An hour later, Anne found herself climbing the steps to the Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy mansion, a great Gothic pile of grey stone complete with crenellations and faux towers that stood out like a peacock in a henhouse amongst the sedate Palladian town houses that surrounded it.
How she was going to get through this meeting when her mind was flying in a thousand different directions, she had no idea. One minute she was furious (with Michael, obviously), the next crushingly disappointed (that she wouldn’t be marrying Michael after all). She would then segue into terror (that she might now be pregnant with no prospect of a wedding on the horizon), then she would work her way back around to furious.
How dare he belittle her work. How dare he. For any other man to have said such a thing would not have surprised her. Indeed, she heard cutting remarks about her “little charity” every week, if not every day, and her placid smile never faltered an inch.
But she had never expected it from Michael, who knew how hard she worked, who knew that the Ladies’ Society meant everything to her.
“Lady Wynters.” The Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy butler bowed as he held the door for her. “Please follow me.”
Anne’s footsteps echoed off the flagstones as she followed the butler across the spacious entryway. The foyer of the Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy mansion matched the building’s Gothic exterior, with pointed arches above the windows and ribbed vaults crisscrossing the high ceiling. Suits of armor bearing halberds were arrayed along the walls, and… Anne squinted at the pièce de résistance displayed on a square pedestal in the center of the room. It was a partially ruined statue in black marble, depicting… a man’s naked rear end? Anne peeked over her shoulder as they mounted the stairs, thinking she must be mistaken, but no, it was definitely a man’s hindquarters. How very odd…
Instead of showing her into one of the stately public rooms, the butler led her up two flights of stairs and toward the back of the house.
The room he indicated was a cluttered space, more workshop than library, with a pair of long workbenches covered with strange contraptions made of brass running the length of the room. As she made her way down the row, she felt the crunch of metal shavings beneath her slippers.
The room was also, Anne could not help but notice, covered with a fine layer of what appeared to be soot.
A maid hurried over. “You can sit right there, m’lady,” she said, gesturing to an elaborately carved shield-backed chair that had been positioned before the desk. “I brought that one in from another room, just to make sure it’s completely clean.”
“Er… thank you,” Anne said, seating herself. The maid continued bustling about, wiping down everything in the room. After a moment, Anne asked, “Is Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy on his way?”
A great clattering arose from the room next door, followed by the sound of shattering china. The maid made a sound that was half chuckle and half sigh. “I warrant that’s him right there.”
Surely enough, Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy came bustling into the room. He was of around Anne’s age, but this was no frivolous young dandy. He had left off his jacket and was clad in only a shirt and plain grey waistcoat. His brown hair was sticking up in what was not so much the fashionable windswept look, as the a-family-of-owls-has-been-nesting-in-my-hair look. And much like his workshop, he was lightly coated in soot
But in spite of these idiosyncrasies, it was the object cradled in his arms that drew Anne’s eye.
She hadn’t the faintest clue what it was, but it had a large bushy brush, almost like four brooms fitted together in the shape of a flower, connected to a series of short pipes, each the length of her lower arm and slightly flared on one end. A rope had been strung through the pipes, connecting them to the brushes. Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy had folded about a dozen of the pipes under his arm, but another dozen dragged behind him on the floor, clanking as he made his way down the length of his worktables.
“Ah, Lady Wynters,” he said, circling around to deposit the mysterious contraption on top of his desk with a cacophonous clatter. He started to reach out to take her hand, then recoiled, seeming to recall that he was covered in soot. “Excuse me,” he said, using his handkerchief to scrub at his face and hands.
Once he finished, he said, “I apologize for the mess. Probably I should have rescheduled and made myself presentable. But I was so excited about this”—he gestured to the tangled heap on his desk—“and knowing how excited you will be about it, I couldn’t bear to delay.”
Anne was at a loss, but she forced herself to smile. “I… I’m sure I will be.”
“I got the idea when I saw that article in The Times,” he said, settling into the chair behind his desk. “That was marvelous, what you did for those climbing boys.” He shook his head. “It started me thinking—why do sweeps even use climbing boys? I thought there had to be a better way, some device that could clean a flue just as well, without putting children in such a dangerous situation.”
He began sifting through a pile of papers on his desk and pulled out an architectural plan. “I did a bit of investigation and learned that the real problem is that our chimneys are so convoluted. Look at this,” he said, turning the drawing around so Anne could see it. “See how the flue makes three ninety-degree turns and has a U-bend?” He shook his head, genuinely affronted. “Appalling design. I should know—when you’re in the business of making iron, you know how air moves around a fire. But the fact is, half the buildings in London have a flue that’s not straight, and nobody’s willing to tear down half the buildings in London to fix them. I realized that what we needed,” he said, reaching for a pipe, “was a very long broom, with a handle that could bend through those corners.”
Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy pulled the rope taut, and Anne watched in astonishment as the tangled heap on the desk transformed into a long-handled broom. “It can bend?” she asked.
“It can.” He demonstrated how the handle could be straight or malleable depending on the amount of tension in the rope. “I was so excited, I stayed up all night building my prototype.”
“Does it work?” Anne leaned forward to examine it more closely. If this contraption could truly take the place of a little boy squeezing himself into a chimney…
“It does indeed. Now, for the worst flues, like this one,” Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy said, tapping the diagram he had showed her, “this alone won’t work. What you’ll need to do is insert a little door right here at the bend. But this should work well enough on ninety percent of the flues in London. I’ve been testing it all morning.”
“On fourteen different fireplaces!” the maid called from the corner, where she was still scrubbing.
