She nodded as if accepting it for now.
Michael slid the agreement across to Blanche. “I’ll find pen and ink.”
Studying the paper, Blanche didn’t look up. “Bring more paper. I mean to add a thing or two.”
Michael didn’t like the sound of that, but he went to fetch the required materials. This marriage of theirs had as much potential for explosion as the gunpowder O’Connor used so well.
Thirty-two
Michael strode into the mining office, and recognized Barnaby at once. Well, this should make for an interesting spectacle. The other man scarcely glanced up from the books he pored over, and Michael turned his attention to the second occupant of the office.
“Elmore Weatherton?” Michael inquired with deceptive composure, knowing full well the fat-bellied pompous ass behind the desk stood responsible for the deaths of eleven men.
The man rubbed at his sweating, balding head and glared at Michael. “Who’s asking?”
Not for the first time, Michael wished he towered over six feet tall and wielded the arrogance of a marquess like Gavin. Instead, he smiled and pulled out the gold watch he’d acquired at a pawn shop. Along with the neatly tailored navy frock coat he’d found back in Ireland and his high-crowned hat, he knew he presented an image of wealth.
“I have precisely one-half hour for you, Mr. Weatherton. This will go much more efficiently if you cooperate.” He produced the sealed vellum from his coat pocket, and laid it on the desk. “I’m Michael Lawrence, Lady Blanche’s new representative in these parts. I’ve come for the company books.”
Barnaby’s head jerked up. To the man’s hostile glare Michael gave a cool nod. “Mr. Barnaby. I wasn’t aware you’d taken employment here.”
Weatherton mopped his brow with his handkerchief after reading the letter. Blustering, he turned on Blanche’s former steward. “You didn’t tell me you were no longer in the lady’s employ. You’ve no business with those books now. I’ll talk with the gentleman in private.”
Michael didn’t want the thief near Blanche. “I have no objection to Mr. Barnaby staying,” Michael said with a casual air. “I’m certain he’s familiar with all the aspects of this operation. Would either of you care to acquaint me with the reason we’re mining a played out seam?”
Barnaby rumbled to his feet like an overgrown bear, grabbed the paper off Weatherton’s desk and scanned it with suspicion. “I’d demand to see the lady herself before I’d believe this drivel.” He flung the paper back to the desk. “This man is a known impostor. He runs tame in the lady’s household, but the duke never gave him any authority.”
The insulting tone he used raised Michael’s hackles. “I would be careful what you say about the lady, Mr. Barnaby,” he said with deceptive softness. “These mines are her concern, not the duke’s, and that paper is signed personally by her. If I do not receive immediate cooperation here, I have the authority to shut down this mine. Now, shall we talk or argue?”
Barnaby uttered a curse, flung the book he held on the desk, and stalked out of the office. Michael swung on his heel and hurried after.
* * *
Blanche sat in the sunshine on a bench outside a bake shop, sampling a delicious apple dumpling drenched in the sweetest cream she’d ever tasted. Pampered like this, she could almost accept Michael’s assumption of her duties.
A tall, lean young man stopped and look at her before entering the darkened doorway of a tavern. Feeling shabby in her old clothes, she took a certain amount of gratification that young men might still look at her. Uncertain of the legalities of Scots law, she had a hard time thinking of herself as a married woman. Or Michael as a married man. Could one marry will o’wisps?
She had no idea how one went about talking to strangers. She’d known the villagers and farmers around Anglesey all her life, so that wasn’t the same. She didn’t know this town or what questions to ask. Michael was right. She didn’t know enough.
The lean young man reappeared in the tavern doorway with a scruffy-looking older man. They stared in her direction with expressions that were rude rather than flirtatious. Blanche shook out her skirt and returned inside the bake shop.
The two men had disappeared by the time she emerged again. In relief, she took the direction the bake shop owner had given her for the dry goods store. She could pick up some needles and thread and make her gown a little less dull.
