Nicola and the Viscount (16 page)

But if Sir Hugh had not written that note, who had?

And then, all too soon, Nicola had an answer to that question. Because the driver was hauling on the reins, bringing his animal to a halt. Nicola, half-collapsed against the bottom of the cab—which was quite grimy, having seen the bottom of a good number of shoes in the recent past—struggled to sit up, and perhaps make an escape….

But the driver seemed to know what she was thinking, and in a trice had reached into the carriage and hauled her out as roughly as if she were a sack of potatoes.

“Unhand me, sir!” Nicola cried with spirit—though it had to be admitted that her voice shook a little. “How dare you mistreat me in this manner? I will see you imprisoned for this!”

The driver, unimpressed, dragged her by the arm into a mean, low-ceilinged building next to which he'd pulled up. Nicola had time only to glance around and see that, much to her surprise, she was by the water—seagulls sat on casks all around, while, behind them, loomed the masts of sailing ships. The tang of salt was in the air, and a rigorous breeze whipped her cheeks.

Then the driver was pushing her through a narrow door. It took Nicola's eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness of the interior after the bright sunshine outdoors. But when she finally could see, it was not the driver's nine children and mounds of washing that greeted her, as she'd almost come to expect.

No, it was the familiar—and not particularly welcome—face of someone she knew only too well, smiling at her from a small, bare table, at which he sat with his plump hands resting atop a silver-tipped cane.

“Hello, Nicola,” said Lord Farelly.

“You!” Nicola burst out.

“Yes,” Lord Farelly said pleasantly. “It is I. Thank you so much for joining us. I apologize for the ignominious manner in which you were conducted here. But you will understand, of course, that we did not think an invitation would do the trick.”

“Stubborn,” came another all-too-familiar voice. “She was always horribly stubborn. Takes after her father in that way.”

Nicola, blinking in the dim light, turned her head toward the voice.

“Lord Renshaw,” she said, recognizing the nattily garbed figure without much surprise. “I should have known.”

“Yes.”The Grouser scooted back his chair and stood up. “All that money wasted on a fancy education that really does not seem to have done you a bit of good, does it? We ought just to have thrown it down the well.”

Nicola, now that her vision had at last cleared, was able to see that she stood in what appeared to be an abandoned taproom. There was a long bar to one side, over which hung a warped and not very clean mirror. A rickety-looking staircase leading to a second floor ran along the opposite wall. Gathered at the various grimy tables along the taproom floor were a number of individuals with whom Nicola was more than a little acquainted. Lord Farelly, of course, was one, as was the Grouser. But Lord Sebastian, she soon saw, was there as well, lolling with his long legs stretched out before him, looking quite pleased with himself.

And there, at a table quite in the back of the room, sat another person Nicola knew, but had hardly expected to see in a situation such as this.

“Harold!” she cried, really feeling as if the breath had been taken right out of her. “How
could
you?”

Harold—looking, it had to be admitted, quite miserable, though whether due to the circumstances in which he found himself or the horrid vermilion waistcoat he wore beneath a powder-blue morning coat, Nicola couldn't say—slumped in his chair, and said, “I'm sorry, Nicola. I'm so sorry. I did try to warn you—”

“Yes.” Lord Farelly stood up, his own waistcoat, of a delicate combination of pink and green, straining a bit beneath his fairly prominent belly. “And I can't say we thank you very much for that, Mr. Blenkenship…though luckily no harm was done.”

The Milksop, looking close to tears, rose with such abruptness that his own chair fell over backward behind him with a clatter.

“Animals!” he shouted, his pale face looking round as the moon in the dismal lighting. “That's all you are! Horrible, disgusting animals!”

“For God's sake, Harold,” the Grouser said from beneath his handkerchief, which he'd brought out and laid across his nose. “Shut up. And be still, won't you? You're raising all sorts of dust. Whoever owns this place, Farelly, ought to be shot. Such scandalous housekeeping I've never before seen in my life. A man could choke on all this dust—”

“Where's my guinea?” the driver of Nicola's hansom cab interrupted gutturally.

“Never mind about your pay,” Lord Farelly said. “You'll get it in good time. Now be a good lad, and make sure no one comes in.”

The driver grunted and opened the front door—letting in a bar of sunlight—then slammed it closed behind him, raising another cloud of dust, and causing the Grouser to begin coughing.

“A guinea?” Nicola, despite her fear, glared at Lord Farelly. “That's all you had to put up for my abduction? One
guinea
?”

“I am a man,” Lord Farelly said, leaning lightly upon his decorative cane, “who appreciates a bargain when he sees one. Surely you can't hold that against me, Miss Sparks. Thrift is generally considered a virtue, you know.”

