The Saint (22 page)

“We have been building new cottages, but give them to the families first. The men who come from elsewhere have to make do for now.”

“I think that we will have to build faster, Laclere, if you intend to bring weavers in as well.”

“If Adam Kenwood's granddaughter has decided to remain a partner, I'm sure that we can afford to build faster.”

She smiled contentedly, in a way that reassured him. However, the points he had made last night, about her marriage to another man jeopardizing control of the mill, had not disappeared with their passion.

He really needed to settle their future together. Not now, however. Now he needed to have a conversation with his secretary, a young man who probably knew far more about the mill and the Duclaircs than previously suspected.

“I should speak with him alone,” he said as the coach rolled to a stop in front of an old stone cottage that had seen recent improvements.

“I understand. We can hardly go calling together.”

It wasn't that. He did not want her hearing this conversation. In fact, he could not even have it if she were present.

He walked to the door quickly. All the same, he was noticed. He sensed the lane go quiet, and felt eyes watch his progress.

Mr. Clark never visited this village, at least not in ways that its inhabitants noticed. His inspections had been as subtle and secret as the rest of his life in this region.

His secretary showed astonishment equal to the villagers. Taken aback at the call, he brought Vergil to a little sitting room and quickly took a chair near a table.

Vergil noted the man's guarded expression. “I have not come to criticize or chastise, Thomas, and certainly not to release you. This is a social call.”

Harry Thomas was a large-framed, fair-skinned man, the sort whose face colored easily when he was angry or ill at ease. It was very ruddy now. His pose in the chair, with legs and arms crossed, made it appear that he braced himself for unpleasantness, or restrained himself physically from revealing his reactions.

He knew that, social call or not, the unexpected presence of his employer was not good news.

He was correct about that, but Vergil guessed that the news would be worse for the employer than the secretary. Rather than delay the pain, he threw himself right on the blade after they had exchanged some banal talk about the fair day and the village's growth.

“You know who I am, don't you?” he said. “You knew who the last Mr. Clark was, too, I think.”

The face got ruddier. The eyes glazed with caution. “He confided in me. I kept it to myself then, and I still do with you.”

“I believe you.” Did he? Was he looking at the answer to it all, right here in this chamber? Did Harry Thomas betray Milton's confidence and threaten to reveal the viscount's déclassé dabbling in industry?

It might have been Thomas, but the mill was not reason enough. Not for Milton. It was something far more damning.

The solution wanted to force itself into his mind, and his heart's rebellion barely kept it at bay.

Vergil strolled around the chamber, wondering how to proceed. His gaze lit on a low case of books, and one caught his eye. He slid the volume out of its spot. As he did, he heard a movement behind him, that of a man shifting in his place. He felt Harry Thomas's alarm.

“Homer's
Odyssey.
My brother loved this work.” He cradled the book in his hands. He recognized the binding. This had been Milton's book, a part of his private library. It had been given to Milton by their father.

And now it belonged to Harry Thomas.

“He loaned it to me. I should have returned it. Take it now.”

Vergil came close to accepting the explanation. He wanted to nod, take his leave, and stride back to the coach and Bianca.

Except this had been no loan. He just knew that. He suspected if he opened the cover he would find an inscription that made it a gift.

He kept the cover closed and looked at the other books, all of them new and with impressive bindings. Too impressive for a secretary of dubious fortune. He scanned the authors. Poets, philosophers, and historians. Milton had given Harry all of these, he was sure.

Had it been an exercise in education? An attempt to improve a naturally sharp mind with some culture? A Voltairian experiment?

The answer, he guessed, was inside the volume that he held. Milton would not have given away his own boyhood treasure to a mere student of literature.

“I have come to ask you some questions about my brother,” he said, setting the book down on the table where they both could see it. Harry looked for all the world like a man who would like to snatch it and hide it under his coat.

“There are some letters from you to Milton. I am wondering about them.”

“I wrote to him. Was my job, wasn't it? He came here less often than you do, and after Kenwood got ill, the mill was left to me to manage day to day. I had to keep him informed.”

“I saw those letters. They were among his business papers, and sent to a London address, and addressed to Mr. Clark. I speak now of different ones, probably sent to Laclere House in London, and to Laclere Park in Sussex. These were kept separate from the others, and saved together. In them you address my brother as ‘Dearest Friend.' ”

Harry's face turned so bland it might have been made of stone. “We formed a friendship. Here, at the mill, in the works, he was not such a grand man. Not the sort to think he was better than such as me.”

No, he had not been that sort at all. Nor had he been the sort to worry that his friendship might be betrayed.

Vergil laid his hand on the volume. “I want you to think now. Were any of these letters indiscreet?”

“What are you insinuating? I'll not be—”

“
Do not
feign indignation with me. I was his
brother.
I may have ignored what I saw, but I saw it all the same. I need to know now if anyone who read those letters might surmise the depths of your friendship.”

Harry's jaw tightened in anger, but his eyes were those of a man trapped and frightened.

“You are safe with me. I would never do anything to harm his name,” Vergil said quietly.

Harry's stiff pose slackened, more in defeat than relief. “I suppose, it is possible, if they were read—but I thought they were destroyed.”

“A sensible man would have burned them, but my brother could be foolish sometimes, and sentiment ruled him in this.”

Beneath his dismay, the notion that his letters had been saved seemed to touch Harry. He nodded his head toward the bookshelves. “Had me reading philosophers and such. Wanted to open the world to me, he did.” He smiled nostalgically. “Interesting stuff, but not much help when the workers got mad after he decided no children could work. They depended on the wages, those families did. I got him to agree to let the boys stay on for some hours, at least. Kenwood couldn't get through to him on some of his notions, but I could. Real life isn't so neat as in those books, I told him. Even good deeds can have bad results. You are more practical than he was. Kenwood said so too. Said this was in your blood more, and not only an experiment for you.”

