Heart of Honor (16 page)

Coralee’s eyes widened. “Good grief!”

“I have a feeling we may have been wrong, Corrie. Making love might not be quite so terrible as we imagined.”

Corrie laughed. “Perhaps not.” She handed a slip of paper across the desk. “This arrived for you just a few moments ago.”

Krista’s head came up. “Another threatening note?”

“I don’t think so. They rarely come with your name penned with a flourish on very expensive stationery.”

Krista popped the wax seal on the message and began to read. “This is from Cutter Harding. He is the owner of Harding Textiles. The man is requesting a meeting. The note says he wants me to hear his side of the issue in regard to the strikes.” She tapped the paper. “He wants to know if I might be available to come out to the factory and observe conditions there for myself.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

Krista looked up from the paper and smiled. “I am beginning to believe
Heart to Heart
is doing some very good work, Coralee. First the overseer from Consolidated Mining hires someone to scare me out of supporting the Mines and Collieries Act. Now the owner of one of the country’s largest textile manufacturing firms thinks our magazine has enough influence to warrant a personal tour of his factory. I can only believe that all our hard work is actually doing some good.”

“It is mostly your hard work,” Corrie said. “I just write the society column.”

“You are in charge of the entire women’s section, not just the society column. In truth, you help me run this place, and I couldn’t do it without you.”

Corrie seemed pleased at her words, which were utterly true. “So what about Mr. Harding?”

“I’ll agree to go, of course. I am extremely interested in seeing his factory.” She smiled. “Besides, if he expects me to hear his ideas, then he shall be obliged to hear mine.”

The meeting was set for the end of the week. Krista planned to travel by carriage to the small town of Beresford-on-Quay, where the factory was located. Along with her big beefy coachman, Mr. Skinner, Leif had insisted on coming, and though she put up a token protest, secretly she was relieved.

Especially so after what happened last night. Sometime after midnight, the offices of the
London Beacon,
a widely read weekly newspaper, had burned to the ground. A fireman had been seriously injured trying to put out the blaze, and one of the employees, an old man who slept in a room upstairs, had died of smoke inhalation.

The fire had undoubtedly been set. The
Beacon
was even more vocal in its reform ideas than
Heart to Heart.
The newspaper had a far wider readership, its subscribers mostly men, while the gazette appealed mostly to women, but its destruction had put Krista’s already heightened senses on alert.

The newspaper business had become a dangerous game, as she had already learned. Harley Jacobs had been apprehended for his part in the assault on her and Leif, but apparently the danger remained.

It was a bit of a ride to the textile factory in Beresford-on-Quay, but Leif would be traveling with her, and she could think of no more capable man. If trouble arose, she would be glad to have him along. This time she intended to err on the side of caution.

Meanwhile, every night since the evening she and her father had accompanied him to Crockford’s, Leif had returned to play cards. He had not come home until the early hours of the morning, when she heard his heavy footfalls climbing the stairs. He caught only a few hours’ sleep, then hauled himself out of bed and accompanied her to work.

Today was no different. He was exhausted, she knew, but he had been winning. He was good, she realized.
Very
good. Given his astonishing memory and fierce determination, she understood why he would be. And he wasn’t about to quit until he had the money he needed.

The notion made a knot form in her stomach.

It was Thursday, late afternoon. Today was the day the gazette was printed, assembled and tied into bundles, which would be loaded into carts on the morrow for distribution on Saturday. Coralee would oversee the job while she and Leif left in the morning to travel to Beresford-on-Quay for their scheduled appointment with Cutter Harding. Her father hadn’t much liked the notion, of course, since she would be spending time with Leif without a chaperone.

“This is work, Father,” she had told him, “not a holiday in the country. Besides, we’ll be back by nightfall.”

He had grumbled, but reluctantly agreed. Having been married to the woman who had founded the gazette, he understood that running a business required a great deal of independence and a certain amount of bending society’s rules.

Rising from behind her desk, Krista walked into the main part of the office, passing the heavy Stanhope press, which thumped loudly as it printed the pages for this week’s magazine. Coralee sat at her desk a few feet away, her copper hair glinting as she bent over a sheet of paper, already at work on next week’s column.

Krista continued toward the back room of the office, operational again after the fire, thanks to Leif, who worked there now, helping Freddie move some heavy boxes into the storage room.

Krista surveyed their progress, noticing how much taller Leif was than the dark-haired boy. “Looks like you two are just about finished.”

