if you had to run out on your friends in the middle of shooting.”
The shooting she spoke of was to be an informal affair between Lindsey and a few old schoolmates—Miller, Graves, and Clarence Rook. Lindsey didn't think it would be too difficult to reschedule, should the need arise.
“I'm sure,” said Sir Geoffrey, “Lindsey wouldn't miss a minute of shooting for the world.”
Lindsey finished his dinner in quiet complacency.
Aubrey started copying out last month’s records as soon as Mr Althorp left the office. He was a quarter of the way through them by six o’clock, when Smith stretched and yawned (for the seventh time that day) and announced his intention to go home. An hour and a half after Smith’s departure, Mr Jennings emerged from his office, ready to retire for the evening, and insisted Aubrey do the same. Aubrey hated to leave a task unfinished, but Mr Jennings stood firm.
Mr Jennings went home by omnibus. Aubrey preferred to walk, though he lived in a more distant neighbourhood. He rented the garret of a ramshackle house, where he shared the ground floor water closet with five other lodgers. All were bachelors. Three were clerks. Mr Brown on the first floor was an evangelical tract writer with a habit of slipping said tracts under the doors of his fellow lodgers. Mr Halloway, in the rooms just below Aubrey’s garret, was a painter. He’d invited Aubrey to model for him on the day he’d moved in, offering a modest sum for his trouble. Unfortunately for Mr Halloway, Aubrey was determined to lead a respectable life. Respectable gentlemen didn’t allow their likenesses to be preserved in the nude, no matter how noble the scene or how handsome the preserver. Furthermore, the paint fumes required Mr Halloway to keep his windows open at all times for ventilation, and the prospect of standing naked in a cold draught for hours on end didn’t appeal to Aubrey.
On a typical evening, Aubrey arrived home long after Mr Jennings had finished dinner. But it hadn’t been a typical day, and Aubrey supposed himself a fool for expecting a typical evening to follow. He had made it out of the mill complex without incident when a figure in a flat cap, muslin dress, and standard-issue factory smock waylaid him.
“Mr Warren,” said Miss Brewster, a young woman with a skeptical twist to her lips. She had one hand on her hip, the other on the brick wall beside her to block Aubrey’s path.
“Miss Brewster,” said Aubrey, touching the brim of his hat.
She removed her hand from the wall and crossed her arms. “I notice you’ve not brought word of a meeting between myself and Mr Rook.”
“My apologies,” Aubrey began.
It had evidently been a bad day at the mill, for Miss Brewster didn’t allow him to continue. “Your apologies. That and twopence will give me a cup of the swill they call tea ‘round here. I’m not interested in apologies, Mr Warren, I’m interested in action.”
“I’m aware—”
“Are you? Because I’m getting an impression otherwise. Perhaps you’ve forgotten our demands—equal pay for equal work. There’d be far fewer babes with starving bellies if their mothers could earn as well as their fathers.”
“Miss Brewster!” Aubrey interrupted as she paused for breath. “I am entirely sympathetic to your concerns.”
“Then why haven’t you let me bring them to Mr Rook directly?”
“Because he would have you arrested.”
Miss Brewster fixed Aubrey with an incredulous squint. “If I were afraid of arrest, I’d hardly have begun this line of inquiry in the first place.”
Aubrey would have pointed out how, with her imprisoned, there would no one to speak for the female workforce, but there were more pertinent matters at hand. “A meeting with Mr Rook would do you no good now. He no longer owns the mill.”
“Who does?”
“Mr Althorp.”
“Get me a meeting with him, then.”
Aubrey stared at her. “I’m afraid you overestimate my influence.”
“With all due respect, I overestimate no such thing. As the new owner, Mr Althorp will confer with Mr Jennings, and Mr Jennings already bends his ear to you.”
Aubrey’s throat went dry. His mind worked double to talk himself out of his panic. Just because Miss Brewster had noticed the peculiar bond between him and Mr Jennings, it didn’t mean she knew the true nature of that bond, or how it came to pass. While observant and clever, she focused her energies on improving the lot of her fellow workers—not on collecting idle gossip. And just because she’d noticed something out of the ordinary, it didn’t mean the truth looked so obvious to anyone else. Still, Aubrey resolved to be more careful in the future. He swallowed as surreptitiously as possible. “And now, I bend my ear to you?”
“Precisely,” said Miss Brewster. “One meeting’s all I ask. Name a date and time.”
Aubrey felt too exhausted to remember the current date and time, much less the projected future schedule of a man he'd met not twelve hours ago. But he’d brushed off too many off Miss Brewster’s requests already. From the look she gave him now, he wouldn’t leave the factory yard alive if he tried to run for it.
“A week,” he said. “Let me talk to him first, get him warmed up to the notion. He’s new at this.”
Miss Brewster considered his terms in silence, then nodded and stuck out her hand. Aubrey shook it. She stepped aside to let him pass.
“I’ll be holding you to your word, Mr Warren,” she said as he walked by.
Aubrey touched the brim of his hat again and escaped while he could.
Aubrey finished copying the records two days later, around nine o’clock in the morning, and sent a telegram to Mr Althorp announcing the completion of his task. Rather than send a return telegram, Mr Althorp himself arrived at the office at three the same afternoon.
“Sir!” was the best Aubrey could manage on such short notice. He gave silent thanks for Smith’s failure to come to work that day, though Smith’s empty desk made a glaring eyesore.
Mr Althorp didn’t seem to notice. He directed his inquiring look at Aubrey alone.
“Mr Warren,” he replied in a chipper tone. “May I come in?”
“Of course, sir,” said Aubrey, and stood to greet him.
Mr Althorp smiled and stepped over the threshold. Aubrey had the copies—two folios' worth—ready on his desk before Mr Althorp reached it.
“Here you are, sir,” said Aubrey, attempting to hand them over.
“Splendid,” said Mr Althorp. He made no move to take the folios from Aubrey. “Could I ask another favour of you?”
After a moment of hesitation, Aubrey set the folios back down on his desk.
“Of course, sir,” he said, careful not to let any bitterness seep into his words. He'd only stayed up half the night making copies Mr Althorp apparently no longer wanted.
“I’d like another tour of the factory,” said Mr Althorp.
Aubrey limited himself to a single blink of confusion. “If you’ll wait here, sir, I'll fetch Mr Jennings.”
“Forgive me,” said Mr Althorp, holding out a hand to stay Aubrey’s progress towards the door. “I’m afraid I’ve been unclear. I'd like you to direct the tour, if at all possible.”
Aubrey didn’t raise his eyebrows at his new employer, no matter how much he wished to. “If you found Mr Jennings’s tour insufficient, I fear mine wouldn’t suit much better. His knowledge of the mill is unparalleled. A tour directed by myself would be far less informative.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr Althorp. "But in my experience, the more knowledgeable the speaker, the drier the speech. Thus, in the presence of ‘unparalleled knowledge,’ one finds one’s attention wandering, and one learns very little.”
Aubrey suspected Mr Althorp’s attention would wander if a stray dust mote floated into his peripheral vision. “Correct me if I mistake your meaning, sir. You believe my ignorance will prove advantageous to your purpose?”
“Yes!” said Mr Althorp with a triumphant grin. It quickly faded. “I mean, that is to say—not ignorance, precisely—”
Aubrey withheld a grin of his own. Doing so was only moderately more difficult than trying to ignore how Mr Althorp stammered and blushed when flustered. The scarlet flush clashed with the gold of his hair and oughtn't have looked as becoming as it did.
Mr Althorp took no notice of Aubrey’s struggle. “—merely an understanding of how one who is not already possessed of all the facts might approach new information, as it relates to manufacturing. To use the common phrase, you can put it into layman’s terms.”
Aubrey choked back a snort of disbelief at the thought of Mr Althorp considering himself a layman.
“Are you ill, Mr Warren?” said Mr Althorp.
His gentle tone, combined with the knitting of his brows would, in any other person, represent grave concern. In a man of Mr Althorp’s position, such and emotion was impossible. Particularly towards a mere assistant clerk.
“Not at all, sir,” said Aubrey. “If you were still interested in a tour...?”
“Yes!” said Mr Althorp with more enthusiasm than the situation warranted. “If you have the time for it?”
“You are full owner of the mill, sir,” said Aubrey. “My time is your object.”
“Still, I should hate to infringe upon your hospitality, or impede your work in any way.”
And yet, here you remain, thought Aubrey, though the sentiment lacked its typical bite. If nothing else, touring the mill with Mr Althorp would be a refreshing respite from yet another afternoon spent toiling in darkness. The latter reasoning silenced the guilty little voice in the back of Aubrey’s head that demanded maximum efficiency.
“No imposition at all, sir,” said Aubrey. “If you’ll just let me notify Mr Jennings of my absence, we may begin our tour directly.”
“Delightful!” said Mr Althorp, and sounded as if he meant it.
As Lindsey followed Mr Warren across the yard to the mill, it seemed as if he walked not upon the vibrating cobblestones but on a cloud of bliss. This cloud began to dissipate as they reached the mill, and vanished entirely when Mr Warren opened the doors and the deafening roar of industry returned in full force.
In his eagerness to secure a tour from Mr Warren, Lindsey forgot the reason Mr Jennings’s tour proved insufficient. Now it was too late to deter Mr Warren from gesturing at various industrial processes and giving detailed verbal instruction—all of it drowned out by the cacophony around them.
Lindsey, regretting the lost opportunity to hear Mr Warren’s voice, yet happy for the chance to gaze upon his face, nodded along regardless of what Mr Warren was saying. This strategy worked until a nod from Lindsey produced a queer look from Mr Warren. Mr Warren repeated himself, his bow-shaped lips moving with slow precision. Despite this, the factory’s rumblings swallowed up his words. Lindsey, having already failed with a nod, tried shaking his head. Mr Warren’s queer expression deepened into a full-on frown of confusion. A handsome frown, but a frown Lindsey was loath to have caused. The game was up.
“I can’t hear you,” said Lindsey, with no proof in his own ears of whether or not he'd made any sound at all.
Mr Warren’s frown disappeared. He brought out a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket, scribbled in it, then held up the result for Lindsey to read. In clear, precise script were the words:
Will this do?
Lindsey laughed. “Yes, quite!”
The corners of Mr Warren’s mouth twitched. He wrote more, then handed the notebook over to Lindsey.
Carding room. Straightens cotton fibre and removes impurities.
Lindsey looked up to find Mr Warren pointing at a particular section of the apparently endless machine. Men fed great bundles of cotton into huge cylinders of wire teeth, which devoured it, tearing it to pieces and remolding it into a cleaner more orderly shape. The cotton tossed from one cylinder to the next, growing brighter and finer at each stage, then the whole mess fell onto a conveyor belt. Lindsey watched in quiet fascination until Mr Warren tapped him on the shoulder—a touch Lindsey savoured—and indicated they should move on.
They followed the carded cotton into the spinning room, where Mr Warren’s notes told Lindsey of the self-acting mule. It hunched on the floor like an enormous steel spider. Two men tended it. As Lindsey watched, the front of the mule lurched forward. Wheels ran along a track in the floor, presenting a long bar at waist-height with a hundred bobbins stuck on in a row, trailing threads behind. With a clatter and whirr, the bobbins spun and grew thick with thread. Then, quick as they'd started, they stopped. The mule folded back in on itself and the men sprang into action. The first scooped up the full bobbins and carried them off in a hand-cart. The second swooped in after him to refill the rack with empty bobbins. With a decisive thunk, the machine jerked into motion again. Boys—younger than Lindsey had been when his father sent him to Eton—ran under the mule between revolutions, ducking clacking beams to fiddle with the suspended strings. According to Mr Warren’s notes, the men were mule-spinners, and the boys were piecers, repairing broken threads.
The bobbins went next to the weave room. Lindsey and Mr Warren went with them. Here worked the dozens of young women Lindsey recalled from his initial tour. They continued to ignore him, intent on their task as Mr Warren explained it. His notes, full of looms and warps and wefts brought to life all the diagrams and illustrations Lindsey had studied the night before.
More importantly, Mr Warren’s face came alive, too. Throughout their tour, a smile threatened to overtake his bow-shaped lips and his dark eyes shown bright as he expounded on the industrial processes. Lindsey found it most distracting, and as a result, failed to memorise some of the knowledge Mr Warren endeavoured to impart. It didn't trouble Lindsey overmuch; if worse came to worst, he'd simply request a third tour of the mill.
Mr Warren drew Lindsey’s attention up to the rafters, where a thick leather belt wrapped around a spinning shaft, connecting it to the loom on the floor. Lindsey turned back to Mr Warren with a quizzical expression. Mr Warren scribbled in his notebook.
Power transferred from engine to shaft to belt to loom.
“And where is the engine?” shouted Lindsey.
Mr Warren motioned for Lindsey to follow him back to the stair.
Mr Althorp followed Aubrey out of the mill like an amicable shadow. They circled the building to the engine house at the back. Aubrey introduced Mr Althorp to the two men on duty: Mr Cartwright, chief engineer, a heavyset fellow in his fifties with a gray broom-bristle mustache; and Mr Hepworth, second engineer, of a narrower build with thirty-odd years under his belt. Mr Althorp peppered them both with questions. Aubrey bit his tongue to keep from answering them in Mr Cartwright’s place. They were more intelligent questions than Aubrey would've expected from a toff of Mr Althorp’s calibre—along the lines of, “At what pressure does the boiler run?”, rather than, “What is an engine?”—and Mr Cartwright responded with his customary dry, yet respectful, tone. Still, Mr Cartwright had a thankful nod to spare for Aubrey when Aubrey gently steered Mr Althorp away towards the mill yard.
They walked side-by-side, Aubrey taking a step and a half for every one of Mr Althorp’s strides. Mr Althorp looked up at the rooftops of the mill complex. Aubrey looked at Mr Althorp. Weak sunlight filtered down through the clouds of Manchester. Each pathetic ray caught and bloomed brilliant in the blond waves escaping from under Mr Althorp’s top hat. Aubrey felt some guilt—he wasn't paid to admire handsome gentlemen on the sly—but the sight captivated him nonetheless. If he were caught, he supposed he could pass off his behaviour as the natural awestruck gaze a posh twit would expect the lower classes to bestow upon the gentry.
“I’ve been reading up on textile manufacture,” said Mr Althorp, startling Aubrey out of his reverie. “I’ve come across a curious item. I wonder—if it isn’t too much trouble—could you tell me more about Jacquard looms?”
Aubrey stumbled to a halt.
“Jacquard looms?” he echoed, giving Mr Althorp a very unprofessional look of surprise.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Mr Althorp reiterated.
Aubrey tried to stop gawking at him. “No trouble at all, sir. But I’m afraid the explanation is rather dull. I should hate to bore you.”
Mr Althorp put on a grave expression, though his eyes continued to gleam with a suppressed smile. “I take full responsibility for my own potential boredom.”
“Very well.” Aubrey cleared his throat. “Jacquard loom is something of a misnomer. The actual mechanism is a head which one may attach to almost any dobby loom. It uses a system of punched cards to—please, stop me if I grow tedious.”
“Not at all,” said Mr Althorp. “This is fascinating.”
From anyone else, Aubrey would have assumed the remark was sarcastic. But the look of rapt attention on Mr Althorp’s face suggested otherwise. Aubrey couldn’t decide which reaction was more unnerving. He swallowed his discomfort and spoke on.
“As I said, the punch card system enables the creation of much more complex patterns. Each card is fitted over the hooks of... One moment. We require a diagram.”
He dug out his notebook and pencil, cast about for a flat surface, found the brick wall of the offices, and ran over to them. Only then did he realise how deranged he must appear to Mr Althorp’s eyes.
Yet Mr Althorp didn’t question his behaviour. He followed Aubrey to the wall and peered over his shoulder at the blank page. The faint heat radiating from Mr Althorp’s chest, like a thrumming engine, washed over Aubrey’s back as if his wool jacket were made of cobwebs. The warmth drove all thought of engineering from Aubrey’s brain for several terrifying moments. He hadn’t stood so close to another man—to another person—for more years than he cared to count. A weak and reprehensible part of him yearned to lean back. His rational mind reminded him he had a job to keep and a reputation to uphold. He forced himself to think upon the latter, found strength enough to steady his pencil, and began to draw.
It wasn’t the best diagram Aubrey had ever produced. The texture of the bricks beneath his notebook gave his linework a bit of a wobble, and his pencil moved at speed to keep up with his words. Still, when he finished his explanation and looked back over his shoulder, Mr Althorp nodded in understanding.
“Fascinating!” he said again. “Might I keep that?”
Aubrey, caught in the midst of closing his notebook, paused. His left eyebrow shot up before he could stop it.
“The drawing, I mean,” Mr Althorp added. “If it wouldn’t be—”
“No trouble at all, sir,” Aubrey finished for him. He tore out the page, careful to keep a straight edge to the paper. “If you’d like a more accurate diagram, an encyclopaedia might...”
As he held out the page to Mr Althorp, he trailed off, a thought having just occurred to him. An encyclopaedia would not only contain a more accurate diagram, but also a full and complete explanation of the Jacquard loom. In fact, Aubrey couldn’t think of any source but an encyclopaedia from which Mr Althorp could have learned of the Jacquard loom’s existence in the first place. Which made his desire for an explanation from Aubrey equal parts superfluous and unfathomable.
Mr Althorp took the drawing with a benign smile and folded it up to fit in his waistcoat pocket. “Thank you. You said something earlier about punched cards outside the textile industry?”
“Yes!” Aubrey replied with a bit too much vigor. “That is to say, Charles Babbage intended to integrate them into his analytical engine. He never managed it, of course, but just two years past, Herman Hollerith used punch cards to sort through census data...”
