Betina Krahn (24 page)

“Fine.” Fitzwater removed his hat and ran a hand back through his hair before replacing it. “But there’s no need all of us goin’, eh? What say I stay here an’ get some of this side dug out?”

They eyed the still-covered half of the boulder, looked at each other, and shrugged. “Well, it don’t take three men to hire up four horses.”

Rupert Fitch removed his coat and picked up a shovel. But the minute the pair were out of sight, he climbed up out of the hole and dusted his hands. Sitting down on the ground by the factory wall, he took out his pad and a stubby pencil and resumed writing.

“ ‘After spending the long, grueling hours that are required at the factory, the beleaguered workers must turn their dispirited steps toward the hovels that Miss Duncan provides
for their housing. The places are in a pathetic state of disrepair, with windows boarded up, roofs with holes, dirt floors, and no water or means of sanitation available. The squalor of the workers’ lodgings is a stark and shameful contrast to the comfort and elegance of her own residence in the village, a substantial brick house in which she entertains and beguiles the court’s appointed overseer of this outrageous venture.’ ” He paused and squinted, thinking, then set pencil to paper again.

“ ‘Burdens of poverty and inhumane working conditions may be borne by oppressed workers with stoicism and heroic forbearance, but the Ideal Garment Company has extended its grim control over its workers to seize even those last scraps of human dignity. Recently, Miss Duncan issued an edict that women workers are no longer permitted to wear conventional clothing, that they must wear the same scanty and indecent garments that she produces in her sweatshop. Indeed, she boasts of wearing such garments herself, and frequently has been seen flaunting her undergarments before the eyes of her male workers.’ ”

Yes, he told himself with a smile, it was shaping up nicely. There was enough here to create quite a stir in the London papers. Exploitation, indecency, squalor, nonconformity, hints of sexual license—this could be his journalistic coup de grâce, the piece that would gild his name on Fleet Street.

But as he looked over the pages and notes he had written, he thought of the rejections he had suffered over the years from those arrogant bastards at the
Pall Mall Gazette
and
The Times
. They thought of him as a hack, a penny-paper scribbler. If he hoped to get this into anything but one of the scandal rags, he had to have more than just a juicy bit of prose. He needed an angle, something to stir up thinking people, something to give the piece a respectable air.

He thought for a moment, and for some reason the sight of Madeline Duncan and Lord Mandeville, nose to nose in opposition, came to him. She such a do-gooder and he such a skeptic and a scoffer. That image sparked a bit of inspiration.

“Pure genius, old bloke,” he mumbled. With his ferret-brown eyes darting over the scene developing in his mind, he flipped to a new page on his pad and began to write furiously. “A second point of view, an opposing opinion. Something staunchly in defense of Miss Do-gooder Duncan and her social experi—”

Suddenly Gilbert Duncan flashed before his eyes—respectable, resentful, and conveniently duplicitous. Grudge-bearing Gilbert had paid him a pretty penny to collect what dirt he could on Cousin Madeline’s tidy little enterprise. Perhaps he would pay a bit more to be cast as his dear little cousin’s defender. And if Rupert played it right, he might be able to get a third party involved, someone well known but controversial … like Sir William Morris.

Beside himself with glee at the possibilities opening before him, he scrambled to his feet, grabbed his coat, and headed for the cottage he shared with those ha’penny dodgers Roscoe and Algy.

Halfway there, in the center of the weedy green, he encountered a small knot of people headed by none other than Madeline Duncan. All of them were staring at the iron water pipe in the main trench. Suddenly there was a faint rumbling and all present held their breath. When nothing happened, Miss Duncan turned to a grizzled workman with a beaming smile.

“I think it’s working!” she declared. She rushed into the nearest cottage and a moment later returned with what to Rupert was disheartening news. “Water! The water’s flowing just fine!”

Well, he thought minutes later as he sat on his bed in the cottage with a new writing tablet on his lap, whittling a fresh point on his pencil, they might have running water in the cottages now, but the rest of the world didn’t have to know that.

The day was not without its high points, Madeline thought, using the memory of those modest successes to stave off fatigue. The water was now running in the houses, and they had actually completed a bodice or two. But the day had seemed endless, and the evening seemed to go on forever. It had been dark for some time when Davenport came up the rear stairs of the factory, lantern in hand, and found her perched on Tattersall’s stool, rubbing her eyes with ink-stained fingers as she tried to see the letters and bank drafts she was signing.

“We waited supper,” Davenport announced, startling her. “For two hours.”

“I’m sorry. I should have sent you word. I needed to get a number of things done, and I had so little time today, with production starting. Every time I sat down at my desk, someone came up with another little crisis.”

“I thought about bringing you a tray, but decided that would only encourage you to stay longer.” She came to lean against the side of the
tall clerk’s desk. “You’ll make yourself sick, Maddy Duncan, if you keep this up. You need rest and food and—when was the last time you took a walk or read a book or ate a proper breakfast at your own table?”

“I can think of more pleasant things than having to face
him
every morning … before coffee.”

“And I can think of worse,” Davenport said tartly. “He’s easy on the eyes.”

“But hard on the nerves.” She glanced down at the paperwork before her and issued a tired sigh. “I suppose this can wait until morning.”

She slipped off the stool, collected her shawl, and doused the lamp.