“This is the last box,” Leif said, easily hefting it as he tried to stifle a yawn. Despite the late hours he had been keeping, he continued to work extremely hard, and he never complained, never tried to shirk whatever job she gave him.

“All right, now that you are done, come with me.” Turning, she started walking, and a few seconds later heard his heavy footfalls behind her.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Upstairs.”

He didn’t say more. She figured he was so tired he didn’t care. When they reached the second floor, she walked down the hall and pulled open the door to the employees’ lounge, tipping her head to indicate he should go inside.

He walked into the room, then stood there watching her through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Take off your shoes.”

His head came up. For the first time, he showed a hint of interest. “Why?”

“Just do as I say. I am your employer, in case you have forgotten.”

His mouth curved as if he found the notion amusing. “I have not forgotten.” Seating himself on the edge of the chaise, he removed his shoes and carefully set them aside.

“Now your jacket.”

He looked up at her and his eyes darkened. He shrugged out of his coat and handed it to her, and she draped it over the back of a chair. In deference to the heavy lifting he often did, he wasn’t wearing a waistcoat, and she couldn’t help thinking how good he looked in his full-sleeved, white linen shirt and simple black trousers.

“Now lie down on the chaise.”

Leif grinned. “If this is another of your lessons,
honning,
I think I am going to like it.”

Krista rolled her eyes. She walked over and pulled the shade on the window, darkening the room, then returned to where Leif waited with a look of anticipation.

“I didn’t bring you up here to seduce you. I merely wish you to get some rest. You are practically asleep on your feet. If you intend to stay out until the wee hours of the morning, from now on you will sleep for at least two hours each afternoon.”

Leif shook his head. “I have a job to do.”

“Yes, you do. And your most important task is to protect me. That is the reason you were sent down here in the first place. In order to do that, you need to be at least half-alert. Now do as I say.”

He smiled. “I will lie down if you will lie down with me.”

Krista made a sound of frustration in her throat. “The object is for you to rest. I doubt you would be thinking of sleep if I lay down beside you.”

He chuckled as she walked to the door. “Go to sleep,” she said softly. “I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.”

But his eyes were already closing, his head relaxing against the cushion at the end of the chaise, his long legs protruding over the end as he drifted into slumber. For several moments, she just stood in the doorway watching him. His massive chest rose and fell in a deep easy rhythm, and his eyelashes lay against the high bones in his cheeks, a darker shade than his golden-blond hair.

Quietly, she closed the door, feeling an odd pang in her chest. Every night his winnings increased. Unless his skill evaporated or his luck turned very bad, it wouldn’t be long before he had the money he needed to leave.

He would go and she would stay.

For the first time, Krista realized how much it was going to hurt when he was gone.

T
he journey to Beresford-on-Quay took longer than Krista expected. It had rained in the night, leaving the road rutted and covered with deep puddles of mud. Dark clouds loomed overhead, bunching and shifting, hinting that last night’s storm might return. Outside the carriage window, rolling green fields crisscrossed with low stone walls stretched out into the distance, and a narrow road wound to the top of a far-off hill where a manor house surveyed the landscape below.

Krista smiled, enjoying the view. As the coach passed through villages along the route, children played ball in the streets. A tinker’s wagon rolling along in front of them pulled over so that they might pass. As the hours stretched on, Leif suggested a game of cards, and Krista laughed as he beat her quite soundly again and again.

“You’re very good at this,” she said as his king trumped her jack and he raked in another stack of make-believe winnings. “It would seem all your study is paying off.”

“I need to win,” he said simply. “This is the chance I have been seeking.”

Krista smoothed a wrinkle from the skirt of her dove-gray traveling suit, then toyed with the black frogs marching up the front of the jacket. “Is buying a ship really so important, Leif? Would it be so terrible if you remained in London?”

His intense blue eyes fixed on her face. “I would stay if I could. There is much to learn here. Every day offers more knowledge. In a lifetime I could not learn it all. But I cannot stay. I made a vow to my father.”

“What sort of vow?”

He stared out the window. “When the men decided to use the shipwrecked timbers to build a boat, my father and I argued. He forbade me to leave, but I told him I must go. That I had to see what lies beyond our world. He begged me to stay, but I could not. I pledged to him on my honor that I would return. I said that I would come back, that I would not forsake my duties as eldest son. No matter what happens, this I must do.”

Krista nodded. Inside her chest, her heart was squeezing painfully. She knew about honor and duty. She had duties of her own. Since her mother’s death, her father had not been the same man he once was. He needed her and she had done her best to take care of him.

