A Flight of Fancy (21 page)

“I have no idea,” Whittaker said. “Perhaps I am starting at shadows.”

“Then we both are.” Cassandra looked at him, her eyes wide and clear, so dark brown they were nearly black, a startling and lovely contrast to her flawless complexion.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat to stop himself from touching her again. “I will see you this evening. We are taking two carriages, so I may not see you until we reach the assembly, as I may end up in the other vehicle.”

“That is probably best.” She closed the door. Through the misted glass, he watched her walk away, leaning on her cane as though she bore a heavy burden, not putting her weight on her right foot.

How terrible that burn on her ankle must have been to still cause her such trouble.

His own shoulders threatening to slump beneath a dozen burdens, the last of which being guilt, he trudged around the house and entered through the front door. For once no one sat in the hall. The fire burned low on the hearth, neglected with no one warming beside it. He should have at least two hours to have some refreshment and go over his accounts or read. Both had been neglected over the past two and a half months, as he joined the men reconstructing his mill destroyed in the spring in an effort to use physical exertion to work off the pain of Cassandra’s rejection. It had not worked, and he had sought her out. He would keep seeking her out despite Miss Honore’s advice.

He must also seek out his comrades amongst the Luddites and try to discover if any or all of them had learned his identity through his too-thin disguise. Together they played their roles of conspirators too well. But if he could meet with them separately, meet with each man on his own ground, perhaps he could learn all he needed to know and bring an end to the masquerade and to drawing Cassandra into danger.

Drawing Cassandra into danger.

He halted halfway up the steps and leaned on the banister. If the explosion was aimed at him, then being close to him proved
dangerous to Cassandra. Yet whoever had done it must have known she would be with him; therefore, the person did not care if she were hurt. But where would the rebels have obtained such a quantity of gunpowder? It was expensive.

He spun on his heel and retreated down the steps to the kitchen, where he found the housekeeper and maids sipping tea. At his entrance, they sprang to their feet with a clatter of earthenware crockery.

“Milor’?” Mrs. Tims wrung her hands. “Is aught amiss?”

“Nothing to concern you. I simply need the key to the cellar.”

She blinked but was too good a servant to question why. She simply removed a key from the ring hanging from her chatelaine and gave it to him.

Whittaker thanked her and crossed the room to the cellar door, unlocked it, and then turned back. “Is this always locked?”

“Yes, milor’.” Mrs. Tims nodded. “And I have t’only key I know about.”

Whittaker frowned and turned back to the steps descending into blackness.

“Milor’.” A maid spoke close behind him. “You’ll be wanting a candle.” Feeling foolish for not having thought of that, he turned back, thanked her, took a candle, and headed downstairs to the dank cellar smelling of mold and mice. Little used for storage now and even less frequently cleaned, the cellar bore the marks of recent passage. Behind a stout door, the room lay empty save for more dust, with a clean circle in the center of the floor where a barrel had stood. Someone had made an effort to brush out footprints in the dust and had been unsuccessful. Imprints of two different shoes stood out against the stone, one large and one smaller, recent enough to show up in clear outline.

He climbed to his room, pausing long enough to return the
key to the housekeeper. His head whirled with questions, notions, everything but answers save for one—someone had taken the gunpowder from the cellar. Someone had gotten into the house, through the locked door, and then back out again. Not impossible with so few servants about. Anyone from one of those servants to a perfect stranger could have gotten in.

But they would have had to know about the gunpowder to take such a risk.

A servant then, someone who had been in the Hall long enough to know his father and brother. A man who did not like Geoffrey Giles as the earl, or a man in sympathy with the Luddites who knew of Whittaker’s activities?

Nauseated, his arm throbbing, he entered his rooms, which were isolated and quiet and forever smelling like the cheroot smoke that had seeped into the carpet and paneling from his predecessors. He would tear it all out and replace rugs and walls when the estate could afford it.

If anything happened to him, the estate would never be repaired. His uncle was not well and his cousins were too young to manage it and the mills. Mama could never cope. She had no head for numbers.

Cassandra could manage. No doubt she could manage better than he. But Cassandra must go. She was not safe with him.

