by Anna Randol
For the first time, the real truth of this situation settled heavily on her chest. There was nothing between them now. Her memories of him were all she’d ever have. And now even those did nothing but open her heart to allow each of his barbs deeper.
She couldn’t tell him the truth. Not when he’d use that knowledge to destroy the mill out of pure hatred. Oh, he might deny it. But ten years ago he’d wanted to stop her father for the sake of justice. This went much deeper. “The mill is bigger than my father. Far more lives are in the balance.”
“Then they can rebuild what they will out of the ruins.”
What had she ever seen in this man? How could she have missed this cruelty? Perhaps her father had been right about one thing in his miserable life—Clayton hadn’t been worth her time. Or her heart. “You’ve waited all this time for revenge?”
“This isn’t revenge.”
She planted a finger on his chest. “This is exactly revenge. Otherwise, why not go to the authorities?”
Clayton knocked her hand away, and for the first time, she could see the hot anger roiling behind his gaze. “The gallows are too good for your father.”
“In other words, you have no proof.” She stopped and took a calming breath. “Let it go, Clayton. I give you my word that the past will not be repeated.”
“Your word?” His voice sliced like a fine-edged knife. He ran his gloved hand over his jaw. “Do you have any idea what happened to my father after I was convicted? Did you even go look for him?”
She knew the stricken look on her face gave away her answer. “I was fifteen.” Yet she’d never checked on him in more recent years, either, despite all her attempts to make restitution. Apparently, she hadn’t changed as much as she liked to think. “What happened?”
But his brief flare of emotion had been extinguished. “This mill is finished.”
The whirr of machinery outside the door slowed to silence. It was only the missing rag shipments, she assured herself.
But then Clayton smiled.
No.
She’d arranged everything to perfection. Even if Clayton had attained the level of genius his youthful abilities had hinted at, he couldn’t stop her.
He drew a stack of papers from his jacket pocket. With slow deliberation, he dragged them in a feathered caress along her cheek. The papers were thin. Cheap. Definitely not from her mill. “Do you know what these are?” he asked.
She shook her head, not trusting her voice. Or her temper.
“Every debt that you owe your creditors now belongs to me. And the first of them comes due . . .” He glanced down at the top sheet. As if he didn’t remember every number and every word on each page. “ . . . next Tuesday. I hope you have the cash on hand to pay it.”
She exhaled. She would. She’d made sure the shipment to Treadmine would be delivered before the debt to the coalman came due.
The shipment that had just been canceled.
No amount of determination could hide the trembling in her voice now. “You cannot do this.”
Clayton strode to the door. “It is already done. And tell your father that from now on, I’ll deal with him and him alone. Deliver that message.”
Chapter Two
“Yes, but perhaps move the tables into the sun?” Olivia directed the men as they moved the tables out of the tavern into the crisp autumn air.
The harvest festival. This was supposed to be a grand celebration. The first village festival in ten years. The first of many more to come.
If Clayton had his way, it would be the last.
Children scampered around the square, chasing a metal hoop.
Women had set up tables with savory pies for sale, brooms, knitted caps, pins, and carved wooden toys.
It was all arranged to perfection.
And would never happen again if Clayton had his way.
Mrs. Wilkerson pressed a mug of warm cider into her hands.
“Thank you.” Olivia tried to hand her a penny, but the woman shook her head.
“Not after what you’ve done.”
“Please take it.” After all, Olivia might have revived the town only to let it be crushed again.
After a moment’s hesitation, the other woman pocketed the coin. “That member of Parliament, did he agree to support your idea? The one about separate rooms in the prison for the children?”
“He said he would think on it.” Which was far more than she’d ever gotten before.
Mrs. Wilkerson was one of two women in the town who’d lost a son to the British penal system, so she followed Olivia’s reform activities closely. Work Olivia had started to rectify the horrific injustice she thought she’d caused.
“Them fancy friends of yours coming to the festival?”
Olivia would hardly call the Society for the Humane Treatment of Child Criminals fancy. They were little more than an odd collection of two barristers, a Quaker, a retired vicar, and a handful of concerned women. But she would call them friends. And recently they’d begun to make progress on their reforms. “I let them know they’re invited.”
A few might come. They saw the mill’s restoration as a grand experiment to see if they could keep young lads from the country from falling into the stews of London.
Mrs. Wilkerson handed mugs to two men who’d stopped to get some cider. Both worked at the mill. Olivia had arranged for the men to have the half day off months ago. So she’d been able to shut down the machines at the mill early without any questions. One thing in her favor today.
Colin came over to the table, one of his little sisters perched on his shoulder. The little girl pointed a chubby finger at the cups. “More?”
He put the girl down. “Do you mind watching her for a minute, Aunt Lucy? The competition’s about to start.”
“Competition?” Olivia asked.
Colin adjusted his glasses. “Cheese rolling.”
Olivia blinked. She couldn’t have heard that right.
