The Reckoning (16 page)

The wolves in question must have been on the watch, for
hardly had Rosamund and Sophie set foot on the flagway
than Mr Hawker and Mr Farraline appeared, exquisite from
the crown of their tall hats to the tip of their glossy Hessians.
Mr Hawker wore a green coat with handsome brass buttons, a
wonderful foil to his dark colouring; while Mr Farraline was
resplendent in saxe blue, with a red-and-white striped waist
coat which tiptoed with catlike surefootedness along the
dividing line between the killingly smart and the vulgarly
ostentatious.

‘
May we have the honour of escorting you, ladies? Where
do you go this morning?' Farraline asked when they had
replaced their hats.

Moss coughed slightly, and nudged Rosamund in the back
with the handle of her own umbrella, an indignity which
roused the devil in her ladyship.

‘
We thought of walking up to look at the castle,' she said
airily. 'We should be glad of your company. I'm a good
walker, but on such a steep road a gentleman's arm would be
welcome even to me; and Sophie could hardly contemplate it
without.’

Moss's gasp was audible only to the young ladies, but it was
enough to make Sophie demur, though mildly. 'I think it may
be too windy up there today, Ros,' she murmured.

‘
rush. Of course it will be windy. That's precisely the point
– only think how fresh and delicious!' Rosamund turned
firmly in the direction of the headland, and the gentlemen,
only too happy to fall in with the scheme, offered their arms,
Farraline to Rosamund and Hawker to Sophie.

‘
That was well done,' Farraline murmured as they walked
ahead – the flagway being only wide enough for two.

‘
I'm an old campaigner,' Rosamund said. 'I'm used to
getting my own way.'

‘
It's an excellent idea, though I'm afraid Miss Morland
may be right about its being too windy for ladies up on the headland. I fear for your bonnets. But oh, for the freshness
and the invigorating air! And the view – nothing in the way as
far as the eye can see! Don't you ever feel hemmed in, Lady
Rosamund? Don't you ever feel the houses crowding in on
you, ready to suffocate you?'

‘
Yes, sometimes; but then I usually send for my horse and
go out for a gallop.'

‘
Yes, that would do it. At home I sometimes follow the
same plan –'

‘I'm afraid I have no idea where home is for you.’

The family seat is at Grasscroft, on the edge of the Pennines. We have moors all around us there. But I'm
building a new house on Cheetham Hill, just outside
Manchester, for the convenience of being nearer the mills.’

Rosamund looked at him in surprise. 'Nearer the mills?’

He smiled. 'Yes. Does it shock you? It shocks everyone else, including Mama!'

‘
I'm not shocked, but intrigued. It sounds like a story, and
I love a story.'

‘
Then I shall make it one for you. You see, just before Papa
died, he bought the Ordsall mills from old Samuel Ordsall.
Over the years he'd gradually grown more and more inter
ested in machinery – well, you can hardly live in that part of
Lancashire without being aware of its influence.'

‘I suppose not.'

‘
You're not convinced, I can see, but it's true! Well, Papa
was very excited by everything to do with machinery and
steam-power – it takes some people that way – and he came
to feel strongly that the future way lay through manufac
turing. So he looked for some mills to invest in, and he came
upon Samuel Ordsall. Have you heard of him?'

‘No, I'm afraid not,' Rosamund said politely.

‘
Oh, he was a grand old fellow! I met him once – one of the
first of all the mill-masters, a character straight out of
history! He started off as an apprentice blacksmith in a tiny
village in Derbyshire. By the time he was twenty he owned
the forge, and by the time he was thirty he had his own mill
employing a hundred spinners. When Papa met him, he was
old, but he was still looking to the future. He wanted someone
to invest money so that he could expand his business – this
was during the war, of course, when the demand for cotton
goods was outstripping the supply.'

‘Of course.'

‘
He offered Papa a partnership, but somehow Papa persu
aded him to sell entirely. Well, Old Samuel had no heir, so
perhaps it wasn't so hard. However it was, Papa became the
first Earl of Batchworth to be a mill-master!'

‘Tremendous.'

‘
Mama and Kit – my brother – thought he was mad, and I
must say I did too, at first. But he took me round the mills
one day – against my will at the time – and I began to see
what it was that fascinated him about the machines. There's
something about them when they're running –'

‘
And when your father died, he left the mills to you?' Rosa
mund hurried him along.

‘
Good God, no!' Farraline laughed. 'Papa would never
break up the estate. Everything went to Kit, along with the
title. Kit would have sold the mills if he could, but there was a
clause in Papa's will preventing it – apparently he'd promised
Old Samuel he'd keep them in the family, as a condition of
the original purchase. So Kit did the only thing he could – he
just ignored them, and left them to an agent to run.'

