A Curse Dark as Gold (14 page)

"Now, I've made a few inquiries, and --"

I had been sinking into a fog of weariness, but at this I snapped back. "You've
what?
How could you? I told you I would handle it!"

Uncle Wheeler's tongue flicked over his lips. "Yes, well. Evidently that was an error in judgement on my part. Charlotte, as your guardian, I feel obligated to do what is in your best interest, and as I believed initially, that is selling the mill."
I could not believe it. After all we'd gone through! I was so tired I could do little more than sputter angrily, but Uncle Wheeler ignored me, forging ahead.

"... to speak with them. I believe that I've settled on the most advantageous arrangement, as I'm sure you'll agree when you've had the opportunity to compose yourself and look at this with reason." At this, Uncle Wheeler rose and smoothed down his jacket. "And now, I do believe Baker has been holding our breakfast."

I was escorted, then, to a meal I was in no state to consume. I wished to tell him that it was no longer necessary to consider selling, that I had the means for saving Stirwaters at hand -- but nothing on Earth would compel me to mention Jack Spinner. Uncle Wheeler ate steadily and fastidiously, one finger crooked away from the corners of teacups and toast points. He frowned when Rosie bounced in, flushed and breathless. She took a moment to compose herself, smiled sweetly to Uncle Wheeler, and slid into place beside me. I stared at the food on my plate but could see only the face of the Pinchfields wool buyer, sneering at me.

A sudden sharp pain in my ankle turned my focus to Rosie, who had kicked me beneath the table. She was chatting away cheerfully with Uncle Wheeler. I took a deep gulp of scalding tea and sat straighter, forcing myself to attend to them.

"I think that sounds like quite a sensible plan, Uncle. Certainly you must take advantage of the felicitous timing, as you say."

"What are you talking about?" I asked carefully. Rosie grinned at me. "Your meeting with Pinchfields in Harrowgate, of course. Uncle Wheeler has everything arranged. Wasn't that thoughtful of him?" She jabbed at a slice of nectarine with a tiny fork. "Uncle, did you try these? They're divine."

I stared at her in horror, but the pieces slowly began to fall into place. As my sluggish thoughts finally caught up with my sister's, I nodded.

After breakfast I cornered Rosie in the kitchen. "Are you witless? What am I going to say to Pinchfields?"

"I think you ought to concentrate on what you plan to say to Mr. Parmenter."

A smile crept about her lips, and I couldn't help myself. I hugged her.

I spent the next days satisfying myself that I could leave the mill in safe hands for seventy-two hours, checking and rechecking the wool in the shed and the strongbox in the office, and cautioning Rosie beyond her endurance.

"Enough!" she cried at last as I was quizzing her about the key to the great lock on the garret room. "I won't let anyone up there; I won't burn down the dyeshed; I won't let Bill Penny run the carding engine. Mercy, Charlotte -- anyone would think you didn't trust me!" And with that she stormed off.

I gave the locked mill doors one last tug and stepped out into the yard to see Biddy Tom across the road, stooped over the verge, gathering greens from the edge of the fence. All at once, she stood up straight and looked right at me.

"Charlotte Miller," she said with a nod; and though her voice was no louder than common, it carried like a shout across the road. I found myself crossing the lane to meet her.

"Good day, Mrs. Tom."

She nodded again and bent for a handful of yellow blossoms. "Keyflower," she said. "Good for headache and insomnia. Wood sorrel" -- here she indicated spindly weeds trailing through the fence -- "for fever. By the way, your place smells a bit funny, like. Come by and I'll get you some sage to burn, clear your air a little."

"It always smells funny," I said. "It's the dyeworks."

She smiled then, reedy and wiry as her herbs. "That weren't what I meant, and you know as much. Odd air hereabouts."

The gall of it! If we had "odd air,"
she
was half to blame for it! All at once, the events of the last days became too much, and everything spilled over. "Did you sell Rosie those -- things? Potions, and -- and mandrake root?"

