The Lie and the Lady (15 page)

“I hate that you're here.” He extended his hand. “I don't trust you.”

“Likewise,” she replied.

“So we avoid each other as best we can. Do we have a deal?”

She took a long, calming breath. Then took his hand and shook it. Hard.

“I think I can manage that.”

9

Dear Rhys—

It is with a matter of some urgency that I write to you. Your medical knowledge is required in Helmsley, as well as your friendship. I am afraid I cannot tell you what is wrong, but make no mistake, it is serious. Please come as soon as you are able. I ask not only for your assistance but for your discretion, as matters here are of a delicate nature . . .

Turner penned a letter to his friend Dr. Rhys Gray immediately upon returning home after Sunday dinner at Bluestone Manor. It was without rancor that he wrote it. Without malice, and in fact, in the spirit of doing a good deed.

That his intent was perhaps a bit more calculated did not need to be mentioned.

Oh, the meal went well enough. After he'd left Leticia's room and found a back way to the gardens, he spent a good ten minutes there walking in circles, trying to calm his mind by remembering the Latin names of the particular violets that Margaret had pointed out (although he had been too busy straining his ears to eavesdrop on his mother and Leticia's conversation to really pay attention to the poor girl) before Margaret herself appeared, sent to fetch him in for dinner.

And all throughout the meal, he and Leticia acted with the utmost decorum, politeness, and deceit. The faces they put forth to everyone else held no hint that they knew each other, let alone that they had been in her bedchamber not twenty minutes before.

While she changed her clothes behind the world's most stubbornly opaque dressing screen and they struck their devil's bargain.

But distracting thoughts aside, Turner had to admit that Leticia seemed more than capable of holding up her end. She kept conversation to innocuous topics—the weather, their travel. Even praised Margaret for the gardens and her innovative fertilization techniques. And when the topic of the mill was brought up (as was bound to happen: as first, it was his livelihood; and second, his mother was in the room and she made damn well sure it was mentioned), the Countess of Churzy kept her smile kind, and her questions basic to keep conversation flowing before gently steering them back to more palatable topics.

Yes, she was capable of keeping up her end of the bargain.

It's just that he didn't trust her to do so. Not one bit.

How was he supposed to make certain that she didn't undermine him with Sir Barty? Other than courting Margaret, which he had no intention of doing (much to his mother's chagrin), he was not in a position to influence the man at all. But she was. And once he and his mother left that afternoon, how would he know that Letty wouldn't turn to her fiancé and immediately begin an insidious campaign against his future? He simply needed to know what was happening at Bluestone Manor at all times.

He needed a spy.

Turner had hit upon the idea midway through the meal.

“And the steam equipment—oh you should see it, Sir Barty.” His mother was waxing rhapsodic. At the dining table, Sir Barty was unable to escape his mother's talk of the mill as easily as he had in the sitting room. “The furnace burns hot enough to keep all of Helmsley warm in winter . . .”

“Don't know why you bothered with steam equipment, young man,” Sir Barty grumbled through bites of pork. “It's going to be nothing but a nuisance.”

“Anything that makes it so I can operate every day of the year as opposed to only the windy ones will not be a nuisance, I assure you, Sir,” Turner answered.

“It will be noisy and smoky, I'm told,” Sir Barty replied. “No one wants that in Helmsley.”

“Who on earth told you such silliness?” Helen said, trying to hide her alarm in a laugh.

“Mrs. Emory was talking about it this morning in church,” Margaret had piped up. “I heard her. She wondered if coal would get into the flour, and how that would taste.” She frowned. “It probably wouldn't taste very good.”

“Likely not,” Leticia added, before meeting Turner's eyes. “But such is the march of forward progress. Do you recall, on our way north, those young men at the inn who said they were going to Stockton to see about the railway they are building there? They use steam machinery as well, I believe.”

“If I were Mrs. Emory,” Margaret added, “I should not worry about coal getting into the flour.”

“Quite right,” Turner said.

“I should worry about the steam getting into the wheat. Nothing rots a crop faster than moisture.”

Sir Barty's bushy brows went up. “She's right. That is somewhat concerning.”

His mother laughed, her voice showing none of the strain Turner suddenly felt.

“It shouldn't be,” she said. “Why do you think we went to the trouble of building a whole separate equipment house on the other side of the mill tower? The steam engine will never come into contact with the grain.”

“It's lamentable.” Sir Barty's mustache twitched in consternation. “Use a pony to pull a wheel if you need more power than the wind can provide. Why ruin what is already in place?”

“Grain mills in other parts of the country don't use wind power, they use water,” Turner said abruptly. “And it has no effect on the product—”

“I'm sure you are right, darling,” Leticia interrupted, smiling at Sir Barty. That smile set Turner's blood to boil. And then, in the act of smiling back at her like a lovesick puppy, Sir Barty leaned forward—and winced.

“Darling, are you all right?” Leticia immediately asked.

“Fine, m'dear, fine. Nothing remiss,” he said, smiling through the furious, embarrassed flush on his face. “No need to fuss over me.”

“Perhaps I like fussing over you,” Leticia said. “Every man needs a woman to fuss over him, after all.”

Turner nearly heaved.

“If it's your foot, you should have it on a pillow,” Margaret said. “That's what the apothecary said. We should call for him.”

“Margaret,” her father had warned. “I can stand one woman fussing over me, but not two. And I cannot stand the apothecary. Keeps telling me to drink powders—as if something I eat or drink could do anything to my foot.”