And she had important work to do at the gazette.
Heart to Heart
was gaining influence in the community, reaching people, helping to make important changes.

Most crucial of all, her grandfather desperately needed an heir, a grandson to assume the Hampton title and fortune. Since his wife had borne him no sons, by special writ of the king, an heir could come from the female side of the family. With her mother gone, the task had fallen to Krista. If she didn’t marry and bear a legitimate son, the title would go to a distant cousin. Her family—Aunt Abby, her father, Krista’s children—and even Krista herself, would suffer.

She looked over at Leif, watched him studying the cards in his hand, and for an instant, she allowed herself to imagine what it might be like if he were her husband. Imagine how it would be if he gave her the child her family needed, a beautiful, golden-haired boy, as strong as his father.

But Leif could not stay, and she could never be happy in some distant, primitive world so different from her own. Her place—her life—was here in England.

Whatever her future, she would not be sharing it with him.

They arrived in Beresford-on-Quay late in the afternoon, two hours later than Krista had intended. The textile factory, a huge three-story brick building, sat on a bluff overlooking the river, its location necessary to run the massive power wheels that ran the heavy machinery inside.

“I think it would be best if you waited out here,” Krista told Leif. “I think Mr. Harding would prefer—”

“No.”

“This is business, Leif. I am scarcely in danger. I don’t imagine Mr. Harding would have invited me here in order to do murder.”

“If you go, so do I.”

She blew out a breath. “You are the most irritating man.”

Leif just grinned.

Clamping down on her temper, Krista entered the long, narrow building through the door below the big red-painted sign
Harding Textiles.
She was directed to Cutter Harding who was at work in his office, his head bent over a stack of paperwork on his desk. His secretary, a young man in his twenties working at a desk in the front part of the office, intercepted her before she could reach him.

“May I help you?”

“My name is Krista Hart. This is my associate, Mr. Draugr. We had an earlier appointment with Mr. Harding, but the roads were a bit more difficult than we expected and so we are, unfortunately, late for our meeting.”

Across the room, Cutter Harding rose from his desk and started toward them, a man in his late forties with thick blond hair and a slight limp in his stride. “Miss Hart…I thought that perhaps you had changed your mind.”

“Not a’tall, Mr. Harding. As I said, the roads gave us a bit more trouble than we expected. This is my associate, Mr. Draugr.”

“A pleasure to meet you both.” The glance Harding gave Leif said he knew very well why Leif was there, and the one Leif gave him in return warned what would happen if all was not as it seemed.

“Well, come along then. It is certainly not too late for me to show you around. Once you have toured the factory, you will see that much of what you and your reformer friends believe is simply not true.”

“I hope that is so.”

Harding led them out of his office, and for the next half hour they toured the main floor of the factory. The huge wheel that provided power for the mill dominated the space, making an annoying racket, but the machine was a necessary part of the milling process.

“Sorry about the noise,” Harding said. “Gotta have power to run the place, which means the big wheel’s gotta turn.”

There was nothing to be done, she supposed. The clatter was only compounded by row after row of spinning machines—spinning jennys, they were called—that sat on the wide-planked oak floor. Though the air was smoky and workers occupied every square inch of space, she saw no children under the working age of nine, which was the current law, and the huge room was relatively clean.

“What is upstairs?” she asked when the tour was finished.

“Just storage,” Harding said.

“And below?”

“A similar sort of operation, but I’m afraid I won’t have time to show you. I’m already late for an appointment. As I said, I thought you had changed your mind.”

“That is quite all right. I’ve seen what I came to see. Working in a factory is not the most pleasant sort of job, but neither does it seem you are breaking any laws or treating your employees unkindly.”

“Hardly. These people are paid a fair wage and you don’t hear any of them complaining.”

No, the men and women she had spoken to had nothing bad to say about Mr. Harding or the place that employed them. Of course, since he was standing there, Krista hadn’t expected they would.

Harding had just started leading them back to the office when a door at the opposite end of the spinning room burst open and a little boy came running up from downstairs. His clothes were worn and ragged, his dark hair shaggy and unkempt, and there were tears in his big, dark eyes. He raced toward the exit and might have made good his escape except that Leif reached down and scooped the child up in his arms.

“Lemme go, ye ’orseson! I didn’t mean to break the bloody spool, and I ain’t takin’ another beatin’ for it. I don’t care ’ow bad me da needs the work.”

“Easy, lad,” Leif soothed, gently pinning the little boy’s flailing arms and holding the child against his chest. “No one is going to hurt you.”