Blanche purchased the required materials and entered into a conversation with the wives of several of the local shopkeepers over the cost of thread, then left the dry goods store in a much better humor. How absolutely marvelous to have the freedom to go where she wished and speak to whom she wished. Perhaps marriage might have its benefits after all.
“Lady Blanche!”
Startled, she glanced up at the speaker before she remembered she was supposed to be Mrs. Lawrence. To her astonishment, her former steward hurried toward her. “Mr. Barnaby, what brings you here?”
“I must talk with you. May we go where we can speak privately?” He grabbed her arm and tried to lead her down the street.
“Mr. Barnaby, I did not give you permission to lay a hand on me.” She smacked his meaty hand with her reticule, forcing him to a halt.
Over his shoulder, she saw Michael hurrying down the street. She refused the role of helpless female. The time had arrived to assert herself.
Taking a deep breath and summoning what little courage she possessed, Blanche skirted around Barnaby and smiled a welcome. “Michael! Look who’s here. Perhaps Mr. Barnaby can answer some of your questions.”
With casual possessiveness, she took her husband’s arm.
“Michael, is it now?” Barnaby sneered. “I’m sure the duke won’t be pleased to hear you’re so familiar with the man.”
Blithely, Blanche flapped her lashes at him. “Did you expect me to call him Mr. Lawrence like some cit? How very bourgeois of you. But I assure you Neville doesn’t find my familiarity with my husband in the least unfashionable.”
The muscles of Michael’s arm tightened beneath her fingers. Turning to smile at him, she glimpsed the tall, lean man again, but she could only deal with one situation at a time. “Dear, this is Mr. Barnaby who once handled this nasty mine situation for me.”
Michael nodded stiffly. “Barnaby. I think it best if we talk without my wife’s presence. I have a few words for you.”
Blanche didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I’m not an incompetent simpleton, sir. I have dealt with Mr. Barnaby these past years and more. We will all sit down and discuss the situation together. Will Mr. Weatherton join us?”
Michael glowered. Barnaby scowled.
Blanche stood firm. She might know utterly nothing about mines or men like Barnaby, but she wouldn’t learn if he kept shoving her behind closed doors. She had Michael bested, and he knew it
Acknowledging defeat, Michael caught her elbow. “We’ll return to the inn. Barnaby, fetch Weatherton and the books. We have matters to discuss.”
Blanche released a sigh of relief when Michael hurried her toward the inn. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Barnaby would appear with any books or that she would know what to do with them if he did. But she was fairly certain she had averted a fight.
“Are you out of your mind?” Michael grumbled as he tugged her through the inn portals. “You haven’t even told Neville yet, and you’re flaunting our marriage to a creature like that?”
Blanche shrugged. “It will do Neville good to learn his place in my affairs. He’s not my guardian, you know. I’m of age and completely independent.”
“Too independent for your own good.” Michael signaled the innkeeper and asked for a private dining chamber. “You didn’t even give the matter of publicly announcing our marriage any thought. What possessed you?”
Blanche wrenched her arm from his grasp and followed the innkeeper, waiting to speak until the doors of the room closed behind them and they had privacy. “I didn’t want you punching Barnaby and that
was the only way I could think to stop you.”
For a moment, Michael looked amused, then he shoved his hand through his hair and shook his head. “You thought I couldn’t handle him. I owe you no gratitude for your lack of confidence. Now we must deal with the matter of our marriage as well as the mine.”
That gave her pause, but she wouldn’t let him see it. She trailed her overlong skirt to the window. “You should have thought of that before you married me, although I don’t expect it to crimp your unfettered existence.”
She couldn’t see his expression, but his curt, clipped tones conveyed his hurt.
“I am not your father. I will not leave you to fend for yourself while I amuse myself elsewhere. So you may remove that notion from your head right now.”
She heard his footsteps walking away, heard the door slam behind him. She couldn’t say for certain why she had said what she had. She supposed she just wanted the hurt out of the way. She really didn’t think Michael could change his nature for her, even should he so desire.
