“Yes, they do. Surely a thoughtful gesture on someone’s part.” David left the slightest question in his voice.
“Yes, indeed, the people here are generous.”
“Novins, given your work you must know the truth.” David rubbed his forehead. “Generosity lasts only as long as people do not fear for their lives or their livelihood.”
“Indeed you are wrong, my lord. Some people are selfish through and through, no matter if they are happy or ill.” He put his hand on the basket that held the bread. “Some are so generous they give despite their own want to strangers. There are those who would risk their lives to care for others. It is my work and to be expected, but Mrs. Cantwell’s loyalty is her only motivation.”
“That’s a singularly noble assessment.” For his part David remained skeptical. “I will ask Mrs. Cantwell if she can identify the senders.”
“Very well, my lord,” Novins said, though David could tell the surgeon did not understand why.
“I know someone who was poisoned by such a gift. I remain cautious. Would it not be easiest of all to eliminate all of us who might be contaminated?”
“Including me and Mrs. Cantwell? For how are the senders to guarantee that only the visitors eat the pies?”
“Hmm” was all David could think of to say as he mulled over what Gabriel called his “paranoia.” His man-of-science brother had pointed out he behaved that way whenever he felt ill or threatened. Both, in this case, if you counted a headache as illness.
“Your silence makes me hope I have convinced you, my lord. I will leave you to your letters and visit the patients. With your permission I’ll report to you before I return to my own quarantine and a year’s worth of books waiting to be read.”
David gave him a nod, understanding why the thought of a week’s quarantine made the surgeon smile.
As much as he wanted to keep his headache a secret, David would tell the surgeon about it before he left the house whether Novins asked him or not.
David did not take the letter from Pennford to the study but carefully opened the seal while still in the kitchen. Lyn had not dated the letter and wrote with less than his usual care.
David,
God’s blood, brother, you do manage to find every possible predicament. Elena says that the letter from Mia is full of utterly useless assurances of your well-being and that all the proprieties are being observed. I will not tell you what my wife said in response to that bit of fiction.
Elena and I have no doubt of your discretion. Unfortunately Mia is prone to create complications by her very breathing. Be careful of her mischief and come home as soon as you are allowed.
Advise me if you require another medical opinion.
As I recall Sandleton is lacking in any reading material of an intellectual variety. When I explained Sandleton to Elena and the sort of books kept in the study, she begged me to tell you not to allow Mia near the room.
If, by some unlikely chance, you grow bored with erotic drawings and anecdotes, I have included the most recent Edinburgh Review and a bag filled with all the details on the Stone Bank Mill, water wheels, and steam engines, all from your rooms here. I trust you have everything else with you.
You may have need of them. I have included a letter from Thomas Sebold. Even before this last delay I see that he has decided to seek a partner from among his cohorts in Manchester.
David picked up the second letter, already opened and refolded. He unfolded it, swore at the indecipherable scrawl, and dropped it back on the table. He would finish Lyn’s letter and then find his magnifying glass to help him decipher Thomas Sebold’s deplorable handwriting.
I know your willingness to escort Mia is the reason for this most recent delay and Sebold’s withdrawal. I had no idea that Sebold’s commitment was so tentative and I apologize for the way our request undermined the project. Rest assured that once the trustees’ cooperation is firm the Meryon dukedom will support your efforts to find another partner for the mill project.
Hopefully David’s letter to the trustees would be well received, as well as the fact that Meryon himself supported the idea. Then he looked at the next sentence and winced.
About steam engines. I personally find the invention unproven and would advise against such an investment at the present time. Water wheels have been in use forever and last as long.
David felt as though he spent most of his time trying to convince his brother to stop looking at how previous dukes had handled their responsibilities and move into the future. The duke might be far-thinking when it came to the well-being of the poor, but if an open mind involved anything mechanical, his brother still lived in the last century.
He began to mull over a reply. The damn engine was invented before either one of us was born. More than two hundred are already in use. A steam engine will allow us to build a mill closer to the source of coal and save money and time.
Oh, hell times ten, he would not waste his energy on a letter. They could discuss it, or argue it out, in person.
David shook off the disappointment and read the closing.
Elena and I both want you well and whole when we see you next. Olivia and her husband promise cinnamon rolls and prayers respectively. Garrett said to tell you that if his prayers work and you do not take ill he will “beat the hell” out of you in the boxing ring for worrying us all so. Sometimes I doubt our brother-in-law’s insistence that he is now a man of peace.
Lynford
David understood his brother’s skepticism. Olivia had fallen in love with a man as unconventional as she was. For an Episcopal priest Garrett had some very eccentric beliefs.
The baskets sat on the table where the servants met for meals. He put them on a chair, out of sight, until he could ask Mrs. Cantwell who had sent them. He would tell her he wanted to send his thanks.
With only a little curiosity, David placed the note to Mia enclosed with his letter on the odd-shaped package awaiting her attention.
