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Instead of joining him, James found his way back to the taproom.

What the hell did Harrison know?

Hurt Mariah again?

The—blast it he could admit it—jealousy receded as Harrison’s words wound around him in a noose of shame. Stumbling back to the taproom, he concluded the only remedy was ale. Then another. And another. James noted the old man from the previous day glanced at him with curiosity before he found oblivion on the ancient wood of the bar.

“I forgot the snow in the north turned black.” One of the veterans, his hand bearing the evidence of missing fingers, remarked as the ancient oaken door of the assembly hall groaned shut behind another former soldier who had gone out to inspect the roof. Although the holes in the roof allowed the biting chill to persist, the heavy thud of the closing door offered a small measure of reprieve from the howl of the wind and the rhythmic drone of the nearby looms.

“Does it n-not in London?” Mariah asked, watching as the man and his partner steadied a wobbling, wooden beam. In the middle of the night, she had awoken to a vision of a giant tent constructed of linen that was too damaged to sell, with a stove inside for everyone to keep warm. Once the performance was concluded, then the women could work from inside the warm tent.

And one day…one day perhaps they could repair the assembly hall.

“Have you not been to London, my lady?” The man, whom she believed was called Humphries, paused, the hammer in his hand gripped awkwardly between two instead of four fingers. But no less effectively.

“Not recently, n-no.” To her, London was where her husband escaped to run away from life and spend her dowry. Mariah was not the kind of girl who had a Season in London, as much as her father wished her to rise in social standing.

“It does turn black my lady, but from a different kind of smoke. I were in London since Sevastopol, I only returned to Yorkshire when Captain Reed told me about the work.”

“Lady St. George,” Miss Mason’s voice was sharp from inside the tent before Mariah could ask how the smoke was different.

“Excuse me, gentleman.”

The two men nodded after her as she entered the flaps of the makeshift tent, where she was swiftly engulfed by the heat from the stove.

She paused for a moment as her breath caught.

The glow from the stove and several brass oil lamps wove together with the unearthly gray light of the sky that filtered through the holes of the ceiling, bathing the space in a glow that befit the burst of warmth. For a moment, she was taken back many years to the one time she had fallen in love.

To the one time she had been in a true theater.

Of course, the musty scent of linen was nothing like the smell of velvet and greasepaint that she remembered, but there was something magical about the glow of the tent, one she recalled from that long ago performance of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

“My l-lady, are you quite all right?” Thomas and one of the other boys had been tasked by Miss Mason with setting out tallow candles throughout the tent, but they had not been lit yet.

Mariah blinked back a tear as she put the memory away. Not forever, just something to pull out later when she was alone. “It’s surprising b-beautiful for something so patchwork.”

“Aye, it is I suppose.” Thomas stopped and glanced around with her as his friend continued to set out the candles. “I haven’t been to a r-real theater before, though. My da thinks it’s a w-waste of time and space.” Thomas said quietly, watching his friend.

Mariah nodded, fearing her own husband thought the same thing. “And what d-do you think?”

“I think that…well I like it. That Shakespeare isn’t s-so bad. But what g-good is he to someone like my da who spends the whole day at the factory?”

I’ve asked myself the same question all my life.

Before she could respond, the front door of the assembly hall opened again, bringing forth a blast of wind.

“You do not need to take my coat, good man.” James’s uneven baritone pierced through the linen of the tent. The odd slurring of his consonants gave Mariah pause as her heart began to sink in her chest. She rushed to the flap at the entrance of the tent.

Outside, in the damp and the chill, she discovered the odd sight of Humphries holding up his seven fingers in the air before her husband, as if placating a wild animal.

“I weren’t trying to take your coat, chap.”

“That’s “my lord” to you.” James started toward the man before Mariah intercepted him.

“Sergeant Humphries, this is Captain Reed’s elder brother, Lord St. George. My lord, Sergeant Humphries is among the former soldiers that have agreed to help build the new tenements. For our neighbors from Lancashire.”

“Why can’t the workers from Lancashire just build the…buildings?” If Mariah had not paid such close attention to James when they first met, she would not have noticed the slight slur to his voice, nor the way he swayed slightly.