To Theo, who had seen the beau monde react to that same marriage with revulsion, it came as a considerable shock to discover that, in some circles, Ethan Brundy had been seen as a very eligible parti. “Becky,” he echoed thoughtfully. “But she married someone else, didn’t she? The foreman?”
“Aye, she were already mad for Tommy, and he for her. Ethan gave Tommy a rise in wages, to make him a mite easier for Wilkins to swallow as a son-in-law—him having lost an arm, you know, and Wilkins saying he won’t give his girl to a cripple—and then he made Wilkins assistant foreman, thinking that might smooth his ruffled feathers.”
“Did it?” asked Theo, intrigued in spite of himself by this hitherto unsuspected result of his sister’s marriage.
Old Ben shook his head. “Not that I could tell.”
“But, dash it, it’s been four years!” exclaimed Theo, unwittingly betraying far too intimate a knowledge of his employer’s marriage. “Surely if he was capable of being placated, it would have happened by now.”
“Aye, you’re probably right.”
“Then why doesn’t someone speak up?”
One graying eyebrow lifted toward Old Ben’s hairline. “Are you volunteering for the job?”
Theo started to make a hasty demurral, but reconsidered. Surely no one was in a better position than he to make Ethan aware of how matters stood. “Maybe I am, at that,” he said thoughtfully.
Old Ben reached across the table and laid a hand on Theo’s arm as if to forestall him. “Take my advice, lad. Don’t do it. Oh, I know you mean well,” he added quickly, anticipating Theo’s objection. “But it won’t serve. You’ll only make a deal of trouble for all of us.”
“But Sir Ethan needs to know,” Theo insisted.
“Aye, but think, lad. Ethan can’t stay here forever. His lady wife likes London—and he likes his lady wife too much to disappoint her. Then, too, he’s standing for Parliament. Soon or late, he’ll return to London, and as soon as he’s gone—” He drew a hand across his neck.
Theo did not interpret this gesture literally—he doubted that any throats would be slit—but understood it to mean that Wilkins’s vengeance against the informer would be swift and sure.
“But you’re not eating,” Ben protested in a very different voice, his shrewd gaze falling on the empty expanse of table before Theo.
Theo shrugged in a not entirely successful attempt at nonchalance. “I—I’m not really hungry,” he lied.
“You will be, by the end of the day,” predicted Ben with the confidence of long experience. “Here, take some of this.”
He tore off a large piece of bread from his loaf and handed it across the table. A hunk of cheese and an apple followed the bread.
“I can’t take your food!” Theo protested, although his neglected stomach growled in anticipation.
Hearing this, Ben’s knowing gaze dropped to Theo’s middle. “Your belly says otherwise.”
“Yes, well, I forgot—I overslept this morning, and barely had breakfast. I forgot that I would need something for the middle of the day.”
“You won’t forget again,” Ben said reassuringly. “You’ll remember to bring something tomorrow, but until then, you’d do best to take this. We’ve five more hours yet, you know.”
“Five more hours,” echoed Theo in failing accents.
“Could be worse,” Ben pointed out. “One of the first things our Ethan did when he inherited the mill was cut working hours from fourteen to ten.”
Alas, Theo could not share Ben’s enthusiasm for “our Ethan’s” generosity. By the end of the day, his back ached and his hands throbbed, several of the blisters by this time having broken open. He wanted nothing more than to collapse onto his own bed (or what passed for his own bed, at least for the nonce) and sleep the clock ’round. Instead, he would have to get up at dawn the next morning and do it all again. He was denied even the luxury of a brief nap, however, for upon entering the boarding house, he was met at the door by Mrs. Drinkard, who urged him to hurry and wash up for dinner.
“For we must dine a bit early tonight, in order to set the dining room to rights for tonight’s political meeting,” she explained, clearly in some agitation lest the location Sir Valerian had chosen for his meeting should fail to find favor in the Parliamentary hopeful’s eyes.