In Aubrey’s experience, most people stopped listening by this point, if not long before. He knew he ought to keep his passions restrained, particularly when speaking to his employer. However, Mr Althorp gave no sign of impatience. On the contrary, his eyes widened as Aubrey detailed the latest advances in mathematics and the sciences.
“Extraordinary!” said Mr Althorp when Aubrey finished. “Most extraordinary indeed! Mr Warren, you’re wasted as a clerk. You ought to be an engineer.”
The cautious smile blooming on Aubrey’s lips died at that remark. “I’m quite happy in my position, sir.”
He meant to sound more grateful, but there it was. Any fool would be happy to be clerking rather than labouring, or starving, or on his knees before men of Mr Althorp’s station. His frustrated aspirations didn’t matter. Aubrey was lucky enough to have escaped the poverty of his youth. To expect more would be folly.
Mr Althorp frowned in confusion but said nothing beyond, “Of course.”
Aubrey forced a smile in return.
The sight of Mr Warren’s Christian name on the Rook Mill payroll sent a thrill through Lindsey’s brain. Aubrey Warren. He wanted to say it aloud, to let it roll over his lips, to imagine how it might feel to address the clerk so. However, Lindsey sat in the country house library, where his father might come in at any moment, and so Lindsey didn’t deem it prudent to take the risk.
Apart from Mr Aubrey Warren, the factory records puzzled Lindsey. Not as badly as the engineering, thank God, but they furrowed his brow nonetheless. From what little he understood of economics, it ought’ve run thus: profits decreased, wages decreased; profits increased, wages increased. However, while Rook Mill profits seemed on a steady rise, no corresponding increase had occurred in wages. Instead, wages had stagnated across the board, from overseers to sweepers, for the last five months. Then, in the week preceding Lindsey’s acquisition of the mill, wages dropped, with the office staff—Mr Jennings, Mr Smith, and Mr Warren—taking the deepest plunge. Most confusing, particularly given what Lindsey had observed of Mr Warren’s work ethic.
“Good heavens,” said a dry voice from the doorway. “What a magnificent mess you've made.”
Lindsey looked around at the factory records spread out across the library table, his lap, and the floor, then lifted his eyes to meet his sister’s gaze as she approached. He opened his mouth to explain himself, but she cut him off.
“If I hear another word about Jacquard looms or self-acting mules,” she declared, “I will scream. Isn’t the whole enterprise supposed to be self-regulating? I don’t recall Clarence ever giving it so much attention.”
“Why should he?” said Lindsey. “It’s all old hat to him.”
“Whilst for you, it’s a novelty.”
“Not a novelty, Ro,” Lindsey protested. “Merely... something new.”
“You just defined the word novelty.”
Lindsey bristled. “To call it a novelty would imply my interest is frivolous at best.”
Rowena looked skeptical.
“Which it most certainly is not!” Lindsey added.
“Of course not,” Rowena replied in her most patronising tone. “Still, I’ve never seen you so excited over anything outside the pages of a penny dreadful.”
“Lies and slander,” said Lindsey. “I’m a fair sportsman, for one.”
“Then what on earth are you doing in here while your friends go out shooting?”
Lindsey blinked at her, turned to the towering grandfather clock, then pulled out his pocket-watch to confirm its grim tidings. “By Jove. That late already?”
“Clarence is waiting for you by the stables. Miller and Graves went ahead with Tanner. Will you be joining them before sunset or after?”
Lindsey ignored his sister’s sardonic smirk as he hurried from the room.
True to her word, he found Clarence at the stables, leaning against a fence and craning his elegant neck to watch a groom put Sir Geoffrey’s best hunter through her paces.
Clarence, yet another old Etonian, came from manufacturing stock. His grandfather had ascended from mill hand to mill owner, and his father from mill owner to multiple mill owner. Clarence would inherit the whole when he came of age in another year or so. In the meantime, he had the original Rook Mill to practice on—until he’d put it up as collateral in a casual game with Lindsey.
Despite his grandfather’s origins, Clarence looked the gentleman. He was among the few men who could stand eye-to-eye with Lindsey, though Clarence had broader shoulders. Auburn waves of hair tumbled over his brow, and his grey eyes changed their tint from green to blue depending on the light. These features had proved most distracting for Lindsey at Eton. Clarence had turned this distraction into an advantage by tutoring Lindsey in mathematics, which Lindsey had been hopeless at before Clarence’s interference. Beyond academics, they’d bonded over cricket, where they both excelled, and had become inseparable.
At university, Clarence had studied the Classics, as befit a man of the station to which his family had ascended. His father would have preferred he study mathematics, but the old fellow had passed on before the end of Clarence's first term. Clarence’s uncle became his legal guardian, but failed to govern him. The best he could do was withhold the bulk of Clarence’s inheritance until Clarence reached his majority, sticking to the letter, if not the spirit, of the entailment. Clarence made do with a small allowance and his winnings from games with friends.
Lindsey had often hoped Clarence might become his brother-in-law; Rowena Rook had a delightful ring to it, and it would be dashed convenient if his sister married his bosom friend. Clarence agreed, but Rowena did not, so Lindsey let the matter drop. Clarence had a sister of his own, two years their junior, and had hinted at a possible union between her and Lindsey. Lindsey laughed him off. Emmeline Rook was a pale slip of a child. Lindsey hadn’t given much thought to what he wanted in a wife, but he felt certain Miss Rook didn’t possess the desired qualities.
At present, whilst Clarence admired the mare, Lindsey admired Clarence. A minute or so passed before Clarence’s chimerical eyes slid sideways to meet Lindsey’s, and Lindsey realised his presence had not gone as unnoticed as he’d assumed.
Lindsey coughed. “Shall we be off, then?”
A wicked smile wound its way up Clarence’s cheek. “Indeed.”
He took up two guns propped against the side of the stable, handed one off to Lindsey, and led the way towards the woods. Throughout their journey, they remained silent. While they were the sort of friends who didn’t need to fill the air with chatter, today’s silence put Lindsey on edge. He and Clarence hadn’t discussed the mill since Lindsey had won it. He wished to bring it up, to have Clarence’s opinion of the place, its staff, and one particular clerk. At the same time, he remained wary of upsetting his dearest friend. He’d just made up his mind to broach the subject when the gamekeeper drew up to them.
Tanner, the gamekeeper, was rather young for his position—hardly older than Lindsey himself. Lindsey supposed Rowena had hired him for his handsome face and considerable height, which precisely matched the footmen. True to his station, Tanner greeted the gentlemen with a doff of his tweed cap and fell into line behind them, near enough to be of use if called upon. While Lindsey didn't think Rowena would ever hire the eavesdropping sort, Tanner’s presence was enough to quell all desire to speak with Clarence on the delicate subject of the mill.
The last day of shooting before the London season had a maudlin air about it, despite nature’s best efforts to insist spring had arrived and the world was born anew. The trees had budded and the grass had turned from brown to green, but an echo of frost hung in the air. Most of the fauna remained in hibernation. Rabbits, however, were always a plentiful nuisance.
Sir Geoffrey’s favourite hound, Belle, stuck close to Lindsey’s side. She’d grown a bit spoiled in her old age, but she remained capable of flushing game out from the underbrush and retrieving it once it had fallen. The rabbits she brought back for Lindsey were all shot clean through the neck. As the shooting drew to a close, Lindsey ended up walking along the edge of the wood with Roderick Miller.
If Lindsey were blessed with an elder brother, he would have wished for someone like Miller. Miller was two years Lindsey's senior, with a ruddy complexion, strawberry-blond mustache, and a hearty, if rare, smile. He stood almost as tall as Lindsey, and twice as broad. The bulk of him was muscle, though if he were anything like his father, it would all turn to fat by the time he saw forty. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc., were bankers. The senior Miller was Sir Geoffrey’s personal financial advisor. That was how Miller introduced himself to Lindsey at Eton, where he took him under his wing. Miller not only pulled Lindsey into his established circle of acquaintances, but insisted Lindsey step outside his books and try his hand at sport. As a result, Lindsey thrived at Eton well after Miller left for university. At Cambridge, Miller bucked the banking tradition by studying law. Fortunately, his father came to terms with it by the end of his university career.
“Miller,” said Lindsey, adjusting his grip on the gun over his shoulder. “I should like your advice on a personal matter.”
“And you’ll have it,” Miller assured him. “Just as soon as you tell me what it is.”
Lindsey had rehearsed the problem over and over in his head since he’d left the library. Yet he found he couldn’t say it out loud while looking Miller in the eye, so he dropped his gaze. Between them, the barrel of Miller’s gun brushed the grass back and forth with every stride.
“I’ve made a new acquaintance,” said Lindsey.
Miller firmed up his grip on his gun. “Oh?”
The forced casual tone didn’t fool Lindsey. It confirmed his instincts to keep the details of his problem as vague as possible. It wasn’t that he didn't trust Miller—after all, Miller had been his friend, his confidante, his mentor at Eton. But even Lindsey knew cultivating a friendship between a gentleman and a clerk was not the done thing. An upstanding fellow such as Miller would certainly disapprove.
“It’s...” Lindsey coughed. “It’s something of a delicate issue.”
“Delicate issues are my speciality,” said a voice behind them.
The voice belonged to Lord Cyril Graves, the third son of an unremarkable marquess. His brown locks hung down into his eyes, giving him a habit of tossing his head back to clear his vision. The first time Lindsey saw him do it at Eton, the gesture reminded him of a mighty and impatient stallion. To others, Graves was merely horse-faced. He’d sported a well-waxed handlebar mustache at university, but sacrificed it on the altar of the Aesthetes soon after. In his post-university career, he wrote infrequent, acerbic literary reviews.
On the present excursion, Graves hadn’t shot a thing. He hadn’t even aimed his gun, much less fired it, despite a Hellenic devotion to Artemis and the rest of the Olympian set. Lindsey suspected he’d come along only to pose in picturesque woodlands and pretend he was attending a Bacchanal.
Graves threw an arm across Lindsey’s shoulders and demanded to know the issue. Lindsey hesitated to divulge the details—Graves tended to carry tales—but Miller had no such reluctance.
“Althorp,” said Miller, “has made a new acquaintance.” He punctuated his remark with a significant lift of his bushy brows.
Graves mirrored the expression. “Who?”
“No one you’d know,” Lindsey demurred.
“Don’t be coy,” said Graves, tossing his head. “Let me guess—animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
Lindsey smiled in spite of himself. “A man, our age, though... not of our sort.”
Graves widened his eyes and turned to Miller, who appeared to suffer the same surprise, though with less theatricality.
“He has rendered me a great service,” Lindsey continued, ignoring Graves’s immediate inquiry into just what service had been rendered. “I should like to reward him for it.”
“A shilling or two should suffice,” said Miller. “Ten, if the service were extraordinary.”
“Too extraordinary for shillings,” said Lindsey. The thought of courting Mr Warren’s friendship with mere money repulsed him. "I want to further the acquaintance, not cap it off.”
“A further acquaintance with a man of another sort who has performed extraordinary service,” Graves murmured, a little too loud to be talking to himself. Lindsey pretended he couldn’t hear him.
“A gift, then?” said Miller, raising his voice over Graves’s ongoing speculation.
“Surely Althorp is gifted enough already.” Clarence emerged from the woods with the gamekeeper in tow.
Graves explained Lindsey’s predicament with more dramatic speculation than Lindsey had suggested.
“The solution is obvious,” Graves concluded. He turned back to Lindsey. “Give him a book.”
Lindsey shook his head. His friends stared at him.
“Are you feeling quite the thing, Althorp?” said Miller.
“Clearly not,” Graves interrupted Lindsey's reassurances. “He’s suffering from a brain fever if he thinks a book isn’t the solution to this and every other problem.”
Lindsey hurried to explain over Graves’s elaboration on the brain-fever theory. “It’s precisely because it’s the obvious solution that I know it isn’t the correct one. I don’t wish to do the obvious.”
Graves appeared unconvinced, but Clarence nodded sagely.
“It ought to be a small, practical item,” said Clarence. “A knife?”
“Too pedestrian,” Lindsey replied.
Graves barked out a laugh. “I’d like to meet the man you think is too good for a knife!”
“One assumes gloves are likewise pedestrian?” said Clarence, smiling along with Graves. “And cuff-links as well?”
“A handkerchief, unthinkable!” said Graves.
“A pack of playing cards, then,” said Clarence. “Personalised, of course.”
“Why stop at cards?” said Graves. “Why not a mill?”
Lindsey bolted upright, fearing he’d been far too transparent in his inquiries, but a glance between Clarence and Graves showed his fears were misplaced. Clarence looked down on Graves with cold, hard, unforgiving eyes. Graves shot him a furtive, mischievous look in return.
Miller cleared his throat and smoothed his mustache. “That’s not cricket, Graves.”
Graves opened his mouth to retort, but Clarence cut him off.
“That reminds me, Miller,” Clarence said in an arch tone. “How many rabbits did you bag?”
Miller gave his number. Clarence claimed a higher one and received a guinea from Miller after the gamekeeper confirmed it.
Lindsey hardly noted the transaction. His mind churned with his friends’ suggestions. Books, knives, gloves, cuff-links, handkerchiefs—none seemed suitable. Yet there was something to Clarence’s aside about cards. Something personal might do. In fact, Lindsey resolved nothing else would suit.
When Lindsey arrived at the mill the next morning, he found Mr Warren alone in the office, the other clerk being gone for reasons Lindsey didn't bother asking after. He gave Mr Warren an enthusiastic greeting and would have given him more besides, but the moment he let slip any hint of a question regarding the factory records, Mr Warren jumped up to fetch Mr Jennings. Lindsey swallowed his disappointment and put on a smile as Mr Warren ushered him into the manager’s office.
Mr Jennings’s office was small but not cramped. Fastidious, meticulous organisation prevented claustrophobia. File cabinets flanked his desk and bookshelves stood behind it, turning his seat into a fortress of industry. The matching chair in front of the desk stayed at an angle to facilitate entry into the room. Lindsey took this seat as Mr Jennings closed the door.
“Now, Mr Althorp,” said Mr Jennings as he returned to his desk. “What may I do for you?”
Lindsey brought out the folio and explained his concerns. As he spoke, Mr Jennings’s fingers clenched and unclenched, tapped their tips together, and finally lay flat upon the desk to give full support to their owner.
“Can you shed any light upon these discrepancies?” Lindsey asked. “I’m certain I'm missing something—new to the business and all that.”
Mr Jennings's right forefinger tapped once more, then fell still. “No, sir, I’m afraid you haven’t missed a trick.”
Lindsey frowned, confused. “Beg pardon?"
“Cant expression, forgive me.” Mr Jennings cleared his throat. “As to the discrepancies... The previous owner required maximum yield from the mill—that is to say, it had to run as profitably as possible at minimum cost.”
Lindsey frowned harder. Clarence Rook was among the kindest men he knew. Surely it wasn’t Clarence’s idea to strangle his employees to line his own pockets. His late father and his uncle had advised him on the business. Clarence was a Classics man; commerce might be in his blood, but his brain turned towards higher pursuits. No, Lindsey felt certain Clarence wasn’t to blame for this mess.
“I was forced,” Mr Jennings went on, “to cut corners wherever I could. When the workers’ wages could be slashed no further—there’s a point where even the Irish won't bother coming in—I had to find another solution. The workers are paid by the hour. But the office staff are salaried. Which is to say, the same sum per annum regardless of what hours we keep. So I discharged the under-clerks and office-boys and made do with Mr Smith and Mr Warren. They’ve risen to the occasion admirably. Then when Mr Rook demanded—forgive me, asked—that we cut costs even further, I chose to cut the office staff’s pay rather than risk a riot from the mill hands.”
Lindsey raised his eyebrows. “They’ve threatened to riot?”
“They've attempted to unionise,” said Mr Jennings. “Nothing you need worry about, sir.”
All Lindsey knew of unions came from an aborted attempt to read Mary Barton at Rowena’s behest. (In her own words, “Lady Pelham has foisted it upon me, and I refuse to suffer alone.”) He didn’t get past the first few chapters of children starving to death. He preferred more fantastical fiction. However, if the reality were as gloomy as Mary Barton claimed, he couldn’t condemn the Rook Mill hands for their dissatisfaction.
But none of his reasoning was any concern of Mr Jennings. To him, Lindsey said, “You didn’t approve of how Mr Rook directed you to run the mill?”
“No, sir, I did not,” said Mr Jennings. “But I'm a company man, and I do as I'm bid.”
“How would you run it if you had your way?”
Mr Jennings’s eyes blinked wider. “Well, sir, to start, I suppose I'd raise wages to reflect the mill's profits, as you said.”
“Including your own salary?”
Mr Jennings looked abashed. “Including all the office staff, yes.”
Lindsey sat back and considered. “What would it cost to do things your way?”
Mr Jennings named a sum. Lindsey thought it acceptable and said as much.
“Sir?” said Mr Jennings, as if there were any confusion about the matter.
Lindsey had already picked up his hat and stood to leave. He turned back, one hand on the door handle.
“Make it so, Mr Jennings,” he said, and opened it.
Aubrey had just shooed Mr Althorp into Mr Jennings’s office when another knock sounded. Aubrey went to answer it. Mr Althorp was already here, and Smith never knocked, so Aubrey assumed it must be one of the floor overseers coming to report.
He opened the door. On the other side stood Miss Brewster. Aubrey wished he’d left it shut, but it was too late now.
“Good morning, Mr Warren,” she said, stepping over the threshold. She brushed past him and strode to the centre of the office, looking the whole of it up and down as if she were an empress come to survey her empire.
