Chapter 17 The Trigger for Action
The Trigger for Action
Amelia sat at her desk in the Review’s offices, poring over the railway commission’s safety reports. The investors’ meeting had unsettled her more than she cared to admit—not just Hereford’s unexpected possessiveness, but the undercurrent of tension whenever factory regulations were mentioned.
The report before her detailed a recent factory collapse in Manchester. Fifteen dead, dozens maimed. All because corners had been cut on basic structural requirements.
“Miss… Forgive me. Lady Hereford?” A hesitant voice broke her concentration.
She looked up to find Freddy, one of their errand boys, shifting nervously in her doorway. “Yes, Freddy?”
“There’s someone asking to see you. Says it’s urgent.” He lowered his voice. “Looks like a factory girl, ma’am. Her hand’s all bandaged up.”
Amelia felt something cold settle in her stomach. “Send her in, please.”
The girl couldn’t have been more than twelve. Thin face, work-worn hands, one wrapped in dirty bandages that couldn’t quite hide the dark stains beneath. She clutched her injured hand to her chest, tears streaming down her face as she fought to hold herself together.
“They said you might help,” the girl said, her voice breaking. “At the factory. Said you write about people like us.”
“Which factory?” Amelia asked, though a sick certainty was already forming.
“Crown Street Textiles,” the girl whimpered.
The location stunned Amelia into silence. Thirteen years had passed since she’d set foot in that place. Her leg began to throb with memory.
“What happened to your hand?” Amelia asked, forcing her voice to remain steady.
“Got caught in the new looms,” the girl explained between ragged breaths. “Foreman said it was my fault for not being careful. Doctor wants to take three fingers, says they’re beyond saving. But if he does, I can’t work, and my family…”
She couldn’t finish as pain overwhelmed her again.
“What’s your name?” Amelia asked softly.
“Mary Collins.”
“Mary.” Amelia rose immediately, reaching for her cloak. “We’re going to see a proper doctor right now.”
“But Miss, I can’t afford—”
“I will take care of everything.” Amelia guided the girl toward the door. “Thompson, cancel my appointments. I’ll return when I can.”
An hour later, with Mary’s hand properly treated by a competent surgeon who believed all three fingers could be saved, Amelia helped the exhausted girl back into the hackney. She pressed several banknotes into Mary’s uninjured hand along with a notecard bearing another address.
“This is where you can find temporary work while you heal. Tell the Duchess of Lancaster I sent you.”
After returning to her office, Amelia sat motionless, staring at the factory report without seeing it. Her wooden leg seemed to weigh heavier than usual, a physical reminder of what she’d lost. What had been taken from her.
After all these years, nothing had changed.
The same dangerous conditions, the same callous disregard for lives treated as mere currency.
She’d channeled her pain into advocating for reform, believing her words might eventually make a difference.
But seeing Mary—a mirror of her younger self—made her realize the futility of mere words against men willing to sacrifice lives for coins.
With sudden clarity, Amelia knew what she needed to do. She needed to face the demon that had haunted her nightmares for a decade.
Standing with deliberate purpose, she gathered her notes and called for a hackney. It was time to revisit the past. Not as a victim, but as someone with the power to ensure there would be no more Mary Collinses.
*
The factory loomed against the graying sky, its brick walls stained black from years of soot.
Amelia sat in the hired hackney across the street, her wooden leg propped carefully on the opposite seat.
She hadn’t returned since that day, had deliberately taken alternate routes to avoid even glimpsing the building that had altered the course of her life.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather go home, m’lady?” the driver asked, clearly uncomfortable with keeping a lady waiting in this part of London.
“Wait,” she said softly, her eyes fixed on the factory door.
Workers trickled out as the sun set—women with worn shawls and tired eyes, children who looked far older than their years.
A young girl limped past the hackney, favoring her left leg.
How many others had been maimed here? How many lives had been casually altered by some man’s arithmetic of human worth?
Hours passed. Finally, a private carriage pulled up to the factory’s side entrance. Peter Moore emerged from the building, looking official in a suit. Years of journalistic experience had taught her not to dismiss any opportunities.
“Follow that carriage,” she ordered. “Discreetly.”