Theo glanced over her shoulder at Miss Drinkard, who was engaged in arranging chrysanthemums in a bowl that stood on the small table in the foyer. She wore a coarse cotton apron over the same blue satin gown she’d worn to dinner the previous evening, this time enhanced with a single strand of pearls which contrasted jarringly with the apron. He wondered if this added touch was in anticipation of Sir Valerian’s visit—and, if so, whether it had been her own idea or her mother’s. As if aware of his scrutiny, she looked up from her task and their eyes met in the mirror mounted on the wall over the table. Her lips curved in an apologetic little smile, and her eyes held a silent plea for understanding.
“Of course,” Theo told his hostess. “I shall be back down directly.” With this assurance, he gave the ladies a nod and betook himself up the stairs to his room.
Back in London, his dinner preparations would have included trading his buckskin breeches and blue tailcoat with its gleaming brass buttons for the form-fitting black pantaloons and black tailcoat deemed suitable for evening. Perhaps, he reflected for the second time in as many days, it was just as well that he’d brought no such garments with him; one could hardly scramble into one’s evening clothes, and thanks to Sir Valerian and his political gathering, he would not have had sufficient time to turn himself out in style in any case.
Resolved to do the best he could in the time he had, he stripped off his sweat-soaked work clothing and poured water from the pitcher into the bowl. This would long since have grown cold, but if his presence had been very much de trop when he’d gone to the kitchen in search of it the previous evening, he suspected it would be doubly so tonight. He bathed himself with water that was just as cold as he’d expected, then arrayed himself in the same clothing he’d worn to dinner the previous evening; if it was acceptable for the daughter of the house to wear the same garments two nights running, he reasoned, then it must surely be so for one of the tenants.
Finally, he picked up his hairbrush and swept it through his golden locks—and muttered a curse under his breath at the cloud of lint produced by this simple act. He strode across the small room to the window, threw open the sash, and stuck his head out, then brushed his hair so that the resulting snowfall drifted to the ground below rather than onto the floor. Having finished with this task, he stripped off the brown tailcoat he’d just put on and, in the absence of a lint brush, shook it vigorously out the window before putting it back on and descending the stairs once more to the dining room.
Mrs. Drinkard’s high hopes for the evening had apparently communicated themselves to the other residents, for it seemed to Theodore that all of them (all except himself, anyway) had gone out of their way to appear to advantage. Mr. Nethercote wore a crimson velvet coat that would have been the height of fashion in the last century, and Mrs. Jennings had chosen to air a set of garnets that might have been much improved by a thorough cleaning. Even Mr. Nutley’s rusty black clerical garb appeared to have been painstakingly brushed, and Mr. Potts had attempted, not entirely successfully, to tie his cravat in a fashionable Waterfall.
“I should like to hear more about this political gathering, Mrs. Drinkard,” urged the aspiring lawyer. “What is it all about?”
“Now, that’s just what I don’t know,” confessed his hostess. “Sir Valerian said he wished to hire a room where he might meet with some of the mill workers. I daresay Mr. Tisdale can tell us more,” she suggested, turning expectantly toward Theo.
He shook his head. “I don’t know any more than you do. Less, in fact.”
“But surely someone at the mill must have spoken of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Drinkard, clearly in some dismay that the meeting might prove not to be the
brilliant coup she had hoped for.
“If they did, I never heard of it. But,” he added quickly, seeing her distress, “recall that today was my first day there. It might be that the workers would not care to discuss a matter of such importance in front of a stranger.”
“Yes, that is very likely the case,” agreed Mrs. Drinkard, brightening a little. Belatedly realizing that this assumption was hardly flattering to her newest tenant, she added hastily, “Not, of course, that we don’t know how very amiable you are, Mr. Tisdale, but the men at the mill will not be so well acquainted with you.”
As she had known him scarcely more than twenty-four hours, Theo was hard pressed to hold back a grin. “I am obliged to you, ma’am,” he said meekly, and had his reward when he glanced at Miss Drinkard to find her smiling gratefully at him.
