The Husband Season. Mary NicholsЧитать онлайн книгу.
if you please.’
‘Oh, very well.’ She assumed a serious expression that was so comical it only served to make him laugh.
They were attracting the amused attention of other riders, one in particular. As they drew abreast, he bowed slightly towards her. She recognised him easily from the upright way he carried himself, the curl of his light brown hair, his brown eyes and strong mouth, twitching a little in amusement. She felt the colour flare in her face, but quickly brought herself under control and put her chin in the air and gathered up her reins to ride at a trot.
‘Who was that?’ Teddy asked, catching up with her after her unexpected burst of speed. ‘Someone you know?’
She slowed down again. ‘Who?’
‘The fellow on the bay. A magnificent creature.’
‘You call him a magnificent creature?’
‘The horse, silly, not the man, though I own he looks top of the trees to me. Who is he?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘But you smiled at him.’
‘I certainly did not. Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘He smiled back and bowed, as if he knew you. Is that why you wanted to come riding today, so that you might meet him?’
‘Certainly not. I have no idea who he is.’
‘Oh, I knew all that preening in front of everyone would cause trouble. Strange men smiling and bowing, it is not the thing, Sophie, really it is not.’
‘I couldn’t help him smiling at me, could I? I didn’t ask him to bow.’
‘You encouraged him.’
‘I did not. Why would I do that? He is conceited if he thought that, and if I ever meet him again I shall make sure he knows it. Not that I wish to meet him again,’ she added hastily.
‘No, of course not,’ he said with heavy irony.
‘Well, I don’t. Let us go home and see if Aunt Emmeline is up and about. I might prevail upon her to go shopping.’
‘Beats me what you ladies find to go shopping for,’ he murmured following her as she turned towards the gate. ‘You seem to have all the fripperies you need.’
‘Much you know about it,’ she said. ‘But you will find out when you marry and have a wife to please.’
‘Then I don’t think I’ll bother.’
She laughed at that, and they returned to Mount Street in good humour.
* * *
Adam, who had recognised her as the girl he had seen with the soldiers, rode on, wondering who she might be. She was unaccompanied by a duenna or a groom, probably out clandestinely, unless her parents or guardians, whoever they were, did not trouble themselves about propriety. She was lovely, and when she smiled or laughed her blue eyes sparkled. Out secretly with her swain and enjoying herself, he did not doubt, but devoid of all sense of decorum.
He had seen her the day before in a carriage with an older woman—a relation or guardian perhaps? Not a very protective one to let her out to be molested by common soldiers. He smiled at the memory; she was a feisty young lady, to be sure, and by no means cowed, even when her clothes were wet and muddy and she had lost her bonnet. He turned out of the gate and made his way back to South Audley Street. He had better put her from his mind; he had more important things to think of than a slip of a girl, however fetching. He had a speech to compose.
The foreman at the mill had warned him that Henry Hunt, known as Orator Hunt, was planning another great rally, but he had no idea where it was to be. He had a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the workers, who subsisted on very low wages that his fellow mill owners had no compunction in cutting when profits went down. Wages for a weaver, which had been as much as fifteen shillings for a six-day week in the boom year immediately after the war, had now dropped to five. Their hardship was not helped by the Corn Laws, which kept the price of wheat, and therefore bread, so high they were hard put to afford it.
Sir John Michaelson, a neighbouring mill owner, was particularly insensitive to his workers, many of whom had left him to come and work at Bamford Mill as soon as they heard he had a vacancy. It did not endear him to his neighbour, who’d come to him in high dudgeon the last time it had happened.
‘Look here,’ he had said. ‘You can’t go paying exorbitant wages. It gives the men a false value of their worth and makes them uncontrollable. You’re making them soft and undermining the rest of us. A little hunger never did them any harm. Makes ’em work harder.’
‘They are not just hungry, they are starving,’ Adam had answered, referring to Michaelson’s workforce. ‘Starving men cannot work well.’
‘So you feed ’em, too.’
‘If I give my workers a dinner, that is my affair, not yours, Sir John.’
‘If we don’t stand together, we won’t win,’ the man said truculently.
‘I have no doubt that is what the men are saying,’ he had said.
‘And you, no doubt, know exactly what they are saying. I am disgusted with you. You are a traitor to your heritage.’
* * *
Adam was soon back at Wyndham House and settled down in the library to write his speech. He was not a natural orator like Henry Hunt and had never made a public speech before, except to talk to his workers. He believed in keeping them informed of how the business was doing, telling them when a big contract had come their way and how long they had to fulfil it and congratulating them if they fulfilled it on time, paying them a bonus, as well. They worked the better for it. Now he had to make a speech to his peers, men who probably held the same views as Sir John and whom he had to persuade. He had covered several sheets of paper, all of which he had screwed up and thrown aside, when Mark came in.
‘You look as if you’ve been busy,’ his cousin commented.
‘All to no purpose. I can’t seem to find the right words.’
‘The words you used the other night sounded good to me.’
‘Two or three sentences when I have to write a whole speech. And my audience will be less sympathetic than you.’
‘Make your speech to me and I will act as devil’s advocate.’ Mark laughed. ‘I will even heckle you, if you like, and see how you deal with it.’
* * *
An hour later Adam was feeling a great deal better about the ordeal.
‘You are much more convincing when you speak from the heart,’ Mark told him. ‘You don’t need to write out the whole speech. Simple notes will suffice to get you going.’
‘Do you think I have a chance of swaying any of them?’
‘Those who are undecided, perhaps, but the diehards will be more difficult. You might have more luck in the Commons, if you could find a sympathetic member to take up the cudgels.’
‘I know neither of the members for Lancashire will do anything. They are in Sir John’s pocket. Two members of parliament for a whole populous county and two for a little place like Dunwich, which has all but disappeared into the German Ocean, is ridiculous. Parliamentary reform is long overdue.’
‘I agree, but you will hardly persuade the members for those rotten boroughs to give up their seats.’
‘Now, if workingmen could vote, that would be different,’ Adam went on. ‘And if they could also stand for election, we might have a more equitable means of governing the country.’
Mark laughed. ‘And that is what you advocate, is it? I advise you to take one step at a time, coz, if you don’t want to sink your whole argument. Now, you have done enough. I am hungry. What do you say