Mrs. Wilkerson ladled a dribble of the drink into a cup and handed it to her whimpering niece. “You had to have seen it as a girl.”
Olivia had never attended the festival as a girl. But she didn’t remind them of that. She liked that they’d forgotten she’d once declared that only poor mongrels bothered with the town.
She’d been seven. Her father had laughed and patted her on the head.
Another man and his wife came to buy some cider.
Mrs. Wilkerson shook her head at Colin. “I don’t think I can watch your sister. Where’s your mum?”
Colin glanced over his shoulder. “Still helping get the children arranged for their songs.”
“I can watch her,” Olivia volunteered.
They both stared at her. “Aren’t you busy with the festival?”
But things looked like they were running smoothly now. “Not for the moment.” She set down her cup and picked the little girl up. “We’ll be fine. Go.”
Colin hesitated, then ran across the square to where some men were gathering atop a hill.
“Yellow.” The little girl pointed to the fallen leaves swirling after him.
“Yes. Yellow and orange and red.” Olivia pointed out the other colors and moved toward the tables that had been pulled outside the tavern. She rested her cheek for a moment on the girl’s soft curls. “We are not going to let the big, mean man take this all away from us, are we?”
“Mean,” the little girl agreed.
Handsome, though. But oh so cold.
Clayton’s reappearance should have soothed her conscience. But she’d managed to think of her guilt as something in the past. Now it had been thrust in front of her face. Glaring. Ugly. Fresh. When she thought him dead ten years ago, she’d prayed to discover that it was all a mistake and that Clayton was alive and unharmed. She longed for the crushing weight of her guilt to be lifted.
Now he truly was alive, and her remorse remained as heavy as ever.
But while she might owe him a debt she could never repay, that didn’t
mean she would allow him to do as he wished. She’d changed since he knew her last. She hadn’t backed away from a struggle since the day she’d been too cowed to follow her father to the courthouse. Since the day Clayton had died.
A new schoolhouse stood proud and straight. The smell of fresh paint still lingered in the air. The inside still needed a little more work, but she’d managed to arrange for the exterior to be finished in time for the festival.
“It’s a fine thing you’ve done. You’ve set things right.” The vicar’s gnarled face beamed down at her. “This is all thanks to you.” He lifted the little girl into his arms.
They were the words she’d been waiting to hear for three years. Ever since he’d come to her in London and told her how bad things had become at the mill. And in the town.
But now they meant nothing.
She’d been striving to make amends for the death of a man who wasn’t dead.
“You were the one who made me see my responsibility to the town.” It had been the second time he’d saved her.
The vicar patted the little girl on her back, swaying as the schoolchildren began their song. She longed to tell the vicar about Clayton, but how could she when he was glowing with so much happiness?
She studied the faces around her. The Johansen family, with seven blond boys whose names she couldn’t keep straight. Mr. Grupp, who finally had bought a new sign for his tavern to replace the one that been lost in the storms five years ago. There were even a few new faces, people who’d come to spend their money at the festival and the families of the new hires at the mill.
The vicar left her side to return the child to her mother.
A man stopped in front of her and doffed his hat, revealing greased black hair. “Sorry to bother you, miss. But a man visited you at the mill today. I think he might be a friend of mine.” He had an accent she couldn’t quite place. “But I wasn’t sure if it was him.”
“Clayton Campbell?” she asked, suddenly eager for someone to share in her shock. In her joy.
The man nodded, but there was no astonishment. “It was him. Did he come to look for work at the mill?”
“No.”
The man’s gaze seemed far too intent, his eyes almost predatory. Olivia stepped back. “How did you say you knew him?” she asked.
But the men were finished with their competition and they swarmed past cheering, pounding each other on the back, and shouting congratulations.
“I came in second!” Colin shouted to her.
She smiled at him, but when she looked back the strange visitor was gone. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to find where he’d gone in the crowd, but she couldn’t locate him.
The men gathered around the cider table. The children had finished their song so they threaded their way through the group until they found their families.
She refused to let Clayton destroy all this. The boy she once loved wouldn’t have been able to hurt all these innocent people. She would just have to do a better job of showing him exactly who’d be hurt by his actions.
A shiver of something dark coursed through her. Part of it was fear, but part of it was anticipation.
To spend time with him again—
But she didn’t delude herself that she could change his feeling about her. What she did hope was to change his mind about the mill. Even as a youth, Clayton had always been too dedicated. Too determined. He had a rather overdeveloped sense of right and wrong. He’d once walked a mile back to a store because they’d given him seven sweets when he’d paid for only six.
There was only one way she’d ever found to dissuade him—his heart.
He cared for things deeply. That wasn’t something that could be changed, no matter what he’d suffered. She had to make him think of the mill not in terms of justice for past wrongs but in terms of the lives it helped now.
Before, it had been possible to coax him to change his point of view. It had taken a whispered word. A smile. A caress.
Olivia doubted Clayton would let her near enough to do any of those things.
But he had listened to logic. Always to logic. And saving the mill was logical. It was right.