Biddy Tom eased herself upright and eyed me levelly. "Sell them? You know better than that, Charlotte Miller. I never sell anything to anyone. Did your sister come to me for aid? That's her business."

"You leave her alone! She's just a girl -- she doesn't know any better --"

"Are ye her mam, then, or her sister?" She reached for my shoulder, and I wasn't quite quick enough to flinch away. "Miss Rosie's plenty old enough to know what she's about. It's hard to watch your sister in pain --"

"Rosie's not in pain!"

Mrs. Tom's lips twisted slightly. "I meant
ye,
lassie. You think it's easy for Rosie, all you've been through? She only wants to help, and you haven't left her many ways of doing that, with your managin' this and takin' care of that."

"Rosie helps," I protested. "We couldn't manage without her."
"'Taint what I mean." She tucked the herbs into pockets in her apron and lowered herself back to the grass. "You've a lot of weight on those young shoulders, Charlotte Miller. Let Rosie hoist her fair share."

"By painting symbols on the floor and chanting nursery rhymes?"

She looked sidelong at me. "Oh? And what happened?"

I clapped my mouth shut. After a moment I said, "Nothing happened, of course."

"Oh? I'd not be too sure of that, lass. That big city trip you were planning is back on again, I see. And I don't believe the rumors that it's because you mean to sell at last." The old woman actually winked at me!

"Yes, it's back on," I snapped. "And it has nothing to do with any chalk drawings or mandrake root or -- or wood sorrel or sage! So stay away from my sister and good day to you!" I spun on my heel and launched myself back home again.

"Charlotte Miller."

Against my will I turned back.

"You mind what I said about clearing the air hereabouts. Don't you presume everything is as it seems by broad daylight."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

But Mrs. Tom had slipped away into the golden afternoon.

Chapter Ten
We
arrived in Harrowgate after a day and a half on the road, bouncing over dry ruts in an airless stage compartment filled to choking sweetness by Uncle Wheeler's lilac wig powder. As I had my head half out the coach window for most of the journey, I beheld quite the prospect driving into town. The narrow valley and green hills of home gave way to a flat broad plain, through which snaked the wide grey river and miles of endless golden pasture. We could see the city long before we arrived there, its staggered rooftops and church spires rising up from the landscape like a queer, manufactured mountain range. An arched iron gateway marked the transition from Country to City, and the packed-earth roadway instantly became cobblestones. Everything seemed both huge and curiously close, as if you could stretch an arm out the carriage window and touch buildings on both sides. Of course, you were more likely to have your fingers bitten off by the neighboring carriage horses, clattering past with an astonishing, inexplicable speed.

Uncle Wheeler had spent the journey instructing me in all manner of city matters: distinguished personages whose paths we may happen to cross, the history and inhabitants of the great houses we passed, the best corner coffee-houses and streets for marketing. It was like someone had breathed life into a penny tour book, and I had only to turn an eye this way or that, and receive the full accounting. I supposed it was understandable; to my uncle, we were home at last.

But as we drove into the city, he did not relax, as I should have done, coming home after months away; by contrast, he became more excitable by the minute, animated and flushed beneath his powdered cheeks.

"Why, Uncle," I remarked as we passed the bustling Stowebridge Market, my uncle's hands on the grip of his walking stick white with exertion. "Anyone would think you were nervous!"

At once he withdrew, easing back into the carriage seat and crossing one stockinged leg over the other. "Nonsense, child," he said languidly. "It's merely the heat of the compartment."

And since I was beating my bone fan rapidly at my own face, I could hardly argue with that.

Uncle Wheeler had scheduled our appointment at Pinchfields for later that afternoon, which gave me scarcely enough time for my most significant errand. Fortunately, he did not object to my paying a call on "an old acquaintance of my father's," and after settling ourselves into the well-appointed inn, my uncle hired a cab to take us across town to the passementerie shop. Round through the foreign streets of Harrowgate we drove, through bricked lanes and grand wide roads crowded with traffic. It flashed by me in a blur; I was too preoccupied to marvel at the unfamiliar landscape. Rehearsing my lines in my head, I clutched my reticule and resisted the urge to reassure myself that the little spool of gold thread was still within. For his part, my uncle was at last mercifully silent, as well.

