Livia had never liked factories.
She respected them, of course. One could not be honest about England’s future and refuse to look at the spinning jennies and power looms that were transforming the North into a web of clattering profit. But respect was not affection.
The Derby manufactory’s yard stank of oil and coal smoke. Tall brick walls loomed around the main building like a fortress. Chimneys belched a steady plume into the flat gray afternoon sky.
She drew her cloak tighter, though the chill was more in her bones than in the air.
“You are frowning,” Rowan observed, stepping down from the carriage behind her.
“I am thinking,” she said.
“You think most when you frown,” he replied. “And when you are about to demolish someone’s argument.”
“Both may be true today,” she murmured.
Mr. Jonah Belling—the manufactory’s current owner—waited just inside the gate, hat in hand, his round face flushed with either cold or nerves. A smaller, flat-faced man hovered at his elbow, eyes darting like a rat’s.
“Your Graces,” Belling puffed, executing something that was more an enthusiastic bob than a bow. “Honored. Truly honored. We’re right proud to be consider—being considered—for your investment.”
“Mr. Belling,” Rowan said smoothly. “This is my wife, the Duchess of Merrow. You have corresponded with her father.”
“Yes, yes,” Belling said eagerly. “Harcourt Trading. Remarkable man. Remarkable daughter.” He gave Livia a sideways glance of uneasy respect. “They say you can see profit where other folk see naught but dust.”
“They flatter me,” Livia said. “Dust has its own uses.”
Rowan’s mouth curved.
The rat-faced man stepped forward with a stiff bow. “Simeon Pratt, Your Graces. Accountant.”
Livia’s head tilted fractionally. “Accountant,” she echoed. “Then you and I will have much to say to each other.”
Pratt’s mouth thinned; his eyes flicked away.
Interesting.
“Perhaps we might begin with a tour?” Rowan suggested. “My wife is eager to see your operations.”
“Of course, of course,” Belling said, gesturing them toward the main building. “We’ll start with the weaving shed. Finest looms in Derbyshire. Near enough, anyway.”
The blast of heat and sound as they stepped inside hit like a physical blow.
Dozens of looms clattered and thumped, the air thick with lint. Girls and young women moved between the rows with the harried grace of those who had no time for idleness. A foreman shouted from the far end; somewhere, a baby wailed briefly before being hushed.
Livia swallowed.
She had seen manufactories before, in Leeds and Manchester, but each time, the assault of them—the noise, the endless movement, the faces—struck afresh.
“Thirty-four looms,” Belling shouted above the din. “When they’re all running, we can turn out more cloth in a week than most small weavers can in a month.”
“And how many are running now?” Livia asked, scanning quickly.
He hesitated. “Twenty-two.”
“And the other twelve?” she pressed.
“In need of repair,” Pratt cut in. “Parts are dear. Coal’s dear. Everything’s dear.”
“Everything,” Livia repeated blandly. “Except wages.”
Pratt’s jaw set. “We pay a fair price for fair work, Your Grace.”
“Do you?” she asked. “May I see your books?”
Pratt blinked, clearly not used to anyone bypassing his excuses that quickly.
“Perhaps, Your Grace, we might first—” Belling began.
“No,” Livia said, her tone even but unarguable. “If you wish us to entrust Merrow funds to your enterprise, we will see the state of it now. Not after you have shown us rows of industrious girls and respectable smut.”
Rowan coughed into his hand, disguising a laugh.
Belling frowned, baffled. “Respectable… smut?”
“Soot,” Pratt murmured, pinched. “She means soot, sir.”
“I mean what I say,” Livia said. “Numbers first. Then looms.”
Rowan’s pride in her crackled in the space between them, warm as the heat from the boilers.
Belling hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “As you wish, Your Grace. Pratt—take ’em to the office. Bring the ledgers.”
***
The manufactory’s “office” was a cramped room off the main yard, its single small window filmed with grime. A scarred desk took up most of the space, papers stacked in precarious towers. A tired fire sulked in the grate.
Pratt hovered protectively as he set the main ledger on the desk.
“Some of the… earlier entries are in poor hand,” he warned. “Before my time. But the last two years are quite clear.”
“I’m sure they are,” Livia said.
She opened the book.
For a few minutes, there was no sound but the flick of pages and the scratch of her finger along rows of figures.