She’d spent the last eight years working to convince lords, magistrates, and members of Parliament to help children who couldn’t even vote. She’d charmed benefactors and political hostesses into funding charities that helped the very street urchins who’d robbed them.
She would handle a former clerk.
Clayton glared up from the papers on his desk. He’d hoped the numbers would soothe him. But they only left him more dissatisfied. From the paltry stipend the Foreign Office had paid him a little more than a year ago, he’d made a fortune, lost a fortune, then made it back again. High-stakes investing was always a gamble, but with careful study it was much less so.
Normally, studying out his investments and planning his next ones soothed him.
But today he could barely keep his eyes on the page.
The numbers were as unsatisfactory as everything else had been that day.
Because he’d gotten nothing accomplished. That had to be the real reason for his discontent. He’d delivered a warning to Olivia.
But unlike ten years ago, he wouldn’t try to protect her from what was coming. She’d made her choices. Unlike last time, her father—or even Olivia herself—would be unable to stop him from justice.
Yet one thing had been far too much like the last time he’d seen her.
She was still the most beautiful creature he’d ever beheld.
She’d matured well, time turning her imperfections into assets. The softness of her youthful form had settled into lithe, graceful curves. Lips that had been too pouty now tempted under angular cheekbones. High-arched eyebrows now lent sophistication rather than surprise.
And her wide eyes, the color of the sky, no longer sparkled with an innocence and naïveté so complete it had been as blinding as it had been beautiful.
But it didn’t matter. He no longer desired her.
If he’d let her soft hand linger on his face a moment too long, it was because he’d been shocked at her audacity.
His butler, Canterbury, entered the study, wearing a rather improbable puce-colored hat. “Was justice satisfied today, sir?”
“I only delivered a message.” Why did he feel obligated to explain himself to his butler? He’d spent a decade as a member of Britain’s most feared team of spies—the Trio. He’d revealed less information under torture. Yet somehow, this man made words spew from his mouth at a glance.
Madeline and Ian, La Petit and Wraith respectively, the other two members of the Trio, would have mocked him mercilessly, but there was something about the old servant that made Clayton feel guilty. Even when he was certain he’d done nothing wrong.
He’d inherited the impertinent butler at the marriage of Madeline Valdan, now Madeline Huntford. He still wasn’t sure precisely how he’d been the one to end up with the servant. Ian was the one who knew Canterbury from a past life.
“You were able to meet with Mr. Swift then?” Canterbury asked.
“No. I spoke to his daughter.”
“Ah.”
That was precisely how Clayton felt about the whole thing. He hadn’t lied to Olivia earlier. At least not much. While he might have thought of her a smattering of times, he’d never had any intention of seeing her or her father again. He’d been far too busy staying alive to hatch intricate plans of revenge.
Until he’d seen the notice in the Times six months ago that the Swift Paper Mill was in contention to secure the contract with the Bank of England despite Mr. Swift’s infirmity.
Never while Clayton drew breath. He’d given up ten years of his life to protect Britain. He wasn’t going to let it be cheated by the likes of Arthur Swift.
“Did she say when you could call on him?” his butler asked.
Clayton tapped at the rows and columns before him. Perhaps that was the root of his dissatisfaction. He’d allowed the Swifts to dict
ate to him as they’d always done.
He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Chapter Three
It took Clayton only a short while to ride the five miles to the Swift house. Even with surprisingly few windows lit, the huge, Palladian-style estate lorded over the surrounding land.
He waited for a minute in the courtyard after dismounting, but when no groom came to take his horse, he tied the reins to a tree. Perhaps they’d seen him coming.
Indeed, it looked like they had. The front door stood open. Clayton expected to be met by armed footmen, but as he mounted the steps, he saw the soles of two booted feet partially visible in the doorway.
He took the last three steps at a run, his knife already in his hand.
The man lying sprawled inside the doorway was the butler. A huge swollen lump disfigured the left side of his forehead. Clayton dropped to the floor beside him and shook him gently, but the man remained limp. At least he was breathing.
Clayton scanned the surrounding area. Blood was pooled on the far side of the entry hall, then smeared in a crimson trail into the corridor as though the injured person had tried to drag himself to safety. He followed the path of the bloody handprints. From the amount of blood, the victim couldn’t have survived long.
Years of witnessing grisly violence, and at times meting it out himself, should have allowed him to analyze scenes like this without any emotion. Yet this time, his heart hammered so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t hear his own footsteps, let alone signs of an approaching attacker.
If she’d been the one killed—
It wasn’t Olivia. It was one of her footmen. And he was dead. Knife wound to the chest.
Hell. He wanted to call out for her, shout until she appeared unscathed from her room. He might despise her, but even he wouldn’t wish this on her.
But Olivia wouldn’t have been the type to hide in her room if she’d heard an altercation. She’d have been out to investigate before she realized the foolishness of her actions.
He kept silent. The attackers were most likely gone, but he wouldn’t risk giving away his location any more than was necessary.