“I said lemme go!”

Krista turned her furious gaze on Cutter Harding. “What is going on here, Mr. Harding? This child is no more than six years old. It is illegal for him to be working in a place like this.”

“Turnbull!” Harding roared, and a stout man with a thick mustache came running. “Take this child back downstairs to his father.”

“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Harding.”

Turnbull reached up for the child and the little boy started sobbing. He clung to Leif’s neck and wouldn’t let go, and Leif’s powerful arms tightened protectively around him.

“I’ll take him down to his father,” Leif said.

“Ye can’t do that,” said Turnbull. “Only employees allowed downstairs.”

“Oh, really?” Krista cast a glance at Harding. “Perhaps we should all return the child to his father.” With a nod at Leif, she marched off toward the stairs, Cutter Harding swearing softly as he and Leif fell in behind her.

By the time little Rodney Schofield had been returned to his father—with a promise extracted by Leif that the boy would not be punished—Krista had discovered what Cutter Harding hadn’t meant for her to see. The bottom floor of the factory had only a few high windows and those were dim with a heavy layer of dirt. The room was smoky and full of lint and dust so thick she could barely breathe.

Here, great looms wove the yarn from the spinning machines above into woolen cloth, and every inch of floor space not occupied by a machine was cluttered by humanity. Each worker had only room enough to do his or her job, and the stench of sweaty bodies was nearly overwhelming.

Worse yet, at least thirty of the more than a hundred workers were children, many of them far less than nine years old.

“You are breaking the law, Mr. Harding. Obviously, you do not care.”

“This is a factory, Miss Harding. We need workers to piece together the strands that break, or take out the empty yarn spools and set full ones in the empty cores. Children are the only ones small enough to fit into those spaces.”

“You are despicable.” She started to walk away, but Harding caught her arm.

“Manufacturing is a man’s business, Miss Hart. You’re a woman. I was a fool to bring you out here. I should have known you wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand enough, Mr. Harding. Now please release my arm.”

Leif took a threatening step toward him and Harding let her go. The man’s jaw looked tight as he turned and stalked away.

Krista felt Leif’s hand at her waist as they left the factory. He said nothing as he led her outside to their waiting carriage and helped her climb in, then seated himself next to her instead of taking his usual place on the opposite side of the coach.

“There is always sadness in life,” he said gently, “no matter where you live. I am sorry you had to see this.”

Krista shook her head, fighting to hold back tears. “No wonder workers are striking all over the country. I cannot imagine laboring under such miserable conditions.” She took a shaky breath. “I have to go to the authorities, tell them that Harding is breaking the child labor law. I have to help those children.”

Leif reached over and captured her hand. Stripping away her dusty white glove, he brought her trembling fingers to his lips and kissed each one. “You will write your articles and you will help them.”

Krista swallowed against the lump in her throat. She was glad Leif had been with her today, glad he was here with her now. She thought of the gentle way he had held the boy, and the lump in her throat grew tighter. She was becoming more and more dependent on him, she realized. She had always prized her independence, but somehow it seemed all right to let down her guard when Leif was there.

She turned to look at him, sitting on the carriage seat beside her, still holding her hand. It was odd. She had thought of him as the man she would choose to marry, even imagined having a child with him.

Never once, not until this very moment, had she realized that she was in love with him.

The carriage rolled toward London.

As darkness continued to fall, Leif became more and more worried.

“The hour grows late,” he said. “There are footpads and high-way-men on the road, and the storm could break at any time. It would be better to stop for the night, wait until morning to finish our journey.”

Sitting beside him, Krista shook her head. “I have to get back, Leif. My father will be worried.”

She was concerned about the professor, as she always was, and Leif knew enough about the rules of society to know how improper it would be for her to spend the night with him alone.

Silently he cursed. He wanted to take Krista to wife, and to that end, he had made a certain amount of progress. He was good at the card games he had learned—very good. He had studied the art of betting and learned how to wisely wager his coin. He had learned to read the other players’ faces, to know which had the greatest skill, which bet recklessly and who could afford to lose the most.

If he was careful, soon he would have enough for his ship, and then he could speak to her father, see the marriage arranged. Once they were wed, Krista would no longer be worried about propriety and he would keep her well content in his bed.

The thought stirred the blood in his loins. Wicked images arose of her lush form spread beneath him, the feel of her full breasts pressing into his chest, her body moving in rhythm with his own. His arousal strengthened, became almost painful.

He wanted her as he never had another woman, and soon he would have her.