An Untitled Lady (25 page)

“Without that, we’ll keep snit-snatting over pennies while our rivals in the South and in Europe steal our pounds. London is jealous of us Northerners.”

“Or frightened.”

“Surely not.”

“Aren’t the manufacturers frightened of the workers? And vice versa? Seems like everyone’s first response to strangers is fear.”

“Such the expert.” He pulled her down to nuzzle her neck.

“An expert stranger.” She leaned toward him, ready for more kissing. He held a hand at her breastbone, gazing at her.

“My beautiful stranger.” He wrapped his arms around her. She sank into his embrace, into the mattress as he turned her and pushed onto her.

This time, the wall of fear was easier to cross. Every time it grew easier. Nash’s hands now triggered pleasure more than fear. She could even wait half a day before the urge to wash him off her grew too strong.

“Sweetest. Someday I’ll show you ecstasy. You’ll forget everything from before.”

“Promise.”

“I swear by my sword. My little radical.”

* * * *

The next Saturday, rather than counting out the bales of cotton Clayton wanted, Nash stood in chest-deep bathwater at the Roman baths, cursing Heywood, his wife, and her balmy ideas. He was not getting his head wet, no matter his mentor’s taunting.

“Don’t tell me you can’t swim, man. You’re Navy.”

“Navy men think water is for transport, not dunking.”

Heywood performed some sidelong stroke that took him around Nash in a lazy circle. He found himself spinning on his feet to keep the man in sight. He stopped, planting himself facing the door.

“Not leaving already? You haven’t gotten your money’s worth.” Let the man laugh. Or don’t—Nash was finding it difficult to know where to look to avoid seeing a flash of cock bobbing about as his friend rolled onto his back. He did not wish to know so much of the man. Heywood seemed oblivious to how unmanned he appeared. It was all Nash could do not to cover himself, but his hands were needed more to protect him from going under. Whose blasted idea was this, anyway?

He tried to look at the overlarge pond through Maddie’s eyes. She, apparently, loved it, coming home damp and with a clear expression of joy. If this were a vice, he had to admit it was a mild one. The subscription fee filtered out the riffraff, and if the men were any indication, no one even smiled at anyone else, much less made inappropriate acquaintances.

Heywood appeared again in his sights. Nash had to look away, to the replica of a Roman mural on the far wall.

“Saw the new announcement in the papers. Not much to gainsay.” The advert took full half the top of the front page, requesting “the borough reeve and constables call a public meeting a week Monday.” No mention of electing a shadow representative, nothing about forming a new government. Nash leaned back a bit, trying to discover which part of the movement had drawn that grin onto Heywood’s face. The mural on the ceiling showed the swan taunting a rather buxom Leda.

Heywood stood up beside him, splashing warm water in his face. Nash rocketed to vertical, sputtering. The man patted him on the back like an infant. Nash was never doing this again. Heywood looked away, shaming him further. Maybe talk would distract the man.

“You do still think we should allow the meeting.”

“What choice do we have? Let them walk and talk, nothing will come of it. We can’t very well give the men suffrage when we don’t have it ourselves.”

Nash leaned back to take another look at the ceiling, careful of the waves he made. “But can we count on the committee?”

“Not bloody likely. Malbanks is glad-handing the army encamped outside town. He says they will have our backs if the riffraff start to rabble.”

“The army? Who will protect us from them?” Nash sat up, pushing the water off his chest and arms.

“Exactly. That militia—shopkeepers all. Pretend soldiers.”

Nash crossed his arms. “Might be wiser simply to create a police.”

“If you can convince them of that, I’ll owe you a three-chop dinner. I’d throw in the whole hog if you could keep the army out of my brickyard.”

“Or it’s Eighteen seventeen. I’ve heard it before.”

“You weren’t here, boy. Armed rebellion, blood in the streets. The wife had to go to her mother’s. Nothing but evil.”

“I’ve heard nothing like that this time.”

“From the moderates. Believe me, these radicals, whatever they say, are just a cloak for conspiracy and rebellion.”

“I’m going to talk with them.”

Heywood scrambled to his feet, water sluicing from his hair and the clefts in his beard. “Alone?”

“They wouldn’t harm a committee man. If I can understand them, I can help them to understand us. We shouldn’t be on the battlements. We want the same things. Safety, security, prosperity. Love.”