He scooped up Sebold’s letter and the satchel. With an “Ooof” at its weight, David lugged it into the study. Setting up his work here seemed the surest way to keep Mia from an examination of the shelves and their contents.
He glanced at the apparently innocent bindings marching along the shelves behind him, but did not touch a one. He had spent the whole of the previous day battling, then banishing, his own licentious imagination. Drawings of men and women in impossible poses would not help keep his thoughts under control at all.
With his back to the shelves he set the bag on the library table and remembered the time he had come into the room to find Jessup and another gentleman with two women. His brother lived life on a scale that would kill him before he turned thirty.
That night cards and markers had been pushed off the table in favor of other pursuits. One of the women straddled his brother, her skirts raised and his pants obviously loosened. The other two watched with unconcealed excitement. David had left the room before any of them noticed him. Then David had left the house to stay at the inn, this being quite obviously a private party in which introducing a fifth would not be at all welcome.
Damn times six, everything in this house reminded him of sex, if not orgies, in some of which he’d participated. Of all the ungodly places to be trapped with a precocious virgin, Sandleton had to be the worst. In a brothel he could find relief elsewhere. In a convent he could spend hours on his knees in the chapel. Both were sure ways to come to terms with a weakness. Neither one was his first choice.
His headache reappeared, if it had ever truly evaporated, and David stared at the drawing of a steam engine, trying to bring it into proper focus. Damn it, this had better not be another symptom. He had no time for illness. He had too much to do.
First on the list was to read Sebold’s letter. David hunted for his magnifying glass. The man showed his birth in his crabbed scrawl and bad spelling. He put the glass over the letter and began to read.
“Lord David, your reesons for delaying our a
pointment, serves to convince me to find a new co-owner for the Manchester project. I have formed a partnership with a banker who has helped me in the past. It has beceome clear to me that you are not interested in this project as seriously as is necessary.” The letter went on but David did not have to read another word.
This quarantine could drive him mad if illness did not kill him. Less than sixty miles separated Sandleton from Manchester. Styal lay even closer.
If it weren’t for the damned quarantine he could ride there in less than a day and confront Sebold, try to convince him that the delay did not mean anything more than inconvenience.
David searched through the bag, relieved to see that Lyn had included the copy of the mill plans. He could find an engineer to amend these, substituting the newest steam engine. But that would mean nothing if he was not able to solve the biggest bar to success: funding.
With Sebold and his support gone it meant that all the money must come from the Meryon estate.
The enforced isolation of the quarantine at least presented the ideal opportunity to prepare proof that would convince Lyn and the trustees that a mill run by a steam engine was the way of the future.
Pulling a sheaf of papers from the satchel, David spread them out on the table that served as a desk.
“I beg your pardon, my lord.”
David had seen the surgeon hovering at the open door and ignored him as he did his best to work his brain around this change of plans.
“Come in, Novins, come in,” David said with as much cordiality as he could muster. The health of his servants could be counted as even more important than the success of his plans. Not more bad news, he hoped.
“Thank you, sir.” Novins perched on the edge of the chair on the other side of the table. “I examined both of the patients and talked to Mrs. Cantwell and Basil. In some way things are improving. I will speak to Miss Castellano later but first I will ask you if you have any signs of illness.”
“A headache,” David admitted.
“Nothing else?”
David shook his head.
“Head pain can come from many things, my lord. Worry for others. Too much close work.” He nodded toward the papers spread out on the table. “What is that, my lord?” Novins asked with an air of sincere interest.
“A design for a cotton mill based on the Long Bank Mill in Styal near Manchester. I am considering building one.”
“I know it, the Long Bank Mill,” Mr. Novins said to their mutual surprise. “It’s less than a day’s travel from here.”
“Yes.” David nodded, pleased as could be that the man had not immediately implied that “going into trade” was beneath the son of a duke.
“Is this a joint venture?”
“Yes, and this quarantine is not advancing my efforts in any way. I thought to use these five days to learn all I can about the mill design.” As if he did not have it memorized already.
“And there is the most likely reason for your headache. Walk at least twice a day, at the coolest hour, and see if that eases the discomfort.”
“Then you do not think we are faced with some horrific contagion?”
“As to that, I am not a physician, trained in diagnosis, but a headache without any other accompanying complaints is not the way the illness started in the others.”
So at least he did not have some dreaded and so far nameless disease. Yet.
“The prospect of this damn illness is like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head.” David’s headache worsened as he spoke, and it would not take a man of medicine to tell him that was from worry.
“Distract yourself with your plans, my lord. But do walk. I insist.”
David nodded.
“Let me tell you what I found upstairs and then I will speak to Miss Castellano. Mrs. Cantwell told me she last saw her in her bedchamber, reading.”
Chapter Fifteen
SITTING ON HER BED, dressed only in her shift, Mia stared at the drawing. Could a woman really bend herself into that position? Would any woman, other than a courtesan, even want to have sex that way?
