Chapter 10
Clattering, whirring, and thudding flooded Peter’s ears. Nearby, a woman stopped one of a dozen spinners and tied together a strand of broken yarn. Across the room, another fed carded cotton into a machine. A few children gathered fallen bits from the floor and watched the spindles.
Lucius turned and said something Peter could not make out over the roar of water churning the wheel. Peter pointed to his ears. Lucius tilted his head toward the stairs, and the two friends made their way through the room, smoky with cotton fibers, and up to a vast, empty space.
Lucius opened his arms as if presenting a gift. “What do you think?” he shouted. The spinning below was muffled but raucous.
Peter conjured enthusiasm, imagined the room full of weaving machines alongside the spinners, and nodded his approval.
“The cloth will span twelve hands, and our production will be ten times faster.”
“I cannot imagine the guild is happy about that.”
Lucius grinned. “They can do nothing. A solicitor assured me the guild’s power applies only to wool. Cotton is the future, and I will supply it, faster and better. I lack one thing.” He gave Peter a look which, from a friendship of decades, made Peter’s stomach fall. “Follow me.”
They traveled down the stairs into a damp basement full of the pungent odors of dye. Peter almost felt instantly at home among the familiar equipment—copper vats; tubs; a cistern for river water; a table laden with scales, scoops, and canisters.
“You plan to complete the whole process here?” Peter asked. “Where did you get such an idea, and how will you convince the dyers’ guild? You will surely replace me as most hated by the guild masters.”
“Remember, this is cotton, outside the guild’s jurisdiction. Not all the dyers are convinced of the enterprise, but I have enlisted some who are as sure of cotton as I am.” Lucius cupped his hands. “Mr. Hobbins?”
Mr. Hobbins, master dyer and local guild committee member, emerged from an adjoining room. “Mr. Ivy. Mr. Sloan.”
“For now, he is merely renting space,” Lucius said with a suggestive raise of brows.
“This is a grander operation than I imagined. Congratulations, Lucius.” Peter was half envious, half exhausted by his friend’s drive. If the plan succeeded, Lucius would be rich. “I must be on my way. Lucius, a word? Walk me out.”
“Before you go,” Mr. Hobbins said, scratching his chest and glancing about as if the guild master were on his way from Gloucester to shut them down.
“You’ve shown me some of the cloth you’ve dyed in your leisure time over the years, and I recognize your talent and understanding.
But your grandfather… The Turkey red is beyond our power, and though you have not entrusted me with this particular display, I know you are capable. ”
The eagerness in Mr. Hobbins’s face matched Lucius’s. Not this again.
“I am not asking for the books.” Mr. Hobbins shot a glance at Lucius. “Only that you work with me.”
Peter loved the hours he spent experimenting with dye, loved cloth and color and the chemistry that combined the two.
With Hobbins as a partner, the gaps in his understanding might close.
But his grandfather’s voice, trembling with hurt, stopped him.
Keep it from those dyers. Punish them for punishing me. Peter had pledged with his thumbprint.
“I am a tailor with a shop to run.” Even without the promise, Peter’s obligation remained with his father’s industry.
“Chintz,” Mr. Hobbins breathed, as if it were sacred. “If we create chintz, we could buy London.”
Peter shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t want London.
And I was born a tailor’s son. Good day, Mr. Hobbins.
” He turned away, regretting his curt manner.
Mr. Hobbins did not deserve his rudeness, and the man was not wrong.
Madder red would change everything for the dyers in Gloucestershire.
Chintz would change all of England. Peter had long craved collaboration with a well-informed dyer, aware that sharing his knowledge would be a joy and a relief.
Besides, Mr. Hobbins was a friend. He began to regret that youthful thumbprint.
Peter and Lucius walked along the river until the rushing of the mill became a distant shush.
“You are quite a visionary, Lucius.”
“As are you, if you would allow yourself to be.”
Peter shook his head.
“Giles could take over the shop,” Lucius suggested. “The same escape shielding us from the guild would apply to you. We will be cotton dyers, chintz creators.”
A lovely, impossible dream. Peter had mastered Turkey red at his grandfather’s knee and enjoyed sketching chintz patterns, but he could not discover how to print cotton.
Even if he could, his limited experience was insufficient to justify such a drastic change in profession.
“Sloan Tailoring” would ever swing above his door.
It was his heritage, his responsibility, his life’s work. He was good at it.