“Yes, hence the mess.” Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy rubbed the back of his head. “I didn’t realize you were supposed to drape a cover over the fireplace before you cleaned it. I am sorry about that, Maggie.”
Maggie shook her head, but she was smiling fondly. “Now that’s all right, Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy.” She turned to Anne. “’Tis an honor to work for a truly great man. We don’t pay no mind to the occasional inconvenience.”
“Well, I think your invention is marvelous,” Anne said. “You cannot imagine the wretched conditions from which it will save hundreds of young boys. Will you be able to produce them in your family’s factories? Or do we need to find a manufacturer?”
“That was what I particularly wished to discuss with you,” Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy said, digging around his desk. Anne blanched as he pulled out a copy of her old pamphlet. “I was so impressed after reading the article in The Times, I set out to learn more about your Ladies’ Society, and I found out you’d written this pamphlet.” He shook his head. “I’m ashamed to say I’d never before considered the rather obvious ramifications that paying women at a lower wage must have on widows with children to support. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try it.”
“Try it?” Anne asked, blinking at him. “Try what?”
“Your plan, of course,” Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy said, flipping to the appropriate page of the pamphlet. “To hire widows who find themselves in the role of breadwinner and pay them a living wage. I see no reason a woman couldn’t make one of these.” He glanced up at Anne, his eyes guileless. “Do you think you could find a dozen or so women who’d be willing to work in my family’s shop?”
Anne found herself unable to speak. After all those years, all of those failed attempts to convince someone to give her proposal a chance, she had resigned herself that this moment would never come. Now that it was here, she should be elated. And she was, but she was also blinking back tears.
Oh gracious—she could not start crying in front of Archibald Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy.
She glanced up and found him peering at her with wrinkled brow. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and started to offer it to her, then blanched as he noticed it was covered in soot. “I’m sorry,” he said, fumbling the handkerchief, “I—”
Anne chuckled, pulling her own handkerchief from her pocket. “You have absolutely nothing for which you need apologize. I am the one who is sorry. It’s just…” She swallowed. “This is actually the first time someone has agreed to put my proposal into action.”
Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy leaned a hip atop his desk. “You’re joking.”
“I’m afraid not.” Anne dabbed at her eyes. “It seems that many men do not appreciate a woman making suggestions as to how they should run their businesses.”
He regarded her for a moment. “If you will pardon my saying so, Lady Wynters, it is my impression that the world is full of stupid people. Not because they aren’t engineers,” he said, gesturing to his workshop, “but because they wouldn’t know what’s important if it came up and bit them on the nose.” He held her gaze. “You do not share in their failing. And I hope you won’t let those blowhards discourage you.”
Anne gave him a watery smile. “You cannot imagine how much that means to me. How much this means to me,” she said, gesturing toward the bending broom. “And to answer your question, yes, I am certain I can find a dozen respectable widows who would be thrilled to work in your shop.”
Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy escorted her to the foyer. He cringed as they approached the statue of a man’s buttocks. “Please pardon the… uh…” He cleared his throat. “A few months ago, Lord Ardingly sold some items from his Egyptian collection, and my parents purchased this, um… striking statue.”
“Ah.” Well did Anne recall it, as the sale had been orchestrated by her sister Caro, to restore the Ardingly estate to solvency so she could marry the earl’s son. “That explains it.”
They arranged to meet at the same time the following week to discuss the particulars of the jobs for her residents.
Once she was ensconced in her carriage, Anne sagged against the plush cushions, overwhelmed by waves of emotions. Someone had finally agreed to put her plan into action. And there was real hope that Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy’s invention could eliminate the need for climbing boys to squeeze themselves into burning chimneys. She felt as though she could fly.
Yet at the same time, she was on the brink of crying or screaming or punching the velvet squabs upon which she sat, she wasn’t quite sure which one. That was how she deserved to be treated. That was precisely how, and yet today was the first day a man had ever afforded her such respect. Usually she was dismissed, she was condescended to, she was lectured, as if those windbags knew a tenth of what she knew about the harsh realities faced by the poor.
She had grown so used to sitting through such remarks that she could do so without her smile wavering. After all, it served no one and nothing for her to show her ire. No one would donate to a society run by an angry harridan. She always had to be mindful of the bigger picture.
Everyone thought she was submissive to the point of being lily-livered. They could not have been more wrong. Her public demeanor was a calculated decision, one she had to make every single day. It took a great deal of backbone to sit through all that drivel with a placid smile on her face.
But Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy respected her. He thought her work was important. So what if a hundred blowhards dismissed her? Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy was smarter than all of them. He was one of the greatest minds of their age, and if he held her in esteem…
“Beg pardon, m’lady,” her coachman called through the window, “but we’re being followed.”
Anne froze. Although most thought her meek and kind, she was not without her enemies. There was a reason she didn’t go into St. Giles without at least two of her hulking footmen. And the recent business with Lord Gladstone was an ugly one. If he held no compunctions about selling four-year-olds into the worst imaginable conditions, who knew what the baron might be willing to do to avoid the consequences of his actions?
“What does he look like, Harold?” Anne asked.
“Uncommon tall fellow. Black hair. Dressed like a gentleman. Got himself a big bunch of flowers, he does.”
Anne wrinkled her nose and dared a peek out the window. Surely enough, there was Michael some thirty feet back, following them on horseback.
“Try to lose him,” she said, slouching against the squabs.
They had almost reached the Ladies’ Society’s lodging house. Anne still wasn’t sure quite what this newfound swirl of feelings meant, but she did know one thing.
She wasn’t about to put up with any nonsense from the likes of Michael Cranfield.