Flo sniggered. ‘He’s right. Her looks aren’t a patch on yours, Katy. No one’s going to look at her hem when they can look at your face.’
‘You both look perfect,’ Caro said firmly. ‘Please remember that the reputation of the Haven rests on your behaviour. If things go badly, the committee will likely refuse Lord Tonbridge another subscription on our behalf.’
‘That would be a crying shame,’ Beth said.
Everyone nodded.
‘We’ll be on our best behaviour, Mrs F.,’ Flo said. ‘Don’t you worry.’
Mr Read opened the front door with a flourish. ‘After you, ladies.’ Another round of giggles ensued.
Outside on the footpath stood Ned Wright, his face shiny from a recent very close shave.
‘Why, Mr Wright,’ Flo cooed, ‘don’t you look a proper handsome gent.’
He did, too. In his dark-blue coat and shockingly bright blue waistcoat, he looked more dandy than groom.
Beth shot Flo a glower.
Female rivalry while Blade Read was a study in innocence. He knew about this budding relationship. Caro narrowed her eyes. The Haven could not afford any sort of scandal.
With what Caro could only describe as a wicked twinkle in his eye, Mr Read offered one arm to her and one to Beth, causing Ned Wright to glower for a very brief instant, before he turned to Flo and Katy and did the same for them.
Now it was Beth’s turn to look less than happy while they walked to the Assembly Room in the middle of the town. Those were the joys of youth Caro didn’t miss. The tortured state of uncertainty and longing.
The role of devoted widow and mother suited her far more.
It hadn’t taken the six of them long to walk the half-mile to their destination. The rooms hired for the assembly were on the first floor of the largest inn in Skepton and were reached by way of a side door, so attendees did not have to run the gauntlet of the inn’s regular customers. They handed their wraps to the staff waiting in the entrance hall and changed into their dancing slippers, before they mounted the stairs to the first-floor ballroom. A mama could not have been prouder of her children than Caro was of her protégées as they swept into a gallery that had been decorated with flowers and bunting and lit by several large chandeliers. Only if one looked hard could one tell that the room’s usual use was for billiards and other male indoor sports.
‘May I fetch you some punch?’ Mr Read asked, once he had found them all chairs in a spot out of any draughts and with a good view of the dance floor.
‘Ratafia,’ she said with a smile of thanks. It was too easy to be enchanted by a man when under the influence of strong drink, as she knew to her cost. Enchanted and seduced and humiliated. Of course, she had also been too inexperienced to taste the rum that had spiked the punch that evening. Her father never imbibed strong drink. Nor had he accepted her excuse that she had not known.
Carothers had known, though, of that she was positive.
Spilt milk and far too long ago for tears.
She had made a good life for herself and her son and she must do nothing to jeopardise all she had fought so hard for. No matter how attractive Mr Read, she must keep him at a distance.
Something deep inside her ached.
Flo and Katy were soon absorbed into a group of young women, some of whom were also employed by Mrs Fitch, while Beth took Ned off to meet some of her acquaintances, one of whom Caro recognised as the grocer’s delivery boy, a lanky youth in the first flush of awkward adulthood.
Idly she watched the ladies in charge of the evening’s entertainments instructing the leader of the small band, no doubt ensuring there would be nothing so disgraceful as a waltz played at their event. She had offered her services to their committee when she had first taken up her post at the Haven, but while they were forced to accept Merry into their circle at their husbands’ insistence, they looked down their noses at Caro and her institution, as they called it.
She didn’t care.
With Merry as her friend and her work, she had no need to involve herself in the affairs of the community. She just wished they would find it in their hearts to send her more troubled girls and women, instead of pushing them off to the workhouse. Or worse.
Feeling as proud as a mother hen, she watched Beth and Ned take their places in a set beside Flo and Katy, who both had respectable-looking partners. By the time the set ended, their faces were flushed from the energy the dance required and their eyes were bright with enjoyment.
‘It is good to see them enjoying themselves,’ she murmured. Good to see them having fun as young women, young respectable women, should.
Mr Read glanced down at her, a smile in his eyes. ‘It is good to see you enjoying yourself as well.’
‘Thank you.’ She tried to sound stiff and stern, but he was right—she was enjoying herself.
He smiled a rather cocky smile. ‘Then may I ask you to honour me with the next dance? A Scottish reel, I believe.’
The dance she had promised him, he meant. It was then that she realised she’d been tapping her toes in time to the music.
‘I would be pleased to dance with you.’ It was the honest truth.
As he led her out onto the dance floor, she noticed his left hand encased in a glove of what looked like white kidskin.
He must have seen her surprise. ‘My father insisted upon presenting me with several...’ He paused for a second. ‘I suppose you would call them “attachments”. I rarely use them, but since I will be exchanging partners I thought it might be less disconcerting.’ He sounded hesitant. Uncomfortable. She could only imagine how some ladies might have reacted to his missing extremity. ‘Would you prefer I remove it?’
‘Certainly not. I was surprised, that was all. I think it is an excellent idea.’