Heywood’s eyebrows arched. Nash shook his head. So much water must have addled his brain. “Think the army would come if called?”

“They did at Plymouth.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Does your wife approve of your language?”

“Her father is a weaver. She’s probably heard worse.”

His friend stopped shaking the water from his hair to look at him. “I thought she’d not met her Da.”

Nash couldn’t very well say she’d done it behind his back, though she had. “Why shouldn’t she?”

“I can think of a dozen reasons why. The man’s a rebel. He was at the ’Change, for god’s sake.” A red flush rose from Heywood’s white-furred chest into his face. “He is whom you parlay with. Does she know?”

“She’s met him. Once only,” Nash added, as Heywood’s face rounded and reddened like a beet.

“Listen to me, Quinn. We promised, your father and I, to keep the girl away from Moore. She’s had trouble enough, hasn’t she? You’ll not go against a promise.” He whispered, but Nash felt the blade behind his words.

He didn’t understand it. “How does a stranger’s promise weigh against Maddie’s chance to know her last living relation?”

“I’ve heard enough.” Heywood pushed himself through the water toward the shelves of stairs at one end. Nash stumbled toward the stair, but wasn’t fast enough to avoid being left alone in the deep.

{ 27 }

Kitty arrived early to the house on Stevenson Square, but Maddie had expected that. She answered the door herself, and had spirited her sister up the stairs before Mrs. Willis reached the ground floor landing. “I’ve picked out the perfect dress for you,” she said.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I want you to feel beautiful today. Don’t you have beaux to impress?”

Kitty actually blushed. “Nay. Men are dolts, only wanting one thing from a lass. They’ll not get it from me.” She’d screwed up her face so tightly it looked as if it would crack. Maddie had to laugh, and in a moment, Kitty did as well. “True, it ain’t that bad, and I have walked about with a few likely lads. These days, though, I want a man that can take care of himself, and me, too, in a pinch. Even the master weavers are hurting for work.”

“Then a farmer it will be for you.” Maddie pulled the blue twill from its peg. “Plenty of hog-men and corn-men at Shaftsbury.”

“Best be a red dress, then, to catch the bull-men.” Kitty started to laugh at her joke, but stopped when she saw the dress. Her eyes widened.

“See, blue. Lustrous, like your eyes. Turn around,” Maddie said bossily, “and I’ll throw it over your head.”

Kitty did as told, and the rounded dress draped her shoulders and hugged her hips like a glove.

“You’re thinner in the belly and bust than I, but the dress has tucks there, see? So it’s not so noticeable.”

Kitty turned to see herself in the half-glass. Her hands traced the lace around the modest squared collar, then down the row of buttons closing the sleeves. “This is too fine.”

Maddie, busy closing the buttons, looked up, catching Kitty’s glance in the mirror. “You are just as fine.”

“My hands are rough, and my hair–.” She touched at her braids as if they were thistles.

“That’s what gloves are for, and combs. Will you let me do your hair?”

“Like yours?”

“Is that how you would like it?”

Kitty chewed her lip. “No. More swept-up, like in the pictures. Yours looks like your husband had his way with you this morning.”

Maddie patted her own wayward curls. “He may have.” She loved this. Kitty was beautiful, so strong and so sure, the very model of the modern Mancunian. Maddie would do anything to be like her.

She had no trouble sweeping her sister’s hair into a proper style, anchored with combs at the back. Maddie was seating herself on the stool, just to do a touch-up, when she heard Nash’s voice in the hall. He was back from the warehouse sooner than she expected.

“Quick, stand by the door.”

“Why?”

“See if you can fool Nash.”

“In your hair and your dress?”

Nash knocked, Maddie answered, trying to throw her voice the way they had in school. She watched in the glass as he came in and stopped short, gazing at her sister. He blinked once, and then extended his hand.

“Nash Quinn. Brother-in-law.”

Kitty’s pout was not as practiced as her own, and was gone in a flash when she realized Nash was serious about shaking hands. She pumped his arm up and down, laughing.

“Thank the lord I don’t look like my older sibling.”

“I hear the new Lord Shaftsbury is a looker.”

Nash shrugged. “If you prefer blond boys.”

“So happens, I do.” Kitty winked at him.

Nash did the double-take Maddie had expected him to have done earlier.

