“My father?” Lucien replied, his hand still firmly on Grace’s shoulder.
“I thought of him during my time in the West Indies and Americas, where I saw the opportunity for wealth beyond imagining. Plantations in Georgia and Mississippi with cotton fields that go on forever. Sugar plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean. I’m surprised he hasn’t started investing there.”
“Places where people are still enslaved?” Grace asked.
“Lord Pinchbeck,” Neville continued, “has informed me there is a troubling movement to forbid trade with such countries. England must embrace the benefits free-trade offers or lose its rightful place in the world.”
Grace bristled. “Even if that trade involves the suffering of thousands?”
Pinchbeck gave a dismissive wave. “They produce sugar more cheaply because of it,” he said. “And without American cotton, every mill in England would turn its workers into the street.”
The thought made Grace queasy. She thought of the children they’d just left, both so thin, their father desperate for work. Neville had always known how she abhorred enforced servitude and slavery. Had she really never noticed this side of him?
“I know it sounds hard, Grace,” he said, his voice softening. “God knows, we all benefit from the tender hearts of our angels of hearth and home. But that very tenderness is why men must protect the gentler sex from the world of commerce. Permit me to point out that you have never seen these plantations with your own eyes as I have. It is not nearly as bad as abolitionists claim.The slaves fare better than our own working poor. Their people have warm cabins, food to sustain them, work to keep them busy?—”
“Their children ripped from their arms at a master’s whim!” she countered, indignant. “They are whipped and hunted. As for the condition of our own poor, we should do better by them as well! Children like the little ones we just encountered on the street—” She pictured little Scrap and Sibby Rose. Grace turned to Lucien, thinking he would surely agree with her, but the expression on Lucien’s face never wavered as Neville spoke over her and Pinchbeck nodded in agreement.
“Englishmendohave a choice,” Neville reasoned. “That’s the whole point of Free Trade. Anyone who’s conscience troubles them can choosenotto buy the cheaper sugar from Brazil or cotton fabric for their homes. Sentimentality can have no part in business decisions if England is to survive. Am I right, Lord Everdene?”
“Is that how you feel, my lord?” Grace turned to Lucien, once again searching his face, hoping for him to refute Pinchbeck’s claim.
He frowned, a deep line forming between his brows. “It is complicated, as so many things are.”
“Far too complicated for the fairer sex to understand,” Neville added with a gentleness that infuriated her.
“Never mind the masses!” Pinchbeck banged his cane on the table, rattling the dishware. “All this nonsense about common men getting the vote. Last thing we need is for landed gentlemen to lose their hold on the government! Imagine the chaos! We must extinguish this reform nonsense as soon as may be.”
Grace felt a pang when Lucien made no counter to such an argument. How very different from her own parents, who had risen to the defense of reformers. Her mother always said that one should lead by example, and so Grace tilted her chin up.“Times are changing, Lord Pinchbeck,” she said. “We live in an age of factories, trains and more industry than our forebears could have imagined possible. Surely it is only right that we change, too.”
“Indeed we must, Grace!” Neville said. “Small crofts are a thing of the past, running estates into the ground. No one knows that better than Lord Everdene, after the expense he incurred on his model village.”
She felt Lucien stiffen. “New Everdene is none of your concern,” he warned.
“I am merely saying we all have ill-fortune when we gamble from time to time. It is not too late to make up for your losses. Invest some of the Harcourt fortune in our new factories.”
Lucien’s expression was unreadable. “It certainly bears further exploration.”
Was New Everdene truly in trouble? Grace thought of how she’d admired the progressive village and Lucien’s sardonic reaction when she’d praised it. The past decade had been the hardest in recent memory, with blights and crop failures, industrialization shifting the balance until there were times their world was unrecognizable. Was it possible New Everdene could be a failure?
She was aware of the weight on Lucien’s shoulders.
“Perhaps, Lord Everdene, I can present our business plans to you,” Pinchbeck offered.
“Perhaps.” Lucien gave a slight nod in Grace’s direction, before returning his attention back to Pinchbeck. “I have reason to believe we will be returning shortly to the country. As for the investment you suggest, there is much to consider. As Lady Grace mentioned, times change, and we must change with them. But I am not yet convinced as to what those changes should be, nor do I think one should rush into it.”
Neville’s brows rose in surprise. "On the contrary. The House of Lords must take decisive action!”
“With the malcontents stoking fires among the populous, it’s out duty to stamp them out before it’s too late!” Pinchbeck thumped his fist on the table.
Grace, surprised by Neville’s vehemence, thought of Sibby Rose and little Darragh. Their father searching for work, their mother struggling. She glanced at Lucien, hoping the incident by the statue had given him faces to remember. Small, wan, pinched with hunger, running from those who would force them into servitude. But when he failed to counteract Neville’s argument, her heart sank. This was the man she was to marry? She searched his face for something she did not find there. Any expectation of knight’s errant shattered at his impassiveness.
Realizing that she would have to wield that imaginary sword herself, she stood and squared her shoulders, drawing on her mother’s zeal as she faced the three men. “Perhaps before you stamp those fires out, you should discover why they are burning?” Without waiting to hear their response, she excused herself and walked away.
CHAPTER 18
The carriage ride home from Gunter’s strained the last of Lucien’s patience, and he wondered how long it would take for his mother to forgive him if he jumped out right there and then to walk home. Knowing he’d never hear the end of it, he pretended to sleep, instead. How could he not? The confines of the equipage seethed with tension. Grace, arms crossed, a militant set to her jaw, Lady Elliot nattering on about some gift to Grace that was doomed to be hopelessly out of fashion and would spoil the stepmother’s plans for an elegant wedding. And his mother sitting gracefully through it all, her gaze on him as if she expected he should do something to put a stop to the turmoil.
God’s teeth, he hated feminine drama. Between his mistresses and the women eager to trap him into marriage, he had been subjected to his share and remained unmoved. Why then, was he feeling guilty now? Not guilt. Irritation. Surely they’d all be over it by dinner?