Rowan watched her, fascinated as always by the way her expression shifted when she sank into numbers. The frown that worried him in drawing rooms became here an instrument—concentration, not displeasure.
Pratt fidgeted. Belling cleared his throat once, twice, then subsided under Livia’s brief glance.
“Your pieceworkers are being paid sixpence a day,” she said at length, not looking up.
“Yes,” Pratt said. “Standard rate.”
“For adult men,” she agreed. “Not for children.”
Pratt stiffened. “Children are paid fourpence,” he said. “As agreed. The law allows—”
“The law,” she said, “is behind the times. Do not cite it to me as if it were the pinnacle of justice.”
Rowan could have applauded.
Pratt’s mouth pressed into a line. “We cannot pay more if we wish to keep the looms running,” he said. “Costs rise. Coal. Wool. Iron. If we increase wages, we must cut corners elsewhere. Or close.”
“And yet,” Livia said, turning the page, “I see here that in the past year, you have taken a dividend of—” her brows rose “—quite a handsome sum, Mr. Belling. For an enterprise teetering on the edge.”
Belling flushed. “I’ve worked hard to build this place, Your Grace. I’m entitled to something for my trouble.”
“You are entitled to profit,” Livia said. “Not to strip your capital and call it wages while your machines rust.”
Rowan leaned forward. “Your looms stand idle because you would not forgo a few hundred pounds for reinvestment.”
“We had a good year,” Belling protested. “Is a man not allowed to enjoy it? I bought my wife a pianoforte.”
“Next year,” Livia said, “you may be buying her firewood instead if you continue so.”
Pratt shifted. “We came to you for that very reason, Your Graces,” he said tightly. “We need capital to repair and expand. You… have it.”
Livia closed the book.
“We have capital,” she said. “We also have sense. And we will not pour coin into a sieve.”
Belling opened his mouth, closed it again.
Rowan watched the two men, his own anger tamped beneath a layer of ice. Six months ago, he would have seen only an opportunity—cheap investment in a precarious venture that might, with luck, pay off.
Now, he saw something else: tired girls at looms, boys running errands between rows of machines, Mrs. Dobbins’s boy in a Derby equivalent, risking limbs for a master’s shortcut.
“What would you do?” he asked Livia quietly.
She looked at him, surprised by the directness of the question.
“With this place?” she clarified.
“With this place,” he said.
She turned back to the ledger.
“Close it,” she said.
Belling made a strangled noise. “Your Grace—”
“Not today,” she continued calmly. “Not by shuttering the doors and throwing these workers into the road. But… gradually. Sell half the looms, keep the best. Pay off your worst debts. Use the remainder to convert part of this building into a different sort of enterprise. Storage, perhaps. Or finishing. Something that does not require this many moving parts you clearly cannot maintain.”
Pratt’s nostrils flared. “We are weavers, Your Grace. Not warehousemen.”
“Then you should have behaved like weavers, not leeches,” she said. “You bled the thing that fed you.”
Rowan stepped in, voice even. “We are not here,” he said, “to lecture. Though you may feel it thus. We are here to decide whether to invest Merrow funds. For that, we must be candid.”
“And your candid view,” Belling said bitterly, “is that we are not worth saving.”
Livia’s eyes softened, just a fraction.
“I did not say that,” she said. “I say that as you are now, you will devour any help we give without changing your habits. And we will not allow Merrow to be thus devoured.”
Rowan nodded slowly. “We might consider a smaller stake,” he said. “Conditional on changes. Sale of some looms. Reduction of your personal dividend. An increase, modest but real, in wages—particularly for children. Appointment of an independent overseer to ensure that repairs are made as scheduled.”
Pratt bristled. “You would meddle in our management?”
“Yes,” Rowan said, unmoved. “If our money is at risk, our eyes will be as well.”
Belling stared between them.
“What you offer,” he said slowly, “is… rope. To climb with. Or hang ourselves.”
“Yes,” Livia said.
He slumped into the nearest chair.
“I don’ know if I can do it,” he admitted. “I know spinning and weaving. I don’ know… all this.” He gestured, helpless, at the ledger. At the walls.
“You can learn,” Livia said. “Or you can sell. There is no shame in knowing your limits, Mr. Belling. The shame is in clinging to control when you are steering into a ditch.”
