The Courteous Cad (16 page)

“A late supper?” The woman took her by the arm and led her toward the stairs. “Or tea and cake or anything else, my dear. Say the word, and you shall have whatever you desire.”

Prudence smiled. “You are kind.”

“Anything for the future Mrs. Sherbourne,” she whispered, giving Prudence a nudge with her elbow. “Anything for the mistress of the manor!”

Nine

William rode toward the mill as the sun set. Two days now, he had stopped at the inn. Two days, Prudence had been away. He had written to her without receiving any reply. He had asked the innkeeper and the housemaid about the nature of her absences, but none knew where the young lady had ventured.

Where could she be keeping herself from dawn to dusk? William puzzled as his horse passed through the gate in the fence that surrounded the mill and its pond. No doubt the mystery revolved around Walker, the local blacksmith.

Still debating the wisdom of his mission, William reined in his horse and dismounted. One way to satisfy his curiosity would be to catch the woman at her mischief. This meant he would need to confirm that the blacksmith had been absent from his post during the past two days.

Another—and far better—way to resolve the matter would be to ride for home, put the beautiful but troublesome creature out of his head, and resume life as he had known it. Certain of the wisdom of restraint, William nevertheless tied his horse to a post and stepped up to the mill’s front door.

Richard Warring, the piecers’ overlooker, was the first to spot him. The man whom Prudence had called Dick the Devil now approached. Head low, he swept off his hat and made a bow.

“Sir, ’tis an unexpected pleasure to see ye here.”

“Learn to expect it, Warring,” William replied, starting down the long aisle between the carding and spinning machines. “I shall visit daily when I am at home, and I expect to stay at home from now until I breathe my last.”

“Aye, sir. And glad we are of it.”

Glad?
Of what? His return home . . . or the moment he breathed his last?

Recalling Prudence’s warnings about mutiny brewing in the mill, William wondered if Dick the Devil was among the agitators. Striding across the dusty wood floor, William inspected the massive machinery he had purchased and set into place.

“Three backwashers,” he murmured, counting as he passed. “Three gill boxes, three lap boxes, six finishing gill boxes, one scouring machine.”

By now the other overlookers had fallen in line behind him. “Sir, I assure you that everything is working very good indeed,” Jimmy, the spinners’ overlooker, reported.

“I am happy to hear it.” William returned to his inventory. “Spindle boxes, spindle dandy frames, spinning frames—”

He halted at a billy halfway down the aisle. The spinner’s carriage, tangled in a spiderweb of unevenly spun wool thread, had stuck fast. As William leaned closer to study the machine, the woman at the wheel gasped and stumbled backward into Dick the Devil. At that, the overlooker shouted an oath and grabbed the woman by the shoulders.

She let out a sharp cry as he shoved her to one side away from the others. Crumpling to the floor, she buried her face in her hands.

“Warring, what do you mean by using such force against a female?” William demanded. “From now on, you will keep your hands off my workers.”

“Aye, sir.” Dick nodded, but his expression conveyed no remorse. “As ye wish, sir.”

Disgusted, William turned away. “Madam, are you harmed in any way?” Hearing no answer from the bundle of gray rags, he tried again. “Are you injured?”

“No, sir,” came the reply.

“I am glad. And I apologize for Mr. Warring’s ill manners. It will not happen again.” So saying, he turned his attention to the billy and its mass of snarls and knots. “What is this, Jimmy? Do you expect my weavers to make worsted from such a hopeless tangle?”

“Nay, sir,” the man said. “That woman is new to the mill, and the billy be difficult to learn at first. Fanny over there, she be teaching the one on the floor.”

William observed the huddled creature once again, and a vague uneasiness crept over him. Was she weeping?

“Yesterday, she done well enough,” Jimmy continued. “But today, she ain’t done so good. Say the word, sir, and I’ll send her packing.”

William let out a breath. “What is her name?”

“Polly, sir.”

He crossed to the woman. “Polly, have you brothers and sisters? a father and mother?”