‘Very wise.'

‘
I was in the army, of course, and I suppose I intended to
make it my career, until I took the wound at Paris. I was
invalided out, went home to Grasscroft, and one day, out of
boredom, had myself driven in to Ordsall to see the mills
again.'

‘
And did they still please you?'

‘
More than ever – but I saw at once that they weren't being properly run. The agent was no good, and I told Kit so, but he
simply wasn't interested. So I offered to run them myself,
provided he would give me a free hand. Now I have shocked
you, I can see.'

‘
No – no, not at all,' Rosamund said, more bemused than
shocked. 'If it was what you wanted ...'

‘
Well, a younger son must do something, you know. The
army is closed to me, and I have no vocation for the church or
the law.'

‘
But you don't actually – you don't surely go into the mills
every day like a –’

He grinned. 'Exactly like a –' he mocked. 'Yes, my dear
Lady Rosamund, I attend to the day-to-day running, and
have even been known to take off my coat and get my hands dirty! That's why I needed the house, of course; and Kit was
happy to build it for me – and to do the thing handsomely –
in the hope that living in a gentlemanly manner would rub off
on me, and make me give up my vulgar obsession. He and
Mama find my taste for the mills appalling. They think I'm
mad. But they'll see – one day you'll all see! The future
belongs to the machine! The day will come when almost every
task you can think of will be done by machinery.’

Rosamund shook her head. 'Your mother and brother were
right. You are quite mad,' she said, but in a pleasant, friendly
way. He only laughed, taking no offence. 'But what can you
be doing here?' she went on. 'Idling away the working day in
strolling about Scarborough like a gentleman of fashion?
Won't your precious machines be going to rack without you?'

‘
I feel it very strongly, I assure you. But my arm was
getting worse and worse, and in the end I had to go to London
to consult a physician. Fitz put me onto a good man – a
former army surgeon, one of the best, who'd set up his plate
in Mayfair since the war ended. He recommended the opera
tion, and –' He shrugged. 'Here I am convalescing.'

‘You must be anxious to get back.'

‘
Yes, I am – though I have enjoyed my stay here much
more lately than at the beginning.’

She avoided the compliment. 'You haven't seemed like a
man consumed with restlessness.'

‘
Nor you like a lady cabined, cribbed and confined – yet
you must find Scarborough slow work after London.’

‘
Perhaps I'm convalescing too.’

He hesitated a moment before saying, 'I knew Tantony. We
served in the Peninsula together. He was a fine officer – one
of the best – and a decent man. You chose well, Lady Rosa
mund.'

‘Thank you.’

He pressed her hand against his ribs for an instant, and
they walked on in silence, hearing behind them how Hawker
was telling Sophie a preposterous story about one of his
adventures in Paris, which was making her laugh. Rosamund
listened for a moment, and then said, ‘Mr Hawker – he is
doing well in the diplomatic world? Is he fixed in Europe?'

‘
I imagine so, for the time being. There's nothing to keep
him in England, and Society is much freer over there.' Farra
line looked at her enquiringly. 'Are you worried for your
cousin?'

‘Is she his object?' she asked bluntly.

A faint smile came and went on Farraline's lips which
Rosamund couldn't quite account for, but he said promptly
enough, 'Oh no. She has nothing that could tempt him.'

‘
He pays her attention, however. He seems to want to
please her.'

‘
Yes, but – difficult to believe though it may be – I think it
is only that. He wants to please her, to give her pleasure. I
think, Lady Rosamund, that he likes her.'

‘
Likes
her?'

‘
I think she reminds him of his wife,' Farraline said gently.
The word caught Rosamund up short, for though she had
thought of Hawker in relation to Fanny, she had hardly ever thought of Fanny in relation to Hawker. His wife – yes, she
had been
Hawker's wife.

Farraline watched her as if he knew what was going
through her mind. Then he said, 'I've known Fitz a long time.
I've seen him with more women than I can count – women of
all ages and all degrees. He goes through them as casually as a
man riffles a pack of cards. I've seen him charm them, seduce
them, amuse them, make use of them, even avoid them. I
never saw him with his wife – a matter of great regret to me –
but I've heard him speak of her, and I've no doubt at all that for once in his life, probably for the only time in his life, he
was in love.'

‘
Good God,' Rosamund said blankly. Farraline was plainly
in earnest. And yet she couldn't believe that their meeting in
the first place was accidental. She couldn't believe that
Hawker had not arranged it for some purpose. 'Then what,'
she asked Farraline directly, 'is his plan?'