Prologue #2
“Franklin.” Alistair fell into step beside him, turning them both toward the stairs at the far end of the hall. “What word from London? Any progress on the Hollingford & Goss matter?”
Franklin’s voice dropped, though the machines gave them cover enough.
“Promising. Very promising. Their latest letter came this morning. They want our high-grade worsted for naval uniforms, and they have an eye on the Bombay and New York trade besides. But they are pushing for a five-year exclusive. No side dealings with anyone else.”
“Exclusive. What is the condition?”
“Shared investment in the canal upgrades.” Franklin dodged a cart of dyed yarn without breaking stride. “They will front half the cost to improve the route to Liverpool. It would triple our reach. Faster shipments, lower costs. But it ties us to them the whole while.”
They paused as a group of workers wrestled a heavy bale across the floor, wisps of fiber spilling free like snow.
Alistair lent a hand without thinking, muscles pulling tight for a moment under the weight.
“Mind the edges there, lads.” Once it was clear, he turned back to his brother.
“It is a gamble. But our worsted is unmatched, and the wool from the Dales is prime enough to justify it. Draft a reply. Agree in principle, but push the investment split to sixty-forty in our favor. We hold the production edge, and they know it.”
Franklin’s eyes gleamed with the thrill of it. “I will see to it. And their agents in Lisbon may open doors for the Portuguese trade besides.”
“Better still. Press them on the overseas tariffs. I will not have surprises eating into our profit come spring.”
They climbed the stairs to the offices above, the noise of the hall softening beneath their boots, the window overlooking the floor letting Alistair keep half an eye on the work below even from his desk.
He had built it that way by design. A man who lost sight of his floor lost sight of everything that mattered.
Inside, he shed his coat for a peg, revealing the crisp linen and waistcoat beneath, the sort of discreet prosperity that needed no ornament to prove itself.
The room held nothing beyond what use demanded: a scarred oak desk buried under correspondence, ledgers stacked along shelves lined with fabric samples in various weaves, maps of the canal routes pinned to the wall and marked in red ink for proposed improvements.
No ostentatious frippery here. A small coal fire fought back the worst of the January chill seeping through the brick. This was a place of work, not show.
Franklin shut the door behind them, and the mill’s roar dropped away to a low hum.
Alistair sank into his father’s old leather chair and reached for the stack of letters waiting on the blotter.
A supplier’s invoice for raw wool. A note from a banker in Leeds confirming the loan on the new engine.
The threads that kept the whole enterprise woven together.
Franklin lingered by the window, looking down at the floor below, and after a moment cleared his throat. “You have inherited.”
Alistair glanced up, caught the odd, sober cast to his brother’s face, and went back to his letters without much thought. “Inherited what?”
“The duke was killed last week. The title has passed to you.” Franklin said it with a shrug, light enough on the surface, though his eyes stayed watchful.
Alistair’s head came up sharp. “What?”
“You have inherited a dukedom.” A pause, and then, dryly, “Your Grace.”
Alistair came out of his chair so fast it scraped the floorboards, his fist coming down on the desk hard enough to rattle the inkstand and send papers sliding. “I do not want it.”
Franklin’s smile turned faintly rueful, unmoved by the flash of temper. “No. But it wants you.” He leaned against the windowsill, arms folding, his ease a deliberate answer to Alistair’s storm. It was the pairing that had always made them work so well together, one weathering the other’s squalls.
Alistair paced the narrow room, boots thudding on the old floorboards.
The Duke of Oxley. Their uncle Jerome, a man Alistair had met perhaps three times in his life …
dead, and the title falling to him? It was absurd on its face.
The Oxleys had always been the grand branch of the family, distant and disdainful, settled into Fortunestone Hall while the Fraser-Oxleys built their fortune in trade.
Grandfather Peregrine had disowned Edmund outright for marrying a mill owner’s daughter and choosing commerce over pedigree, and Edmund had built this mill in spite of it, scorning every idle habit the nobility prized.
His sons had inherited that scorn along with the mill.
And now this.
“Killed how?” Alistair halted, hands closing into fists at his sides. “And why me? There must be nearer kin than a mill owner’s son.”
Franklin’s voice gentled, just slightly.
“Some sort of accident. Fell from a cliff on the estate. He leaves four daughters and no sons. You are the eldest son of Peregrine’s second son, so the line falls to you.
There is no getting round it, Alistair. You are the tenth Duke of Oxley now.
” He drew a letter from inside his coat, the solicitor’s seal pressed dark into the wax.
Alistair snatched it, broke the seal, and scanned the lines, the words blurring together before they settled into sense.
Inheritance … Entail … Immediate attention required.
His fist closed round the paper, crumpling one corner.
Duke.
The word sat sour on his tongue. He had no use for titles, no patience for the idle pomp of the peerage. His life stood here, in the mills, built with his own sweat and stubbornness. “Confound the man. I will not accept it. Let it pass to you, or to Benedict, or Gregory.”
Franklin shook his head, a wry twist to his mouth.
“It cannot be done. The entail is strict. Eldest male heir, full stop. And even if it were not, think of the scandal a refused peerage would bring down on us. The Crown does not take kindly to being told no.” He straightened, his tone turning coaxing.
“Besides, it might be worth something to us. The Oxley lands are vast. Prime pasture for sheep. Fold them in with our own suppliers, and we could hold the whole wool chain, flock to finished bolt. And a seat in the Lords besides, to sway the tariffs on imports.”
Alistair dropped back into his chair, pressing his fingers to his temples where an ache had begun to gather. Below the window, the mill floor hummed on, indifferent to the upheaval taking shape in this small, warm room.
Fortunestone Hall.