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“But…what—” she began and cleared her throat, which along with her eyes, was starting to sting. “How d-did this come to be? How could w-we afford this? Bedford Grange⁠—”

An onslaught of tears blurred her vision and she averted her eyes to the rafters to will them away. Which was now lined with even more exposed pine trusses bolted together with heavy black iron brackets. Almost like the hull of a ship.

Sapper’s work, she realized.

In an endearingly familiar gesture, James gripped his hair at his neck. “I may have offloaded a few properties I did not need, here and there. I should have sold them years ago.”

“A f-few properties?” Mariah searched his face as his full meaning dawned on her. “No. No, James, tell me you d-did not give Bedford Grange to Barrymore.”

“I did not give or sell Bedford Grange to Barrymore.”

Mariah parted her lips to offer a response, yet James raised a hand, gently silencing her. “But I did sell it to a dear friend of mine at a fair price. He plans to give it as a gift to his dearest friend, his wife’s cousin’s family.”

James leaned forward to wipe a tear that had escaped down her face, and she relished the soft scrape of his rough thumb against the skin of her cheek. “Don’t cry, my love. It is no great sacrifice. Besides, it gave me the idea to sell several other properties that I should have gotten rid of ages ago. With those, I have been able to use the funds for the tenements and this. Harrison’s sappers worked day and night, at fair wages, mind you, to get this finished.”

“But James, what is this?” Mariah pressed her kid gloves against her eyes, seeking to stem the deluge of tears as James turned to survey the transformation of the cavernous hall.

Restoring his palm to the delicate curve of her cheek, he tenderly cradled her face. “Mariah, love, this is our legacy.”

He dropped his hand at an abrupt sound from outside, then pulled out a golden pocketwatch from the depths of his waistcoat. “Here,” he urged, extending his palm to receive Mariah’s charcoal paletot. It was then that she became acutely aware of the heat within the chamber, her gaze arrested by a pair of massive coal stoves that cast a steady, comforting orange glow from the shadowed corners.

“Harrison!” James barked as his brother, who suddenly appeared, directing a sapper to take their things.

“Harrison, what is h-happening?” Mariah asked her brother-in-law, hoping that he could provide a less cryptic answer than her husband.

“Oh, my brother just invited most of the town here.”

“But the mills, my father⁠—”

“Your father gave them the afternoon off. It is Christmas after all.” Harrison shook his head at her as if she were Ebeneezer Scrooge from Mr. Dickens’s famous work, motioning to several men to follow him to the doors.

“But James, the women, where will they work after, after—” she still did not know exactly what was happening, so she struggled to put a name to what it was.

“They will work here. You will see.”

And with that, the brothers cast open the heavy doors to a surging throng of people. Blinking as she gathered herself, Mariah recognized workers from Lancashire who were now living in the tenements pass through, many stopping to thank her and James.

“I wouldn't have a roof over my head if it weren’t for you, my lady,” one older man said solemnly and those tears threatened again as James squeezed her hand and she clasped his in her own.

Mariah gasped as she began to see workers from her father’s mill spill through the doors, including Thomas’s father, who shook James’s hand and tipped his hat to Mariah before removing it. Rounding out the flow of people was Mariah’s father, who in a great surprise, went straight to James and wrapped him in a bear hug.

James blinked and cleared his throat as her father released him and Mariah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from chuckling at the dazed expression on her husband’s face. Her father had been a working man before he had been a mill owner and he had not let himself go to seed.

“I don’t know what you did to Barrymore, how you managed to put the fear of God into Barrymore, but my workers keep their full wages, and their families have a roof tonight. Bless you, lad,” he added as he kissed Mariah’s cheek.

“What d-did you do, James?” Mariah asked under her breath once her father went to sit down.

He leaned down so that he could whisper in the shell of her ear, the scratch of his beard spreading gooseflesh along her exposed skin in its wake. “Barrymore may have committed some light treason. Do not worry, he will be served his just desserts.”

As James began to lead Mariah to the front of the theater, before they turned down the rows, an older man quietly entered and stood in the back. His clothes were ragged, as if he had been working in the trenches for days on end. She might have easily dismissed him as a wanderer seeking sanctuary from the December chill, yet her husband’s response suggested a deeper acquaintance.

James froze for a moment, his body locked like a clockwork automaton. The stranger, whose features remained indistinct at a distance, offered a tilt of his cap toward him. After a fleeting heartbeat, James’s eyes crinkled in silent acknowledgement, and he favored the man with a nod.

“Who is that?” Mariah inquired as he guided her through the burgeoning crowd toward the front of the theater. Before he could respond, James arrived at two empty seats next to Harrison. Ensnaring her waist, he drew her flush against his frame once more to murmur against the delicate shell of her ear.

“In addition to being a surprise for you, I have one small surprise for Harrison. Whatever happens, do not let him leave.”

Pulling back, she looked up at the man she was coming to love. Though he had surrendered his former carelessness, he still possessed a charming disarray, prompting her to tuck a stray golden lock behind his ear. “I will n-not let him leave.”