The House of Parmenter was literally an old green town-house nestled in a row of residences in a modest neighborhood. The carriage pulled to a stop by a curtained bay window where a young woman sat sewing. Uncle Wheeler looked up long enough to sniff, before pulling open the heavy door for me.

A grandmotherly woman in a feathered hat waved us in. Her crewelwork dress, with its silk piping and foot-long bullion fringe, made her look like a walking advertisement for Parmenter goods -- or a walking sofa. "Good day, good day!" she warbled.

The girl in the window, a much, much younger copy of the woman, looked up from her needlework with a coy smile. She stared openly at Uncle Wheeler, who lingered in the foyer behind me as the older woman shuffled out from her heaps of paperwork and samples.

"My good man, what can I do for you? The House of Parmenter is at your service. Custom embroidery? Lace cravats? The finest imported silk thread?" Mrs. Parmenter looked me up and down through tiny spectacles. "Or perhaps a wedding costume for your young lady, hmmm ... Mother-of-pearl buttons, linen mantua-lace light as air ..." She swept a tape from the desk and advanced on me like a matador.

"I think not," Uncle Wheeler said in clipped tones that let all the air out of poor Mrs. Parmenter. "Charlotte, do get on with whatever your -- business here is. I will await you in the carriage. Do not tarry." He turned toward the door and paused, his hand lifted toward a length of silver braid. He examined it for a moment with some evident scorn, and then said, "Have ten yards of this sent to Burke's and Taylor. I fancy a travelling coat."

"Heh," Mrs. Parmenter said, as the landing door closed with a snap. "And I'll be sure to hurry that along, won't I?" She gave me a great wink. "Who are you then, dearie?"

I started, quite unable to be nervous in the face of this reception. "Charlotte Miller, ma'am. I've come --"

Her blue eyes grew wide. "You're never James Miller's girl!" She bundled me to her bosom in a flutter of gold lace. "Oh, my dear. Go right up, go right up. Mr. Parmenter will be so pleased to see you. Such friends, your father and my Irwin, you know."

Mr. Parmenter's office was no tidier than Mrs. Parmenter's desk. A bright workroom under a flood of cracked skylights, it was crowded with desks and tables piled high with sample books. Tacked up on every wall were scraps of gold lace, silk fringe, and braids and trims of every conceivable design.

"Hello?" I stepped tentatively over a box of spools. "Mr. Parmenter?"

Mr. Parmenter emerged from the muddle, a slight older fellow with thinning hair well-waxed and curled, his neck draped about with yards of trim like a tailor's measuring tape. "What did you say your name was?" he said, peering at me in some confusion.

"Charlotte Miller, sir. I've come from Shearing. Your wife -- that is, the lady belowstairs, seems to think you knew my father, James?"

Mr. Parmenter was scribbling notes on a scrap of parcel-wrapping. "Hmm? What's that? Oh -- clothier, I believe.
Some odd bits about that business, though -- you'll want to stay away from them."

"No, Mr. Parmenter -- I
am
Miss Miller." Clearly, talk would get me nowhere. I opened my reticule and withdrew the spool of gold thread and set it on the worktable. It shone like sunlight itself in the brightly lit workroom, a radiant coil of pure gold that made Mr. Parmenter's other luxurious wares seem tawdry by comparison.

Mr. Parmenter stared at the spool for the longest moment, his mouth half open, a blot of ink blooming at the end of his pen. At last he composed himself and gave the thread the same suspicious examination it had endured at my own hands.

"Where did you get this?" he said, almost reverently. "Tradesman. Can you use it?"

He eyed the thread as if afraid to give away his eagerness. Oh, that was a look I understood very well! "How much can you supply?"

"Oh, nearly a thousand of the like. Can --"