A flash of relief crossed his expression. Clearly the man was not as confident as he appeared, and in a way that helped her feel a little less unsure, as if they were facing an ordeal together.
As they danced, she was pleased to see that while some of the ladies noticed the oddness of his touch, not one of them refused to hold his hand or commented. She also noticed there was more than one gentleman dancing who was missing a limb or sported some other injury. The war with France had asked a heavy price.
As was proper, Mr Read asked several other ladies to dance, ladies, she noticed, who had lacked for partners for most of the evening. When asked, she also danced with other gentlemen who were known to her through Merry or Tonbridge. Mill owners mostly, who wanted to question her about Tonbridge’s whereabouts and his stand on various issues. None of which she answered except in the most general of terms.
The Tonbridges were her friends and they deserved her loyalty and discretion. If they wanted these men to know things, then they would ensure that they did.
One of her partners even went so far as to guarantee positions for any of the girls she helped who were willing to work hard, if she would put in a good word for him with her noble friend. As if she could be bribed. And added insult to injury by asking her not to mention his offer to his wife.
‘I doubt your lady wife will be asking me to tea any time soon,’ she had replied and walked away at the end of the dance with her head throbbing from the tension of watching out for these political traps. The next time she was asked to stand up, she excused herself as needing refreshment and found a quiet corner where she could watch over her charges in peace.
She’d been sitting there for about fifteen minutes when she became aware of someone standing behind her.
‘Would I be addressing a Miss Caro Lennox?’ a hoarse voice murmured in her ear.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She gasped, desperately trying to maintain her composure at the sound of her maiden name. She turned her head to meet the questioning gaze of a florid stranger. Or was he? Had she not seen hi
m before?
Ah, yes, at the wake for poor Mr Garge. ‘You are mistaken, sir, and I do not believe we have been introduced.’ Heart thudding painfully, she turned her face away.
‘Is there a problem?’ Mr Read asked, appearing at her side and glaring at the man, who seemed to shrivel inside his coat.
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. It was only that you looked familiar.’ He bowed with an apologetic smile, turned and left.
Blade’s gaze hardened as he followed the man’s progress to the other side of the room. He turned that hard gaze on Caro. ‘Do you know him?’
She felt ill. ‘I— No, I have never seen him before in my life.’ She coloured. ‘That is not quite true. He is the man we noted at the wake. The one intent on eating all the food.’
‘I remember.’ He frowned. ‘Are you all right? You look very pale. Did he offer you some insult?’
By speaking her real name, he had destroyed her world. ‘It was, as he said, a case of mistaken identity.’
Now what was she supposed to do? Her mind whirled. The man seemed to accept her word that he was mistaken. Perhaps he was someone she had met in her youth. Her father, seeking news from town, had entertained many visitors at the house. Surely if he’d been certain of her identity, he would have argued his case or said something to Mr Read.
‘Are you sure you are all right?’ Mr Read asked.
‘I have a touch of the headache, that is all.’
‘Do you want to leave?’
Dashing off right after meeting the man might only serve to make him suspicious, though right now he seemed uninterested in anything apart from the dainties laid out on a table at the end of the room.
‘I can’t leave without Beth and the other girls.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll have Ned round them up.’
‘I couldn’t possibly. It would be wrong to spoil their fun.’
He looked about him, his expression a little grim. ‘You know, it is past midnight and, if I am not mistaken, the most respectable of tonight’s attendees are also taking their leave. What will be left are the riff-raff.’
He was right. Several of the well-to-do families were bidding farewell to friends; others had already gone.
She breathed a sigh of relief. It would behove her to leave, too.
With the skill of a general, he marshalled their party and had them down the stairs in minutes. As they left the inn, he placed her wrap around her shoulders. She looked up into his handsome face and felt a rush of traitorous warmth at the solicitous expression she saw on his face.
‘Thank you,’ she said as he walked her out into the street.
‘The pleasure was all mine,’ he said softly.
And her foolish heart wanted to believe him.
Chapter Seven
At just before midnight, Blade walked the perimeter of the house and stables. Something he’d been doing at irregular intervals throughout all the nights he’d been here. Ned looked after most things around the property during the day, leaving Blade free in the afternoons to roam the local inns with an eye to picking up any gossip that might be of interest to Tonbridge, such as men forming a citizens’ army intent on wrecking property.
Before escorting the ladies to the assembly he’d spent the afternoon in the taproom of the Lamb and Flag, making friends and acting the disaffected soldier without learning anything of use. Nevertheless, he’d been disturbed by how many of his countrymen had expressed similar disaffected feelings, particularly when they discussed the circumstances of the Peterloo massacre and the Six Acts intended to quash any further rebellion. In his opinion, the north was ripe for revolution. All it needed was a leader.
Yet he’d learned of nothing specific. Nor was he surprised. While the men might talk to a stranger in general terms, Yorkshiremen were a closed-mouthed lot when it came to naming names or getting a fellow Yorkshireman into trouble with the authorities. He had a long way to go before they trusted him with those sorts of secrets. And so he patrolled the house just in case.
