Page 90 of The Time for Love
“At least one, and I suspect there’ll be more. If you go around breathing fire and brimstone and demanding to see Blackwell, they’re likely to get in your way.”
Slowly, Edward sank back into his chair. “What, then, should we do?”
Faintly frowning, Martin glanced at Oliver. “That, indeed, is the question.”
For a moment, silence reigned, then Lady Bracknell said, “Well, I suggest we talk to Inspector Curtin and see what he and the police commissioner have to say.”
Given Edward’s disinclination to have anything to do with the constabulary, unsurprisingly, that proposal sparked a vigorous debate.
Martin sat and listened while silently evaluating his own inclinations.
In times past, members of his family would have reacted exactly as Edward wished to. They would have roared around and driven Blackwell off, using whatever means fell to their hands, which, in those days, would likely have included physical retaliation.
In truth, Blackwell was the sort of villain that Martin’s father, uncle, and their cousins—indeed, all that generation of the upper aristocracy—wouldn’t have hesitated to remove permanently. And everyone involved, including the authorities, would have nodded and deemed that an appropriate and acceptable outcome.
Viewed from the widest perspective, namely that of the ultimate good for all of society, such an outcome might still be considered by many as righteous, yet Martin had a strong suspicion that, in this day and age, the authorities would be very uncomfortable, even antagonistic, should he dispose of Blackwell in such high-handed fashion.
Times had changed.
So had villains.
How one dealt with them had to change as well.
Men like Blackwell grew to be feared by their peers and victims alike precisely because they’d learned to live within the modern system and had discovered how to make it work for them.
These days, dealing with the likes of Cornelius Blackwell required a very different approach.
Although Martin wasn’t of his father’s generation, he still felt the same overwhelming need to exact retribution from the man who had dared to strike against the woman Martin viewed as his. His to care for, his to protect. Those impulses were ingrained in him; they compelled in a way he could neither deny nor ignore. He had to—had to—retaliate against Blackwell, but the paramount objective that drove him was to eliminate the threat Blackwell posed to Sophy, Carmichael Steelworks, and indeed, Sheffield as a whole.
The town was going to become Martin’s permanent home. Obviously, his defense of it was slated to begin immediately.
Luckily, when it came to the way the world now worked, courtesy of his years in America and his subsequent campaign to establish himself in England, he had experience beyond his years to call on. He’d learned how to operate within the current structures, and his personal wealth testified to how successful he’d been in that.
With those considerations circling in his brain, he sat beside Sophy, his arm across the back of the sofa, and coldly and carefully considered their options. In confronting a man like Blackwell, their approach needed to be not hotblooded but coldblooded, with every move calculated and executed with power and precision.
The argument over appealing to the police had grown heated.
With a plan slowly forming in his mind, Martin stirred and, cutting across a pointed exchange between Charlie and Edward, evenly stated, “One thing I’ve learned over my past twenty years of business dealings is that there is never any point in wishing matters were other than they are.”
As Martin had hoped, the somewhat tangential observation drew everyone’s attention. Charlie and Edward broke off their fraught argument, while Oliver, Lady Bracknell, and Julia looked at Martin hopefully.
Sophy swiveled to face him. “You’ve been very quiet. Thinking?”
Soberly, he nodded. “And after considering all the information we currently have, I believe that the only way to successfully deal with a threat of the kind posed by Cornelius Blackwell is, first, to identify exactly what our ultimate goal is and, subsequently, to work toward that single-mindedly while simultaneously searching out and exploiting Blackwell’s weaknesses.”
Oliver nodded. “That sounds like the sort of plan we need.”
Charlie frowned. “What sort of weaknesses would a man like Blackwell have?”
“We’ll get to those,” Martin said. “But first, let’s define exactly what we want to achieve in dealing with him.”
“We’re not selling him Carmichael Steelworks,” Sophy promptly replied, and both her cousins looked equally obdurate.
Martin dipped his head in acknowledgment. “That’s understood, but simply taking that stand—essentially refusing Blackwell’s offer and telling him to go away—is going to be seen by him as a challenge. He’ll react by doing everything in his power to make you bend and sell, and he won’t give up. By openly defying him, you’ll have made yourself a threat to his rule, one that he will absolutely have to crush. He can’t afford not to, can’t afford to let you get away with it. His reputation would be badly dented. So what will you do when he retaliates?”
Sophy—and Lady Bracknell, Julia, Edward, and Charlie—looked taken aback, but as his words impinged, their expressions clouded, and they frowned.
Martin lifted his arm from the sofa’s back and looked around the circle of faces. “We need to go further. We need to eliminate the threat that Blackwell—through his designs on the steelworks—poses to Sophy, the Carmichael family, the steelworks and all who work there, and ultimately, to Sheffield itself.”