“You’ll not dare to aim that high?”

“Ain’t aiming at nothing. Just want to see how the nobs do it. Before they kick us all out.”

“They can’t kick us out.” Nash held his arm out for her to take. “My brother owns that town.”

Maddie breathed a sigh of relief. Nash had taken immediately to Kitty, as he should. His approval could only help them when they arrived at the castle.

They were still a quarter-mile from the main house when they met the line of carts and coaches parading toward Deacon’s grand affair. It was rare that an earl reached his majority and rarer still that he threw open his doors to masters and tenants alike. Nash had called his brother’s idea clever, replacing the tenants’ shortened celebration with this one—and brilliant to do it when Mama was away and couldn’t faint over it.

Kitty gasped when they finally past the gate into the castle proper. They were fashionably late, for Northerners, the sun’s mid-afternoon slant outlining the full-grown wheat in the fields in orange and red.

“I never thought to see this.” Kitty’s smile was infectious, her laugh a joy.

“Why not?” Nash looked past Maddie to her sister.

“Country folk and town folk don’t much mix. Country folk are clannish and distrusting of strangers.”

“And town folk aren’t?” Sparing a moment from the horses, he winked at her.

“May be so.” Kitty touched her hair for the dozenth time, as if she still did not believe she was so
à la mode
, either.

He checked the reins again, and then looked at Maddie but spoke to Kitty. “You did not invite your father?”

Kitty’s face turned crafty. “He wouldn’t have liked it. He’s a hearth-and-home sort.”

“Who has no room for Maddie.” Nash’s voice dripped disbelief.

Kitty looked at her gloves. “It’s the shock, I’ll tell you. After he saw you at the meeting, he didn’t say a word to me for two days. I don’t know what he is thinking.”

“It may be unfortunate that you look so much alike.” Nash’s gaze passed from one to the other and back.

“Maddie is the likeness of our Ma.” Kitty’s mouth turned down. “Might be hard for him to even look upon her. Aye, and worst is the days around the wedding date. Now.”

Maddie, who still marked the death of the Wetherbys every year, knew how an anniversary deepened one’s sense of loss. “It sounds like they deeply loved each other.”

“Aye.” She sighed.

“Will you…will you like being here, Kitty? Will you be comfortable?” Maddie knew they were the wrong words, but her nerves overpowered her.

The smile drained from Kitty’s face. “You’re ashamed of me?”

“Of course not.” Was she? So much was expected of Maddie at the castle, and she wasn’t sure she lived up to it. How could Kitty, with no experience at all?

Kitty frowned.

Nash touched Maddie’s arm. “I know that look. Stubbornness runs in your family.”

“I can enjoy myself with the nobs as well as with anyone else.”

“Good.” The relief in Maddie’s voice surprised her, and by the look in Kitty’s face, surprised her sister as well. “I mean, I want you with us.”

“You need ammunition?”

“Support. I was raised with this sort of people, and I know what they must think of me now.” Just the thought set her belly churning. She set her palm against her dress as if to calm it.

Kitty saw the movement and nodded smartly at Maddie. “I’m here now.”

Nash turned onto the inner drive. Cottagers and gentlemen, cobblers and clergy milled about the lawns and gardens outside the walls of the great house. Ale tents and the sound of fiddles edged the woods, and games for children and their parents claimed the wide meadow. No one in the county had missed this invitation.

“There must be whole villages here.” The castle wasn’t exactly dwarfed, but for once it had to compete with the noise and energy of humanity for pride of place. Maddie had forgotten how clear the air was here, and the rich smell of turned earth and fresh-cut grass.

Kitty whistled. “Here I thought there won’t be room for us all.”

“The old castle has some thirty rooms and the two additions another twenty.”

“Just your mother and brother racket around in all that?”

“Along with their phalanx of servants. Actually, I do believe it is close to an hundred. I’ll have to ask Deacon.”

“One hundred twelve.” Maddie smiled at his raised eyebrow. “According to the temporary bookkeeper.”

“Remind me to hold my accounts with you. Such a precise memory.”

A groom took the reins, and Nash walked the ladies through the inner courtyard and up the stairs to the main entrance. Maddie was surprised to see Deacon himself in the shade of the hall. They stepped in and performed their courtesies.