Alas, this proved to be the one bright point of the evening meal. Holding his fork in his blistered hand proved to be an agony, and as the brisket of beef to which Mrs. Drinkard treated her guests that evening was somewhat tough, wielding his knife was even worse. As a result, he ate little in spite of his hunger, but excused himself from the table as soon as he could do so without giving offense, and returned to his room, where he wanted only to seek oblivion in Morpheus’s embrace.
Unfortunately, he had reckoned without Sir Valerian’s political gathering. He had hardly settled himself between the sheets before the first arrivals appeared, as evidenced by the sounds of tramping footsteps beneath his window, followed in quick succession by the rapping of the door knocker and Mrs. Drinkard’s voice welcoming the mill workers with a careful blend of hospitality and condescension. That same voice assuming a very different tone was sufficient to inform him that Sir Valerian himself had arrived.
But Theo’s troubles were only beginning. As his room was directly over the dining room, the sounds of the gathering drifted up the chimney flue, obliging him to pull first the covers and, finally, the pillow over his head in a futile attempt to muffle the voices that grew increasingly agitated as the meeting progressed. And then, quite suddenly, two words rose above the babel of voices, two words that caused Theo to throw off the pillow and bedclothes, and to sit bolt upright in his bed.
The words were “Ethan Brundy.”
8
Listen for dear honor’s sake.
JOHN MILTON, Comus
THEO CROSSED THE SMALL room in three strides. Kneeling before the fireplace (heedless of the discomfort to knees cushioned by nothing more than a thin cambric nightshirt), he thrust his head in, the better to hear the angry voices that drifted up through the flue. While the voices were not difficult to hear, distinguishing the words they spoke was quite another matter. The speakers often talked over one another, to such an extent that Theo wondered if the people in the room directly below could understand each other any better than he could understand them himself. Occasionally, however, a word or phrase made itself heard, and these were enough to fill him with foreboding: “Employer? Slave-driver, more like!” “—getting above himself—” “—while he lives like a king” and, most ominous of all, “—time to take action—”
Action? What sort of action? Theo instinctively leaned forward, as if by doing so he might more easily understand any specifics offered for putting this vague threat into practice. Alas, if any such specifics were put forward, Theo never heard them, for he was distracted at that moment by a light knock on his door.
He jerked upright, and cracked his head on the brick lintel. Muttering imprecations under his breath (although whether these were directed toward the unyielding lintel or the uninvited caller, even he could not have said), he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the protests of his aching muscles.
“Coming!” he called, then snatched up the breeches he had discarded earlier and tugged them on, stuffing his nightshirt into the waistband. Having made himself decent, if not entirely presentable, he opened the door—and was stunned to see Miss Drinkard standing in the corridor just beyond the threshold, bearing a tray with a bowl of steaming water, a jar of some unguent, a pair of scissors, and a roll of cotton lint. Theo eyed this last with disfavor. If he never saw a shred of cotton again, it would be all too soon.
“I—I’m sorry to disturb you,” she stammered, blushing a little at the sight of his déshabille.
“Well, now that you have, what do you want?” Annoyed and more than a little embarrassed at being interrupted in the act of eavesdropping, Theo spoke perhaps a bit more sharply than the situation warranted.
“It was nothing. Just—I beg your pardon—I should not have—”
She began to back away, and Theo instantly regretted his show of temper. “No, don’t go. I’m a brute to lash out at you. It’s just that, well, it’s been a hard day.” As if in proof of this statement, he raked one abused hand through his disheveled golden curls.
“Yes, I’m sure it must have been,” she said, halting in mid-flight. “That was why I came. I noticed you weren’t eating much at dinner, and saw—” She made a helpless little gesture toward his hands, and tried again. “Mama keeps a supply of basilicum ointment in the stillroom, and I thought you might need some.”
“And for this, I snapped your head off,” said Theo, filled with remorse. “It was kind of you to think of me. I would be glad of any assistance you would care to offer—although if you’ve changed your mind after the rude welcome I gave you, it will be no more than I deserve.”