He looked at her, something like respect grudging its way through.
“You’d buy me out?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” Rowan said cautiously. “If the terms are reasonable. If we can turn this place to a purpose that suits Merrow.”
“And the people?” Mrs. Belling—Livia could not help thinking of them as such—asked suddenly from the doorway.
Livia turned.
A woman in her thirties stood there, apron over her plain dress, flour on her hands, eyes sharp.
“I did not know we had an audience,” Rowan said, rising.
“I heard my name,” she said. “And pianofortes. And losing the house. I listen when men talk of such things over my head.”
Livia liked her immediately.
“The people,” Livia said, meeting her gaze, “will not be abandoned. That is the only condition on which Merrow will involve itself here. If we take this place in hand, we will treat them as we do our own tenants. Imperfectly, but with attention. If we do not, we will still not permit you to toss them aside without resistance. Do you understand?”
Mrs. Belling’s chin lifted.
“I do,” she said. “And I believe you. Because you gave that boy”—she jerked her head vaguely in the direction of what Livia assumed was the Dobbins equivalent—“time off when his ma was ill. Baines’s cousin wrote. Said the duke of Merrow’s wife was not like the others. ‘She thinks,’ he said. ‘She looks. She don’t just… take.’”
Heat pricked Livia’s throat.
“I am flattered by Baines’s cousin’s powers of observation,” she said.
Rowan’s eyes warmed.
“Very well,” Mrs. Belling said, turning to her husband. “We take their rope, Jonah. And we climb, or we hang, but we don’t sit here in the mud pretending the roof ain’t leakin’.”
Belling stared at her. “Annie—”
She put her floury hand on his arm. “You ran this place as far as you know how. Time to let someone else see a bit further.”
Livia watched them, something easing inside her.
“Then,” Rowan said, “we will have Channing draft terms. A smaller investment. Conditional. If you meet the terms, we may increase. If you do not, we will withdraw. Agreed?”
Pratt opened his mouth, saw Mrs. Belling’s expression, and shut it.
“Agreed,” Belling said.
Rowan glanced at Livia.
“Agreed?” he murmured.
She thought of the looms, the girls, the ledgers.
“Agreed,” she said.
***
On the road back to Merrow Park, Livia stared out the carriage window, lost in thought.
“You did well,” Rowan said quietly. “In there.”
“You did,” she returned.
He laughed. “You are very generous.”
“I also saw you counting under your breath when Pratt began to splutter,” she said. “Up to four.”
“I remembered your ledgers,” he said dryly.
She smiled faintly. “And I remembered your grain.”
He shifted closer on the seat, their shoulders brushing.
“Livia,” he said. “Thank you.”
“For?” she asked, surprised.
“For refusing to let me pour good money after bad,” he said. “Six months ago, I would have seen that place as a bargain. Desperate men, cheap shares. I would not have looked at the girls—or Belling—or the thinness under all their pride.”
“You would have,” she said softly. “You simply would have looked away.”
He winced. “Perhaps.”
“You do not now,” she said. “That is… not my doing. Not entirely. You chose to open your eyes.”
“I had help prying them,” he said. “You. Whitlow. Harcourt. Agnes. Mrs. Talbot. Dobbins’s boy halfway up a damned oak tree.”
She laughed.
He sobered.
“I am… glad,” he said slowly, “that we are doing this together. Mud. Numbers. Arguments. Caricatures.” He glanced at her. “I do not think I could bear it alone.”
She felt something twist, sharp and sweet.
“Nor I,” she admitted. “Do not let it go to your head.”
“Too late,” he said lightly.
He reached for her hand, lacing their fingers.
She let him.
The carriage rolled on through the damp Derbyshire countryside.
Behind them, a manufactory began, very slowly, to change.
Ahead, Merrow Park waited.
Between, in that jolting, intimate space, they sat together, two fallible people trying, improbably, to make something larger than either of them alone.
It was frightening.
It was exhausting.
It was, Livia realized as Rowan’s thumb stroked absently over her knuckles, quietly exhilarating.
She did not say she loved him.
Not yet.
But for the first time, the word no longer felt like a precipice.
It felt like something growing, stubborn and green, through the cracks of an old stone wall.
***