“Miss Brewster.” Aubrey closed the door behind her. “I’m afraid this isn’t a good time.”
“Have to disagree with you there,” she said, peering over Smith’s desk to inspect his empty chair. “Now is the only time. Where's Mr Althorp?”
Aubrey hesitated, to his peril. Miss Brewster barreled on.
“Don’t try to palm me off with an excuse. I know he’s here. I saw him come in not ten minutes past.”
She focused her keen gaze on Mr Jennings’s closed door and stepped towards it. Aubrey half-ran to block her path.
“Mr Althorp is meeting with Mr Jennings,” he said.
The left side of Miss Brewster’s mouth quirked up, the closest to a smile Aubrey had ever seen on her face. “Figured that much out for m’self, thanks.”
Aubrey withheld an exasperated sigh. “If you return to your station, I’d be happy to fetch you once they’ve finished.”
“And give him a chance to escape? No, thank you.” She leaned against the edge of Smith’s desk. “I’ll just wait here till he’s done.”
Aubrey swallowed. “Miss Brewster, please—”
“Too distracting for you, having a woman in the office? Just keep your hands and eyes to yourself, Mr Warren, and I’ll be quiet as a churchmouse.”
Aubrey refrained from rolling his eyes. If there was one thing she needn't fear from him... Though he could hardly admit as much aloud. And true to her word, she kept remarkably still after she crossed her arms and turned her head towards Mr Jennings’s door, with her chin up and eyes unblinking. But regardless of her behaviour now, he had to consider the inevitable explosion of her impending contact with Mr Althorp.
The crux of Aubrey’s dilemma was this: she wasn’t wrong. Rook Mill’s wages were the lowest in the city. Its machinery was out-of-date, much of it in need of repair if not outright replacement. A deadly accident was only a matter of time. Miss Brewster and her working girls had threatened to walk out three times in the last year. Mr Jennings placated them with breaks, leniency, and the implied threat of a dozen other women happy to step in and take their places. Mr Rook, with his insatiable craving for profit, cared not for the literal hunger of his workforce.
Mr Althorp, on the other hand...
Aubrey tried to derail that train of thought, but it had already left the station and was well underway to its terminus. Compared to his predecessor, Mr Althorp showed far more interest in managing the mill. Given the chance, it was entirely possible Miss Brewster could win him over with her arguments. Throwing Mr Althorp into her path would mean the sacrifice of any good impression Aubrey had made on him thus far, but Aubrey couldn’t justify never taking the chance. His pathetic desire for the attentions of a handsome gentleman meant nothing in the face of true progress.
Aubrey returned to his ledgers and did his best to pretend Miss Brewster wasn’t there. His resolve didn’t have to hold for long.
“Make it so,” declared Mr Althorp as the door swung open and he returned to the main office. Miss Brewster leapt in front of him.
“Mr Althorp,” she said, thrusting out her hand before Aubrey could do more than stand up and lurch impotently towards her. “Miss Brewster, weaver.”
Mr Althorp appeared stunned as he took her hand. Mr Jennings emerged from his office in time to witness the transaction, but too late to prevent it.
“How do you—” Mr Althorp began.
“Quite well, thanks,” Miss Brewster replied. “Mr Althorp, are you aware of the earning disparity between male and female mill hands?”
Mr Althorp blinked at her. Behind his back, Mr Jennings shot a horrified look from her to Aubrey. Aubrey wanted nothing more than to drop his forehead into his palms. He settled for a small shake of his head.
“I’m afraid not,” said Mr Althorp.
“Then allow me to enlighten you. All the mule-spinners in Rook Mill are men. As are the overseers. And the foremen. And the clerks. Every job with an inkling of a living wage belongs to a man. And before you tell me they must have earned that place—” she said as Mr Althorp opened his mouth to speak, “—let me finish. Mule-spinning, for example. One of the highest positions a man can attain, and only a man may attain it. What reason is given for this? Why, the weaker sex haven’t the strength required to run the machine. This is nonsense. The self-acting mule is called such for an excellent reason: it is self-acting. All the heavy lifting, all physically taxing mechanical motions, are done by the mule. The spinner need only tend it. Therefore, any man or woman of average strength should find no difficulty. And yet, all mule-spinners are men. Does this not seem strange to you, Mr Althorp?”
Mr Althorp, after it became apparent her question wasn’t rhetorical, spoke. “Miss Brewster, would it be possible for you to put your concerns in writing? I’d like to go over them in detail with Mr Jennings.”
“I’d be happy to,” she said, “if I thought it wouldn’t be a wasted effort on my part. They’ve told us time and time again, sir, to wait patiently for all the big important men in the world to notice our problems and, eventually, solve them. I’ve had enough of waiting. I’d like your answer now.”
“Yes,” said Mr Althorp.
Three sets of eyes gawked at him. In the absence of a verbal response, he elaborated.
“Your foremost complaint is against low wages, correct?” He gestured to Mr Jennings over his shoulder. “Mr Jennings and I have agreed to raise them to a level better reflecting the mill’s prosperity. It should take effect...?”
“At the end of the week, sir,” Mr Jennings finished.
Mr Althorp nodded and returned to Miss Brewster. “By the end of this week, on my word as a gentleman. Which I hope you’ll come to trust.”
Miss Brewster continued to regard him with suspicion. Aubrey couldn’t entirely blame her.
“In the meantime,” said Mr Althorp, “your writings would be most helpful in moving forward with the mill. May I have that by the end of the week as well?”
Miss Brewster stared him down a few seconds more. His hopeful smile never faded.
“You may,” she said at last, uncrossing her arms and holding out her hand for him to shake. Mr Althorp did so, still smiling.
“A pleasure meeting you, Miss Brewster. If you'll excuse me, I’ve some business to conduct with Mr Warren.”
Aubrey jerked upright.
Miss Brewster gave a short curtsy and showed herself out. Mr Jennings bowed to Mr Althorp and returned to his office.
And so Aubrey and Mr Althorp were left alone. The reason for it remained beyond Aubrey’s understanding. Mr Althorp, far from forthcoming, let an awkward silence settle between them. After half a minute, Aubrey could stand it no longer.
“What may I do for you, sir?”
Splotches of red appeared on Mr Althorp’s high cheekbones. Aubrey gave serious consideration to inquiring after his health. Before he could, Mr Althorp blurted out a question of his own.
“Would you care to take a turn about the mill yard with me, Mr Warren?”
The words poured out all at once, the torrent sweeping over Aubrey and leaving him stunned. It took a moment for him to collect himself enough to reply. “Of course, sir.”
Mr Althorp’s tight smile relaxed in unmistakable relief. He remained silent as they left the office, though several times he bit his lip, and twice he opened his mouth as if about to speak, but caught himself, clearing his throat and adjusting his cravat. On one occasion he raised his hand to cover his mouth, rubbing his palm over the lower half of his face and on down his neck. Aubrey found his eyes following the hand’s progress as it stroked that slender throat. He hurriedly looked away.
They walked on in silence, past the boiler shed behind the mill, and back around to the offices. Aubrey stopped beside the door.
“Was there anything else you wanted, sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mr Althorp, much to Aubrey’s surprise. “I, er, have something for you.”
“Oh?” said Aubrey, his bewilderment barring a more articulate response.
Mr Althorp, preoccupied with retrieving something from the inner pocket of his jacket, took a moment to respond. “A small token of my appreciation for your diligence.”
Aubrey stared at the object Mr Althorp held out to him: a narrow rectangular receptacle with a hinged lid at one end, made of silver and embossed with intricate curlicues around the edges. These ornamental curls framed the central engraving of WARREN in elegant script. Aubrey didn’t need to see it opened to know it was empty. The box itself was the gift, and an extravagant one. Impossible as it seemed, he couldn’t deny the reality before him—Mr Althorp was attempting to present him with a calling card case.
What possible use Mr Althorp thought a clerk who scraped by on ten shillings a week could possibly have for such a thing, Aubrey couldn’t fathom. And yet, there it lay in Mr Althorp’s outstretched palm.
It occurred to Aubrey he should probably respond to this.
“I couldn’t—” he stammered out. The expression of anguished disappointment on Mr Althorp’s face silenced him.
“Oh, but you must!” Mr Althorp implored. “I insist!”
Aubrey hesitated. He could hardly hope to refuse his employer’s insistence and retain his position. Besides, as useless as the trinket was, the thought behind the gesture seemed sincere.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. A second or two afterward, he remembered to take the calling card case from Mr Althorp’s hand. The metal felt warm in his fingers. He slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
Mr Althorp nodded smartly, satisfied. “You’re quite welcome, Aubrey. That is, if I may call you Aubrey?”
Aubrey gave a start at the first utterance of his Christian name. In Mr Althorp’s aristocratic accent, it carried echoes of Aubrey’s fantasies. But a twinge of bitterness followed. Of course Mr Althorp might presume to call him Aubrey. It was Mr Althorp’s right as his employer and social superior. He could call him anything he liked—clerk, boy, you there, and a half-dozen ruder terms—and Aubrey would be obliged to answer.
By the second time Mr Althorp said his name, Aubrey had recovered his composure enough to respond with minimal venom. “As it suits you, sir.”
“Lindsey,” said Mr Althorp.
Aubrey allowed himself a confused frown. “Beg pardon, sir?”
“You must call me Lindsey. That is, if I’m to call you Aubrey. It’s only fair.”
It took a concentrated effort on Aubrey's part to keep his jaw from dropping open. Words failed him. He could only stare.
Mr Althorp, meanwhile, seemed blissfully unaware he’d said anything out of the ordinary. He maintained his placid smile as Aubrey stared in silence, his mind chugging along like an overworked engine to try and to understand what the deuce was happening. His heart beat faster, his pulse reverberating through the calling card case in his pocket.
“Very well,” said Aubrey. Then he added, “Lindsey.”
Lindsey’s smile broadened into a grin.
To Lindsey, the trip from Manchester to London felt as if the train were floating rather than rumbling over the steel track. He smiled to himself in the hansom cab between the station and the townhouse, the sound of his name on Aubrey’s lips ringing in his mind. His cheerful mood continued all afternoon and evening, on through the night, and remained with him the following dawn. He greeted his valet, Charles, with unwarranted enthusiasm when the latter brought his morning tea and biscuit, and grinned at all the staff he passed in the townhouse’s halls. He laughed louder than ever at Clarence’s jokes in the club, laughed off Graves’s criticism of his favourite novels over dinner, and laughed at Rowena’s disapproval of his laughter throughout the day. For the rest of the week, nothing could persuade him that the world was anything but bright and beautiful and inherently good. It all ground to a halt the following Monday, when he entered the London house’s library to find his father at the shelves.
Sir Geoffrey glanced up sharply at his son’s entrance. Lindsey froze in place on the threshold.
“Good morning, sir," he said.
Sir Geoffrey turned back to his books. He had one in hand already, and was running his fingers over the spines of its shelved companions, searching for its proper place. “Good news from the mill?”
“Indeed,” Lindsey replied too quickly, over-eager for any assistance in crafting the lie he needed. “The, erm, profits are quite satisfactory.”
“And unnecessary,” added Sir Geoffrey. “Still, I’m happy for you.”
He neither looked nor sounded particularly happy, but Lindsey chose to take him at his word. His blood still sang with elation from his encounter at the mill. A little thing like his father’s perpetual disappointment couldn’t sour his mood. He wished he could pass on some of his cheer to Sir Geoffrey. There’d never been much Lindsey could do to please his father, but he knew of one possible method.
“Would you care for a game of chess, sir?”
Sir Geoffrey’s mustache twitched, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He set his book aside. “Yes, I believe I would.”
Lindsey hurried to fetch the board. Sir Geoffrey approached the table at a more sedate pace as Lindsey set the pieces up. Black went on his father’s side, and white on his own, a tradition begun when Lindsey was a child just learning to play. Though Sir Geoffrey gave his son the advantage of the first move, his tactics were otherwise merciless. He never once held back to allow Lindsey to win. If his son desired success, he would have to earn it. And he had earned it, eventually. Over years of play, they had become more evenly matched, until Lindsey’s chances of winning were as good as a coin toss. In recent times, he’d started to win a little more often than that—just by a hair, the smallest increase. As a child, he’d assumed such victories would bring him joy. As a man, they unnerved him. He wasn’t used to having any advantage over his father, no matter how inconsequential. This new balance of power didn’t rest easy on his shoulders.
But perhaps Sir Geoffrey would win today. Lindsey held onto that comforting thought as he made his opening move.
The game progressed slowly, with equal ground gained and lost on either side. Belle wandered in as Lindsey’s queen took one of Sir Geoffrey’s rooks. As Sir Geoffrey’s favourite hound, Belle had the honour of accompanying him from country to town. She settled under the table between Lindsey and his father. Sir Geoffrey scratched behind her ears, then demolished Lindsey’s bishop.
Halfway through the match, when Lindsey thought he might have regained the upper hand, Charles appeared in the doorway. Sir Geoffrey sat with his back to the door and didn’t perceive the valet’s approach. Lindsey, however, took immediate notice. While the chessboard arrested his father’s attention, Lindsey dared to cast an inquiring glance at his valet. But Charles remained tight-lipped. Whatever his business, it was important enough for him to come find Lindsey, but not urgent enough to interrupt the match.
Distracted by curiosity, Lindsey suffered a sudden, crushing defeat. Sir Geoffrey sat back with a suspicious frown. Lindsey braced for his father to accuse him of throwing the match.
“You’re too protective of your queen,” said Sir Geoffrey.
Lindsey balked. “Sir?”
Sir Geoffrey shook his head, his stern gaze focused on the board. “I've told you time and time again, boy. You sacrifice everything to keep her in play when a calculated loss would give you an advantage—if not the outright win.”
Lindsey relaxed. “Yes, sir.”
Sir Geoffrey, apparently satisfied, moved to rise. Charles stepped backward into the hallway before entering the room, preserving the illusion of just now coming in. He passed Sir Geoffrey as the latter returned to the bookcase. Sir Geoffrey paid him enough attention to prevent a collision, but no more.
“What is it, Charles?” said Lindsey.
Charles flicked his eyes over to Sir Geoffrey—who continued ignoring them both—then returned to Lindsey and leaned in to answer in a low tone. “You’ve a visitor, sir.”
Lindsey’s hopes soared with the thought of Aubrey Warren, here, on his very doorstep.
“A Miss Brewster,” Charles continued. If he noticed how these words crushed Lindsey’s spirit, he gave no sign of it. “She claimed you were expecting her. She was most insistent. I had Timothy put her in the front parlour.”
“Timothy?”
“The new footman, sir.”
“Ah.” Lindsey stood up. “I suppose I’d better see to it, then.”
“Very good, sir.”
Lindsey bid his father good day as he left the library. Sir Geoffrey spared him a nod, then returned to the shelves.
When Lindsey reached the front parlour, he found Miss Brewster standing in the centre of the room, a small carpet-bag in hand, her attention flitting between the lace-curtained windows and the tall mahogany mirror over the marble-topped mantle.
“Miss Brewster,” said Lindsey. He left the door open for propriety’s sake, wondering if he oughtn’t call his sister in as well. It couldn’t do Miss Brewster’s reputation any good to be alone in a room with a bachelor. But she didn’t seem to think anything of it.
“Mr Althorp,” she replied. She continued examining the Oriental carpet under their feet, then met his eyes with a face stern enough to halt an oncoming train.
Lindsey likewise paused before responding. “Would you care to sit down?”
It felt like offering a seat to a lioness. Miss Brewster glanced over the pink velvet chairs sprinkled throughout the room. She didn’t wrinkle her nose, exactly, but came very near to it. Yet she thanked him all the same and perched on the edge of a cushion, setting her carpet-bag by her boots.
Lindsey sat next to her. He didn’t like looming over her—far from giving him the high ground, it seemed to expose his fleshy underbelly to her predatory stare. He cleared his throat. “Is there something I may do for you, Miss Brewster?”
“Many things, I’m sure.” A smile flashed across her lips, a glint of bared teeth, then her stony expression returned. “But first, I must thank you for keeping your word.”
“You find your new wages satisfactory?”
“It’s a start,” she conceded. “In return, I’ve brought what I promised.”
She opened her carpet bag. Lindsey watched in fascination as she rummaged through its contents. At last, she produced a pamphlet and held it out to him. He took it dumbly, his lips pursed in confusion. They smoothed out into a grin as he beheld the words ROOK MILL WOMEN WORKERS’ UNION printed on the top page.
“Thank you, Miss Brewster!” he said, flicking it open to peruse its contents. Her resulting silence induced him to raise his head and see her regarding him with one eyebrow elevated far above the other.
“You’re welcome,” she said, still giving him an odd look.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said, drawing out the word. “It’s just... May I be frank, Mr Althorp?”
“Of course.”
“Most gentlemen don’t give two bits what their workforce wants, much less ask for their literature.”
“But I adore literature!”
Miss Brewster looked yet more disturbed. Lindsey hastened to elaborate.
“That is to say, I’m most intrigued by your ideas—I’m rather new to this whole manufacturing business, you see. I’d like to do it right. And it can’t be right if my workforce is unhappy. Indeed, I don’t see how the mill could function in such a state. Surely the happiest workforce is the most productive. I certainly accomplish more when I’m happy with what I’m doing and feel it’s worthwhile.”
Miss Brewster continued to stare at him.
“I suppose so,” she said at last, though her concerned look never wavered. Before Lindsey could add anything more, she rose. “Thank you for hearing our concerns, Mr Althorp. I’ll not trouble you any further today.”
Lindsey stood as well and pulled the bell-rope. A footman arrived to show Miss Brewster out. She eyed him warily before accepting his escort.
