Penelope, on the other hand, glowed with delight. Her gaze kept returning to the book’s brown leather binding, and her fingertips drifted over the tooled decoration again and again.
“He would do better if you hosted the reception, I fear. There will be those who will not accept my invitation.”
“Nonsense. I will see to it that the people who matter come. This will be an important event for you, my dear. A first step, as we relaunch you into the circles you deserve. Your situation has lasted long enough. Even transported prisoners eventually can come home.”
Pen’s wavering smile revealed skepticism, resignation, and hope. Bianca’s heart twisted at the emotions flickering on the countess’s face. Penelope always appeared accepting of her social fall, even glad for it, but it was obvious right now that she merely hid the pain.
Bianca looked to Mrs. Gaston with new eyes. She had not warmed to the woman before, but she did now. Mrs. Gaston had continued her friendship with Pen when many others did not. Now she was plotting Pen’s rehabilitation. Small wonder that Pen counted her as a dear friend despite her vain, overbearing manner.
“I will ask my brother if I can use Laclere House.” Pen spoke with firm decision. “It will take a lot of preparation, of course, but perhaps he will agree.”
“Make him agree,” Mrs. Gaston said. “Explain what is at stake. More than a poet’s success. Witherby is his friend, so Laclere should come around.” She rose. “Now, I must go and make my other calls. I think that Mr. Witherby will arrive soon. He allowed me the honor of bringing you this first printing, but no doubt he wants to witness your pleasure in it.”
She left Penelope gazing at the book, stroking its cover again.
Bianca went over to admire the little volume with Pen, and then sat nearby. She would have preferred broaching her request on a different day, when Pen was not so absorbed in the compliment of that dedication.
“Penelope, I would like to return to Laclere Park tomorrow.”
That pulled Penelope’s attention away from the book. “Are you saying that you are not happy here? I thought that you preferred the city.”
“I do. However, I am very uncomfortable with Dante in attendance so much.”
“Goodness, are you saying that he has—”
“His behavior is above reproach. I know that we are fortunate to have him escort us to the theater and such, and yesterday’s excursion to the British Museum was very enjoyable. It is just . . .” She let her voice trail off.
Pen had never spoken of that day by the lake and what she had seen, but her expression indicated that she understood Bianca’s reason for wanting to leave London.
“It wouldn’t do to ask Dante to make himself scarce, Bianca. Charlotte rarely gets to spend time with him. As for departing the city, I have just promised to give Mr. Witherby the reception to honor his new book next week. I wish I could accommodate you, but until the reception is over, we are rather stuck here.”
“I could return myself tomorrow with Jane, and you and Charlotte could follow as planned.”
“I do not think that would be wise.”
“Jane and I crossed an ocean. The ride down to Sussex is a minor thing, especially if we go in your coach. Once back at Laclere Park, we will be well cared for.”
Pen began wavering.
“Please. The alternative is for me to take to my bed here and pretend an illness. With time I am sure that Dante’s company will not embarrass me, but right now, so soon after . . . it is difficult to face him.”
Pen patted her hand. “You are always so composed that I never realized how awkward it is for you.”
“Very awkward.”
“I think that I will permit it. Still, I will be giving my coachman strict instructions to take you directly to Laclere Park, and he will carry orders to the butler and housekeeper to see that you remain there. Vergil can hardly object with those precautions in place.”
“Thank you, Pen. Will you make some excuse to Dante?”
“I will find something to say when he comes tomorrow. Eventually he will know that you have left, of course, but not right away.” She bestowed a sympathetic smile. “He really is very gentle, Bianca, despite his naughty behavior. I hope that you will be at ease with him in the future. Vergil tells me that Dante holds the most honorable affection for you.”
“Do you really think men are capable of that? I wonder if their affection is ever really honorable.”
Pen shook her head with a little laugh. “I am the last woman to give advice on the topic.” She caressed the book of poems with her fingertips. “Although, I find myself wondering if it might not be possible in a few rare cases.”
The mail coach careened around a bend and its passengers braced to keep from crushing to the left. Bianca huddled inside Jane’s light cloak, seeking some shelter from the damp chill that had reached her bones hours ago.
She had not expected this journey to be this miserable. The speed of the coach created a jaw-jarring ride despite the good roads.
There had been no alternative. Not only did she need to make this journey a fast one, but the money she had hoarded out of the twenty pounds extracted from Vergil would not pay for a private coach. She had permitted herself one break last night at an inn, and would do so on the way back, but she doubted that Jane could maintain the deception longer than three days.
She pulled the cloak snugger. Just her luck that the only hooded outer garment that Jane had brought to London was lightweight wool.
The request for Pen’s coachman to stop at a coaching inn near Laclere Park so that Jane could detour to visit an ill friend had not raised any suspicions. Nor had her own excuse to seek relief at the necessary. Back behind the building, she and Jane had exchanged cloaks and the wrong woman had returned to the carriage. Even the weather had cooperated, providing a light rain to explain the obscuring hoods pulled low over their faces.