“It would not be right to abandon my father’s livelihood. And you know I promised my grandfather,” Peter said.
“He would have loved seeing you work with the stuff. Imagine his pride, watching from heaven as London shops fill with Sloan’s printed cottons.”
Peter shrugged away the suggestion. “I did not pull you aside to repeat the discussion I held with Mr. Hobbins. I must beg you to release me from our wager.”
Lucius stopped in surprise. “You’re choosing option two?”
“To walk home each week with Widow Tolbert?”
“You must walk home with whomever I choose for you.”
“I accept.”
Lucius beamed. “Miss Cooper.”
Peter scoffed. “No. She is the woman I’m trying to avoid. As she is my apprentice, it is unseemly for me to send valentines to her.”
“Call it fate. She’s perfect for you.”
“Perfect? She is a thorn in my side, a squeaking hinge, a wasp in the jam pot.” While his words did not precisely mirror his feelings, Peter would not make trouble with full honesty.
“Charlotte liked her. Miss Cooper is a woman who will never bore you. Clever, lively, handsome. As your brother by all but blood, you have my permission to propose marriage to her.”
Peter smiled, though his unease remained.
“I’ll tell you what,” Lucius said. “Send the valentines, but you needn’t reveal your identity unless you wish.”
“Give me another concession. Allow me to discontinue mid-March.”
“Never.”
“And what lucky woman will be the focus of your charms?”
“Widow Tolbert.”
“You’re joking.” Peter laughed.
“I wish I were.” Lucius grimaced. “I have already sent a card.”
“That is kind of you.”
Lucius glanced over at Peter. “If I can manage it, you too are capable of delivering some small note or token to Miss Cooper.”
Unlike Widow Tolbert, Miss Cooper was not covered in cat hair, did not smell of damp wool and mustard, and had not the stigma of mysteriously losing three husbands before the age of thirty-two. But sending love notes to his female apprentice unsettled his stomach.
“If you’re so interested in Miss Cooper, take her,” Peter said. As he made the offer, an image rose—Miss Cooper’s arms around Lucius, Lucius’s hands on her hips. Peter shuddered.
“Never,” said Lucius. “Names cannot be exchanged. It’s been a week. You must send her something tonight.”
Whatever would he give her? He didn’t know anything about her, though he’d seen her almost daily for months and she’d lived across the street for a year. He must observe and discover what she valued beyond dressmaking. There was no sense sending things she didn’t want.
“Have you received valentines yourself?” Peter asked.
“Not a one.”
“Neither have I. At least the ladies keep it simple for us.”
Seldom had Peter or Lucius received a valentine in return. Custom held the gentleman far more responsible for maintaining the tradition.
Upon his return home, Peter thanked Miss Henton and checked that his father was breathing before stepping into the dye workshop.
It smelled terrible. Ammonia, dung, urine—every foul odor combined.
He passed mortars and pestles, thick aprons, and a cauldron, making for the shelf at the back where his grandfather’s journals stood in chronological order, bindings flaky, paper scraps fanning from the pages.
The newest volume cracked open in his palm.
Not a word scarred the pages, but it fell open to a six-inch square of cotton as red as an April tulip.
Memories flashed like the opening and closing of shuttered windows.
His grandfather throwing him in the air, showing him a vat of blue so deep it was black.
His mother mixing watercolors and comparing them to fabric dye.
Peter covering his nose against the putrid dyehouse.
Grandfather’s headstone covered in red silk flowers his mother had sewn while her tears fell into a bucket of red madder.
He folded the scrap of red into his breast pocket and fetched his watercolors.
Peter took a square of thick paper from his writing desk.
He didn’t know Miss Cooper well, but he knew she liked beautiful things.
He painted a starling perched on a gnarled branch, a symbol of unity and adaptability, as true a sentiment as he could muster for a woman who had disrupted the cadence of his life and given it new rhythm.
He pretended not to notice the changes she wrought, a hard task when it seemed the entire atmosphere of the shop had altered since she arrived. She enforced an efficiency unknown to Sloan Tailoring.
The wings of a bird took shape under his hand. Perhaps he knew more about her than he liked to admit, but this correspondence would remain strictly amicable. He would meet the obligation of his wager and think as little of Miss Cooper as possible.
On a blustery day the following week, Peter assured Lady Downsbury of the punctual completion of mourning clothes for herself and her seven daughters before stepping into a sleek black carriage. He settled onto luxurious suede and expressed silent gratitude for the hot brick warming the equipage.