“If you’ve any questions,” she said as she departed, “you know where to find me.”
Once she’d gone, Lindsey picked up the pamphlet and wandered back down the hall to his own rooms, reading as he walked. The pamphlet employed a fiery breed of rhetoric. Lindsey couldn’t help admiring its passionate language, though the charges laid out against the mill’s previous owner felt somewhat harsh.
“Who was that?”
Lindsey stumbled to a halt. In the hall before him stood Sir Geoffrey.
“Sir?” said Lindsey, dropping the hand holding the pamphlet to his side and giving his father his full attention.
“That woman with the carpet-bag. Who was she? A new maid?”
“Yes,” said Lindsey. Something in his chest twisted as he did so, as if he’d actually bruised his conscience by presenting Miss Brewster as anything other than her true self. Certainly the lady herself wouldn’t approve. “Rowena meant to interview her, but it seems there was some confusion as to the time and place.”
Sir Geoffrey gave him a long, inquisitive look. Lindsey stood firm under it. Experience had taught him it wouldn’t do any good to flinch from scrutiny.
“You’ve sent her packing, then?” Sir Geoffrey said at last.
Lindsey swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. She’d never last here if she can’t keep track of the time.”
With that, Sir Geoffrey passed by and was gone. Lindsey withheld his sigh of relief and hurried to the safety of his own chambers, Miss Brewster’s pamphlet clutched in his fist.
The telegram arrived on Lindsey’s doorstep not a moment too soon. He leapt into the family carriage and took off for the mill. The journey seemed shorter than ever before. Within the space of a blink, he’d arrived.
The office held Aubrey alone, bent over his work. Lindsey didn’t question his good fortune. He made a beeline for the desk. As he approached, Aubrey looked up and stood to greet him with a warm smile.
“Lindsey,” he said.
Lindsey reached across the desk to stroke the clerk’s porcelain cheek. Aubrey leaned into the touch, turning to press a kiss to Lindsey’s palm. Lindsey rushed forward—the desk had disappeared, he didn’t know where it went, he didn’t care—and claimed Aubrey’s lips in his own.
Aubrey’s thigh slipped between Lindsey's legs to brush against his stirring prick. Both their clothes had gone the way of the desk, leaving Lindsey’s hands free to roam over the supple landscape of Aubrey’s bare flesh. Their bodies pressed together, their hard cocks trapped between their bellies. Lindsey rolled his hips, Aubrey whispered huskily into his ear, Lindsey, and then—
Lindsey awoke with prick in hand, bucking into his fist. His seed spilled over his sheets as the name “Aubrey” tumbled from his lips onto his pillow. It left his mind in a haze.
Some minutes later, when the lovely languid feeling wore off, Lindsey had much to consider. Certain sonnets of Shakespeare and large portions of the Classical texts he’d studied at Eton made far more sense in light of his sudden self-discovery. He understood what compelled Zeus to carry Ganymede to Olympus and cast his image among the stars, what drove Hadrian to deify Antinous. New worlds bloomed into being, all revolving around the dark sun of Aubrey.
An anticipatory shudder ran through Lindsey’s frame. He expended a tremendous effort to harness his imagination. As much as he wished to, he could hardly gallop to the mill and pounce on its clerk. A true gentleman would ask permission first. And for all he knew, he might be refused. This possibility cast a shadow over his sunny disposition, but not for long. He’d simply have to prove himself worthy of Aubrey’s affections. And he was determined to do so.
Nobody bothered Aubrey when he stayed at the office past eight o’clock. Everyone else, from mill hands to stationary engineers to his fellow office staff, left far earlier. To hear a knock on the door was most unexpected. And when he called out for the unexpected to come in, it doubly astonished him to see Mr Althorp enter.
“Good evening, sir,” he managed despite his bewilderment. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Even more surprising, Aubrey realised his idle comment was sincere. He put considerable effort into tempering his enthusiasm. It wouldn’t do to let slip just how much he appreciated the visit. If Smith hadn’t left hours ago, the humiliation alone would have struck Aubrey stone dead.
Mr Althorp—or Lindsey, as he allowed Aubrey to call him—showed no such restraint. His winning smile made it perfectly clear how delighted he felt to be in the mill office after hours, for reasons beyond Aubrey’s understanding.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” said Lindsey.
He was, of course, but Aubrey would never tell him so. “Not at all. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
The moment the phrase escaped his throat, Aubrey wished he could snatch it back. It wasn’t a pleasure for a mill owner to drop in on his employees without warning. He ought’ve asked what he could do for Lindsey—that would’ve demonstrated a work ethic beyond sycophantic flattery. But Lindsey didn’t seem to notice the subtle difference.
“Is Mr Jennings available?” he asked.
The question caused Aubrey unaccountable disappointment. He refused to reflect on why this might be. “No, sir, I’m afraid Mr Jennings went home some time past.”
“And the other clerk?” Lindsey asked before Aubrey could offer his services as a replacement. “Mr ...Smith, wasn’t it? Is he in?”
Smith had gone home for lunch and never returned, though Lindsey didn’t need to know that. Neither did he need to know how the thought of Smith as an acceptable substitute, preferable to Aubrey himself, made Aubrey queasy. Still, he replied in a level tone, “No.”
To his astonishment, Lindsey grinned.
“Perfect,” he said, and took the liberty of hanging his hat on the coat rack. “I’d hoped to make a request of you particularly, and in private.”
As he talked, he advanced across the room until he came to Aubrey’s desk and seated himself quite casually on the corner of it.
Aubrey, meanwhile, refused to accept this version of reality. Lindsey couldn’t possibly mean what he supposed. Life didn’t work that way. Surely Lindsey spoke in jest. Yet as Aubrey looked into his eyes—the too-blue eyes of a man who’d given him an expensive, if thoughtless, gift, along with words of praise and a request to be called by his Christian name—he found a shy, hopeful expression.
“I would be delighted,” said Lindsey, “if you would do me the honour of accompanying me to the theatre.”
Aubrey felt a slight pressure on his thigh. He glanced down to find Lindsey’s hand upon it.
He buried his initial reaction of wild, inappropriate glee deep down where Lindsey would never see it. Yet while he could hide his joy from the outside world, he couldn’t escape it within the confines of his own mind. His imagination presented a whirlwind of vignettes—Lindsey’s fingers brushing the arm of his jacket as they walked to the theatre; once inside, Aubrey taking advantage of the darkness to rest his hand in Lindsey’s lap; he and Lindsey sharing a cab home after the show, Lindsey undoing the buttons of his waistcoat, Lindsey’s mouth on his throat, Lindsey straddling him, Lindsey—
At present, Lindsey’s hand remained on his thigh. Aubrey reined in his fantasies, lest Lindsey encounter more than he’d expected there.
Or perhaps precisely what he’d expected.
Aubrey swallowed hard. Regardless of his tempting offer, Lindsey remained Aubrey’s superior. If Lindsey tired of his companionship, Aubrey would be tossed back in the gutter. The alternate possibility, that Aubrey’s own interest would wane, and Lindsey would demand continued affection as a condition of his employment, didn’t sound any more appealing. And if by some miracle a third path appeared, as the stupider parts of Aubrey’s brain hoped, wherein he and Lindsey remained inseparable in mutual bliss until the end of their days, Aubrey couldn’t conceive of a world in which he became anything more than Lindsey’s pet clerk, a filthy little secret. No. He’d moved on from that role long ago. He had no intention of returning to it now.
Then again, considering all he’d accepted from Lindsey, it looked as if he’d returned to it already.
Realising this uncomfortable truth left Aubrey with only one respectable option. He took a deep breath, gathering courage along with air, and spoke.
“Mr Althorp, I am not entirely comfortable with the position of your hand.”
Lindsey’s seductive smile fell away into an expression of terror. He snatched his hand away as if Aubrey had burned him.
“Yes, of course,” he stammered. “Please forgive-forget I said anything.”
He shot up from the desk, upsetting the ink-bottle. Grabbing for it earned him a splash of ink between his left thumb and forefinger. Aubrey, wary of his resolve in the face of physical contact, kept clear of Lindsey’s flailing.
“I should go,” Lindsey continued as he backed away toward the door. “I’ve an appointment, and I—well, best not trouble you any further. Good evening, Mr Warren.”
He gave a stiff nod and fled.
His exit left the door in motion behind him, swinging between open and shut. It stopped a hand’s-breadth shy of closed. Aubrey stared at where Lindsey had disappeared.
Without Lindsey’s hand, his thigh felt cold. This chill spread throughout the office. The empty space loomed larger than ever before. Aubrey’s breath seemed to echo in it.
He wrenched his gaze away from the door, rearranged the papers Lindsey had scattered in his flight, and returned to his bookkeeping. After the fourth elementary error, he realised his current temper was ill-suited for it, and stopped. It wouldn’t do to lose his job over something so trivial.
It then occurred to him he may have lost his job already.
Aubrey stared at his ledger, his mind elsewhere. With his advances rebuked, Lindsey had no further reason to keep Aubrey in his employ and would no doubt sack him tomorrow. Aubrey’s stomach growled as if to remind him of the hungry times ahead. The abdominal pangs came alongside an ache in his chest with no physical cause Aubrey could discern.
Able to do no more work that night, and thoroughly ashamed of himself for it, he prepared to leave. As he retrieved his coat and hat from their respective pegs, he realised Lindsey had left his own hat behind.
Aubrey’s brain struggled for a solution. The hat needed to be returned to its owner. A gentleman would return it in person—an impossible task for one so vulgar as Aubrey. Perhaps he could use an intermediary.
As he pondered his predicament, it dawned on him he’d spent the last few minutes stroking the smooth silk of the hat’s brim. He jerked his fingers away and brushed them off on his trousers. The hat remained on the hook, taunting him. Aubrey cast a helpless gaze upon it.
Surely a man so wealthy as Lindsey wouldn’t miss one hat.
Aubrey chastised himself for the thought as soon as it occurred, but it persisted nonetheless. Besides, he didn’t intend to steal the hat. Just put it away for a while. Until he knew what to do about it. That would be enough for now.
He glanced into the hall, determined it contained no one, then whipped the hat off the hook, crossed the room, flung open the bottom-right drawer of his desk, and, after a moment’s hesitation, gently laid the hat inside with a few sheets of paper balanced atop it. It was a poor disguise and would fool nobody, but for now it was the best he could do. Aubrey resolved to think no more on it, nor on Lindsey’s proposal. He’d made the right decision.
He told himself so as he put on his own hat and coat and walked home from the mill. He told himself again as he choked down his tinned supper, tasting none of it. As he tried to unbutton the shirt he’d already removed and ended up jabbing his fingertips stupidly at his bare chest; as he crawled into bed and shivered beneath a threadbare blanket powerless to keep the night’s frost from seeping into his skin; as he stared up into the darkness trying to will himself to sleep; as he twitched awake after dreaming of Lindsey naked and writhing on top of him, lying curled beside him, twining his arms around him—he told himself, over and again, he’d made the right decision.
He insisted upon the point even as he woke late, nicked himself twice shaving, missed breakfast and barely made it into the office before the bell tolled for first shift, all the while pushing the specter of Lindsey from his mind. Or trying to. It proved difficult to banish, particularly when Aubrey had to work at the very desk with Lindsey’s hat secreted away inside it. By second shift, Aubrey had added the same column of figures thrice over and found a different sum each time.
That night, sleep eluded him. His mind raced, engineering formulae replaced by the repeating recollection of his encounter with Lindsey the previous evening. Lindsey, with his regal carriage and noble ancestry, who thought nothing of tossing social protocol aside to meet Aubrey where he stood. Lindsey, with golden hair and a smile made of sunshine. Lindsey, with his deep blue eyes focused on Aubrey’s face and his hand on Aubrey’s thigh. The memory of his warm, firm touch left Aubrey’s skin afire in its wake.
Aubrey tried his utmost to think of anything but Lindsey. The only available distraction was his own prick twitching against his inner thigh.
He’d be awake until dawn if this kept up.
Aubrey let his hands wander under the hem of his nightshirt. He pulled it up to his navel and clenched it in one hand as he palmed his half-hard cock with the other. His hips bucked of their own accord. He took the hint and curled his fist tight. He imagined his hand were Lindsey’s, recalled the softness of fingers unaccustomed to hard labour. Aubrey yearned to feel it again, a velvet touch to match velvet tones, sweet nothings murmured in an aristocratic accent. He hated himself for craving the sound, but desire won out. His mind filled with remembrances of blond curls and smooth hands and crisp speech. He imagined a whisper in his ear—Aubrey—and slender fingers wrapping around his length, releasing it to trail down his thighs until the teasing touch returned northward to his cock and circled its head—
Aubrey.
That delicious, detested voice, tripping off a toff’s tongue. Surely such a tongue could be put to better use. And with his mouth occupied, Lindsey’s elegant hands would be free to...
Aubrey had but an instant to imagine Lindsey’s tongue on the slit of his cock and those fingers crooked inside him before the vision of Lindsey swallowing his whole length down overwhelmed his senses. He shot off, spending in his right hand while the left leapt to his mouth to muffle his cry of ecstasy.
The next morning dawned dim and dull. Aubrey woke late again, full of melancholy longing. He sat up and regarded his garret by Manchester’s cold, gray excuse for sunlight. From the bare floor to the peeling yellow wallpaper to the low slope of the ceiling beams, all spoke of poverty and despair. This, then, was what Aubrey deprived himself of every joy to preserve. The thought nearly drove him back to bed. But he refused to succumb. He pushed through the motions of preparing for work. While his body obeyed, his mind continued to wander.
So what if Aubrey wanted Lindsey; Aubrey was used to never getting what he wanted. And so what if Lindsey wanted Aubrey in return; as a man of means, Lindsey could have whatever he wanted whenever he pleased. He’d probably already moved on to the next easy conquest. He would forget Aubrey within the week. Aubrey resolved to forget Lindsey first. But as much as he disliked the idea of being forgotten, he found he despised the prospect of forgetting Lindsey even more.
Regardless of his emotional turmoil, Aubrey couldn’t take Lindsey up on his offer. Such a path lead to scandal, strife, and self-delusion. But he couldn’t keep on as he was, either. Twice now he’d tied his bootlaces in accidental slipknots. Hellfire and damnation, at this rate Smith would arrive at the office before him. Aubrey, ready to pull out his hair in frustration, racked his brain for a solution. He needed a third option, something between throwing himself upon Lindsey’s mercy and tossing Lindsey out of his life forever. Perhaps if he accepted Lindsey’s offer, just the once, indulged himself just enough to take the edge off his unnatural impulses, perhaps then he could return to his accustomed equilibrium.
Aubrey tied a proper knot in his laces, and stood up, squaring his narrow shoulders. Very well. He would accept.
“You’re quite the talented sulk,” said Rowena over breakfast.
She and Lindsey arrived late to the meal. Rowena had stayed out at a dinner party with Lady Pelham until the small hours of the morning. Lindsey had spent the night going over every syllable spoken, every gesture made in the course of his acquaintance with Aubrey, pulling his memories apart to find the point where it’d all gone wrong. Consequently, neither sibling was awake when their father rose at dawn to consult the elder Miller at his bank. Now, at half-past eleven, Rowena and Lindsey faced only each other.
Lindsey scowled at his eggs. He didn’t consider Rowena’s barb worth the trouble of a reply. Nothing seemed worth the trouble anymore. Getting dressed felt like an exercise in futility—Charles had managed to coax him into a fashionable outfit, but Lindsey still couldn't see the point. He had no one to impress. Certainly not Aubrey, who wasn’t looking at him now and had never looked at him the way Lindsey wished he would. The memory of Aubrey’s dark wool suit came to the forefront of Lindsey’s mind with no effort whatsoever, yet Lindsey couldn't recall what Charles had clothed him in not an hour previous. He had no idea whether he wore the periwinkle paisley waistcoat or the robin’s egg blue. He considered tipping his gaze down his front to check, then remembered he didn’t care and huffed in disgust.
He was more than disgusted; he was enraged. Not at Aubrey of course, never Aubrey, the idea was inconceivable. No, Lindsey reserved all his anger for himself. Only a fool would’ve pursued Aubrey with such relentless passion. Lindsey had probably frightened the poor man. To match the stain his folly left on his pride, a corporeal stain from Aubrey’s inkwell remained on his left hand. He'd half a mind to tattoo it in place as a permanent reminder not to transgress again.
“Has Mr Holmes failed to solve a case?”
Lindsey looked up from his hand to find Rowena smirking at him. Were he not a gentleman, he might’ve thrown his napkin in her face. He settled for glowering at her from across the table. She smiled wider.
“Nothing else could cause you so much grief,” she continued. “Is it a robbery? Murder? Blackmail?”
Lindsey crushed his napkin in his unstained fist, dropped it into his runny eggs, stood from the table, and strode out of the room.
“Lindsey!”
He quickened his steps down the hall, determined to ignore his sister's cries. Just a few hundred yards more to the stairs, and he could climb up to spend the rest of his life moping behind the locked doors of his suite.
“Lindsey Marie Althorp, will you stop!”
Unfortunately for his plans, Rowena outpaced him despite the handicap of skirts. He could’ve run for it, but his mood wasn’t dark enough to blind him to the indignity of such a scene. As such, he allowed Rowena to catch his elbow and whirl him around to face her.
“What is the matter with you?” she demanded.
Lindsey fixed his gaze on the ceiling as he contrived to put his tempestuous emotions into words. “I’ve offended my clerk.”