“Lord, I do not know what to do.” He stood staring out the window at the overgrown parkland and barren fields. “I have truly made amok of everything.”

No answers came to him. He closed his eyes and could not even think of an appropriate Bible verse to give him guidance and wisdom. He had set himself too far away from the Lord to have a consequential relationship with his Savior. Once upon a time, he would have discussed this feeling of distance from
God with Cassandra. She would have said something wise. They would even have prayed together. Somewhere along their path, they had pushed God aside in favor of their own wants.

Guilt plucked at his spirit. He needed to change his relationship with the Lord but did not know how. Mama would know. She was a wise and godly woman and his best chance at a spiritual adviser. Perhaps even an adviser about Cassandra.

He went to the bellpull to ask a footman where he might find his mother and remembered Cassandra’s cut bellpull. He had not yet repaired it. Tomorrow—no, that was Sunday. The day after, before he slipped away, he would ensure she was not left without the means of getting attention quickly if she needed it.

And why would someone rob her of that means of communication? The idea that she was the target of someone’s malice sent him to the door, ready to sweep her up and take her immediately away from Whittaker Hall. But he could not do that and risk Major Crawford thinking he had abandoned his mission and revealing Mama’s indiscretion of the past.

Cassandra’s safety or Mama’s reputation. Neither option sounded good. A thought began to form in his mind, then someone knocked on the door. He opened it to see Gareth.

“Lady Whittaker sent me here to help you dress, milord.”

“Of course. The assembly.”

He donned his evening dress, too elegant for a country inn assembly, as it was made for London. The tightness of the coat pinched at his still-healing arm. If Cassandra were not so insistent that she was attending, he would stay home. For some reason, she chose to go to the sort of entertainment she normally despised. So he bore the discomfort with the hope that the wool would stretch a bit with wear and took to tying his own cravat until it fell in snowy folds over the placket of his white shirt. In
the center, he affixed his best pin, a sapphire Mama had given him for the previous Christmas, created from a ring she never wore. Black knee breeches, white silk stockings, and black shoes with silver buckles completed the austere ensemble.

“You would look quite elegant,” Mama said when she met him in the corridor, “if you had gotten your hair cut. It quite ruins the effect of a man about town.”

“I never was much of a man about town.” He offered her his arm. “But I was out enough to know you are prettier than any of the London mamas.”

“Do not speak falsehoods.” Mama laughed and rapped his knuckles with her fan. “But thank you for the attempt to flatter this aged lady.”

“Not at all flattery, and should ladies half your age be so lovely.”

She did indeed look lovely in muted violet satin and foaming lace over her shoulders.

“I expect Miss Irving will outshine us all,” Mama said.

Miss Irving was indeed a vision in green silk spangled with gold and accented with emerald jewelry. Miss Honore shimmered in blue the color of her eyes and a pale gauze overskirt.

And Cassandra!

She wore a gown the color of pink roses with creamy lace and pearls. His pearls. Or the ones he had given her for a betrothal gift. Not family heirlooms, so she had been under no obligation to give them back. That she had not, that she wore them now, sent his heart singing with hope.

Instinct drew him forward to go to her, but he hesitated and Miss Irving stepped into his path. “You will be so kind as to escort me, will you not, my lord? I know no one here but will soon if you take me in.”

She was a bold piece but absolutely right. To deny her would be churlish and rude.

He offered Miss Irving his arm. “Certainly. This is a small country affair. Everyone will be friendly.”

“I have actually spent most of my life in the country,” she prattled. “Each year I beg for a Season, but with no one to sponsor me, it has been difficult to manage.”

They reached the carriage. Mama was inside. On the other side of the drive, Major Crawford handed Miss Honore in with a bit too long a hold on her gloved hand and an exchange of flirtatious smiles. Cassandra must have entered that vehicle first, for she stood nowhere in sight.

Resigned, Whittaker turned to Miss Irving and gave her his hand to steady her ascent into the vehicle. “Country folk can sometimes be as exacting in their acceptance of strangers as London.”