Nicola, though she did not feel particularly brave, nevertheless snorted. Madame had always frowned upon this method of communicating one's feelings, but Nicola supposed Madame would agree that most rules of etiquette could be waived in the case of kidnapping.

“Oh, yes,” she said sarcastically. “Your economy is truly to be applauded, my lord.”

It was at this point that Lord Sebastian, after a lang-uorous stretch, rose and said in his lazy drawl, “Look, can't we get this over with? I've a man to see about a horse.”

“Another one?”The Grouser lowered his handkerchief and eyed the viscount disapprovingly. “Didn't you just buy a horse a month ago?”

The viscount shot Lord Renshaw a disgusted look. “Can a man have too many horses?”

“As a matter of fact,” the Grouser said, “yes, I think—”

“Enough.” Lord Farelly reached down and pulled out a spindle-back chair. “I believe we've all forgotten our manners. There is, after all, a lady present. Miss Sparks? Won't you sit down, my dear?”

Nicola, primly folding her hands in front of her, said, “Thank you, no. I'd prefer to stand.”

“Sit!”
thundered the earl in a voice so loud that more dust was loosened from the heavy oak beams overhead, and came sprinkling down upon them like snow.

Nicola hastened to do as Lord Farelly commanded, slipping onto the chair with an unsteadily hammering heart, and a sudden inkling that she might not live out the afternoon.

“That's better,” the earl said in his normal voice. He even smiled down at her…much the way he had smiled that day he'd taken her to ride the
Catch Me Who Can
. “Now. Would you care for anything to drink? There's no tea, I'm sorry to say, but I could get you a glass of ale…. ”

“No, thank you,” Nicola said meekly. “I'm quite all right.”

“Fine. Fine, then.”

And then the earl pulled out another chair, spun it around, and settled upon it, only backward, so that his elbows rested across the chair back as he gazed down at Nicola with a kindly expression on his face.

Only this time, Nicola knew better than to trust it.

“We are, as you might have guessed, Miss Sparks, in a bit of difficulty,” Lord Farelly explained. “You see, I am a partner in a firm called Stockton and Darlington. Do you know it?”

Nicola thought it wiser not to admit that she'd read all about the company, courtesy of his lordship's private correspondence, which she'd come across while rifling through his desk drawers.

“No, my lord,” she said, widening her eyes to appear all the more innocent.

It seemed to work. Lord Farelly said, “No, of course you've never heard of it. Well, the Stockton and Darlington Company is in the coal business. It is our goal to see that everyone in England—and, eventually, the world—has access to our product. A noble enough goal, would you not agree, my dear?”

Nicola, after a brief glance at her guardian to see if there was to be any mercy from that quarter, nodded. The Grouser, she saw, was busy digging out the contents of his nostrils. There was to be no help from him, she saw at once.

“The problem,” his lordship went on, “is that we need a better delivery system for our coal. We've used horses for years, but the problem with horses, Miss Sparks, is that they can haul only so much without getting tired…no matter how hard you whip them. That's why lately we've been working on a revolutionary new way of distributing our product. I believe you are familiar with this particular innovation. In fact, you've ridden on one.”

Nicola nodded, conscious that both the Grouser and Lord Sebastian, as well as his father, were staring at her. The Milksop was slumped against the bar, his head resting against his arms. He alone did not appear interested in what was happening across the room.
Thank you, Harold,
Nicola thought silently to herself.
Thank you very much, you sissified excuse for a man….

“The
Catch Me Who Can
,” Nicola said carefully, because Lord Farelly seemed to expect a reply of some sort.

“Correct,” the earl said, as happily as if he were a teacher with a particularly gifted pupil. “The
Catch Me Who Can
. I took you, Miss Sparks, to ride on the
Catch Me Who Can
because I thought it might spark in you, as it had in me, an enthusiasm—a fever, you might almost say—for locomotives. For I believe that locomotives, Miss Sparks, are the way of the future. But you've heard me say so before.”

“Yes,” Nicola said, since again, some response from her seemed anticipated.

“What I'd hoped to do,” Lord Farelly went on, “was to plant in your mind, Miss Sparks, a seed. A seed I like to call progress. Because progress, Miss Sparks, is what industry is all about. Without it, we fester, do we not? Indeed, we do. And progress, Miss Sparks, in the coal industry, is all about locomotion. With the use of locomotives, we can haul more coal to our customers than we ever could using the old-fashioned means of a horse and wagon. Do you see where I am going with this, Miss Sparks?”