Rowena remained silent, which forced Lindsey to look down to see her reaction. This vexed him. It vexed him double to discover she had one hand clamped over her mouth as the corners of her eyes pinched with restrained laughter. He wrenched his arm out of her delicate grip and marched off again.
“Lindsey, wait!” she called, her voice bubbling with mirth. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me—”
“Your apologies would ring more sincere if you could refrain from giggling!” Lindsey spun to a halt to fix her with his fiercest glare. She ignored it.
“Will you join me in the morning room for reconciliation?” she said. “I do so hate quarrelling in the hall.”
Upon reflection, Lindsey thought her suggestion prudent, and followed her there.
“Now,” she said once the doors had shut and they stood together in an otherwise empty chamber. “What’s this about your clerk?”
“I believe I’ve spoken to you of Mr Warren before?”
“Often and at length, yes.”
“Then permit me to bore you again.”
She inclined her head in a polite bow. He launched into a summary of his recent activity—acquiring the factory, meeting Aubrey, attempting to deepen their bond beyond what typically existed between employer and employee. Lindsey thought Rowena might do more than quirk an eyebrow at that last point, but she seemed far less surprised than he himself had felt at the discovery of his peculiar proclivities. Undaunted, he pressed on, culminating in a stuttered description of his final conversation with Aubrey.
Rowena remained silent for a minute or so after Lindsey concluded his tragic tale, deep in thought, with one hand held in a fist under her chin.
“What were his exact words?” she asked.
Lindsey blushed to repeat them, but did so regardless.
“‘I am not entirely comfortable with the position of your hand,’” she echoed. A small frown creased her brow. “I suppose we must take him at his word. There's nothing else for it but time. You’ll forget him eventually.”
“Forget Aubrey!?”
Rowena’s left eyebrow reached new heights. Lindsey belatedly realised his error.
“He’s ‘Aubrey’ now, is he?” said Rowena.
Lindsey said nothing. Rowena tipped her head forward to pinch the bridge of her nose between two slender fingers.
“While I dread the answer,” she said, her tone grim, “I must assume you are ‘Lindsey’ to him?”
“Until yesterday.”
Rowena sighed and fixed her brother with a hard look. “Forget him. Don’t sack him—”
“I could never!”
Rowena continued as if she hadn't heard him. “—it’s already scandalous. Sacking him now would only set tongues wagging. He remains employed, you never set foot in the factory again—no, that’s even more suspicious. Go on as though none of it ever happened. Don’t speak to him unless absolutely necessary, which, given the disparity between your respective stations, should be ‘not at all’. Throw yourself into theatre and have an affair with an actor or brood into your novels, I care not, but forget him. And for God’s sake, be discreet.”
“Rowena—!”
She cut him off. “Do you understand what’s at stake? It might not be a capital offense any longer, but you’re hardly suited for prison.”
Lindsey jerked back, stunned. “What are you implying?”
“You must know whatever you desired between yourself and Mr Warren is illegal.”
“Yes, but Aubrey would never—!”
“Mr Warren,” said Rowena, enunciating the name with ferocity, “is an unknown quantity. I cannot assume what he may or may not do. Why couldn’t you fall for any of the dozens of grooms I threw into your path?”
“The grooms you...?” Lindsey blinked. “What?”
Rowena gave him a disappointed look. “Surely you don’t imagine I hired only the handsomest and most discreet young men for my own sake?”
“Didn’t you?”
Rowena let her face fall forward into her pretty palms, muffling her voice. “Oh, Lindsey, you perfect idiot.”
Lindsey struggled to maintain his composure. “If you’re suggesting Aubrey could be replaced by any random gentleman you chose for me, you are quite mistaken!”
“It hardly matters now.” Rowena lifted her head and fixed him with an expression of cool composure. “He has rejected your suit. Accept his decision with grace, forget him, and move on as you see fit. Should you seek to vent your frustrations, I can suggest several accommodating avenues.”
“No, thank you,” Lindsey replied curtly.
“Then the matter is closed. Good day, brother.”
She swept out of the room without waiting for his reply.
Lindsey wished she’d left him in the library. There he might have found some distraction from his misery. Instead, he stood staring into space for a few minutes, then sat chin-in-hand in an understuffed armchair and stared at the wall for many minutes more. He wasn’t brooding. No matter what Rowena would say if she’d stayed to watch him.
“Sir?”
Lindsey whipped his head around to the doorway, where Charles waited. “Yes?”
“Telegram for you, sir.”
Lindsey took it and dismissed him with a nod. After Charles had gone, he opened it.
Mr Althorp
Warren
Please come to mill at 9.
Lindsey frowned at it, certain he’d misread. Aubrey wanted to see him—impossible. He’d made his opinion of Lindsey very clear at their last meeting. Perhaps something had gone wrong at the mill, though in that case the telegram would've come from Mr Jennings. If it wasn’t an invitation for a liaison, nor notice of an emergency, only one possibility remained.
Blackmail.
Lindsey’s heart plummeted to the pit of his stomach. He supposed Aubrey’s presumption should enrage him, but all he could muster was profound disappointment. He’d thought better of Aubrey. Just yesterday, he’d have given him anything he desired.
And he still would, good sense be damned.
Aubrey spent the day in dread. Smith left the office at the unusually late hour of four. Mr Jennings likewise stayed late, departing at quarter-to-nine. Aubrey’s heart stuttered in his throat as he watched Mr Jennings gather up his articles. He waited in dread for Mr Jennings to stop at the door and demand Aubrey leave with him—or worse yet, encounter Lindsey on his way out.
But neither occurred. Mr Jennings sighed and shook his head at the sight of Aubrey bent over three ledgers and left without further comment.
Part of Aubrey’s anxiety left with him. The rest—fear of his telegram’s interception by third parties, fear of Lindsey arriving with the police to arrest Aubrey for indecent solicitation—remained to prevent him from accomplishing anything in the quarter-hour between Mr Jennings’s departure and Lindsey’s earliest expected arrival. He endeavoured regardless.
The sun had set hours ago. Aubrey almost forgot what light was. Then, at ten-past, Lindsey appeared on the threshold and reminded him.
“Mr Warren,” he gasped, breathless, as if he’d run all the way from London. “You wished to see me?”
For once, he wasn’t smiling. Aubrey suppressed a surge of pity.
“Mr Althorp,” he said. He’d risen from his desk the instant Lindsey arrived. Now he wavered, uncertain if he should approach him, or if he had any right to. He rapped his knuckles against a ledger. “Please come in.”
Lindsey hesitated, then stepped into the office, his fingers clenched tight around the brim of his hat.
Aubrey’s pity won out. He abandoned the shelter of the desk and came forward to stand within arm’s reach of Lindsey. “Regarding the subject of your hand on my thigh...”
Lindsey’s eyes flew wide. Aubrey realised his opening could be interpreted as a threat, and rushed to conclude his proposal.
“I’ve given it some thought,” he said, stumbling over syllables in his haste, “and I find myself far more amicable towards the suggestion than my previous answer may have led you to believe.”
Lindsey stared at him. Aubrey feared he’d overstepped, but then a slow smile crept across Lindsey’s features.
“Then,” said Lindsey, “might I make another attempt?”
He ended his inquiry by biting his lip. The sight stole Aubrey’s breath. The best he could manage in reply was a nod.
With timidity Aubrey found painful to witness, Lindsey lifted his hand to Aubrey’s cheek. His fingertips brushed against Aubrey’s jaw, their touch even softer than Aubrey had imagined.
Lindsey halved the distance between them, then shut his eyes, tilted his head, and leaned in to close the final breach.
Lightning seemed to strike the office as Lindsey’s kiss made contact. Aubrey fought to stay upright despite the shock.
The kiss remained chaste until Aubrey took Lindsey’s lower lip between his own, drawing a gasp of delighted discovery from Lindsey’s throat. Aubrey relished the sound. He cupped the back of Lindsey’s head, pulling him in, determined to wring more pleasure from him.
He got his wish soon enough, he and Lindsey entangling like youths in the throes of a newfound passion. The force of Lindsey’s affections pushed Aubrey back against the desk. Aubrey responded in kind, his hands slipping under Lindsey’s jacket and shoving it off his shoulders. The sight of Lindsey’s upper arms in nothing more than shirtsleeves made him want to tear the jacket in twain, desperate to feel the warm, solid flesh beneath.
Over those same magnificent shoulders, Aubrey could see the office door. It hung open a crack. All passion fled in the face of his horror.
“Stop!” he hissed, shoving Lindsey’s sternum with both palms.
He’d expected to have to fight further to escape Lindsey’s amorous clutches, but to his astonishment, Lindsey fell back the instant the command left his lips—looking confused and a little hurt, but not angry.
Aubrey had no time soothe his hurts or feel relief at the absence of rage. All his perception narrowed on the crack and the hallway beyond. He listened for any sign of possible witnesses. Hearing nothing, he stepped away from Lindsey—despite the cacophonous protests of his own fevered desire—to the door. He pushed it further open and peered up and down the corridor. It remained dark, silent, empty. No noise but the pounding of his panicked heart. He shut the door with a soft click.
“This cannot continue,” he said.
An indignant sound of protest came from behind him. He turned to find the same look of confusion on Lindsey’s face, though his hurt seemed to have progressed to anguish.
“Here, I mean!” Aubrey corrected himself as he hurried back to Lindsey’s side, taking one of those magnificent arms in his grip. His mind went momentarily blank as he felt the strong sinew beneath the fine linen, then he shook his head clear and continued. “Here and now, impossible, but...”
“Somewhere more private?” Lindsey finished, a hopeful smile returning to his handsome features.
“Yes!” Aubrey agreed, though rack his brains as he might, he couldn’t think of anywhere they could go. The local hotels couldn’t be trusted. His own lodgings shamed him.
“Tomorrow?” said Lindsey, apparently untroubled by Aubrey’s conundrum. “It’s Saturday. You won’t have to work, will you?”
“A half-day,” said Aubrey. “But—”
“Then perhaps you could arrive in Wiltshire on the eight-o’clock train.”
Aubrey blinked. “Pardon?”
“It would give me time to open up the house before you arrive. No one’s there at present. We’d have total privacy. And you're welcome to stay the night.”
Lindsey looked very pleased with his plan as he waited for Aubrey’s input. Aubrey struggled to wrap his mind around it.
“Forgive me,” he choked out, “but do I understand... you’re inviting me up to your house?”
“I believe I am, yes,” said Lindsey with a cheeky grin.
Aubrey couldn’t help it—he gawked. Goggled, even, at Lindsey’s devil-may-care assessment of their predicament. “Wouldn’t it attract suspicion?”
“I don’t see how,” said Lindsey. “What could be more natural than for me to discuss business with a clerk from my mill? And if I choose to do so in my own home rather than the office, why, then these are clearly urgent matters indeed, requiring utmost secrecy. It would be terribly rude and suspicious for anyone to inquire further. Do you accept?”
A rational and right-thinking man would take the time to weigh the risks and rewards of the proposal.
“God, yes!” Aubrey replied in a rushed exhale.
The Wiltshire train platform was deserted when Aubrey arrived. By the gaslight leaking out the station windows, he saw a sleek, black-varnished carriage with a silver crest painted on the door, waiting alone in the road.
The coachman sitting on the box caught Aubrey’s stare and nodded down at another man who stood ready by the wheels with his hands folded. The second man turned to Aubrey and began to approach.
“Mr Warren?” he said, his voice carrying in the still night air.
“Yes,” Aubrey confirmed. He would’ve asked the man’s name in return, but said man interrupted him by reaching for the messenger bag slung over Aubrey’s shoulder.
“I’ll take that for you, sir,” he said when Aubrey didn’t relinquish it.
The bag contained two ledgers from the office, chosen at random to represent the “business” Aubrey and Lindsey were supposedly conducting. The man gave no sign he found either the bag or Aubrey’s hesitance suspicious.
Aubrey remained wary. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”
The dim light didn’t give Aubrey a good look at the stranger’s expression as he stepped back, but his tone, when he spoke, sounded apologetic. “Charles, sir.”
“Is this Mr Althorp’s carriage, Mr Charles?”
“Just Charles, sir. And yes, it belongs to the Althorp estate. Mr Althorp sent it down for you.”
Aubrey, who’d assumed he’d walk from the station to Lindsey’s house, tried to suppress his instinctive panic at the change in plan. “That’s... very kind of him.”
“If I may, sir?”
Charles reached for the bag again. Aubrey let him have it. With the bag under one arm, Charles performed a brief yet impressive balancing act to open the carriage door with his other hand. Aubrey climbed into the carriage and came face-to-face with Lindsey.
“Good evening,” said the latter, unable or unwilling to disguise his grin.
The door shut behind Aubrey before he could respond in kind.
The carriage ride was equal parts luxurious and unbearable. The springs ensured few if any bumps in the road made it up to the plush velvet seats within. The matching curtains kept out the night’s chill. Nevertheless, Aubrey’s discomfort only grew.
Matters had cooled in the hours since his office encounter with Lindsey. Now, at leisure to enjoy each other’s company in a more secluded setting, Lindsey acted shy. The barest touch of their knees seemed all he could initiate.
Aubrey counted the seconds in his head as the carriage lurched off. When he reached a hundred and twenty, his patience wore out. He took Lindsey’s jaw in hand and kissed him. Lindsey rose to the occasion in every sense of the phrase.
“It’s an hour’s ride,” he gasped into Aubrey’s ear as they caught their breath. “Do we have time...?”
An odd question. Most men Aubrey’d known hadn’t needed half as many minutes. Nevertheless, he assured Lindsey an hour was plenty, and let his hand slip beneath Lindsey’s jacket.
Perhaps it was only his own fevered imagination, but Aubrey swore he could feel the warmth of Lindsey’s flesh through his silk waistcoat. His fingers trailed farther down to trace the outline of Lindsey’s erection. One had to admire the sheer heft of the thing. He couldn’t wait to get his hands around it.
Despite the thick wool barrier, Lindsey squirmed under his touch. Needful noises escaped his throat. Aubrey, though he enjoyed the display, supposed he ought to give the poor man a reprieve.
He started unbuttoning Lindsey’s trousers. The jostling carriage and Lindsey’s rolling hips hampered him. Lindsey himself had his wrist in his mouth, biting it to keep quiet. Aubrey caught Lindsey’s wrist in one hand, kissed it, then gently pushed it aside to recapture his lips in his own.
Lindsey cried out into Aubrey's mouth. His back arched, his hips bucked, his whole frame spasmed—then he fell back, limp, panting, his eyes fluttering shut.
Aubrey, still half in Lindsey’s lap, stared at him. Surely he hadn’t...
“Are you all right?” he said when Lindsey failed to show any sign of life beyond his ragged breaths.
“What?” said Lindsey. “I’m... yes, I’m fine.” He laughed a little and opened his eyes, his cheeks flush with exertion. “Though I'm afraid I've quite ruined these trousers.”
Aubrey knew he was good, but he didn’t think he was that good. Fortunately, Lindsey took no offense to his shocked silence.
“Kiss me?” said Lindsey with a dazed smile. “It’ll revive me, I think. Like a prince in a fairy tale.”
Aubrey thought a lover’s embrace revived fairy tale princesses, not princes. He kissed Lindsey anyway.
They spent the rest of the journey returning their rumpled selves to a state of respectability. The carriage pulled up to the house the same instant Lindsey smoothed the last ruffled curl of his hair back into place.
Aubrey stepped down from the carriage. Ahead, he couldn’t see any proof of a house apart from a few windows twinkling with candlelight. Their distance from each other suggested a structure whose size rivaled the Rook Mill. Intimidating, to say the least. He flinched as Lindsey touched his elbow.
“Sorry!” said Lindsey, dropping his hand.
Aubrey wanted to explain himself, to have Lindsey’s comforting touch return, but just then two small globes of light appeared in the distance, bouncing down from the presumed house. As they approached, Aubrey realised it was one servant carrying two lanterns.
Lindsey spoke to his staff—Charles, coachman, and newcomer alike—in smooth, self-assured, warm tones. In the space of a few words, too quick for Aubrey to catch, he had the coachman on his way to the carriage-house, the newcomer handing one lamp off to Charles and following the coachman with the other, and Charles leading the way up to the house with Aubrey’s bag on his shoulder.
Through a pair of doors large enough to admit an elephant cavalry, Aubrey entered the house. He found himself facing a massive staircase, as wide as three London streets, in a hall that echoed like a tomb. Candles in wall sconces provided more flickering shadows than light.
“Shall I put this in the library for the morning, sir?” said Charles.
He’d spoken to Lindsey, who looked to Aubrey.
“That’s fine,” said Aubrey, not so concerned with his bag as with the house looming around him.
Lindsey nodded to Charles, who disappeared into the shadows. The lamp went with him.
Just as Aubrey’s anxieties reached their zenith, he caught a candlelit glimpse of Lindsey’s fond smile. This time, Aubrey put his hand on Lindsey’s elbow. Lindsey’s grin shone white in the dark.
Lindsey led Aubrey up the stair and down uncounted winding corridors until they reached a gaslit antechamber full of bookshelves, armchairs, and other accoutrements. A tall door stood at the far end. Lindsey opened it and revealed the massive bedroom beyond.
The bed alone, a great four-posted thing with crimson curtains and polished cherrywood feet carved into lion’s paws bigger than a man’s skull, would take up most of Aubrey’s garret. A mountain of pillows lay at the head. The scarlet glow of the lamps glinted off the wardrobe handles, the drawer knobs, and the organic curves of the lamps themselves, all gold.
Aubrey stopped on the threshold. Lindsey strode into the room as if he’d been born to it—because he was born to it, Aubrey reminded himself. Aubrey knew he should follow. He meant to. But his legs refused to obey. He didn’t belong here.