“Worse,” Mama said. “London is so large they expect that strangers and even those on the fringes of social acceptability can get a place in the finest houses with the right manipulations. But here, if one’s reputation is tarnished, judgments are harsh, as one stands out more.”

“And I cannot hide that my inheritance comes from trade.” Miss Irving sighed. “Thus here I am, five and twenty and unwed. Quite a shame to my mama, which I believe is why she has taken herself off to India with my father.” She emitted a trill of mirth.

“Perhaps,” Whittaker suggested as he settled on the backward-facing seat across from the ladies, “you should go to India. I should think a host of younger sons would be more than happy to meet you.”

“Geoffrey,” Mama snapped as though he were a schoolboy. “That is rude of you.”

“Not at all.” Miss Irving met and held his gaze, her lips curved into a half-smile. “Younger sons from the right family can often be an excellent prospect.”

He was a younger son. Or had been one. But if she were indicating that she intended to chase after him, she would catch cold.

“You will not find any eligible titles tonight,” Whittaker said by way of warning her off.

Her smile simply broadened.

Mama let out a delicate cough. “I simply think this will be excellent entertainment, and the food is always very good. Some dancing for the young people. Some young ladies singing.”

“You mean caterwauling?” Whittaker grinned at her. “Remember the last assembly and Miss Dunstan?”

“Do not remind me.” Mama clapped her hands to her ears as though the young lady produced her tuneless shrieking in the confines of the carriage.

“Dear me.” Miss Irving’s smile faded. “Will she be there tonight, do you think?”

“I expect she will. She is seventeen and her parents want to launch her next spring.” Mama sighed. “She is quite pretty. They simply need to teach her to keep her mouth shut more often. Nothing worse than a chattering—” She stopped and laughed. “A chattering female like me.”

“You do not chatter, Mama.”

“I have done a bit of singing at soirées,” Miss Irving announced. “It is one way to endure them—participate in the entertainment. But I assure you I neither screech nor caterwaul, and I can hold a tune. Singing is actually a great pleasure of mine.”

“Perhaps Miss Honore could accompany you one evening.” Mama sounded anything but enthusiastic, but the remark was expected of her.

“I thought the harpsichord was broken,” Whittaker said without thinking.

Mama shook her head. “I did not mean accompany on the harpsichord. We have a pianoforte. Your brother bought one shortly before . . . Well, it is a good instrument I have kept in fine repair. Much more modern than a harpsichord.”

His brother had purchased a pianoforte shortly before he died? Whittaker did not even know John played. No one in the Giles family was musical, or had taken the time to find out if they were, in at least two generations, thus the ill repair of the only instrument that had been in the never-opened music room—the ancient harpsichord.

“Where is this pianoforte?” Whittaker asked.

“In the music room, of course.” Mama laughed. “If you would come home to Lancashire for the house instead of the mills, you would know this. I had the harpsichord moved into a bedchamber, and now the pianoforte sits for me to play quite badly upon, until recently when Miss Honore went in there and played quite delightfully.”

“Major Crawford also plays—” Miss Irving pressed a gloved hand to her lips as though she had spoken out of turn.

Perhaps she had. She and the major barely seemed to know one another.

“I thought I heard him tell Miss Honore something of the sort,” Miss Irving continued too quickly. “Oh, look, here we are. What a charming little inn.”

The inn was not precisely little, since it contained a common room large enough to accommodate the gentry within a twenty-mile radius, which trended toward fifty or sixty people in attendance during the months when the hunt did not bring a hundred more along and the gatherings grew more exclusive. For
Miss Irving, however, Whittaker Hall was probably a charming little house, since it possessed only thirty bedchambers to her two hundred in the home her father had purchased from a noble family that had fallen on hard times. Or, more accurately, bad luck at the gaming tables.

Where the Hall had come too close to going out of the family.

He should consider creating an entail for the estate. What did it take? The current owner plus two heirs in succession who had reached their majority? That meant waiting nine years until Laurence reached his. No worries there. Neither he nor his uncle was a gamester, and Laurence was too young if something happened to his father or Whittaker. But if something happened to the mills and the income dried up—