“Welcome, my dears. You’ll stay to supper? Cook is rabid that the courses won’t stretch, but I told her I would skip some if worse came to worst.” Deacon’s eyes darted from them to the lawn to the drive to them again, frantic. This day involved so much planning and organizing, and he’d done it all himself. So he would think, when Maddie knew Mr. Perkins family had it all in hand. His hand was clammy in hers as he bent to kiss it.

“You’re doing too much, my lord. Enjoy your day. I’ll check with cook; she likes me. You and Nash might give Kitty a quick tour.”

His shoulders dropped an inch as he let out a great breath. “You’re a saint. Talking to Cook is like speaking French to a German.” He stopped short, staring at Kitty. “This is the sister? She is very like.”

Kitty curtseyed carefully.

Deacon gave her a gallant bow. “How do you find Shaftsbury? Miss Moore, is it?”

She glanced past him, at the castle. “Fine and all.” Deacon started; Kitty was shouting. She softened her voice, if not her tone. “It’s hard to favor fat priests and gentry who sit on their arses—begging your pardon—while the likes of us break our backs merely to make them rich.”

“You’re a rebel?” He grinned at her.

“Reformer,” she said.

“Radical reformer,” Nash said.

Kitty turned to Nash. “Did your Maddie tell you, I’m officer in the Women’s Reform Society?”

“Women need reforming?” Deacon laughed. “I had no idea.”

“You know they don’t,” Kitty rolled her eyes at the earl.

“Right. It’s men that do.” Deacon nodded like an Old King Cole, making them all laugh. Maddie breathed easier. This afternoon would go well.

“Make fun all you like, Sir Earl,” Kitty put her hands on her hips, grinning. “I helped design the flag we’ll carry to our meeting next week. It’s to be the biggest yet.”

“So I heard. And you’ll be dreaming big—wanting the franchise, too?”

She frowned, really more a scowl. “Your women ain’t even got that. The men can have the vote. They’ll do by us.”

“Just so.” Deacon waved at the entrance to the main house. “How about a tour?”

Kitty dipped another curtsy. “Begging your pardon, sirs, but I’d not say no to a pint of something first.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Nash said, taking Kitty by the arm. “We’ll meet you down at the tents.”

Maddie watched as they sauntered down the stairs and across the lawn.

“They make a handsome couple, do they not, sister-in-law?”

Kitty was a head shorter than Nash, but they did seem to proportion up right, somehow. “They do.”

“That’s how you look, too. A right couple, shaping up nicely. Are you?”

Maddie had not yet grown used to her brother-in-law’s style of interrogation. She puzzled on her words a moment. “I believe so.”

“Nash seems as settled as a Navy man can be. He even stepped into the castle without growling. A miracle.” They turned into the cool of the castle. Deacon took her hand. “One has only to glance at Nash to see your influence. The man went through an entire conversation, short as it was, without scowling once.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “I need someone like you, reliable, temperate, and smarter than I. Blasted if my old man hadn’t had the right of it after all.”

At first sight of them, Deacon’s beefy cook threw both her bread-loaf arms in the air, crying, “I give up.” Deacon matched her expression, and Maddie sent him outside for good. Ten minutes of wailing and whining on one side and gentle persuasion on the other, and cook was back happily stirring the soup-pot where she belonged.

Maddie felt that, perhaps, she just might belong here, too.

* * * *

Nash felt an odd combination of comfortable and awkward with his sister-in-law by his side. Especially as she was in Maddie’s frock. He caught himself leaning too close to tell her something about the castle, then pulled himself back suddenly. He hoped she didn’t take affront.

“Already used to having a wife around, aren’t you?”

So, she had noticed.

“I’m an easy touch.” Surprisingly easy, where Maddie was concerned. When she screwed up her courage to spill the news about meeting her father, he could have hugged her for her bravery. She should never be afraid of her husband. As mad as Nash could get, he would never go back on a promise.

“Are you such an easy touch for the pints? I don’t have much coin.”

“This is no festival, this is a party.” He saw she didn’t understand. “The beer is free. Ale. Even lemonade.”

“Lead me on.”

Kitty took two mugs of ale, and handed one to Nash. She drank her own with gusto, but then seemed to remember where she was. She looked around furtively, as if to gauge reaction to her behavior, but no one was watching.

“Enjoy, Miss Moore. That’s what the drink is for.”