A Flight of Fancy (29 page)

Too much of a hush. Too little movement. Too much stillness.

“Whittaker?” Cassandra called in a low voice. “My lord?”

Drip. Splash. Patter. Water running off her cloak made most of the sounds around her.

“Geoffrey?” she tried again.

More rain sluicing from the sky, the branches, her clothes. Otherwise, not one footfall, not one tall, broad figure, not the merest whisper of a voice disturbed the woodland.

Geoffrey Giles, Earl of Whittaker, had failed to make their rendezvous.

24

He was being followed.

Whittaker stood a dozen yards inside the parkland gate and knew he was not alone. Beneath the trees, the partial shelter from the rain offered enough quiet for him to hear the click of the gate latch behind him. The gate he had locked. He could not mistake the dull ping of iron against iron and a squeal of hinges no louder than a newborn kitten’s mew.

Hairs rising on the back of his neck, he stepped into the shelter of an oak and spun toward the entrance.

So swift he would have missed it had he blinked, a shadow melted into the density of overgrown vines and tree limbs. A twig cracked, then silence reigned save for the ceaseless rush of water against the interlaced branches above.

And Cassandra was a quarter mile away waiting for him. At least she should be by now if she were coming. He needed to get to her quickly, warn her to get back to the house. Yet if he did, he could be leading the assassin right to her. Unless it was the major’s watchdog.

Unless they were one and the same.

Madness. This game was giving him notions far beyond reason. Major Gabriel Crawford was a respected military
man. Respected military men did not go around hiring assassins against peers of the realm. They especially did not when they worked with another peer. And whatever Lord Bainbridge thought of Whittaker, he would not condone his death.

If it was the same man who had thrown the knife near the mill the day before, Whittaker could not return to the field gate either. If the person following him meant him harm, he would walk right into a trap.

He stood motionless, waiting, listening, praying that Cassandra would grow too weary or cold to wait for him. Or perhaps he should be praying she had not come out in the rain at all. He should not have asked it of her. He should have thought of another way to talk to her, to tell her everything. Yet with her standing before him so pretty in her blue dress and ribbons twisted through her hair, he could scarcely think. Every word he spoke about leaving her to Philip Sorrells felt like a dose of poison. He was right, though. The third person in the parkland seemed like the final proof that he must remain separate from her, the one clear message he had received from the Lord in months.

Leave her. Leave her. Leave her.

His heart so heavy he felt as though each footfall would sound like a roll of thunder, Whittaker began to move through the trees. The rain would cover up the rustle of what foliage remained on low-hanging branches, as well as the sound of his rough workman’s shoes on the bed of fallen leaves. He knew this parkland. Until he went to school himself at the age of twelve, he had spent the holidays when his older brother was home hiding from him amidst these trees so he could read without being disturbed. He knew the location of the other gates. Their latches and hinges would be rusted enough to screech like banshees, but
he could be away and across the fields before whoever followed him found him.

And Cassandra would be back in the house, out of reach. She would be safe. That mattered more than anything.

“You had best respond to my messages today, Major Crawford,” Whittaker muttered as he reached another gate and began to work the latch.

It had rusted shut. After several blows and a cut on the side of his hand, it broke apart and the gate popped open. Just one more repair—an inexpensive one—but dozens of them added up to a great deal of money for an estate that could not bear it and keep the farmers’ homes in good repair, yet not raising the rents or lowering the wages of the mill workers.

Perhaps the Lord was telling him to marry the heiress.

He could not believe it. Surely God did not intend for a man and wife to have no attraction for one another. Miss Irving was beautiful, and her glances at him he recognized as appreciative. Their interest ran no further. They shared nothing except a relationship so distant the marriage laws would not prevent an alliance between them. If she answered to a suit from Whittaker, it would be for the title and nothing more. Nothing more than him answering to the siren call of her inheritance. He would rather live in a hovel like the shepherd’s cottage with Cassandra than in a manor house with Regina Irving.

But if the Lord wanted something else from him, he should pursue it. He had pursued his own way for too long, and all that resulted was playing spy for the Crown by force, and disaster for Cassandra.

Soaked to the skin, Whittaker entered his cottage. Warmth from the banked fire filled the single ground-floor room. He
built up the blaze, made tea, and sipped it while his clothes steamed dry. By the time both were finished, he had made up his mind about what he would do next. First step came with his meeting that night.

“This continual destruction gets us nowhere,” Whittaker began.

“Aye, we’ve heard that from you before.” Rob yawned as though bored with Whittaker’s argument. “We’re trying to teach the owners a lesson about cutting our wages.”

“Which they’re doing now to pay for the repairs,” Whittaker shot back. “And you damaged the Hern mill. That owner hasn’t lowered anybody’s wages.”

Hugh leaned forward, a looming shadow in the dim room. “We heard he was going to now that he ain’t marrying money.”

“Did you, now?” Whittaker made himself sit still and silent, afraid of what else he might let slip. A dozen questions crowded into his head.
From whom?
ranged at the top of the list.

“That’s what we do to them who thinks they can rob a man of his honest pay,” Jimmy said, his voice as soft as the silk he wove. “It’s a warning like.”

Whittaker shrugged. “I can understand that, but maybe we should look at the rumors and make sure they’re true first. If they aren’t, we could be the ones robbing men of their honest day’s pay.”

“Hern was a mistake,” Rob conceded.

“No, it wasn’t,” Hugh and Jimmy chorused.

“Two of our men got shot,” Rob persisted. “No one warned us the place would be guarded so heavily.”

“Or maybe someone warned them.” Hugh shoved back his chair with a rasp of wood against wood. “I’m wondering which one of you it were.”