“It is good that you were here to help him. When he came north, did he visit you in this house?”

“None saw him. He was discreet. Didn't come up in a fancy coach as you just did.”

In villages such as this, no discretion was great enough. “Did you and he ever visit Manchester together?”

“Sometimes. Nothing untoward was seen, if that is your question. It was natural for us to be together at meetings and such. We worked together.”

That was true, but one wrong glance, one wrong laugh … “I regret that I must return to those letters. Did you ever write another sort of letter to Milton, asking for something of value from him?”

Harry's soft expression snapped away. “What are you saying?”

“Did you make any demands on him? His friendship with you made him vulnerable to anyone who knew of it, including you.”

“Made me vulnerable as well. No point in my making demands.”

“That is not true, and we both know it. He was a peer. Any scandal, let alone a trial, would affect him more. Men no longer hang for such things, but they can be destroyed. You could disappear if it came out, but he could not.”

“Damn you. Damn all of you. Assuming that I'd be grasping, just because I'm not born to silver as you are. It wasn't like that, but I'd never expect the two of you to understand.”

“What do you mean, the
two
of you?”

“You are not the first to come have this chat with me,
Mr. Clark.
”

“Another man has approached you about this friendship? Who?”

“Not a man. A lady came, all veiled and sneaky. Said she knew about the mill, and me, and worried for his reputation and that of his family.”

“She knew who Mr. Clark really was?”

“To be certain. She said he was careless, and asked if there were letters to him as the viscount that should be destroyed. She was going to do it, you see. To protect him. Before she left she threatened me. Said if I ever told anyone, if I ever tried to use this for my own gain, she'd see me hang.”

“Was this before or after my brother's death?”

“A good four months earlier. I didn't want him to know that she had figured it out. If he knew, he might …” He shrugged.

“She may have been veiled, but you must have known who she was if you spoke of anything at all with her.”

Thomas sneered at him, as if he were an idiot. “I knew who she was, because she told me straight-out. It was your sister, the Countess of Glasbury.”

The child peered at Bianca and Bianca peered back. The little girl had been scrubbed for Sunday, and her red hair blazed in the sun. Her big eyes examined Bianca's garments with astonishment, then she ran back to her mother who watched from the doorway.

Their cottage was small and tidy and new. A little row of them flanked the lane, facing the older homes that showed their age and indifference to care.

Vergil came out of Mr. Thomas's house and noticed her down the lane. He walked toward her with a troubled expression.

“Did you learn what you wanted?” she asked as he joined her.

“More than I wanted.” He appeared tired and lost.

“The letters were from Mr. Thomas?”

“Yes.”

“See, they were friends, as I said.”

“They were not to Adam, but to my brother.”

She shrugged. “A different friendship, then. Charlotte always speaks of Milton as being reclusive, so it must have been a joy to him to have some dear friends. It must make you feel better to know that he did, that he wasn't lonely in his life.”

He gave her an odd look. “Yes, I suppose it makes me feel better knowing that. Now let us return to the house. Of the many lives I find myself living today, the one that includes you is the one I need right now.”

As soon as they entered the coach, he took her hand and pulled her across the carriage to sit on his lap. “What did you think of your mill?”

“I think that perhaps I will let the manager continue for a few more years, at least. I am not sure that Nigel will be so sanguine, however. How have you managed to keep him ignorant of your role in it?”

“He was in France, and since his return Mr. Clark has dodged meeting him. We have a lively correspondence going. I am counting on him being content if his income surpasses what he could get in the funds, but if necessary, I will offer to purchase his share at a generous profit.”

“Why not do so right away?”

“The offer from Mr. Johnston and Mr. Kennedy will give him fifty thousand pounds. I cannot raise that without mortgaging the mill itself.”

“Fifty thousand … Why, that means that my share must be worth …”

“Over two hundred thousand. The value is in the equipment and the land and the accounts more than the annual profits. Are you sorry that you have promised not to sell?”

“I wouldn't know what to do with that much. You say the profits are better than the income from an equal amount in the funds, so I am better with the mill it seems.”

“One bad decision by your manager and the mill's value diminishes.”

She pecked his nose with a little kiss. “I think that I will take my chances. I trust my manager. Not because he is hungry for the gain, but because he has a passion for what he is doing and therefore will do it well.”

One eyebrow arched rakishly. “Does passion lead to superb performance? I think that theory should be tested more.”

A long kiss made his meaning clear. She emerged breathless. “Lucas …” she gasped while he untied the neck of her cloak.

“He won't hear a thing with all the noise the carriage makes.”

It didn't seem to make much noise at all suddenly, but then his mouth was raising sensations that had blood pounding in her ears. “If we are stopped …”

“No one will do so except a highwayman, and these parts haven't seen one in a decade.”

“We are almost home.”

“At least twenty minutes away. But you are right, we wouldn't want to pull up at the wrong moment, and I am not inclined to make love to you quickly. Quite the opposite. I will have to pass the time with more leisurely pursuits.”

“A game of cards?”

“I was thinking more in terms of discovering just how wild I can make you between here and the manor.” His expression gave lie to his teasing words. The concern she had seen when he found her on the lane still veiled his eyes. “I am very grateful that you are here with me now, more than I can ever explain.”

It turned out that he could make her very wild. Incredibly so. Sensations piled up and split and multiplied. Pleasure layered upon pleasure. She was not even undressed, but his hands found and touched with wicked precision through her bodice and under her skirt. The end never came and the frenzy doubled in on itself, pitching her up to a crazed peak of need. With observant deliberation he kept her balanced on a point of exquisite torture.