Lindsey, halfway across the room, realised he'd lost his bedfellow and looked back with a puzzled expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” Aubrey replied too quickly, still frozen.
Lindsey’s concerned look continued for another moment, then in three long strides he returned to Aubrey’s side and opened his mouth as if to speak.
Aubrey, knowing he couldn't answer whatever question Lindsey intended to pose, darted up to cover his open mouth with his own. Lindsey’s surprise proved no match for Aubrey’s passion. As they kissed, Lindsey spun them both around so he could shut to door behind them. With the door locked, Aubrey had no compunctions against steering Lindsey to the bed. They fell on it in a heap.
In all his experience, Aubrey hadn’t yet found a way to make untying shoes and flinging them aside look enticing. But once they were gone, he could slide his hands up Lindsey’s long, well-formed calves to unhook the garters holding up his socks, and linger on the firm muscles.
This done, Aubrey began untying Lindsey’s cravat. In turn, Aubrey fumbled with Aubrey’s necktie. Their wrists tangled. Aubrey bit back a frustrated oath. Lindsey laughed and brought him up for another kiss.
Cravat, tie, jackets, and waistcoats were tossed to the floor. Lindsey’s hands fell to the buttons of Aubrey’s shirt. Aubrey stayed out of it lest they tangle again. Unbuttoned, his shirt slipped off his shoulders. His undershirt went over his head and left him bare-chested beneath Lindsey’s hungry gaze. No, not hungry. Curious. A look Aubrey hadn't seen in years. He coloured under its scrutiny.
Lindsey smiled shyly up at him and kissed his collarbone. It flickered through Aubrey’s touched-starved frame like an electric current. Before he realised it, he’d clutched Lindsey to his chest. But Lindsey, who wriggled up and out of his grip to kiss him again, didn’t seem to notice anything odd about Aubrey’s behaviour.
Aubrey ignored the trembling of his own fingers as he unbuttoned Lindsey’s shirt. He’d tired of self-denial; he wanted to see the flesh he’d dreamt of, to realise the fantasy.
Lindsey did not disappoint.
Underneath the fine linen lay a lean, lithe body. Sporting exercise had developed the muscles overlapping his ribs and outlining his abdomen. Aubrey traced them with his fingertips, resisting the urge to follow with his tongue. Lindsey shivered under his touch. Aubrey wanted to make him quake.
He hooked a finger through the top buttonhole of Lindsey’s trousers. Lindsey’s hips bucked. His simultaneous gasp suggested spontaneity. Aubrey, far too desperate himself, tore Lindsey’s fly open and wrestled his waistband off his hips. By the time he reached into Lindsey’s drawers to claim his cock, it was hard as iron. Aubrey felt much the same. He would’ve disrobed, but Lindsey pulled him in for another ravenous kiss which left Aubrey grinding his own clothed cock against Lindsey’s bare hips.
“Please—!” Aubrey heard himself beg as Lindsey drew back. He managed to shut up before he said anything more incriminating.
Lindsey took the hint. His clever fingers made quick work of Aubrey’s trousers.
Naked at last, Aubrey set upon Lindsey with the single-minded fury of a hound scenting a hare. He fumbled his cock into place to slide against Lindsey’s with the lubrication their feverish undressing had provided. The slick stroke of hard prick on prick made both men moan. Yet Aubrey needed more.
“Do you have pomade?” he murmured into Lindsey’s ear. ”Something to ease the way?”
“The way to what?”
Aubrey stopped—the kissing, the groping, the grinding, everything. He could’ve sworn Lindsey was joking, save for his expression of total confusion. Lindsey’s premature release, his uncertain caresses, his present bafflement, all facts led to one conclusion.
“You’ve never done this before, have you,” Aubrey said flatly.
Lindsey’s lips parted, but no answer emerged. The sudden scarlet hue of his cheeks and ears were answer enough.
“How!?” Aubrey cried before his better judgment could prevent him. “You went to public school, for God’s sake!”
Lindsey’s eyebrows swooped down from the heights of surprise to a defensive knot. “What the devil does that have to do with anything?”
Everything, Aubrey would’ve replied, but he’d not spent months fantasising about their encounter only to sabotage it now. He forced a smile and leaned down to run his thumb over Lindsey’s sharp cheekbone. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
Lindsey’s blush of shame faded away to the flush of healthy exertion. “You don't mind, then?”
“Not in the slightest,” Aubrey assured him. “Though we’ll need some sort of grease to finish what we’ve started. I think you'll enjoy it immensely.”
He rolled his hips to give Lindsey a hint. Their cocks slid together in his fist.
“Chest of drawers!” Lindsey gasped. “Top left!”
Aubrey leapt to retrieve it. As he returned to the bed, Lindsey sat up.
“What do I do?”
Aubrey straddled his lap. “Just lie back, and I’ll take care of everything.”
Lindsey complied with a look of eager anticipation.
Truth told, Aubrey felt relieved it’d worked out this way. Lindsey’s prick wasn't the largest he’d ever seen, but damn near to it, and Aubrey hadn't taken a cock of any kind in years. Far better for Lindsey to let Aubrey set the pace than to have Lindsey flip Aubrey onto his face and ravage him from behind with a cock that size. Aubrey banished the image from his mind as soon as he'd conjured it, lest his nerves get the better of him. If this was Lindsey’s first time, Aubrey wanted to make it memorable.
Lindsey watched with open curiosity as Aubrey dipped two fingers into the pomade and slid one inside himself. He kept at it, adding more grease and a second finger. When he thought he might be ready, he slathered Lindsey’s prick with it. Lindsey bucked into his slippery fist. Aubrey grinned, then pulled himself up, arranged Lindsey’s prick in line with his hole, and leaned back. The head slid around the point of entry. Aubrey would’ve liked to tease himself with it, but Lindsey’s fascinated patience wouldn’t hold forever, so he guided his cock inside.
Both men gasped—Aubrey at the welcome return of a familiar sensation, Lindsey at the discovery of pleasures he hadn’t dared dream of. His eyes fluttered shut.
“Like that, do you?” said Aubrey, unable to keep the smile off his face.
Lindsey replied with a helpless laugh. “Yes, quite.”
It took a few more shuddering breaths for him to gather the will to open his eyes. He tried to sit up, reaching for Aubrey’s face. But Aubrey shook his head, so he lay back again, content to wait for whatever came next.
It astonished Aubrey to find Lindsey so biddable. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a partner willing to consider his needs, much less let him take the reins.
Aubrey pushed out, opening himself up to let in a few more inches of Lindsey’s massive cock. His insides burned as they stretched. He held off, torn between impaling himself and watching the look on Lindsey’s face as he experienced it for the first time, or selfishly taking his prick at a glacial pace to drag out the marvellous feeling of being filled. The latter course seemed safer. Besides, judging by the groans arising from Lindsey’s throat, Lindsey enjoyed it either way.
Inch by inch, Aubrey sank onto Lindsey’s cock, till the tip grazed a certain sensitive spot inside him and his own prick twitched in response. There. That was what he’d missed all these years. A broken moan escaped him.
“Are you all right?” said Lindsey. His hands came up from where they’d rested atop Aubrey’s thighs to stroke his hips as if soothing a skittish beast.
“Yes,” Aubrey hissed through gritted teeth. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t make a very convincing case with his eyes screwed shut, sweat beading on his brow, and his legs trembling to balance in his precarious position.
Lindsey frowned. “Are you sure? Because you look a bit—”
Aubrey clenched around Lindsey’s prick. Lindsey yelped. Aubrey grinned.
“See?” he said, then took a steadying breath and bore down. His arse met Lindsey’s hipbones in one slick thrust.
Lindsey let out a blasphemous exclamation. Aubrey shuddered, gasping to restore the breath he’d driven from his body. To have Lindsey’s whole length inside him—! He’d be lying if he called it painless, but it was the satisfied ache of accomplishment. The steady pressure on that certain point inside him helped considerably. He’d take full advantage of it soon. For now, he felt content to wait, breathe, and adjust.
And to soak in the look Lindsey gave him, which seemed rather as if he’d lassoed the moon or caught the stars in a net or some other poetic nonsense.
As it so happened, Lindsey’s command of poetic nonsense in thought or speech left him as his eyes rolled back into his head. All awareness of the outside world was lost. Engulfed in soft, tight heat, his whole essence concentrated in his groin. “Exquisite” was the word he’d use for it when he regained his vocabulary. At present, he had only wild cries. He bit his lip to silence them.
In the midst of one such muffled shout, Aubrey bent forward—Lindsey’s cock slid out a few inches, and by Jove, did Lindsey appreciate the sensation—and kissed him. Lindsey returned it hungrily. His hands rose to catch Aubrey’s jaw, but Aubrey pulled back out of his reach. Ganymede teasing Tantalus.
All Lindsey could do was clutch Aubrey’s waist and hold on for the ride. It didn’t take long to come to its natural conclusion.
“Aubrey,” Lindsey gasped. “I—I’m afraid I must—”
“Hold on,” Aubrey groaned. “Just a little longer, please—”
He fell off talking and frigged himself desperately, his cock slipping from his fist in his haste. Before he could grasp it again, Lindsey’s hand was upon him. Long, soft fingers twined around his twitching prick. They resolved into a fist and gently tugged. Aubrey almost sobbed in frustration.
“Harder,” he begged, bucking into Lindsey’s grip. It was almost enough, he was nearly there. “More, for God’s sake—!”
Lindsey thrust into him, his hips driving upward, his hand pulling rhythmic and rough on Aubrey’s cock. Then Lindsey rose up to claim Aubrey’s lips in a devouring kiss, and—
Aubrey cried out into Lindsey’s mouth. His hands scrambled for purchase on Lindsey’s back, nails drawing furrows in virgin skin. His back arched as ecstasy shot from his groin through his entire body—then he sagged, trembling, half-laughing in relief.
Lindsey stroked him through his crisis, though his own thrust grew erratic. He balanced on the knife’s edge of release. Then Aubrey lifted his head from where it’d fallen to rest on Lindsey’s shoulder and whispered in his ear—
“It’s all right. You can come now. Come for me.”
—and he went off with a strangled yell and fireworks exploding behind his eyelids as he buried himself in Aubrey’s flesh. He fell back onto the mattress, Aubrey collapsing in a heap atop him, both men gasping to recover their spent breath.
When the mindless euphoria faded, Aubrey grew conscious of his semen drying between their bodies and the discomfort his weight must exert on Lindsey’s lean frame. He started to roll off him, but Lindsey’s hands roamed north to trace lazy lines over Aubrey’s ribs, and up further still, until his arms settled around Aubrey’s shoulders in a gentle embrace—all with his eyes closed and a sleepy smile on his lips.
Aubrey wished he could feel even half as assured. Though he could break Lindsey’s hold with a casual roll of his shoulders, he felt trapped.
Fucking, he understood. Intimately. To hold a cock, to suck it, and take it with professional ease, he knew well.
But this?
Lindsey, half-asleep and blissfully unaware of Aubrey’s dilemma, softly stroked his sweat-slicked back.
Aubrey fought the panic rising in his chest. Most men would’ve shoved him off by now, washed their pricks, and left with no more of a backward glance than to say, “Same time next week, then?” As for those who stayed, who called him “beloved” and swore everlasting, smothering affection—he’d’ve done anything to get them out of his bed faster.
Of course, this wasn’t his bed.
He considered pulling out of Lindsey’s embrace and slipping out the door. But the bed was soft, and Lindsey’s touch softer still, and a comfortable warmth surrounded him.
He supposed he could stand it a little longer.
By slow increments, Aubrey repositioned himself half on his side, half on Lindsey. A contented hum issued from Lindsey’s lips. Then his eyes opened. His sleepy smile remained for an instant before his brow knitted in concern.
“You all right?”
Aubrey hurried to rearrange his own discomfited expression the moment Lindsey opened his eyes, but it seemed he hadn’t been quick enough. He plastered an easy grin over his anxieties and affected an airy tone. “Of course.”
Lindsey didn’t appear convinced. His mouth opened. Aubrey, dreading further questions, put a stop to it with a kiss.
Thus distracted, Lindsey gave up his inquiries. He pulled away to nuzzle at Aubrey’s jaw and on down his throat. Aubrey allowed himself to relax a fraction under the quiet, undemanding affection.
The downy duvet drew up over his shoulders. Another kiss, this time to his collarbone, then Lindsey’s forehead came to rest upon it and seemed content to stay there. Aubrey let his own hand rise to come through Lindsey’s well-tousled curls, untangling and twining them through his fingers.
He could get used to this, he thought drowsily.
He wouldn’t, of course. Only a fool would dare to.
But he could.
Lindsey awoke to sunshine, birdsong, and absolute bliss. At first he didn’t recall why. Then he rolled over and beheld Aubrey, curled in on himself like a cat, sheets clenched tight in his fists.
Even closed in sleep, dark bruises shadowed his eyes. His black hair fell half on the pillow, half over his face. With no expression to pull at its edges, his perfect mouth took on a bow shape, turned down at the corners.
Lindsey reached out to smooth a dark strand back into place. Aubrey’s brow flinched, but he slumbered on oblivious. If he didn’t look peaceful, at least he appeared less troubled. Either way, he remained the handsomest creature Lindsey knew.
He felt content to lie beside him for a thousand years, but his growling stomach demanded otherwise. Lindsey slipped out of bed and into his dressing gown, pulled the bedclothes back up around Aubrey’s ivory shoulders, rang for Charles, and stepped into the hall to make arrangements for tea.
By the time the tray arrived, Lindsey had washed up, though he’d yet to exchange his dressing gown for more respectable attire. He spent another quarter-hour sitting up in bed, nibbling a biscuit and rereading his well-worn copy of Lady Audley’s Secret by the sunlight streaming in through the windows.
One of these sunbeams crept over Aubrey’s face at half-past ten. His awakening groan drew Lindsey’s attention from the book.
“Good morning!” said Lindsey as Aubrey shook the sleep from his head.
Aubrey glanced up at Lindsey as if he’d only just noticed him. As soon as they locked eyes, Aubrey looked away. “...’Morning.”
Lindsey’s smile waned. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Aubrey seemed ashamed. Discomfited, at the very least. Lindsey found the idea of Aubrey’s discomfort unbearable.
“There’s tea,” he said, thinking perhaps hunger formed the root of Aubrey’s ills. “And toast, if you’re so inclined. It’s all warm yet, I’ve kept it covered.”
Aubrey turned away and reached over the edge of the bed for his clothes with a mumbled, “Thank you.”
“...Or muffins?” said Lindsey. “I can arrange for muffins if you’d rather.”
“Toast is fine.”
Lindsey set his book aside. Perhaps Aubrey wasn’t hungry after all. Something else must’ve upset him. Before Lindsey could inquire, Aubrey sat up.
“Do you have—” Aubrey still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “—I mean, is there a...?”
“Lavatory?” Lindsey guessed.
Aubrey nodded, his face pale as skimmed milk.
“Through there,” said Lindsey, pointing at the door to his private bath.
“Thanks.”
Aubrey rushed off, pulling on his trousers as he fled. Lindsey chastised himself for failing to offer a dressing gown.
“Are you all right?” he called after Aubrey.
The door slammed shut.
Lindsey’s lavatory was a massive marvel of engineering and a testament to the aesthetic triumph of marble. Aubrey noted it only in passing. He sat down hard on the edge of the hip-bath, nearly slipped off, and took gravity’s hint and settled down on the cold marble floor to consider his situation.
The aristocratic vice had come full circle. It’d trickled down through society’s ranks to the lowest rung until he, pathetic urchin, doubled back up the ladder to retake one of the upper class. Aubrey would’ve laughed if he didn’t feel so ill. For God’s sake, what was he doing here? Who did he think he was fooling?
Someone knocked on the door. Aubrey jumped up, scrambling for purchase on the tiles.
“Aubrey?” The thick wood muffled Lindsey’s voice.
Aubrey coughed out the squeak in his throat. “Yes?”
“I’ve a dressing gown for when you come out, if you need it.”
Aubrey detected a note of disappointment in his tone. Perhaps Lindsey expected last night’s festivities to continue through the morning. Aubrey thought he might be amenable to the notion, but it wasn’t his place to suggest it. His place involved gathering his effects and getting out before the situation became embarrassing. Assuming it wasn’t embarrassing already. Aubrey had a sinking feeling they’d passed the point of embarrassment long ago and were well underway to total humiliation. Still, he managed to summon up a small, “Thanks,” as he hurriedly cleaned himself up and threw on his clothes.
When he opened the door, Lindsey stood on the other side, dressed for the day, leaving against the bedpost with a silk dressing gown thrown over one arm.
“Could I interest you in breakfast, at least?” he said.
Aubrey, who’d given serious thought to bolting past him, paused.
“It’s downstairs,” Lindsey continued with an apologetic air. “I could have it brought up if you prefer.”
Aubrey swallowed. “Downstairs is fine.”
Lindsey grinned, tossed the dressing gown on the bed, and led the way down.
The country house had seemed grand in the night. Daylight made it resplendent.
The breakfast room alone—an entire room set aside for a single meal—was thrice as large as Aubrey’s garret. French windows ran from floor to ceiling along the south-facing wall, wringing out every drop of sunshine from the overcast sky. The eggshell wallpaper reflected the light, doubling it, giving the whole room a warm glow. The table could sit six comfortably, ten in the settings Aubrey was used to, yet only four chairs surrounded it. Eggs, buttered toast, bacon, sausage, ham, soft rolls, marmalade, jams, and a tea service covered the mahogany sideboard. Enough for an army, laid out to feed two men.
