Patrica Rice (12 page)

Michael scowled, most likely because she was right and not because of her question. “The mill owner insisted the workers extend their day to sixteen hours for an order he needs immediately. They refused to do it without extra pay. When he said he’d turn off anyone who wouldn’t stay, they all walked out. The situation is growing ugly. I better put you on the horse and get you out of here.”

“You found all that out in these few minutes?” Blanche replied in admiration.

Michael shrugged. “They are not exactly hiding their complaints. The owner stands to make a large profit if he can get those orders out on time. They saw no reason why they should suffer and not share in those profits. But if he closes the mill, they will all be out of work. Most of these people are the sole support of their families. They’ll starve.”

“But if he closes the mill, he won’t get out the orders, and nobody profits.”

“It would seem that way, but I suspect the real owners of the mill also own other manufactories that could supply the order. It would just mean putting aside their current projects to produce this one. It will only take a week without wages to drive these people begging back again. I’ve seen it happen.”

An angry shout rose into a wave of terrifying screams rippling backward from near the mill. People at the front of the crowd broke away and sprinted across the field, with others close behind. Some fell, and others trampled over them. Blanche heard glass breaking and the sharp report of what sounded like firecrackers. More people screamed and ran.

“Damn and blast it, you need to leave,
now
!” He grabbed her by the waist and threw her up on his horse. Blanche grabbed the reins as the mob surged around them, tilting the carriage and driving its horses to rearing panic.

From her vantage point atop the horse, she could see over the heads of the mob, and she gave a gasp of horror. “Militia! They’ve called the militia. They’re shooting, Michael. We have to stop them. There are children in this crush! They’ll all be killed.”

Without waiting for Michael’s reply, Blanche grabbed the horse’s reins and kicked with her soft boot. She had no side saddle to grab with her knee, so her sideways position was shaky, but she’d grown up on the back of a horse. She could hold on.

She nearly fell when Michael leaped up behind her, cursing fluently under his breath. He kneed the horse into the crowd, and she could only hang on.

The firing had stopped now that the mob fled across the fields, but the damage had already been done. Ill-clothed bodies of every shape and size lay strewn across the trampled grass and mud, whether victims of the fleeing mob or gunfire, Blanche couldn’t determine. A woman’s sobs caught her ear, but Michael kept the horse at a steady gallop toward town, away from the fleeing mob and the soldiers.

Blanche screamed in rage when she understood his purpose. She didn’t want to go toward town. She wanted to run down those soldiers and shoot the owner of that wretched mill. She needed to help the wounded. She wanted to tear out the throats of whoever was responsible for this catastrophe. She certainly had no intention of running for safety.

She pounded Michael’s hands on the reins with her fists. “Stop this instant, you blasted beast! Let me off!” She beat upon his thigh when he didn’t rein in.

He caught her wrists with one hand and gripped the reins in the other. “We’re not going anywhere near those soldiers. They won’t know you from the rest of the mob. We’re running to safety before the mob returns and tears the mill down.”

“You’d stop if it were just you!” she accused him tearfully, struggling against his imprisoning hold. “I’ll buy the damned mill! Just let me down from here.”

With a muttered imprecation at her contrariness, Michael reined the horse through a broken gate some distance past the carnage. He couldn’t hold on to a kicking, screaming female for long, not and keep his grip on the horse too. Sooner or later she would slide off, and probably fall beneath the horse’s hooves.

And she was right. If it were not for her, he’d be storming through that field prepared to rip someone apart. The idea of buying the mill and firing the management suited his sense of justice. He wondered if she really could do that. He didn’t know, but between them, perhaps they could equalize the situation.

Checking the scene behind them for danger, Michael turned the horse toward the mill.

The untrained militia stood uncertainly on the front steps, their muskets aimed at the road. As a few women crawled through the scene of battle, searching out the bodies scattered there, the soldiers waited for further orders, unwilling to shoot directly at women or the injured. Michael suspected some were already prepared to lay down their guns and retreat with disgust, but soldiers with weapons often possessed a thirst for power. He couldn’t trust appearances.

“Stand back!” one shouted as Michael rode boldly toward the mill’s front door.

He released Blanche’s waist. Reining in the horse, he groaned as she immediately slid to the ground and ran to a fallen child. So much for buying a mill. She would be sending for the carriage and hauling bodies off to her townhouse, where she might mother and nurse an entire mob to her heart’s content.

Michael focused on the frock-coated gentleman appearing in the mill doorway. “You’ll have to post guards around the clock,” Michael remarked when the gentleman’s gaze turned in his direction. “They’ll come back and tear the place apart elsewise.”

The man scowled and diverted his gaze to Blanche, who now consulted with another woman over the child’s unconscious form. “Who’s that, and what the hell’s she doing?”

Michael had known it was impossible to disguise Blanche’s air of privilege. Even though she wore the dowdy clothes of a squire’s daughter, she carried herself with grace and dignity.

“Under the circumstances, I don’t believe revealing her true identity wise. Just suffice it to say, she can make a great deal of trouble for whomever is responsible for this carnage. Are you the owner or the manager?”