Miss Drinkard hastily denied having any such thought in her head, and Theo invited her inside—being careful, of course, to nudge the doorstop in place with his foot in order to satisfy the demands of propriety by keeping the door open. She gave him a shy smile at his ready understanding of the potential awkwardness of her situation, then commanded him to take a seat on the room’s only chair, the one positioned before the writing desk. He obeyed this behest, albeit not before taking the tray from her—ignoring her protests that he must consider his poor hands—and setting it on the desk.
“First, you must turn up your sleeves,” she cautioned him as she plunged a cloth into the bowl of hot water. “The nights have grown quite chilly, and you will not want to sleep in a wet shirt.”
Theo submitted to these instructions with a good grace, rolling his sleeves up halfway to the elbows and revealing a pair of forearms lightly dusted with golden hair. “Tell me, Miss Drinkard, does it often fall to your lot to act as physician to your mother’s tenants?”
“Mama prefers to call them guests,” she confided, lowering her voice. “It is all a pretense, of course, but one can’t really blame her. As for my acting as their physician, I wouldn’t say it occurs ‘often,’ but it is not unusual. Just last winter, poor Mrs. Jennings was so ill with the influenza that we feared we might lose her. Mama did not quite like me tending her, for fear I should fall ill myself, but I couldn’t bear to see the poor old dear suffer so.” She wrung the excess water from the cloth, then set about dabbing away the dried blood that had crusted about the worst of Theo’s blisters. “And then there was the time I was obliged to splint poor Mr. Potts’s arm until the surgeon could be sent for.”
“I expect he enjoyed that,” Theo remarked drily. In fact, he was aware of a certain pleasurable sensation himself. Miss Drinkard’s hands were gentle on his, and he found himself wondering what it might be like were she to touch him for reasons unrelated to the practice of medicine. Gentle, certainly, but if her labors in the kitchen were anything to judge by, then possessing a surprising strength as well . . .
She looked up abruptly from her work. “Oh, so you noticed that, did you?”
Theo gave a guilty start. “What? Oh—yes—Mr. Potts. Well—forgive me, Miss Drinkard, but he makes it rather difficult not to.”
She gave a little huff of annoyance. “I have told him he must not—must not entertain hopes in that direction. Even if I were to—to return his very flattering sentiments, Mama would never countenance such a match.” She glanced up from her work, giving him a glimpse of speaking dark eyes before lo
wering them once more. “Mr. Potts is not the only one to entertain hopes, you know, and Mama has not entirely abandoned hers. She wants to see me make a brilliant match.”
He had guessed as much, of course, and yet was taken aback nevertheless at hearing it so baldly stated. “I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, Miss Drinkard, but in your present situation, such an outcome seems unlikely.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Under the circumstances, I daresay the arrival of Sir Valerian must seem like a godsend,” observed Theo.
By this time she had finished cleaning his blistered hands and had progressed to swabbing them with the basilicum ointment, but at the mention of Sir Valerian, her gaze shifted to the fireplace, from whence indistinct voices could still be heard. “Yes, but although Mama could not but welcome the extra money, Sir Valerian must not be allowed to inconvenience the other guests. If the noise from his meetings will disturb you, he must find somewhere else to host them.”
“No! Er, that is, no,” said Theo, modulating his tone. “I daresay it will be just as you predicted, and I shall be able to sleep through any disturbance, now that my hands will no longer pain me. It is very kind of you, Miss Drinkard.”
“Surely we’re not back to that!” protested Daphne, deftly unwinding a length of cotton lint.
“Back to what?” asked Theo, all at sea.
She bent upon him a roguish smile with a dimple at the corner of her mouth. “Your telling me how kind I am, and my assuring you that it is nothing at all.” In a more serious vein, she added, “I am often lonely, Mr. Tisdale. You seem to have some understanding of my predicament, and yet you do not seek to placate my pride by mouthing well-meaning platitudes. I had thought perhaps we might be—friends.”
“I am sure Mrs. Drinkard would say I am not at all a proper ‘friend’ for you to have.”
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