After studying it carefully for a full minute Mia pulled a pillow toward her and used it as the other half of the picture, the male half, and bent her body into as close an approximation of the position illustrated as she could. It was a challenge even for her agile body. The pillow pressed into her most sensitive spot, which, she had to admit, was feeling some arousal after spending the last hour looking at the drawings. With a gasp she pressed against the pillow for a moment and then tossed it to the floor.
She blushed, even though completely alone—but that position did have something to recommend it.
I will consider that a learning experience. Jumping from the bed, she took a cold rag, pressed it against herself, and waited for the throbbing to abate. She knew self-pleasure was a sin in any religion, but she had just learned that it was a very tempting one, one that might be worth whatever penance was suggested. Unless one died from the pleasure and then it would be straight to hell. Did the Episcopal Church believe in confession? And, if they did not, then how did one atone for the occasional lapse?
She would ask Michael Garrett when she saw him next—though the idea of confessing this behavior to him would be more embarrassing than confiding in an anonymous priest.
Mia supposed a courtesan gave up all hope of salvation, unless in her old age she could use her wealth for good works and contrite acts.
What an amazing book, she thought as she carefully smoothed the pages and closed it. Sliding it into the drawer next to her bed, she decided to explore the library further. Given what this house was used for there were bound to be other books like it.
The second book she had chosen at random was not nearly as scandalous, a collection of poems in a language she did not know. She wished she did. The illustrations were quite sensual, though not nearly as salacious as the drawings in the book she had hidden.
A scratch at the door made her jump, then scramble under the covers. “Yes,” she said, trying for a sleepy, half-dreaming tone.
“Miss Castellano? I am sorry to disturb you, but I would like to speak with you in the main salon downstairs at your soonest convenience.”
Mr. Novins. He would not come in uninvited. She relaxed. “Yes, of course.” Then a horrible thought occurred to her. She jumped up from the bed, ran to the door, and opened it a crack. “Is everyone all right? Has Lord David taken ill?”
“No, miss, everyone is as I expected.”
“Thank goodness.” She relaxed her deathlike grip on her robe. “I will dress and be downstairs as quickly as I can.”
“Thank you.” He nodded and turned away before she closed the door. Mrs. Cantwell had explained his decision to come to the house. How noble of him to risk illness himself in order to care for them.
Now, if it had been Lord David at the door, he would have pushed his way into the room and berated her for still being abed. And, as a punishment for his rudeness, she would have made him wait an hour. Mr. Novins deserved her full cooperation, and surely he would have a few minutes to talk with her about Miss Horner. If she could find no novels to read, she could certainly enjoy a real-life story, particularly one she might be able to move along toward a satisfactory conclusion.
Mia raced through her toilette. She managed to lace her stays and slip into her gown, tie it, and find shoes, dismissing stockings. She left her hair down, settling for brushing it free of knots and tying it at the back of her neck. Janina would scold her endlessly for her casual air. Mia could hear her.
“You must always look your best. You never know when the man of your heart will appear.”
“Mr. Novins will never be the love of my life, Janina,” Mia announced as if Janina sat next to her. Then Mia held the brush close to her heart and closed her watery eyes. Please, please be well, Nina, and come back to me soon.
As she hurried down the steps Mia decided that she would write Janina today and tell her all that she learned about Mr. No
vins and Miss Horner.
Mia hurried into the salon and then stopped short. She had not been in here before. This room had more light than the hall. It benefited from a west-facing window, and the light gave the space a golden glow that accentuated the yellows and golds that colored the walls and upholstered furniture. A huge arrangement of white and yellow summer blooms spiked with bright blue hydrangea brought the room to life.
If there had been a pianoforte she would have called this room perfection.
Mr. Novins stood at the window, his hands behind his back, as still as a statue. The view from the window had much to recommend it. The trees mixed green against a startling blue sky, but Mia knew the prospect was not what Mr. Novins saw.
She waited so long that Mia thought she would have to clear her throat to draw his attention, but just then the surgeon turned to face her.
“Good morning, miss,” he said, as if just noticing her.
“Good morning,” she echoed with a small curtsy. “This room is lovely and those flowers spectacular.” Their earlier conversation came to her. “Did Miss Horner make this arrangement?”
“Yes, she did. But they are not half as lovely as she is,” Mr. Novins said with a proud nod.
Oh, Mia thought, his heart is so very involved.
He cleared his throat and Mia pretended not to notice his embarrassment at so revealing a sentiment.
“I brought a package for you, Miss Castellano. It arrived last night from Pennford. I left it for you in the kitchen.”
“A package! Is there a letter as well?” Of course Elena would have written. “Never mind, I will go see for myself.” She spun around and had almost reached the door when Mr. Novins stopped her.
“Lord David told me today that he has a headache.”
His words froze her in place.
“No.” She spoke it firmly, her back still to Mr. Novins. “Lord David cannot be sick. No.” She turned to face the surgeon. “I will not allow it.”
“I hear desperation in your voice, Miss Castellano.”
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