“Help yourself,” said Lindsey, as if this were normal. Aubrey reminded himself that, for Lindsey, it was normal. Absurdly normal.
Aubrey took what he considered a reasonable portion of eggs and toast. He ignored the temptations of bacon and ham. Best not get used to such luxuries. It would make it harder when it all came to an end.
“Would you like to see the house?” asked Lindsey after a few moments of silent consumption.
Aubrey lowered his egg-laden fork. The mill didn’t require him on Sundays, but that was no excuse for sloth. A man focused on self-improvement would’ve gone home and studied The Engineer. Yet all Aubrey could focus on was the smile lighting up Lindsey’s handsome features. “Certainly.”
Lindsey looked out the window over Aubrey’s shoulder. “The weather’s fine enough. Shall we start with the gardens and work our way in?”
Aubrey supposed so, and said as much.
The air outdoors had a crisp quality. Aubrey indulged in deep breaths as Lindsey pointed out features of interest. Aubrey wasn’t sure if Lindsey meant to impress or inform him. He was impressed despite himself.
“The house was properly built in 1731,” Lindsey began. “Before that it was little more than a hunting lodge. Capability Brown designed the hedge maze, though we’ve let the topiary go since then. Would you care to see it?”
Aubrey hadn’t the first idea who Capability Brown was, but he acquiesced to the plan and followed Lindsey across the property.
The hedge maze, with twelve-foot walls casting impenetrable shadows, gave him pause. Uphill from the house, its elevated position kept its coils hidden. The air of a trap hung around the entrance.
“It’s not as complicated as it looks.” Lindsey stepped into it and looked back at Aubrey. “Just keep making right-hand turns ‘til you reach the centre.”
“What’s in the centre?” Aubrey asked as he caught him up.
“I suppose I ought to preserve the surprise. But since you asked: a folly.”
Aubrey didn’t wish to appear as much of a fool as he felt for not knowing what “folly” meant in this context, and so kept silent.
The path twisted, turned, and forked, yet Lindsey’s stride never wavered. He kept his head high and his eyes forward. Aubrey, on the other hand, had a devil of a time keeping his own head from swiveling back and forth between the dark alcoves looming on either side. Some contained shaggy green figures—the promised topiary—most overgrown into an unrecognisable state, though Aubrey thought one upright creature with two fuzzy antennae might have been a rabbit.
Aubrey began wondering if they hadn’t taken a wrong turn at some point. Then Lindsey, with a cheeky grin, brought him around the final corner and into what he could only suppose was the folly.
Six gleaming white marble pillars supported a domed roof over the larger-than-life-sized statue of a woman wearing a sheet and carrying a bow with a nocked arrow. She stood upon her pedestal with a hunter’s readiness, her head turned from the altar before her towards the wall of the maze, as if she’d heard something over her shoulder.
“Temple to Diana,” said Lindsey when Aubrey looked to him for explanation. “It’s not original to the maze. Father had it installed as a wedding present for Mother. Rowena and I used to picnic on the altar.”
“Rowena?”
“My sister.” Lindsey stepped up to the folly as if it were no more remarkable than a public water pump. “Elder sister. Keeps me in line. You’d like her, I think.”
Aubrey, about to follow Lindsey into the false temple, paused mid-step. None of the other men he’d fucked had tried to introduce him to their families. He’d certainly never met any sisters.
Lindsey looked back at him and, seeing his hesitation, added, “It’s terribly pagan, I know, but I assure you it’s quite harmless.”
Aubrey laughed and approached the folly. Up close, he could admire how the sculpted marble mimicked flesh and falling cloth. He could also admire the smooth curve of Lindsey’s throat as Lindsey craned his neck to point out the constellation map engraved in the ceiling.
On their way out, the path forked. Aubrey tugged Lindsey towards the shadowy right-hand path.
“That’s a dead end,” Lindsey said, a note of apology in his voice.
“I know,” said Aubrey.
Then he pulled him into the alcove for a kiss, and had the satisfaction of leading a dazed Lindsey out of the maze.
Between maze and manor, Lindsey showed Aubrey a gleaming glass conservatory, the edge of the wooded glen, and the stables. Just as Aubrey had predicted, the stables held a variety of handsome steeds. Lindsey listed off their names with a fond glance at each. Aubrey endeavoured to remember them, but found himself distracted by the presence of a groom brushing one of the geldings. The groom didn’t regard them, apart from a deferential nod to Lindsey when they arrived. Lindsey had answered him in kind and turned his attention to a chestnut mare.
“Do you ride?”
Aubrey, who was keeping a wary eye on the groom, gave a start and turned back to Lindsey.
Lindsey, petting the mare’s neck, didn’t seem to notice anything unusual in Aubrey’s behaviour. He awaited his answer with a patient smile.
Aubrey struggled to formulate an appropriate response. Where Lindsey thought he’d found a horse to ride, or the space to ride it, he couldn’t imagine. “I’m afraid I had to give up keeping thoroughbreds in Manchester. They didn’t get on with the self-acting mules.”
He’d meant to temper his sarcasm, he really had, but there it was. He braced himself for Lindsey’s anger. He didn’t dare turn to see what the groom thought of it.
Lindsey blinked, then brought a hand up to cover his mouth, lest his laughter spook the horses.
“Sorry,” he said, when he’d recovered his composure. “That was rather stupid of me, wasn’t it?” He shook his head and spoke on over Aubrey’s protests. “Would you care to learn?”
Aubrey eyed the mare towering over him, watched her toss her mane and paw the ground with hooves as big as his face. “Another day, perhaps.”
“I look forward to it.”
Aubrey dared a glance up at Lindsey, who wore a sincere smile, and did his best to mirror it.
Beyond the stables and behind the house lay a fern garden with an artificial waterfall, installed by Lindsey’s mother. As they followed its walkways to the front of the house, Lindsey apologised for not knowing the scientific names of all the represented species. Aubrey assured him he didn’t mind.
“Are you hungry?”
Aubrey, distracted by the massive marble lions flanking the stairs from the front courtyard to the house, which he’d missed in the dark of the previous night, took a moment to realise Lindsey had spoken to him.
“It’s about time for luncheon,” Lindsey continued, undaunted, nodding towards the oxidized copper sundial in the centre of the ornamental water feature. “I’m afraid I didn’t give Cook much notice of our arrival, but you’d be amazed what she can do with so little.”
And so Aubrey went back in.
Luncheon in the breakfast room—Lindsey actually apologised for using the same room twice, as most of the household staff had moved to London with the family for the season—included chicken, more ham, fresh greens, and mashed potatoes. Lindsey filled Aubrey’s plate with some of everything. With ample encouragement from Lindsey, Aubrey polished it off. Then, to his surprise, the cook herself, a rotund middle-aged woman with a scowl for everything but Lindsey, arrived with gooseberry tart. Lindsey tucked in as if he hadn’t just eaten more food than Aubrey saw in a week. Aubrey picked at his tart with a silver fork.
“No good?”
Aubrey dropped the fork. His head jerked up to meet Lindsey’s concerned frown.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Aubrey rushed to reassure him. “I’m just not terribly hungry, is all.”
Lindsey nodded, though his brow remained furrowed. In an effort to smooth it, Aubrey scooped some tart onto his fork. Delicious, but his gut contracted when he tried to swallow.
“You don’t have to finish it,” said Lindsey. “I assure you, Cook won’t take offense.”
Aubrey doubted it, but he lowered his fork with a grateful smile all the same.
With luncheon under their belts, the tour continued indoors. Corridor on corridor, chamber after chamber, the house seemed endless. And all devoted to nothing more strenuous than an afternoon’s light exercise. Compared to the ceaseless industry of Manchester, Aubrey could hardly justify it. Yet when he saw the delight on Lindsey’s face at a fern in a terrarium, or his evident joy when Aubrey responded positively to the library, Aubrey couldn’t begrudge him an inch of it.
“Do you read?” Lindsey asked as Aubrey took in the endless shelves. “For pleasure, I mean.”
“Haven’t the time,” Aubrey replied. But Lindsey, head cocked with a listening look on his face, seemed to want more from him, so he continued. “Used to, though. When I was younger. Penny dreadfuls and such. Nothing like...”
He waved his arm to indicate the library entire. Lindsey followed the gesture and returned to Aubrey with a smile.
“You’d be surprised. It looks austere, bound up in leather, but the content is much the same.”
Aubrey raised an eyebrow, but couldn’t withhold a smile of his own.
At the other end of the house lay the music room. A harpsichord carved in last century’s style and painted gleaming white sat at one end of the enormous, echoing chamber. Lindsey went straight to it and lifted its lid. A few delicate chords stirred the air, drawing Aubrey’s eyes from windows taller than his whole lodging-house. Lindsey, realising he had Aubrey’s attention, played some showier notes. Then a self-conscious smile stole over his lips and he stepped away from the instrument, sitting down on its bench with his back to it.
Aubrey sat down beside Lindsey and looked over his shoulder at the harpsichord. The last few notes still hung in the air. “Do you play often?”
“No, hardly at all. My sister’s the real musician. She used to teach me her lessons as she learnt them, for practice.”
“Used to?”
“Until our father sent me to Eton.” Lindsey’s smile waned. “He resisted the notion for years. Finally gave in when I was thirteen, only to call me home three years later.”
“Why?” Aubrey asked before his sense of propriety could stop him.
Lindsey shrugged. “Didn’t see fit to explain his reasoning to me.” He reached behind himself and played half a scale, his long fingers ambling over the keys. “He’s not terribly forthcoming at the best of times. I assume he was dissatisfied with my academic performance.”
Aubrey, having no experience with parents of any kind, much less those who might care whether he succeeded or failed, changed the subject. “Did you enjoy school?”
“Oh, I adored it!” Lindsey abandoned the harpsichord to fix Aubrey with a look of purest joy. :The books, the sport—I found my dearest friends there.”
“What sort of sport?”
As it turned out, every sort. Lindsey related them all, from cricket to football to rowing and back again, throwing in anecdotes of striking successes or failures in the field. It all lay outside Aubrey’s purview, but even what he didn’t understand seemed wondrous when delivered with Lindsey's enthusiasm. Bright blue eyes shone with glories of days past, and his hands moved with animated vigor as he described a close boat race. Aubrey pictured those hands clenched around oars, those lean shoulders pulling against the rushing river, bare skin gleaming in the summer sun.
“And you?”
The spell broke, leaving Aubrey stunned. “Pardon?”
“Did you enjoy school?” Lindsey asked with an expression of eager interest, which made it all the more painful for Aubrey to realise how inadequate his answer would be.
“Yes. But it was hardly so exciting as Eton.”
The ghost of Lindsey’s grin remained, but his eyebrows knit in confusion.
Aubrey hopped off the bench as if it’d bit him. “You said something about a portrait gallery?”
Lindsey looked no less confused than before, but stood up regardless. “I did, yes. Shall we?”
Aubrey wholeheartedly agreed.
Lindsey led the way to a grand hall with a high, vaulted ceiling. Originally built for indoor perambulation, thick curtains now covered its wall of impossibly tall windows. Every remaining inch of wall from floor to ceiling displayed framed portraits of blond, blue-eyed, aquiline-featured people. Several could’ve passed for Lindsey’s doubles, costumes aside. These, then, were Lindsey’s ancestors, stretching back through the centuries to William the Conqueror. Possibly beyond.
The entire Althorp clan stared Aubrey down. Aubrey, alone, with no gallery of compact, bow-lipped, large-eyed individuals behind him. Not a single living soul who bore any resemblance. No memory of a face like his looking into his own.
Despite his best efforts, he felt a bit small.
“My father.” Lindsey pointed to a portrait of a man with a moustache set in a grim line. “He’s gone a bit grey since. Well, entirely grey.”
“I see.” Aubrey didn’t know what else he could say, apart from congratulations to Lindsey for having a recorded past.
“And here’s their wedding portrait.” Lindsey stepped aside to indicate a life-sized full-figure piece. A younger version of the man stood with a smile pulling up the ends of his moustache and crinkling the corners of his eyes. His hand rested on the back of a chair, in which sat a slender blonde woman with a long neck, a regal bearing, and Lindsey’s own smile beaming down on them with the force of a thousand suns.
“Him and my mother, I mean,” Lindsey added, as if it weren’t immediately apparent. “Alice Althorp. She used to say her middle name was Alliteration. Took me ages to work out the joke. In fairness, it sounds a bit like a real name when one is four years old.”
Aubrey wouldn’t have known the difference at that age either, and told Lindsey so. Lindsey smile appreciatively.
“Is there a more recent portrait of her?” asked Aubrey.
Lindsey’s smile vanished. A pathetic imitation replaced it, yet Aubrey felt its absence like an ice-cold draught blowing in through a broken window.
“No, unfortunately,” said Lindsey. “She passed away when I was seven.”
His gaze returned to the wedding portrait. Aubrey tried not to notice how ferociously he blinked to force tears back into his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Aubrey. Inadequate words, he knew, but before he could add more, Lindsey cut him off.
“Don’t be,” he said, pulling his pained smile into something more sincere. “She wouldn’t stand for it. Never could abide sorrow of any kind.”
His right hand disappeared into his trouser pocket. His left twitched as if it, too, wished to hide. Aubrey caught it in his own. Lindsey, jerked out of his reminiscence, looked down to their joined hands, then up at Aubrey with a grateful half-smile. Aubrey drew closer, and Lindsey leaned his head atop Aubrey’s own.
“Are your parents...?” Lindsey began.
Aubrey stiffened, felt Lindsey do the same against him, and forced himself to relax. “Both deceased.”
“Forgive me, I didn’t mean—”
“There’s nothing to forgive. Happens to everyone eventually.”
Lindsey squeezed his arm.
They wandered back through the house, Lindsey adding a few more interesting details he’d forgotten along the way, ‘til he halted abruptly at the base of the entrance hall stair.
“By Jove!” he cried. “We never made it to the theatre!”
Aubrey’d forgotten all about it. “It’s all right, I don’t mind.”
“Are you sure?” asked Lindsey. “I feel dreadful about it. I did promise, after all.”
“Promise?”
“Offered, then. I fear I’ve lured you here under false pretenses.”
“No,” Aubrey replied quickly. “You didn’t.” He, of all people, knew a thing or two about false pretenses and luring.
Lindsey didn’t notice. “Shall we go tonight? I could take you to dinner beforehand. Give Cook a break from us, and us a break from her cooking.”
Only a fool would turn down a free meal. And it would take a better man than Aubrey to resist the temptation of such a handsome face, bearing such a kind smile.
Aubrey answered with a smile of his own. “Then I suppose we’re off to the theatre.”
Nothing distinguished Lindsey’s club from the rest of Pall Mall until Aubrey entered. Though the staff welcomed him as Lindsey’s guest, the other members fixed him with cold stares. Their everyday attire put Aubrey’s best—and only—jacket to shame. Even the staff had more polish. But Lindsey didn’t seem to see anything amiss with Aubrey’s appearance. Aubrey gave silent thanks and turned his attention to the food, more than enough to sate his appetite. Then he and Lindsey left the club’s indignant eyes behind for the glamour of the theatre.
St. James’s Theatre was only marginally more opulent than the Althorp estate. Aubrey wasn’t the worst-dressed man there. Plenty of other theatre-goers had similar attire. But none of them stood beside Lindsey in his tailored evening jacket and silk waistcoat. And they certainly didn’t have Lindsey’s gentle hand on their elbows, guiding them out of the lobby to the magnificent stone stair leading up, up, up to the private box reserved for the Althorp family. In Lindsey’s words, both he and his sister adored the theatre. Aubrey assumed their father felt indifferent towards it.
The theatre’s interior had cream-coloured walls gilded with gold inlay, framing murals of frolicking youths. Aubrey wondered how anyone could concentrate on the stage with the house so decorated, though his own interest lay in the electric chandelier far above the audience. He tried to restrain himself, but Lindsey caught him looking up.
“The, er, lights,” Aubrey explained. “Electric.”
Lindsey followed his gaze upward. “So they are!”
The lights dimmed soon after, much to Aubrey’s relief. In the dark, no one could gawk at the shabby little man sitting beside the elegant Mr Althorp.
Aubrey hadn’t heard of the play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, but Lindsey assured him his friend Graves, a literary critic, had judged it acceptable. It proved better than acceptable. Aubrey laughed outright twice in the first act, surprising himself as much as Lindsey.
It could’ve been a terrible play for all Aubrey cared. The experience of sitting with Lindsey in the privacy of a dark theatre box thrilled him even more than he’d imagined. Their shoulders pressed together from the moment the lights went down, and Lindsey's hand meandered over to rest on Aubrey's thigh as the evening progressed. It left Aubrey giddy as the curtain closed for intermission. But whatever plans he had for entertainment between acts were dashed by the arrival of an usher bearing a note for Lindsey. Lindsey took the note, smiled at it, and gave an affirmative reply.
“Graves is in the box opposite,” he said after the usher departed.
Aubrey peered across the house as if he could discern a specific stranger at such a distance.
“He'd like to stop by for a quick chat,” Lindsey continued. His sunny serenity turned to concern. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Inwardly, Aubrey panicked. Foolish enough to agree to accompany Lindsey in public, but he’d done it assuming no one would notice or remember him. An introduction to Lindsey’s friend hadn’t factored into Aubrey’s calculations.
Outwardly, Aubrey assured Lindsey he didn’t mind.
It took some time for Graves to arrive. Aubrey and Lindsey spent it watching the crowd below, until an usher behind them cleared his throat and announced, “Lord Cyril Graves.”
Aubrey turned, and came face-to-face with Mr Halloway.
