Page 113 of Holding Onto Love

“Ridiculous but critical.”

“Georgiana and Olivia will help you. Vanessa, my mother will help if you let her. I don’t think you’ll find it as onerous as you fear. And as for running the household, I’m certain you’ll manage. I have an excellent staff besides.” Good God. He was doing it again. She lived in four tiny rooms with no servants. Her friends were commoners. “It will be an adjustment…” He trailed off before saying “but” and assuring her he believed her up to the challenge.

“I don’t want to abandon the mill.”

What the devil? “The mill?”

“The Comptons. Their boot mill. Didn’t Olivia tell you? Or Crispin?”

He shook his head. The two of them had rather infuriatingly refused to tell him anything of their dinner with Vanessa, though he’d tried begging and bribery.

“Tell me.”

“My friend, Lydia, and her husband and brother-in-law are bootmakers. They made these.”

She twisted sideways in her chair and lifted her hem to display a pair of tooled leather Hessians. They were unconventional in appearance and, as he’d just learned, packed rather a kick when one was in too much of a hurry to remove them. There was something absurd about them, yet ladies’ shoes had always seemed absurd to him, so why should combining prettiness with practicality not make sense?

“We’ve just begun to sell them—”

“We?” He heard the beginnings of enthusiasm in her voice and tempered his own confused disapproval with a tentative smile. “You’re not simply a customer?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been spreading the word.”

He nodded warily. “And?”

“Georgiana, Rose, Effie, and I suspect Olivia will also model Bitter’s boots.”

“Bitter?”

“He’s the engraver. He can’t walk. And the other bootmakers are wounded soldiers.” She spoke quickly, earnestly, with a furrowed brow. “But they can’t sell the boots if no one ever sees the product. They need ladies with means to parade their wares. They need samples in shops. In London shops. And they have to be ready to expand production if orders come in as quickly as I think they will.”

If he understood correctly, she meant to market these boots. To utilize her connections, his connections, to sell footwear. He did not like this idea. Not at all. It would draw more attention to Vanessa, more unwanted attention.

Of course, he couldn’t stop Georgiana and Olivia from doing what ladies did, passing along word of new fancies. But Vanessa’s role was evidently more mercantile. Samples in shops? Expanding production? Good God.

“You want me to allow you to become a boot peddler?”

Vanessa bit her lip. Then nodded.

He shook his head. That was simply not possible.

“It…it would be crass. It’s trade. I know I sound toplofty, but allowing my wife to engage in trade would be thumbing my nose at the ton.”

“Thumbing your…for pity’s sake. You are marrying your mistress!”

The ton would consider boot peddling a step below courtesan.

“Vanessa, we shouldn’t make this harder on ourselves.”

She stood to snatch up their teacups and carted them to the basin. Her back to him, she said, “So I am to sacrifice my friends for our convenience?”

Her voice had taken on a peeved tone, so he made his own even more reasonable. He didn’t want to argue.

“I think ‘sacrifice’ is overly dramatic. They were bootmakers before you came to Cartmel, weren’t they?”

She spun to face him. “They made plain boots for common men. They need my help to sell these boots.”

“Let them go back to making plain boots,” he said, getting to his feet because it seemed they were arguing after all.