And suddenly, it popped into his head. A simple idea. He needed someone to keep an eye on Leticia. And Sir Barty needed someone to see to his foot (which definitely needed a new dressing—Turner could smell it from down the table).

“Quite right, sir,” he said. “You shouldn't trust apothecaries. Pull all your teeth out of your head before you can tell them your elbow hurts.”

That garnered a bark of laughter from Sir Barty.

“I have a very good friend who is a preeminent physician, however. I'm more than happy to write to him on your behalf.”

While Sir Barty politely protested, and Leticia protected his pride by saying that Sir Barty was in the pink of health, and Margaret disputed point by point how Sir Barty was not in the pink of health, the meal was somehow brought to a reasonable conclusion, with a bit of cake, minimal after-dinner conversation, and promises by the ladies to call on one another.

His mother took that as gospel, and planned to call on the countess the next day to see if she could persuade her to walk into Helmsley and meet with the local ladies—facing down the annoying Mrs. Emory in particular.

Meanwhile, his mother lamented the fact that he did not take the ladies removing themselves after dinner as an opportunity to speak privately with Sir Barty. But as Barty had not shown himself to be amenable to any more conversation about the mill, and he had no designs on Margaret, Turner was a little unsure what they would talk about. Your fiancée is very lovely—especially that mole just above her knee. Oh, you don't know about that?

And that would just about be the end of trying to convince Sir Barty of his mill's worthiness. Besides, Leticia had shot him a look of such condemnation he dare not dawdle with Sir Barty after the meal.

So, with his mother determined to befriend the countess, and with a pressing need to make sure that he was not being undermined . . . yes, Turner buckled under the pressure and reached out to a friend, writing Rhys a letter.

Four days later, Rhys answered it.

“What is it? What is wrong?”

Turner was on the fourth floor when he heard the voice of his old friend wafting up from below. The mill yard was awash with workers, a half dozen men putting the final bricks into place on the engine house, on the other side of the mill from the granary. They'd had the engine itself brought in first—a horizontal compound engine with pistons and cranks and flywheels—all manner of modern machinery. Once it had been assembled, the men set about building the engine house around it.

Thus Turner was the only one in the mill tower proper today. But he liked it that way. He liked tinkering with the gears, making the smallest of adjustments and checking to make sure everything was as it should be. A man who'd had his livelihood burn down twice could not be too paranoid.

The windmill tower was seven stories tall, with each level accommodating and accessing different parts of the mill machinery. From the top floor, for instance, one could access the wind shaft—the long iron bar attached to the wind sails outside—and the grooved gears of the break wheel and crown wheel, which turned with the wind. The cap of the tower would rotate, pushed by the fantail to best catch any breeze. The shafts drove power down to the millstones on the fifth floor—three different sets of sandstone and quartz, grinding against each other day in and day out, fed by the bins of grain from the sixth floor.

Or at least, they would be, when they had grain to grind.

The first, second, and third floors were where the now-ground grain was separated by grind and weight, wheat and chaff. And suddenly, the bags and barrels that had brought in hard kernels of grain were full of white and brown flour.

Yes, it would be marvelous. Once they had customers. And once the sails were positioned properly, so they would turn in the wind at optimum speed. Which Turner was attempting to do from the fourth-floor balcony via the rope-and-pulley system when he heard his friend's voice.

He glanced down, and for the first time in God knows how long, smiled a true, broad smile.

Rhys was climbing down from a carriage, whose horses had been ridden very fast, if their sweaty coats were anything to judge by.

“Hello to you too, Rhys!” he called out.

“What the hell are you doing up there?” his friend called back.

Turner thought briefly about launching into an explanation about wind direction and sail positioning, but thought it might not be audible from four stories up. “I'll be right down!”

He tied off the ropes and let the windmill spin. Even when the sails were positioned into the wind, they would still turn a little bit if there was a strong enough breeze. But since they didn't have any grain to grind just yet, it was detrimental to the grindstones to have them working, so the break wheel and cross wheel were at present unattached and unturning. If they had been turning, the sound still wouldn't have been loud enough to spare Turner the scolding he was subject to now.

“John!” Rhys grabbed his arms and pulled him into a bear hug. Then he pulled back and began feeling his limbs. “No disjunction. Nothing broken, no breaks, no sprains.” His hands started feeling his neck. “No swollen glands.”

“This is a very odd greeting.”

“No visible sores or wounds—is it an infection? Something new, perhaps?”

“Rhys, stop!” Turner said. “I'm fine!”

“Don't worry—whatever it is, we'll discover it and find the cure. There is—” He stopped suddenly. “What did you say?”

“I said I'm fine.” Turner smiled. “It's very good to see you.”

Turner was a different man when he was with his friends. He was allowed to be loose with Rhys. He was allowed to smile and grumble in equal measure. Only recently had he felt he could do so with his other best friend, Ned, since, when he was in the man's employ, he was forced to squash his opinions and true feelings into the role of hard-nosed secretary. And since he'd been back in Helmsley, he'd felt the weight of the town's expectations and speculation so heavily he'd automatically retreated into that same persona.

But now Rhys was here, and with him, he could be at ease. Hell, he hadn't felt this much like his true self since . . .

Since he'd sparred with Leticia in her bedchamber a few days ago.

But Rhys was talking, and turning a rather unhealthy shade of red, so perhaps he'd better pay attention to his friend.

“You're fine?” Rhys was saying.

“Fit as a fiddle,” he replied. “Is that your trunk?”

Rhys glanced down at the trunk that landed next to his feet. He turned back to the driver, who had been the one to unceremoniously dump it there.