They all sat still and silent now. Even the taproom below seemed to hold its collective breath for half a minute. Whittaker fully expected the men to surround him and bind him, admit aloud they knew who he was, and hang him as so many of their own had been hanged for assaults on weaving shops and officers of the Crown. He braced himself, ready to bolt for the window. Slowly he lowered his right hand from his thigh in the hope that he could grab the knife shoved into his boot before they overwhelmed him.

Jimmy moved first. He shoved back his chair hard enough to topple it backward. Whittaker grabbed his knife hilt.

Before he drew the blade free, Jimmy turned on Hugh. “Maybe your informant ain’t so good. Maybe you led us right into a trap.”

Whittaker relaxed infinitesimally. Jimmy was indeed protecting him, drawing attention from him. Perhaps even trying to learn who the true enemy was?

“Are you accusing me of sommit?” Hugh surged to his feet as well. “’Cause if you are, just come out and say it.”

“I’m saying you might not be gettin’ such good information,” Jimmy said.

“Who was it?” Rob demanded, standing also.

Whittaker lounged back in his chair as though entertained by a drama. The less attention on himself, the better.

Hugh took a step backward. “I ain’t goin’ to say who. It were good information. I mean, the rest he’s given us has been. He must’ve made a mistake.”

“That mistake got my cousin killed.” Jimmy never raised
his voice, yet it slid across the room with the undertone of a threat. “More mistakes like that might get someone else killed.”

Hugh leaned over the smaller man, his face inches from Jimmy’s. “Are you threatening me?”

“Maybe.” Jimmy did not back down.

“Then maybe I should—”

“This is getting us nowhere either.” Whittaker rose and shot out an arm between the two men. “Back away, both of you. We gain nothing if we fight amongst ourselves.”

“So what’re your ideas for makin’ things better for us weavers?” Rob jutted his chin at Whittaker. “Seein’ as how you’re so sure what won’t work.”

“I wish I could say work only for those who pay fair wages,” Whittaker said with care, “but there’s too few of those.” His mill owner’s heart rebelled against what he suggested next, yet it was better than the destruction and the death the uprising had caused thus far. “If you stop working altogether without destroying the looms, the owners will have to pay more to get you back. They don’t make money if they have no weavers.”

“And who will feed our families?” Rob asked.

“Who’s feeding our families now?” Whittaker returned.

Hugh snorted. “Them who pays the tithe tax—the landowners and the churches.”

“And the mill owners,” Jimmy added.

“Why should I work twelve hours a day for naught,” Hugh pressed on, “if someone else will take care of my wife and children?”

“Have you no pride?” Whittaker held back a sigh of frustration. “Because I do, and it tells me that what we’re doing now is getting nothing but more men out of work and a lot dead.”

“Then you ain’t with us no more?” Rob took a step closer to Whittaker. “’Cause if you are . . .”

Whittaker held his ground. “I won’t take part in any more senseless destruction like at the Hern mills.”

How he wanted to say he would take part in no more destruction at all. But the major’s threat still loomed.

Whittaker sat down and drew his chair back to the table and the sour stench of the ale before him. “Let’s sit down and discuss what we do next.”

“The Murdoch spinning mill.” Hugh returned to his chair, and the others followed as he laid out a plan for destroying the water-driven spinning machines that produced finer, stronger, and more consistent thread than did the hand spinners but were dangerous. At the same time, they put hundreds of spinners out of work.

A touch of guilt stabbed Whittaker that he had thought of buying a spinning mill himself when the money became available. He felt guilty for how much his looms had put men out of work, though they had been there long before he expected to inherit. Yet if he sold the mills, a new owner might not be so generous, and Whittaker Hall would suffer, putting more men out of work on the farms.

Lost in his thoughts, he barely heard the plans the men made. He did not need to know them. In the melee of an assault, no one noticed his absence, or had not thus far. All he needed to tell Major Crawford was that an attack was imminent. The military was supposed to take care of the rest. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they failed to arrive on time. What mattered most about the night’s meeting was that he had one more important sliver of information.

Hugh was the key to learning who insisted on continuing the
destruction, though the rebellion had died down in most other areas. If Whittaker could learn the identity of Hugh’s informant—misinformant—then Whittaker would give the major what he wanted and be free to go about his life, rebuilding the mills and Whittaker Hall, building a family with a wife and sons and daughters.

The latter should look like Cassandra. But they would not. Could not. She did not want him for her husband, and he was beginning to accept that she might be right. Once upon a time, when he remembered to do so, he had prayed for God to provide the means to spare him from financial ruin and thus sparing the livelihoods of dozens of men and women. Then he met Cassandra, fell in love with her, and only later learned of the modest but so useful dowry. He would have her as his wife without it, and yet perhaps he would not after all, for too many would suffer without the infusion of money. Perhaps God was showing him another way to prosperity for those dependent upon his success to make their living.

Tomorrow he would go home to court the heiress. With the Irving fortune, he could buy mills from owners who could not rebuild and needed the funds as much as did the weavers. He could do more good with a fortune than without. It was the right choice, surely a godly choice.

As he made his way home through the night now free of rain, he wondered why, if this was all so right, he found himself praying that Regina Irving truly found him no more intriguing than he found her.

25

“Tomorrow?” Cassandra hugged her arms across her middle and smiled up at Philip Sorrells. “I can go up again tomorrow?”

“Provided no more rain comes today.” Mr. Sorrells spoke in a hushed tone so as not to be overheard by the rest of the company, including the boys, their tutor, and Lady Whittaker, who were using the open end of the great hall to practice a badly performed version of
Richard III
, directed by Regina Irving.