Hopefully, when Jane arrived at Laclere Park, she had managed to retire abruptly with complaints of a chill. Snuggled in Bianca’s bed for a few days, wrapped and capped and sleeping off an illness, she might just avert discovery of her true identity.
If not, Bianca expected to return before a full alarm could be raised.
The biggest inconvenience in the plan, besides her numb extremities, was the fact that she had not been able to bring any baggage with her. The only items of toiletries and clothing that she carried were stuffed in her reticule and inside her bodice.
The coach sped into the environs of Manchester, making a series of quick stops as the countryside gave way to sprawling villages that then bled into the edges of the city itself. An odd combination of raw newness and old squalor flanked the residential streets. Perhaps on sunny days, and if a visitor weren’t bone-chilled and hungry, it would not appear such a dreary place. One knew without being told that this was a growing city. The congestion spoke of too many people cramped into too few domiciles.
Their pace slowed until the driver pulled to a halt. Two other passengers gathered their belongings. “If you want Manchester, this is it,” one said. “Coach heads to Liverpool now, and the mail for the city will be picked up here by others.”
Bianca stepped out into the drizzly mist. She entered the coaching inn and asked the man in charge where she could hire a gig and driver for a few hours.
Soon she was back in the damp again, this time squashed beside a portly driver snapping the gig through the city streets. She huddled inside her thin cloak with the hood pulled low against the mist.
“Is the Clark mill far away?”
“East a bit. Newer mill than somes the others, and a bit off on its own. Hard to believe it was almost open country there just ten years ago. City just keeps getting bigger, like a spider getting fat from eating those coming in from the land.” He pointed to a young man standing against a building. “Like him. Can always spot them. They have that bewildered look. Then, if they find work in a good mill, they grow contented, and if they don’t, they get mean.”<
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“What is a good mill?”
“One with decent wages, such as they are. Where the machines are kept safe. Where families work the same times.” He cast a sidelong look at her. “None of my business, but you sure you want to go to this mill today? There’s been a spot of trouble popping up here and there the last few months. Been gettin’ worse, it’s said.”
“I must go today. I am sure that Mr. Clark has one of the good mills, so there should not be a problem.”
He laughed. “When trouble spreads, there are no good mills.”
It took almost an hour to make their way to the eastern environs and the long, low buildings of the Clark mill.
The driver hopped down and helped her descend. “He would be in there.” He pointed to a two-storied stone square. “Manager’s house. Not as fancy as some.” He raised his head like a dog sniffing. “Seems quiet enough.”
“Wait here, please. I will want to go back to the coaching inn for tonight.”
She gathered her limp cloak around her and marched into the house. A young man sat at a desk in the building’s first chamber.
“I have come to see Mr. Clark,” she explained.
He gave her the once over and was not impressed by Jane’s serviceable cloak. “He is in the works right now. Perhaps I can help you. I am Mr. Thomas, his secretary.”
“Thank you, but it is Mr. Clark himself with whom I must speak.”
He examined her critically again. “They don’t usually send such young ones. Which reform group are you from?”
“I am not from a reform organization. I have business of a most critical nature with the manager.”
“Tell me your name and I’ll go see if he knows of this business.”
“Mr. Thomas, I have no intention of giving you my name. I will wait on Mr. Clark’s return. I promise you that he will not thank you for any interference.”
His startled reaction hovered between a laugh and a frown. Amusement won. He showed her into the office.
A fire burned in its hearth. She stood close and savored the warmth that began burning away the damp.
She turned to give her back a little roast, and surveyed the office. The furniture was solid but plain. The desk’s surface held only writing implements and a neat stack of documents. The whole room appeared rather blank. If it reflected the manager’s personality, he was a colorless, uninteresting man. Hopefully that did not mean that he lacked imagination. She needed him to see that her proposal actually gave him what he wanted.
And gave her what she needed. The chance to get away.
She turned back to the fire. She pictured herself walking sunny streets and being gay and happy and singing for hours. Her life would be so bright and exciting that she would never think about this horrible interlude in damp, cloudy England, and how it had scrambled her emotions and turned part of her into someone she didn’t recognize.
This would all become a brief memory, a stage stop on her journey to womanhood. Once she was gone, the ache that she carried inside her chest would disappear. A wonderful future waited. She would grab it bravely and not look back and—
A sound behind her broke into her hopeful reveries. A door opened and one footstep fell.
“Mr. Thomas said that you wished to see me, madame.”
Images of Italy fractured like a hammer had smashed them. The fragments rained through her stunned mind.
Her mouth dropped open as she swung around and looked into the blue eyes of the Viscount Laclere.
chapter 12
Hell.”
The low curse floated on his delayed exhale. They stared at each other for a dazed interval.
Slowly, her wits absorbed the implications of his presence.
Vergil and Mr. Clark were one and the same.
What a stunning discovery.
What an incredibly bad stroke of luck.
Then again . . .
He recovered first. “What in damnation are you doing here?”
Amazement left her speechless. Amazement, plus the fact that her explanation would hardly soften his expression. To say that he was less than pleased to see her was putting it rather too finely.