The clock in the hall was chiming half past something when they walked through the front door. Davenport peeled Madeline’s shawl from her drooping shoulders and ordered her up the stairs and into bed, promising to bring her a tray. Slipping easily into the pattern of bygone days, she obediently trudged up the stairs, peering over the banister to see the light coming from under the library door.

Every muscle in her body was complaining as she changed her clothes, gave her face a cursory splash of water, and then sank down into the stuffed chair by the cold fireplace. She pulled her bare feet up under her nightdress and wrapped her arms around her knees. While she waited for Davenport, lists of tasks for the following day and details needing attention kept trailing through her mind chanting:
Don’t forget … Don’t forget
 … And the chant became a numbing drone.

That was where Davenport found her, curled up in the chair, sound asleep, her head resting against the padded wing. The housekeeper set the tray on the table and was about to leave, when she heard movement near the door and whirled.

Lord Mandeville was coming across the room with a finger to his lips. He gestured to the bedcovers, then picked up Madeline and carried her to the bed. Davenport quickly
tucked her nightdress around her ankles and pulled the covers over her.

For a moment the pair stood looking at the pale face surrounded by a turbulent cloud of dark hair.

“Headstrong. Stubborn as the day is long,” Davenport said. “But you’ll never find a truer heart. She was snatched from the jaws of death when she was but a child. Her parents were missionaries, you know. In Africa.”

“No. I didn’t know,” he murmured.

“She comes by her ‘giving’ streak naturally, I suppose. It’s in the Duncan blood. Her grandfather, her father and mother, and her dear aunt Livvy—they all spent their lives doin’ good. A pity they didn’t
get
as good as they
gave
. Raising children in pious poverty … dyin’ young and in a heathen land … dyin’ old and ill without children for comfort. Seems like the Duncans always come to a heartbreaking end. I worry that the same will happen to Maddy if she keeps on the way she’s going.”

With a final tuck and pat of the covers, Davenport picked up the lamp and led Cole out.

By the time he reached his own room, Cole was roundly annoyed with Davenport and edging toward furious with Madeline. It appeared that St. Madeline of the Endlessly Selfless issued from a whole line of philanthropes who had come to a damned bad end—martyrs to the noblest impulses of humankind. The Duncans suffered from some bizarre inherited compulsion to do good, to give themselves away—substance, body, and soul—to a troubled world. The Duncans of this world were the givers.

And who cared? Who extolled their names or reverenced their sacrifices? Who built monuments to them or wrote songs about them? Certainly not the Mandevilles.

The Mandevilles of this world were the takers.

Hunger was what awakened her this time in the middle of the night. She sat up in bed, feeling her empty middle with her hands, and knew instantly what she wanted. Chocolate. Hot and creamy. It was her favorite treat. She found her soft Turkish trousers and her most comfortable cotton tunic in the wardrobe, put them on, and headed for the kitchen.

The light was out in the library as she passed the door, and she felt a pang of disappointment, which was quickly stanched. The last thing she needed just then was another humiliating encounter with his imperial lordship.

Cocoa, sugar, milk, and a pinch of salt for balance—she soon had the syrup brewing over the coals left in the stove. It smelled heavenly. Her mouth began to water; she could just feel that creamy, chocolaty sweetness sliding down her throat, warming her insides. She turned from the cooler with the milk in her hands—and barely kept from dropping it.

“Ohhh!” Clutching the earthen pitcher tight against her, she flushed with delayed fright. “You just shortened my life by two years!”

“Sorry.” Cole was standing behind her in his shirt and riding breeches, leaning a hip against the worktable. His hair was rumpled and his eyes looked as if he had recently been asleep. “Another midnight raid on the kitchen, I see. You know, if you took regular meals like the rest of us, you wouldn’t awaken in the middle of the night starving.” He smiled with a hint of teasing. “Just a thought.”

“I didn’t feel like eating earlier,” she said. Alerted by the sound of something bubbling, she hurried back to the stove and grabbed her wooden spoon.

He came to peer over her shoulder and sniff the potent aroma of heated chocolate. She looked up just in time to see his eyes close in ecstasy, and jerked her gaze back to the chocolate pot, disturbed by that glimpse of him in the throes of pleasure.

“Chocolate.” He leaned over the stove and inhaled deeply. “Ummm. So this is how it’s made. Trust you to know how to concoct some decadent culinary delight. Singularly unladylike, you know. Cooking.”

“I’ve never claimed to be a ‘lady,’ ” she said, letting the chocolate drip from the spoon back into the pan. “I was raised to believe a woman should be able to do for herself, whether it’s fastening her own garments or managing her own finances or preparing her own food.” Judging the chocolate syrup to be ready, she gave him a guarded look and poured in the milk. “I suppose that groan a minute ago meant you would like some.”

He grinned. “Clever girl.”

“Fortunately for you, I know how to make chocolate only in quantity. Make yourself useful and get two cups out of the cupboard on the right.” She stirred and watched the pot, testing it periodically. “There, that should be just right.” She poured it into the cups he held, then took one from him and carried it to a stool by the table. He took the same seat he had occupied the other night … at the table beside her.

“Where did you learn to make chocolate?”

As he drank, his shoulders eased and his features relaxed. The chocolate was working its spell. She had to make herself look away.