They wound through London’s darkening streets until the carriage stopped before a small townhouse. Amelia watched Moore disappear inside without a backward glance, unaware of the eyes that followed him.
“Where to now, m’lady?” the driver asked quietly.
“Home,” she said finally, the word tasting bitter on her tongue. “The Hereford townhouse.”
As the hackney turned toward home, she asked herself what she’d hoped to accomplish tonight. Perhaps she’d simply needed to give her demons a name, a shape.
In her chambers, she sat before her mirror and slowly unpinned her hair.
The face that looked back at her was neither the girl who’d once worked in that factory nor the hardened newspaper editor she’d become.
A woman with shadows in her eyes and steel in her spine, who now knew exactly where to find her demons.
*
Hereford barely registered the soft knock before Barker entered, carrying a pressed shirt and tomorrow’s selected waistcoat. The valet moved efficiently about the chamber, hanging garments and collecting discarded items without comment.
“My lord,” Barker said mildly as he retrieved a carelessly dropped cufflink from beneath the escritoire, “might I observe that you’ve worn quite a groove in the carpet this evening?”
Hereford paused mid-stride. “I was merely… thinking.”
“Indeed.” Barker moved to the washstand, replacing used towels with fresh ones. “Though your thinking appears to have increased considerably since Her Ladyship began these evening excursions.” He glanced meaningfully at the connecting door. “One might almost mistake it for concern.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hereford muttered, resuming his restless movement.
Barker said nothing as he laid out tomorrow’s small clothes, though he did pause to straighten a picture frame that had been jarred askew during one of Hereford’s more vigorous turns.
“Barker,” Hereford said suddenly, “in your experience, how does one… that is, what would you recommend when…”
“When one has developed inconvenient feelings for one’s temporary wife?” Barker supplied helpfully, not looking up from brushing lint from a coat sleeve.
“I haven’t—” Hereford began hotly.
“Of course not, my lord.” Barker moved toward the door with an armload of laundry, then paused at the threshold.
“If I may be so bold, my lord—the sooner a gentleman acknowledges what’s perfectly obvious to his household staff, the sooner he might actually enjoy his marriage.
Rather than wearing holes in expensive carpeting. ”
With that, Barker disappeared into the corridor, leaving Hereford staring after him.
The sound of Amelia’s chamber door opening made Hereford’s head snap toward the connecting door. Relief flooded through him so powerfully it left him momentarily lightheaded, only to be immediately replaced by a surge of anger.
His hand rose to the door handle for the tenth time that hour.
He had every right to demand answers. He was her husband, damn it all.
Even if she had no respect for him. Even if their marriage was a sham.
She couldn’t just disappear into London’s dangerous streets doing…
No, he couldn’t entertain the idea. It would drive him mad with worry.
Before he could lose his nerve, he rapped sharply on the connecting door.
“Enter,” came her voice.
He found her at her dressing table, still fully clothed in her day dress, removing pins from her hair. In the lamplight, she looked pale and tired. The sight of her, safe and whole, made his chest tighten with an emotion he wasn’t prepared to examine.
“You’re quite late,” he said without preamble, his voice more severe than intended.
“I wasn’t aware I needed to report my schedule to you.” She didn’t meet his eyes in the mirror, and that evasion sent irritation spiking through him.
“A simple message would have sufficed. I was concerned.” The word felt inadequate for the bone-deep fear that had gripped him, the images of her hurt or worse that had tortured him for hours.
She turned to face him, her expression cool, and he felt the familiar frustration at her ability to mask her emotions so completely. “Concerned or simply practicing for your next public display of ownership?”
Heat flooded his face with anger.
“That little performance at the investors’ meeting. Touching my hair, marking your territory like some rutting stag.” Her voice was sharp with accusation, and the unrefined comparison added to his temperature. “Did you enjoy the way every man there suddenly remembered I was property?”
“It’s my right as your husband.” He stepped closer, his hands clenching at his sides as frustration built like steam in a kettle. “Especially when other men seem unaware of it.”
“They’re not ‘other men’,” she said bitterly. “They’re my colleagues with whom I’ve worked hard to gain respect for my work.”