He paused in the shadows of the stables wall, looking up at the windows across the back of the main house.
As he expected, there were no lights to indicate the occupants were anywhere but where they should be. In their beds. He pictured Caro Falkner in her bed. Likely in a nightgown of flannel that covered her from neck to toe. The image was so erotic as to make his breeches feel uncomfortably tight. More fool him.
She was a lovely lonely widow and she was lovely and dreadfully lonely for all she tried to hide it beneath her prim and proper ways. It showed in the shadows in her eyes. And lovely lonely widows were his speciality among the ladies of the ton. Caro Falkner, however, was not of their ilk. She deserved a man who could give her so much more than a brief affair, no matter how pleasurable.
And so he continued his perambulations, making plenty of noise as he went. He wanted anyone interested to know the place was well guarded. He circled around to the front of the house. Nothing amiss here. He bit back a yawn, half-wishing something would happen to ease the boredom. He returned to the back of the house and took up position in the shadows.
A faint grinding noise caught his attention. A light flickered in the kitchen window.
Hell, had somebody found a way past him and into the house? He pulled his pistol from his waistband and checked it was primed and ready before moving towards the back door.
As he reached it, it swung wide.
‘Let me see your hands,’ he whispered.
The figure gasped. ‘Is that you, Mr Read?’
‘Mrs Falkner?’ Wearing, if he was not mistaken, nothing but a dressing gown over her nightclothes. ‘What in the devil’s name are you doing out here?’
‘I brought you a cup of coffee. I thought you might be cold.’
Not when he had his trusty flask of brandy. A soldier’s best friend on a long cold night.
‘I could have killed you,’ he said in a low mutter. ‘What can you be thinking, sneaking around in the dark?’
‘I wasn’t sneaking,’ she said indignantly. Then surprised him with a soft chuckle. ‘Well, only a little. I didn’t want to wake anyone. I am sorry if I scared you.’
‘Hardly,’ he scoffed, uncocking his pistol and tucking it back in his waistband.
He took the coffee mug from her hand and led her to a wooden seat outside the kitchen door. He sat down beside her. ‘What are you doing up at this time of night?’
She let go of a soft sigh that sent his blood heading south to a part of him that had no brain at all, though it knew what it wanted. ‘A sound woke me and then I couldn’t go back to sleep.’
‘What sort of sound?’
‘That is the trouble. Creaks I never used to care about now have me leaping from my bed. All this talk of insurrection is making me nervous, I suppose. Even Cook was going on about it this evening. Talking about the need for good Yorkshiremen to rise up to take back their rights.’
The whole thing was a mess. Parliament, it seemed, had lost touch with the people it was supposed to represent. Hopefully, sensible men like Tonbridge could convince the government to use their heads for once.
‘I’m sorry you are distressed. Be assured, I will not let anything untoward happen to the occupants of this house. Word of significant male presences on duty will be enough of a deterrent.’
He sipped at his coffee. It was strong and sweet. Just how he liked it. Had she enquired of the cook as to his preference? Not something he could ask without looking a fool. But it gave him a strangely warm feeling inside to think she had cared enough to ask. Who was he fooling? Likely it was simply a lucky guess.
He took a deep breath. ‘There is one thing. Young Beth—’
Her shoulders tensed. ‘What about her?’
‘Did you know she went out shortly after dark? Not lo
ng after nine. She has a key.’
With a groan, Mrs Falkner pressed her palm to her forehead. ‘She asked me if she could visit Polly Garge. I told her I wanted her to remain indoors with the other two ladies. Are you saying she went and hasn’t yet returned?’
‘She has not.’
‘Now what do I do?’ She put down her mug and closed her eyes for a brief moment. ‘After all she has been through you would think she would know better. She will put the reputation of this house at risk.’
She sounded so defeated, so bewildered, he couldn’t stand it. ‘I sent Ned to follow her. He’ll watch out for her.’
She turned her face away, swallowed loudly, then sniffed.
A feeling of horror went through him. Was she crying? He rummaged for a handkerchief and handed it over.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, her voice thick. She dabbed at her cheeks and blew her nose.
The little snort was the sweetest sound he had ever heard for all that it made her seem so terribly vulnerable when he had hoped to make her feel safe.
He felt like the worst cur imaginable, telling her about Beth. Yet she had to know what was going on under her roof. He had no doubt she would have been angry had she discovered it later and learned he had known. He put an arm along the back of the seat, an offer of comfort without touching. ‘She will be all right, Mrs Falkner. I promise you. She likely wanted to gossip with her friend.’ Hopefully, she wasn’t off seeing the grocer’s boy.
‘Caro,’ she said. ‘Please, call me Caro, just as Charlie does. Since it seems we are to be thrown together in this enterprise at least for the next few weeks, we might as well observe the courtesy of being friends. At least in private.’
Did that mean she was afraid to be his friend in public? He cursed himself for his defensive reaction. He’d become too jaded, too ready to sense rejection, and yet he did want her friendship. At the very least.
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