“Two sisters, Mr. Sherbourne.” She kept her head down. “My parents died.”

“And your sisters—do they work in this mill?”

“No, sir. Neither.”

“You are their sole support, then. And what did you eat today at my mill?”

“Oatcake and water porridge, sir. Both meals.”

William stood over the pitiful little woman in her filthy mobcap and frayed black shawl. Was this the sort of militant rebel who meant to do him in? He could hardly imagine it. Yet, given her destitution and hunger, Polly might be prone to join an uprising.

“Keep her to the end of the week,” he told Jimmy. “See how she fares by then. And feed the poor wretch. Give her . . . oh, hang it—give them all cake.”

“Cake?” Dick the Devil tilted his head. “Cake, sir?”

“Cake. Have you never heard of it, Mr. Warring? Tomorrow, I shall send cakes down from the kitchens at Thorne Lodge. And see that the labor is given tea to drink. Good, hot tea.”

Moving on, he took up his recitation again. “Twelve carding engines. Each of these cost six hundred pounds, I shall have you know. One, two, three . . .”

He spoke to no one, his thoughts absorbed by Prudence Watson and her admonition to treat his workers better. Feed them cake, she had said. Cake! And now, against his better judgment, he had done it.

The girl’s opinions were not worth two figs. Yet he had listened and acted. What was this hold she had over him? Were her warnings a sign of tenderness? Or did she concoct the tale of a rebel plot in an effort to sway him toward reform?

“Looms,” he continued trying to drown out his own thoughts. “Stocks. Fulling machines. Have the water pipes been inspected of late?”

“Aye, sir,” one of the men behind him called out. “No leaks, sir.”

“Very good. I shall inspect the smithy.” He started for the stairs, but the object of his visit stood in his path. “Mr. Walker. You are here?”

“As always, sir.” The blacksmith extended a hand toward the staircase. “Will you come up?”

William stepped ahead. Had Walker descended to watch his master’s path through the mill? Or was there another reason he lurked below his forge?

In five minutes, William made the requisite inspection of the smithy. When asked, Walker explained its operation and listed various implements he was called on to create or repair. The blacksmith was, no doubt, intelligent. Moreover, if a man could be the judge of such things, Walker must be called handsome. It was no wonder, then, that Prudence had lost her heart to him and had stayed in Otley in some vain attempt to win him again.

Silly girl. Silly, empty-headed girl. He descended the stairs and started back down the aisle. As he neared the spinners, he saw a cluster of workers gathered around the woman who had collapsed. One had brought her a ladle of water. Another was helping her to stand.

“No,” she was saying. “I am well, quite well. Return to your posts, I beg you.”

Spotting William, she struggled to her feet and made for her billy, where Fanny, her teacher, was quickly snipping threads and aligning spindles. The woman . . . was it Polly? . . . now pressed Fanny to step away.

“I can do it,” she insisted. “Please, it is all my fault, and I must repair it myself.”

William approached, aware that every eye in the mill was on him. He frowned. Something in the woman’s air—the way she held herself—compelled him. He had not had a good look at her face, but all the same he felt as if he had seen her before. Perhaps on the street somewhere.

“Madam?” He reached for her arm.

“Fire! Fire!” The shout rang out through the cavernous room. “Run! Everyone run for it!”

Jerking away from the woman, William caught sight of a ball of flame tumbling down the wooden staircase from the smithy. Shrieking in fear, people ran for the doors. Walker hurtled down the stairs, a pail in each hand. As the waterwheel ceased turning and the machines halted with great groans and clangs, the blacksmith tossed water onto the blaze.

William sprinted toward Walker, arriving in time to tear off his greatcoat and beat the smoldering flames. In moments, the fire was out.

And the mill was a shambles.

He looked up to find the place empty, with doors banging in the wind. Jimmy darted back into the hall and paused, silhouetted in the fading light. Walker stomped the last of the ash into the floorboards and started up the stairs.

“Halt,” William barked at him. “What was that?”

“Sir?” The smith turned.

