Page 5 of The Artisan and the Duke
The little girl looked up with a smile as Gregory approached. Her dark hair showed that she was not used to frequent baths, and her face was smudged with what could have been any number of things. “For your worry,” Gregory said as he held out two coins to the girl. She took them with more enthusiasm than Gregory had ever seen. He could not help smiling as the girl raced off down the street that Gregory had just arrived from.
***
“Whatcha suppose he’s up to?” Roger said gruffly after the dandy nobleman had taken his leave.
Jules shrugged. “Checking property, perhaps,” Jules said with distaste. “That’s all the ranks of his sort care about.”
They sat down heavily on the curb. Since before dawn, they had been sifting through the debris. There were still names unaccounted for, but the men had grown weary. David walked up dusting off his breeches and spat, “Would be nice to see a guardsman.”
“They would just give you a fine for the effort of coming to look at you,” Roger said as he shook the ash from his red locks.
Jules shook her head. “There’s no need to be so distraught over such as guards. What I’d love to know is where were the insurance’s watermen? No fire brigades seen yet, and we all know there was no way that Marcus didn’t have that place insured.”
The men all nodded. Roger agreed, “I remember seeing the badge on the building.”
“Aye,” called another Irishman down the way. “I saw the fire mark too. It was just by that lantern post by Roger’s head.
There was a chorus of agreement from the men. Jules too was certain that something had gone terribly wrong. There had to be a reason the watermen did not come. Were they not called? “Speaking of the Devil, has anyone seen Marcus?” Marcus Lambert was the owner and operator of the factory in question.
The men all fell silent. Roger scratched his head. “I saw him at the baker’s yesterday morning, can’t say I saw him again after that.”
“Didn’t see him at the pub, either,” another local named Finnegan added. “He’s almost always there going on about his money.”
Jules sighed. There definitely was something off about the fire.
***
“Did you see what they were saying in the paper?” Jules’ mother asked as Jules came in from working all day to clear the rubble.
Jules wiped her forearm across her ash-smeared forehead. “I’m certain it will not be helpful,” she said with a tired sigh.
“The implication was that the fire was set deliberately. Why would anyone want to burn down that old place?” Mrs Kelley shook her head. “Makes little sense, and I can see no one that would benefit.”
Jules was too tired to contemplate any of it, and she just grunted as she went to find her old mattress upstairs. She collapsed unceremoniously onto the mattress that had at one time been her grandmother’s. Jules just did remember to take off her cap before she gave herself up to sleep.
***
“Sounds like the Luddites to me,” Maxwell Chapman said definitively. He rapped his knuckles on the wooden table in the Gentleman’s Club as if he were presiding over a court. Maxwell was a nobleman in his own right, as the son of the Duke of Rutherford, but he had chosen to dedicate himself to a life on the judge’s chair.
Gregory shook his head. “I fail to see how it would benefit anyone to burn down a building filled mostly with women and children,” he said with disgust.
“You obviously have not met any of the activists that claim to be trying to protect the jobs and security of the working class,” Maxwell said. “Why to them the only negative is if their jobs get hurt in the process.”
Gregory sighed at his old friend, “Some of the people the Luddites advocate for worked in that very factory. Besides, I went down there and perceived the damage. The only ones there were the local tradesmen and artisan guilds. Not a guardsman in sight.”
“Why would there be?” Maxwell lifted his shoulders dismissively. “The insurance companies are bound to keep the fires in check, not the guards.”
While the answer did not sit well with Gregory, he knew that the guards only did what they had to do. Few would go beyond the normal calls of duty, especially for the kinds of people who worked and lived in the section of the city where the factory had been.
Chapter 2
Fredrick held the newspaper in his hand. “Going out to investigate?” he asked Gregory as his brother came downstairs dressed incognito in the white shirt and breeches.
“Found out,” Gregory said in amusement. “I feel like there has to be something else there.”
Fredrick nodded. “There might very well be,” he agreed. “There’s another story about the factory fire in the newspaper today.”
“You seem more interested in that fire than you have in anything since you returned home. What makes it so intriguing?” Gregory sat down on one of the soft cushioned chairs in the foyer of their home in one of the more affluent sections of the city which was dominated by homes fit for the upper echelon of society.