* * *
When neither Weatherton or Barnaby arrived for their meeting, Michael consulted with Blanche, obtained her agreement once she understood the dangerous working conditions, then took matters in his own hands. This time, when he walked into the mine office, he confiscated the books, ordered the mines closed until further notice, and held a meeting with the miners.
Weatherton had cheated Blanche and the workers, in collusion with Barnaby. With evidence of their crimes, he would have to find the local magistrate and ask for their apprehension.
The mine needed a new manager, someone who knew the operations, knew the men, and could keep the mine operating without dishonesty. He’d already picked out a few possibilities from the crowd tonight.
His new authority didn’t weigh heavy on his shoulders. He would have done the same without Blanche’s permission, just in a less blatant manner. Responsibility he understood. Blanche, he didn’t.
The meeting had lasted until dark. The distance from mine to Blanche stretched out interminably. Michael could hear some of the other miners talking around him as they all headed home.
Vaguely, he heard distant shouts, but his thoughts had wandered to the bed he would share with Blanche tonight. It took more than a few loud voices to intrude on that daydream. He could count the weeks and probably the hours since he’d shared her bed last.
Not until the miners around him shouted in alarm and raced ahead did Michael look up. Over the top of the trees, in the direction of the town, flame shot into the night sky.
Thirty-three
Flames leapt from the inn roof, illuminating the night sky like some magnificent Midsummer’s Eve bonfire. Just as on a night previously scarred in his memory, Michael saw a crowd milling about the street, uselessly heaving buckets of water and wailing. The night he’d almost lost Blanche to an inferno filled his soul with horror.
Shouting “Blanche!” he pushed and shoved his way through the crowd. Many of the bystanders still wore nightcaps and gowns. Women and children screamed as a portion of the inn’s roof collapsed, shooting another bolt of flame into the stars. Men formed an erratic line from water pump to inn, but the town didn’t contain enough buckets to quench a conflagration of this scale. Michael didn’t see Blanche anywhere, and his throat ached with the effort not to roar his pain.
Lungs bursting from lack of air after his run, Michael focused on the inn. If Blanche had panicked as she had after the carriage explosion, she could still be in there. The smoke boiling through the windows could already have silenced her. He shoved through the crowd. Someone still remained inside, he could tell from the shrieks.
Smoke billowed through all the lower windows. The ladders leaning against the inn roof had been abandoned, and the bucket brigade now simply flung water on those flames creeping closest to the tavern.
Fortunately, the night held little wind, and the earlier dampness controlled the spread. Still women shrieked and wept hysterically, watching the windows for some sign of life. For whom?
With wildly beating pulse, Michael scanned the windows. This wasn’t Blanche’s loyal staff milling about. This crowd didn’t even know she existed. Surely she wouldn’t risk her life again walking those burning halls searching for those left behind. He would kill her if she did.
He raced into the clearing around the inn with the men and their buckets, aiming for the one substantial ladder within sight.
“Michael! Michael, my God, you’re here! The little girl! The little girl is still in there. I heard her, but I couldn’t find her.”
He skidded in the mud at the familiar cry. An arm full of wispy muslin and flowing gold locks fell into his embrace, clinging to him as if he were the last barrier between heaven and hell. Michael nearly choked on the thick, smoky air with his gasp of relief. Clutching Blanche’s slender waist, he buried his face in her hair and tried to calm his racing heartbeat.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he muttered. “I looked everywhere. I thought you’d gone rescuing servants again. I couldn’t bear it one more time. Thank God you’re safe.”
Blanche wrapped her fingers in his waistcoat as he lifted her from her feet and crushed her tighter against him, but her hysterically whispered words didn’t die. She sobbed, and her whole body shook with the depths of her anguish.
“The child, Michael. I can hear her crying. She’s in there. I can’t reach her, Michael.”