He looked subtly different. Still Vergil. Still tall and dark and stern. Still chiseled face and startling eyes. But his black frock coat was cut more austerely than usual and seemed of poorer quality. His collar points were less perfect somehow, and he wore a black cravat tied in a casual knot, something she had never seen him do before.
He was presentable enough in a dark, menacing way, but she couldn’t shake the sense that he appeared a man new to fine garments, who didn’t quite know how to put them together yet, and who lacked a good valet to show him. A wealthy man, but not born to it.
“I asked what you are doing here, Miss Kenwood?”
Despite her cursed outspokenness, she knew that there were times when silence was the best course. It would hardly do to blurt out that she had come to extort money from Mr. Clark so that she could escape her evil guardian.
“How did you get here?”
“The mail coach.”
“That explains why you look half-dead. Is that your gig outside?”
She nodded.
“Where is your baggage? Did you leave it at your inn with Jane?”
Oh, dear. “No.”
He frowned. “You came all this way with no baggage?”
Her lack of response did not delay the conclusion. He raked her with a very sharp look. “In fact, you came without Jane, too, didn’t you? You made this journey alone.”
She would have spun a story, an outright lie, if she could think of one. Her mind simply wouldn’t cooperate.
“That was very, very reckless of you, Miss Kenwood.” He abruptly opened the door and left.
A few minutes later he returned.
“I expect that you are tired and cold, but I must delay your comfort for a while longer. I have paid your coachman and sent the gig away. My carriage will be here shortly. While we wait, I want you to tell me how you arranged this journey, so that I can determine just how large a calamity you may have created.”
Feeling more like a naughty schoolgirl than she liked, she explained the brilliant plan that had abruptly lost its luster. “So, if Jane remains undetected, there may not be any calamity at all,” she concluded.
“And if your ruse was discovered, Penelope might already be raising the hue and cry all over England.”
“She will know once she speaks with Jane that I was not abducted. I expect she would wait a few days for my return.”
“Does Jane know where you went and why?”
“I did not confide the details to her. If you send me back at once, no one will have reason to seek out Mr. Clark. No one will know your secret.”
“You will know. Until I decide what to do about that, I have no intention of sending you back. However, we cannot discuss that here.”
The sounds of the coach rattled outside. Vergil disappeared into a side room and returned with his great coat. He draped the heavy garment around her shoulders and escorted her through the front office to the door.
Morton held the reins in the coachman’s seat of a vehicle that bore no aristocratic insignia. The mouth buried between his beard and mustache opened in surprise when Vergil guided her out of the building.
“Well, now, my lord, this is an inconvenient complication.”
“You have a gift for understatement, Morton.”
“Rather bold of her, if I may say so.”
“Yes.”
“On the other hand . . .”
“Exactly.”
What was that supposed to mean? The way she saw it, all of the “other hands” belonged to her.
Vergil settled across from her. He found a coach rug and tucked it around her legs. “Your shoes are damp. Silly, flimsy things to wear on a mail coach.” He unstrapped both shoes and slipped them off, then swathed her feet in the fur rug.
He tucked and wrapped like she was some child. He pull
ed the coat snugly around her until her head stuck out of a huge bundle. It was very disarming of him to fuss like this, especially since the light in his eyes suggested that he thought she deserved it if she caught a fever from this escapade.
Morton guided the coach across a bridge and they headed south.
“Where are we going?”
“I have a manor nearby. We should reach it in less than an hour.”
The manor. She wondered if the mistress was in residence. Since she already knew about that woman, she wondered if he would bother to keep her hidden for the few hours they might need to settle this “inconvenient complication.”
He kept regarding her with intense speculation. It was the sort of calculating expression one sometimes catches on a person who thinks no one is looking. Having it directed at her for this extended length of silent time was very unsettling.
She felt no danger for her safety. Quite the opposite. But she couldn’t shake the notion that the man sitting across from her had become very unpredictable all of a sudden, and that Mr. Clark might not play by the same rules as the Viscount Laclere.
“Unless you want me to conclude that you made this journey because you could not bear to be parted from me, you had better explain yourself.”
The cool allusion to that other part of their relationship sent a peculiar alertness blotting through her.
“I came to see Mr. Clark.”
“Why?”
“To have a little chat. To make his acquaintance.”
“I am not in the mood to have my wits insulted. Since I am Mr. Clark and we made our acquaintance long ago, you will state your business now.”
“Well, if Mr. Clark had been amenable, and I’m sorry to say that I do not think he will be, I intended to propose a mutually beneficial arrangement. Mr. Peterson told me about the offer to buy the mill and how Mr. Clark—that is, you—did not want to sell, and how if I sold and Nigel did, too, then . . . oh . . . oh, so that is why you tried to force me to marry your brother. To secure ownership of that mill. Really, Laclere, I am very disappointed in you.”
“You have many reasons to be, but this is not one of them. I never tried to force you to marry my brother. You were supposed to be a meek, provincial orphan, who, like all women, would swoon with delight every time Dante smiled. You would fall in love, marry him, and that would be that. There was nothing dishonorable in the plan. As for what happened later, may I remind you that if you had not thrown yourself at Dante I would not have—”
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