“You know very well what I mean. That pile of rags was lit on purpose. Water stood at the ready to put it out. None of my laborers was ever in danger from a fire—were they?”

Walker’s eyebrows lifted. “I always keep water at the ready, sir.”

“And how often do you toss burning rags among my workers?”

“Do you accuse me, sir?”

“I do indeed.”

Jimmy approached warily. “Mr. Sherbourne, the people stand outside awaiting a word from ye. It grows dark, sir, and we normally send them home this time of night.”

William gave a snort of disgust. “Tell them to go home. And send in the overlookers to put the machines to rights.”

“Yes, sir. To be sure, sir.” Jimmy backed away a few steps and then turned and ran for the door.

“I shall require your presence at Thorne Lodge, Walker,” William told the blacksmith. “Tomorrow morning at eight sharp.”

“Yes, sir.”

The smith started up the stairs again. Stifling a groan, William studied the billy that had been a tangled mess only minutes earlier.

He did not like the tension in his mill. He did not trust his blacksmith. And he was reluctantly starting to believe that Miss Prudence Watson had been right to warn him of the potential for mutiny.

Worse yet, it seemed very possible—probable, in fact— that the woman to whom he was losing his heart was also his sworn adversary.

Her cape fluttering and curls bouncing, Prudence flew through the front door of the inn. She ran for the stairs in the earnest hope of eluding the innkeeper’s wife.

“Oh, Miss Watson!” The woman herself sallied forth from the kitchen. “Can you imagine? But he came again today! And he has written you a second letter!”

She drew the note from her apron pocket and presented it to her guest.

“Thank you very much indeed.” Prudence took the letter and offered a small curtsy before moving away again.

“He was dressed very handsome,” the innkeeper’s wife said, laying a hand on Prudence’s arm to stop her flight. She leaned close to confide. “In my opinion, he is the handsomest of all the Sherbourne brothers. Some say that with a single glance Randolph Sherbourne can drop a woman to the floor in a swoon. Others are partial to Edmund Sherbourne and his upright, pious appearance. But I myself cannot find a handsomer man than William Sherbourne. He is most assuredly the best looking of all three, and today he wore a greatcoat that was cut so well he seemed a foot taller and twice as broad at the shoulder! Can you credit it?”

“No, indeed, I cannot.” Prudence smiled. “But I must hurry to my room and read this letter.”

“Of course you must! Why do you dawdle? Go, go, child!”

Prudence lifted her skirts and fled up the stairs. She fumbled with her key, burst through her door, and shut it again as quickly as she could. Leaning against it, she tried to catch her breath.

Oh, how very close she had come to exposure! This venture was not going well. Not well at all! If Mr. Walker had not distracted William’s attention, he most surely would have found her out.

And to think that Mr. Walker had risked a fire on her behalf! A fire that could have burned down the mill and caused the death of many people! The very prospect of such a thing was too horrible to contemplate.

Already, Prudence’s intrusion at the mill endangered the workers. Mr. Walker had jeopardized his position to defend her masquerade. But she knew he had not done it out of love. He had acted on behalf of all the poor workers at the mill— those kind and gentle souls who had placed misguided hopes on her ability to improve their lot.

A sharp rap on the door startled Prudence. Holding her breath, she swung around and turned the knob.

“Miss Watson!” The innkeeper’s wife looked nearly as alarmed as Prudence felt on seeing her in such a state. “He is here; he is here! Just now, he has returned to the inn and asks for you. What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him I cannot go down.” Prudence closed her eyes and drew in a gasp of air. “No, wait! Tell him I shall be happy to speak to him.”

A grin brightened the woman’s face. “I’ll make tea!”

As she toddled off to complete her errands, Prudence tore open the letter William had left earlier. She read aloud.

“‘Miss Watson, will you please be so good as to join us this Friday evening for an assembly at Thorne Lodge? We should be happy to introduce you to our friends. Only say the word, and my husband will send a carriage for you at eight. Yours sincerely, Olivia, Lady Thorne.’”