Between gulps for air, she was shaking him with her fists. “I can’t find her. And now I can’t hear her anymore.”
Michael saw the hysteria in her eyes and remembering her terror of fire, feared the worst. “What child, Blanche? I don’t remember any child.” Still, he could hear women wailing. He saw the grim faces of the men working at the corner of the inn least engulfed in flames.
“I heard her crying, Michael! I was in the garden, and fire exploded. She cried for her mama. She never stopped crying, Michael. I tried, but they wouldn’t let me near.”
Still uncertain that Blanche did not conjure the child’s cries from hysteria, Michael held her close and tried to hear what she had heard.
His stomach clenched at the groan of the crowd as still another portion of the rambling roof collapsed. If the child existed, he couldn’t leave it in that inferno.
“Where, Blanche? You must tell me exactly where you heard the screams.” A few short months ago, he could have walked into that building without a qualm. But he had a wife and child now, and he couldn’t imagine releasing his grip on Blanche.
“I was in the garden—there, where the men are.” She didn’t point but continued clinging to his lapels.
Michael knew where she meant. He’d seen the men feverishly concentrating on the yard beneath the oak. “Upstairs or down?” he demanded.
“Up. The fire started in our side, but it went up and did not spread across quickly. But the smoke is everywhere. She could still be alive, Michael, I know it.”
He clutched her arms, insisting she meet his gaze. “Promise you will stay right here, away from the fire. You carry a child, Blanche. You can’t risk our child to save another.”
Michael read trust and love and hope in her widening eyes. “Promise?” he demanded. When she nodded, he released her and ran toward the burning inn.
“Does anyone know the room the child is in?” he asked of the first firefighter he reached.
The soot-blackened face turned toward the flames creeping across the rooftop. “We went in the back corner and couldn’t find her. She’s crippled and cannot walk, poor wee thing, so she could not go far. Perhaps it’s God’s wish to ease her pains.”
The back corner—where the servants had rooms overlooking the tavern. The child was a servant? “Where are her parents?”
The man wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his forearm and nodded in the direction of a group of huddled, weeping maids. “The lass has no father that we know of, and the mother’s no better than she should be. It’s one less worry for a girl like th
at.”
His scorn told Michael all he needed to know. Perhaps God had meant to take the child from the misery her parents visited upon her, but he couldn’t give her up without trying. “I’ll need someone to hold the ladder steady,” he commanded as he crossed the distance between the crowd and the firefighters. The man gave him a look as if he thought him crazed, but he yelled at one of the other men to join them.
Michael grabbed a full bucket of water and doused himself, soaking his one good coat. He asked for a blanket from the stables. He’d need something wet to wrap the child in.
When the men had the ladder in position, Michael threw the wet blanket over his shoulder and began to climb. He didn’t notice the crowd growing silent behind him. His entire being concentrated on that square of glass behind which waited an unconscious child. For Blanche’s sake, he wouldn’t believe her dead. Clenching his teeth, he reached for the window.
Blanche watched Michael’s lone figure scaling the ladder. She covered the base of her throat, fighting a mounting scream. She sank to her knees as Michael knocked out the window with a blanket-wrapped arm. Smoke poured from the opening, and the fire roared louder in protest, as if he’d challenged and struck some fiery beast.
She clutched her arms over her chest in prayer, and rocked back and forth, praying for forgiveness, praying for Michael, making promises to a deity she had long forgotten. She would never call Michael fool again, though only a fool would obey her insane plea. But right now, in this moment, she saw the gallant knight she’d seen before, the one who protected her, teased her, taught her to live again.
She wouldn’t ask for his love. She would just love him for himself, and let him go his own way. She wouldn’t hold him back, she promised God. The world needed good men like him. Just let him live so he could go on as he had, righting small wrongs where he found them, rescuing maidens in distress.
The women in the crowd followed her actions and knelt on the damp ground, praying to themselves or aloud, all for the lives of one crippled child and a madman.
Patrica Rice Page 24