Beside Mr Halloway stood another gentleman. Lindsey took that gentleman’s hand with a cheerful greeting, but Aubrey's attention remained fixed on his downstairs neighbour.
Halloway, wide-eyed, seemed equally off-put by the coincidence. Then the gentleman stranger put an arm around Halloway’s shoulders in an affectionate squeeze, and Halloway’s shocked expression gave way to a wry, resigned smile. Before Aubrey could respond, Lindsey stepped in.
“Warren,” he said to Aubrey, “this is Graves, my friend I was just telling you about.”
Aubrey stood—belatedly—and shook hands with Graves, a toff their age with a lock of flat brown hair falling into his eyes. A pair of lavender gloves poked out of his waistcoat pocket, and a green carnation adorned his buttonhole. His eyes swept over Aubrey, lingering on his frayed trouser hems.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” said Graves. “Althorp, Halloway.”
Halloway, quicker to catch on than Aubrey, gave Lindsey a charming, easygoing response. Aubrey quieted the turbulent whirlpool of fear, shame, and jealousy brewing in his guts and pasted on a polite smile. If nothing else, he could take comfort in how Halloway’s costume resembled his own, with the addition of an emerald paint smear on his shirt-sleeve, so near the cuff as to show under his jacket when he moved his arm.
Lindsey and Graves fell to talking like the old friends they were, leaving Halloway and Aubrey on their own. Aubrey had half a mind to pretend he was meeting Halloway for the first time. Halloway didn’t.
”What’s a respectable chap like you doing in a place like this?” he asked with a cheeky grin.
“Taking in a show,” Aubrey replied, unamused.
“I bet you are.” Halloway’s gaze fell on Lindsey, wandering up and down his lean frame.
“And you?” Aubrey said, as if Halloway hadn’t just undressed Lindsey with his eyes.
Halloway gave a fond eye-roll towards Graves. “He had work to do, and he despises doing it alone. Prefers to mix it with pleasure. I’m the same way.”
“Indeed,” said Aubrey, his tone flat.
Halloway raised his brows and turned away to put his hand on Graves’s shoulder. Graves, though still chatting, caught the hint and bid Lindsey adieu.
When they’d gone, Lindsey looked to Aubrey with a hopeful expression.
“Your friend has impeccable taste,” Aubrey managed.
Lindsey beamed at him. They settled in to watch the rest of the show with their fingers entwined.
The curtain closed all too soon. As the electric chandelier brightened, Aubrey disentangled himself with no small amount of reluctance. Leaving Lindsey’s side was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but the hour was late, and Monday required an early rising. He refused to become a second Smith.
“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said, pressing Lindsey's hand in his own. “But you know where to find me if you should want me again.”
Lindsey smiled. “I do. And I certainly will.”
Aubrey quieted the flutter in his chest with a cough.
The walk to the train station was cold and damp. Aubrey’s burning cheeks kept the chill at bay. He scarcely noticed the temperature or anything else until he boarded the train and heard a familiar voice.
“Going my way?”
Aubrey gave a start. There stood Halloway again, in the entrance to the train car.
“Yes,” Aubrey admitted. It’d be ludicrous to pretend otherwise.
“Splendid,” said Halloway, and sat down across from him. The train jerked into motion. Halloway waited until the screeching whistles and clanging bells subsided, then asked, “I don’t suppose I could convince you to model for me?”
“No,” said Aubrey. “You couldn’t.”
Halloway shrugged. "Only asking."
“As you have before, with the same result.”
”Yes,” said Halloway, “but I assumed you refused me for reasons that wouldn’t apply in light of what we’ve learned tonight.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t paint him, either.”
Halloway’s eyebrows almost touched his hairline. “No need to be territorial. I’d hoped we might become friendlier, considering our common ground.”
“If this is blackmail,” said Aubrey, “then it’s clumsily done.”
Halloway’s jovial expression shut down like a portcullis over a castle gate. “Nothing of the kind.”
He put his chin in his palm and turned to the window. An uncomfortable silence settled over the train car. Aubrey tapped his index finger against his knee.
“About tonight...” Aubrey began.
Halloway lifted his head and turned back to him.
“I’d prefer you didn’t mention it to anyone,” Aubrey finished.
Halloway waved him off. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Thank you,” said Aubrey. Then, “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It was unfair of me.”
“It certainly was,” said Halloway, but he couldn’t keep up his disapproving expression for long. His mouth quirked to one side in a half-smile. “Fortunately for you I’m a forgiving soul.”
Aubrey smiled back.
“Sir Geoffrey would see you in his study, sir,” a footman said on the following afternoon.
Lindsey, who’d bent over The English Mechanic and World of Science, snapped upright. Few good things ever followed those words. On his best behaviour ever since his father pulled him from Eton, Lindsey hadn’t heard the phrase in years.
Despite the short distance between the library and Sir Geoffrey's study, Lindsey found plenty of time to fret over what his father wanted. Sir Geoffrey’s valet, Jonathan, met Lindsey at the study door. Lindsey stopped short of the threshold and waited to be announced.
Black walnut paneling covered the study walls from floor to ceiling. Three narrow Gothic windows dotted the north side. Apart from them, the study depended on gas for light. In Lindsey’s childhood, it had been whale oil. Lindsey didn’t think an ocean’s worth of whales could brighten the grim chamber.
Sir Geoffrey sat at his desk, an enormous affair of black walnut with a bas-relief reproduction of the family coat of arms carved into its front. A matching armchair stood before the desk at an angle, a hollow imitation of the throne Sir Geoffrey occupied. He seemed at ease in his fortress, his eyes cast down at the Pall Mall Gazette, a forgotten cup of cold tea by his left hand. At Jonathan’s reappearance, he raised his eyes.
“Master Lindsey, sir,” said Jonathan.
Sir Geoffrey gave the slightest of nods. Jonathan vanished down the corridor.
Unable to stall any further, Lindsey walked with silent tread to stand in front of his father’s desk, and waited.
Sir Geoffrey took another minute or so to finish reading his article. Then he folded up his newspaper, set it aside, and deigned to look up at his son. “Sit down.”
Lindsey perched on the edge of the seat, hesitated, then allowed his left elbow to settle on the small patch of upholstery on the chair’s arm. No sooner had he done so than Sir Geoffrey stood and strode out from behind his desk to tower over his son.
“You haven’t chaperoned your sister on a ride through Hyde Park in some time.”
As far as scolding went, this seemed as though it would be mild. Inwardly, Lindsey relaxed a fraction. Outwardly, he maintained the posture of a cast-iron bar. “No, sir, I haven’t.”
Sir Geoffrey’s right eyebrow twitched. Lindsey feared he’d come across as insolent and hurried to correct himself.
“If she requires chaperonage, I’m happy to oblige. She need only ask.”
Still Sir Geoffrey said nothing. Lindsey restrained a nervous jitter in his left leg and tried again.
“In the future, she won’t need to ask. I will offer.”
Sir Geoffrey sighed. Whatever test he’d set, Lindsey had failed.
“Rowena is more than capable of asking for what she wants,” Sir Geoffrey said in the tone of a man who’d been asked often enough. “Your negligence concerns me only insomuch as it represents a change in your habits. Rather than tending your sister, or your friends, or even your literature...”
Here Sir Geoffrey paused. The angle of his brows made plain his opinion of Lindsey’s literature, as if Lindsey didn’t already know.
“...you tend your factory.”
Lindsey’s heart stopped.
Whether Sir Geoffrey had heard it from his fellows at the club, or from friends at the theatre, or from the country house staff, Lindsey couldn’t say. But nothing else could explain this meeting.
Sir Geoffrey knew about Aubrey.
Lindsey resolved not to panic. Panic would solve nothing. Sir Geoffrey had neither pity nor time for those who cracked under strain. Least of all his own son.
Sir Geoffrey continued. “I suppose you think me old-fashioned. But I am not so set in my ways as you might believe.”
Lindsey’s eyes widened. Surely his father didn’t both know and approve.
Sir Geoffrey noted the change in his son’s expression—Lindsey had been careless—and mirrored it. “I understand to derive one’s income from property alone is passe. Income from investments and industry is the way of the future. But a gentleman doesn’t dirty his hands with the day-to-day details of such business. He employs an agent to manage his affairs. You, being yet a youth, have none. I can recommend several worthy candidates for the post.”
Lindsey took a half-second too long to respond. In his defence, his mind reeled with mingled relief and disappointment—his father didn’t know, and so couldn’t approve—and focused on ensuring none of it showed in his expression or posture.
When he felt prepared to address his fathers proposal, he found it inspired dismay. An agent would become a middleman between him and Aubrey. An agent recommended by Sir Geoffrey would doubtless report to him behind Lindsey’s back, with tales of the curious relationship between Lindsey and his lowly clerk. An agent would ruin everything.
But Lindsey had never in his life contradicted his father to his face.
A month ago, Lindsey would’ve acquiesced to his father’s plan and swallowed his complaints. But a month ago, he’d have lost nothing of true value. Now, he’d lose Aubrey. He couldn’t bear it—not with stoicism, which his father demanded above all else.
“Thank you, sir,” Lindsey forced out, stalling for time. “I appreciate your concern.”
Sir Geoffrey responded with an expectant look.
“But,” Lindsey continued without any idea what would follow. Then in a burst of inspiration, he added, “I should endeavour to understand the business before I allow others to manage it on my behalf. It would be the simplest thing for someone to take advantage of my ignorance and ruin me. None of your candidates ever would, I’m sure, but if I don’t learn to judge for myself now, I’ll be at the mercy of others forever. When I’ve learned the business, I’ll delegate. But first I must learn.”
Sir Geoffrey remained silent. Lindsey’s mouth went dry.
“With—” he managed, then cleared his throat. “With your approval, sir.”
Sir Geoffrey continued to stare with an expression of what Lindsey thought might be surprise. He couldn’t say for certain. He’d never seen his father surprised before. Then the left corner of Sir Geoffrey’s moustache quirked up.
“Very well.”
Lindsey caught his sigh of relief in his chest.
Sir Geoffrey strode around his desk and sat back in his chair. Lindsey relaxed a little in a shallow imitation of his father’s posture.
“Your argument is compelling,” said Sir Geoffrey. “When you’re ready to employ an agent, come to me. I’ll find someone trustworthy.”
Lindsey thought he must be daydreaming. His father never relented so easily. Though Lindsey noticed how readily Sir Geoffrey agreed that Lindsey’s ignorance bordered on vulnerability.
“Thank you, sir,” Lindsey repeated, more sincere. He rose with a deferential nod and left the study.
Lindsey awoke to the sound of someone calling his name. He opened his eyes and discovered Charles by his bedside, leaning over him.
Charles said something. Or rather, his lips moved, but Lindsey couldn’t quite hear him.
“Speak up, Charles,” said Lindsey.
A pained expression flicked across Charles’s face. Perhaps he’d caught cold, and lost his voice. No, he was speaking again, and there were definitely sounds. Probably words. But jumbled, somehow. Lindsey couldn’t understand them. He waited patiently for Charles to correct himself.
Charles repeated whatever phrase he’d uttered. This time, Lindsey caught the tail end of it.
“—is dead.”
Lindsey bolted upright. “What? Who’s dead?”
Charles grimaced and repeated himself a fourth time.
“Sir Geoffrey is dead.”
Lindsey stared at Charles. “Balderdash.”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
Lindsey frowned. It wasn’t like Charles to be contrary. “If this is your idea of a joke, Charles, it isn’t funny. Now, what did you wake me for?”
A strange look came over Charles’s face. Not quite sorrow—pity, perhaps. It disappeared, replaced by his customary calm. “I woke you to tell you Sir Geoffrey is dead, Sir Lindsey.”
Lindsey began to think Charles might be serious. “And what makes you believe my father is no longer with us?”
“Jonathan found him so, sir, not a quarter of an hour ago. It seems he passed on in his sleep.”
Impossible. Sir Geoffrey hadn’t been the slightest bit ill last night. Lindsey was about to say so when Charles continued.
“Would you like to see him, sir?”
“Yes!” Lindsey got out of bed. “Yes, I would, by God.”
That would put an end to Charles’s nonsense once and for all. Lindsey would go to his father’s chambers and find Sir Geoffrey sitting up in bed, wondering why the devil they’d barged into his room at such an hour.
Lindsey led the way down the hall, not at a run, but an efficient march. Charles hurried along behind.
Sir Geoffrey’s bedroom door hung open. Jonathan stood at the bedside. Sir Geoffrey himself was asleep. Lindsey brusquely motioned Jonathan out of the way and approached his father.
“Sir.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw Jonathan shoot a pointed look at Charles, who shook his head. Lindsey ignored them. They were both clearly delusional. Perhaps they’d dipped into the drinks cabinet. Sir Geoffrey would be livid when he heard of it.
“Sir,” Lindsey repeated, louder, and reached for his father’s hand.
It was cold, and refused to budge under his fingers.
Part of Lindsey’s brain insisted the chill morning was at fault; the fire was out, the blankets thin, Sir Geoffrey’s circulation poor. But another, smaller voice in the back of his mind grew louder by the second and threatened to break into a scream.
“Sir?” Lindsey fumbled with his father’s wrist for a pulse.
Nothing.
Lindsey’s grip tightened on the unyielding flesh. A hand settled on his shoulder.
“Come away, sir,” said Charles.
Lindsey could’ve struck him for his impertinence. He resolved to so as soon as he felt like himself again.
For the moment, he allowed Charles to lead him from the room.
Charles shepherded Lindsey back to his chambers, shaved him, dressed him, and ordered him a breakfast he barely noticed.
“I took the liberty of sending for a physician, sir,” Charles said at some point between the dressing and the breakfast.
Lindsey could only nod his assent.
He had wild hopes when the physician arrived—perhaps Sir Geoffrey’s affliction merely mimicked death, and he would recover—but they were swiftly dashed. The physician confirmed the terrible news and diagnosed the probable cause: a bleed on the brain. Sir Geoffrey had never awoken, had suffered little, his passing peaceful. Lindsey swallowed his protests and thanked the physician for his expertise.
All that remained was to inform the absent Rowena. Lindsey tried to compose the telegram on his own, but when his pen tore through his fourth attempt and gouged the leather top of his desk, he delegated the task to Charles. Charles performed it with admirable stoicism. After a gentle inquiry into whether or not Lindsey required his services further, and receiving a negative reply, Charles left Lindsey to his own devices.
Lindsey spent all of thirty seconds alone in his chambers before fleeing to the library. He pulled volumes from the shelves at random, desperate for distraction. None held his attention. The text of Wuthering Heights blurred before his eyes, panicking him until he realised his vision had failed not from a stroke, but from tears. He blinked them back and flung the book aside.
The library having failed him, he departed it with no clear idea of his next destination. A closed door yanked him from his daze. Upon opening it, he discovered his semiconscious steps had taken him to his father’s study.
Lindsey entered the sepulchral chamber. It never occurred to him to turn up the gas lamps. He barely had the presence of mind to cross the room and collapse into the high-backed armchair in front of his father’s desk.
He wasn’t an idiot. He’d known the omnipresent spectre of mortality ever since the fateful winter afternoon when Sir Geoffrey entered the nursery for the first time since Rowena’s birth to tell the children Mother wouldn’t take tea with them today. Mother had to go away, but the place she’d gone was much nicer than here.
Lindsey, nearly seven then, couldn’t imagine anywhere nicer than the nursery, except perhaps the Crystal Palace. He supposed Mother had gone there and asked when she would return.
Sir Geoffrey had seemed taken aback by the question and said, in a tone he probably hadn’t meant to sound so gruff, that Mother wouldn’t return. Ever.
Despite the turmoil in his tiny heart, Lindsey hadn’t shed tears. He’d already shamed Mother into leaving him. He’d resolved not to do the same to his father.
Now that his father had left, regardless of his best efforts, he couldn’t stem the tears streaming from his eyes.
He needed something to brace himself. He rose from the chair and ventured behind his father’s desk to a small cabinet. Sir Geoffrey, with absolute trust in his staff, had never bothered to put his spirits under lock and key.
Lindsey poured a glass of brandy and sat down again, bringing the bottle with him. He meant to sip at it, but as he realised he’d spent his entire life in pursuit of his father’s approval only to lose all chance of achieving it, he found himself draining the tumbler. He poured another, his hands shaking. Perhaps if he’d tried harder to mold himself into a more acceptable heir, Sir Geoffrey’s nerves wouldn’t have been so strained, and...
His shoulders heaved in a choked-off sob.
Lindsey forced his thoughts down another path. As he emptied his second glass, he conceived a terrible idea. By the time he’d gulped down the fourth, he lacked the faculties to talk himself out of it.
Around eight o’clock that night, Aubrey heard a shuffling stop and a thud on the landing outside his door.
“Warren?” a voice whispered. “Open up, will you?”
Aubrey rose from his desk. “Who’s there?”
“Halloway. And your friend.”
Aubrey frowned, confused, but opened the door regardless.
There stood Halloway. Leaning heavily upon him, cravat crumpled, eyes rimmed red, and reeking of brandy, was Lindsey.
“What the devil?” said Aubrey, standing back to admit them.
Halloway pulled Lindsey over the threshold. “Found him outside. Thought I’d best bring him in before Mrs Padwick noticed. I assume he’s here for you? Unless Brown shares our proclivities.”
“No, no,” said Aubrey, adding, “Thank you.”
“No trouble at all,” said Halloway. “I’ll just be going.”
And he was gone. Aubrey closed the door and looked at Lindsey, who swayed like an elm in a breeze.
“Lindsey?”
Lindsey straightened up, squaring his shoulders and holding his chin high. “My father is dead.”
“Oh.” Aubrey cringed and tried again. “You have my sympathies.”