Nicola nodded. She wondered if the driver was still waiting outside the door. What if she were to make a run for it? Would Lord Farelly—or his son—try to stop her? The Grouser she was certain she could outrun. But what was the point of trying if that foul-smelling hansom cab driver was going to be there to bar the door? Perhaps there was some other way out of the building.

“It so happens that your ancestral home, Beckwell Abbey,” Lord Farelly continued, “is smack-dab in the middle of the most direct route we were planning on using for the delivery of our coal. It was my hope that, once you became as impressed as I am, Miss Sparks, by the incredible potential afforded by these magnificent steel engines, you would recognize that some sacrifices must necessarily be made in the name of progress. Stockton and Darlington offered you what I believe was a more than generous amount for your home. It isn't, if I understand correctly, that any members of your family still live in the abbey. Still, I can see that a girl who's lost both her parents might perhaps form an attachment to even the humblest of homes, and want to cling to it as the last vestige of her family.

“But that, you see, was why I offered you a place in
my
family, Miss Sparks. To replace all you'd be losing.” Lord Farelly gestured to his son, who stood with his back against the bar, his elbows propped upon it behind him, gazing at her with those eyes she'd used to think the color of a summer sky, but which she now equated with the hardest of ice. “My son was very willing to marry you, and make you, in essence, my daughter. You would have had, at last, parents and a sister who love you. Moreover, you'd have had a handsome and well-off husband. You'd have been a viscountess, with all the jewels and gowns such a title suggests. All that money could buy you, Miss Sparks, I'd have gladly afforded you. And all in exchange for a house that you do not use, and which is not worth half of what we'd have gladly paid you for it.”

Here Lord Farelly's tone, which had been quite pleasant, suddenly became very unpleasant indeed.

“But what did you do?” the earl asked her, his gaze narrowing. “How did you respond to our generosity? You broke off your engagement to my son with barely an explanation, and left our home with hardly a word of thanks!” He stabbed an index finger at her. “You very selfishly refused to see any of us. And, worst of all, you still stubbornly clung to the idea that you were not going to sell the abbey.”

He lowered his hand and said, in a voice that was lower in volume, but no less menacing, “And that, Miss Sparks, was a very grave mistake. Because the fact is, none of us can afford to stand in the way of progress. To do so is a betrayal. Not a betrayal of friendship, or of trust. But a betrayal of our country. Of England. Because if any of us decide to stand in the way of progress, what we are really doing is holding England back, keeping her from becoming all that she could be. And you, as a loyal citizen, would never want to do that, would you, Miss Sparks?”

Nicola, after some consideration, shook her head. Not to do so, she felt, would be unwise at this juncture. And she was gratified to see that she'd guessed rightly. Lord Farelly seemed very glad to see her head shake. He even smiled, reminding Nicola of all the many jolly conversations she'd had with him back when she'd stayed at the Bartholomews'.

Except crocodiles, Nicola reminded herself, were said to smile, as well…right before striking their prey.

“That's more like it,” Lord Farelly said, still smiling broadly. “You see, Norbert? I told you she could be reasonable. You simply hadn't put the matter in as clear a light as I have. Now, Miss Sparks, perhaps we can repair this little misunderstanding, and all go about our separate ways and forget any of this unpleasantness ever happened.” His lordship reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a sheaf of papers. “I just need you to sign a few things, and—”

Nicola was willing to be obliging…but only to a point.

“No,” she said in the smallest voice imaginable.

Lord Farelly, the papers still in his hand, glanced up briefly. “I beg your pardon?” he said, as if he had not heard her correctly.

“I said—” Nicola's throat had gone dry. She wished she hadn't turned down the earl's offer of a glass of ale. Nevertheless, she swallowed and said in the same small voice, “No. I won't sell. And,” she added, knowing it was only going to get her in trouble, but unable to help herself, “you can't make me.”

Lord Farelly stared at her, for all the world as if she were a rock or some other inanimate object that had suddenly begun to speak. The Grouser, across the room, groaned and lifted his gaze, in evident supplication, to the ceiling. Even Lord Sebastian sucked in his breath and shook his head, while, farther down the bar, the Milksop let out a whimper, and hid his head deeper in his arms.

Lord Farelly blinked. “What…did…you…say?” he asked slowly.

Nicola, though she was frightened witless, felt angrier than she did scared. Angry enough to snap, “You heard me. I said no. I'll never sell Beckwell Abbey. But I'll tell you, if I were to sell it, the last person on earth I'd let buy it is you, Lord Farelly. Imagine, suggesting my not selling it is unpatriotic! I'll tell you what's unpatriotic: Bullying a young, defenseless orphan. That's what's unpatriotic. Why, men like you ought to be locked up!”