“None of your damned business.” The man muttered a few curt orders to the militia, and they set out across the mill yard, their firearms across their chests.

Blanche looked up. “Michael, send for the carriage. These people need transport to the hospital. I think they’re all alive, but I don’t know for how much longer.”

Her bonnet had fallen back, revealing a cascade of flaxen hair. Her lovely oval face with the burn scars marring her cheeks and forehead gleamed in the dismal gray light of the cloudy day. The man standing on the doorstep paled at the sight, Michael noted with interest.

“I warned you,” Michael said, gambling that this man at least suspected Blanche’s identity. “Women detest violence. She’ll have the man responsible for this by the short hairs as soon as she takes those people to town.”

“I had my orders!” the man replied nervously. “I just do what I’m told. I’m to get that order out or close the mill. I can’t let a mob dictate how I run the business. Where would we be if those barbarians started doing things their way? They’d arrive when they felt like it, leave when they’d the notion, and demand enough money to keep them drunk on gin around the clock. They can work as told or find work elsewhere.”

Returning to Michael’s side, Blanche apparently overheard this self-serving speech. “I demand to speak with the owner,” she ordered.

“The owner isn’t here,” the manager responded nastily. “You didn’t really think he’d stay in this godforsaken hole, did you? He’s in London, with all the other swells.”

“Truly? Then I’ll be certain to meet him when I return. I’ll have his name, please.”

Blanche’s slender fingers dug into Michael’s arm. Instinct warned him not to pursue the subject of ownership. “My lady, I think it best if we call the carriage...”

Blanche glanced at the approaching vehicle. “I sent one of the women for it. We’ll take your horse into town. There won’t be room left. That child has a broken leg.” She glared at the man in the doorway. “And it’s all your fault. He’ll most likely be crippled for life. There are others out there who might die from gunshot wounds. I’ll have your name and the owner’s name immediately, or I shall go to the magistrate and request them.”

“Don’t know the owner’s name,” the manager snarled. “I just deal with his man of business. Barnaby is the name, and good luck to you if you find him. He’ll scale the hide off any interfering female. It’s none of your damned concern what we do.”

The fingers biting into his arm weakened. Michael held them in place. With a curt nod, he bade the manager farewell and hurried Blanche down the path toward his horse. The driver of the carriage seemed to have the women and the injured well in hand.

“Barnaby!” Blanche whispered. “Do you think there can be two of that name?”

“I should think there could be hundreds of that name,” Michael answered soothingly.

“But not with the same profession,” she returned with a scowl. “
My
Barnaby.
My
man of business. Do you think I own that mill?”

Michael didn’t want to answer that. Unfortunately, she must have inherited Barnaby from her grandfather.

She didn’t wait for his dilatory reply. “I’ll have to dismiss him. I cannot believe he would order this...this
horror
.”

Michael said nothing as he lifted her onto his horse. Absentee owners and landlords were the scourge of any number of countries. He’d condemn them all, but then he must condemn people like Blanche. She had done her best, but only someone who lived with the locals and knew how the operation worked could possibly understand what it took to run a company like this, or a mine in Cornwall, or a farm in Ireland.

“Is this what Fiona complained of?” Blanche whispered. “Have we become too removed from the people who work for us? Is that the problem?”

Since that was exactly what he had been thinking, Michael couldn’t lie. “I don’t know Fiona’s complaints, but yes, that is much of the problem. Not all. I have seen factories run by local people who think human lives are expendable. The greed for gold is more important than their souls. They would work their employees all day and night if they could. We are not so terribly different from the slaveholders in the American South. We just don’t buy and sell our employees.”

“But we work them and beat them and starve them. I think I’m going to be sick.”

She said it casually enough, but then she bent double and gagged. Alarmed, Michael halted the horse and lifted her down. He watched helplessly as she bent over the muddy ground while she emptied the contents of her stomach. He dipped his handkerchief in a creek and wiped her lips when she shakily sat back, her arms clasped around her middle.

He offered a sip of watered wine from the flask in his pocket. “There is only so much one person can do, my lady,” he said as she drank. “We will stop in Manchester and you may send letters to your solicitor asking that he find a replacement for Barnaby. Or would you prefer that I return you to London?”

Michael held his breath against Blanche’s reply. He’d tried not to touch her, avoided spending too much time in her presence, and ignored her lively questions so he wouldn’t rely so much on her company. But it had happened anyway. He didn’t want to let her go.

Still kneeling in the mud, Blanche returned the flask, and lifted her gaze to his.

Michael felt the impact like a bullet to the chest. He read the plea in her eyes, the quiver of her pale lips, and he couldn’t resist. He never could. Terrified he would do it wrong and frighten her, he placed his lips on hers.

Her breath tasted of wine, and despite the cold, heat enveloped them. Gasping at the intensity of his reaction, Michael caught Blanche’s waist with his hand, balancing their precarious position. Her lips parted and tentatively, she slid her arms around his shoulders. He held back a groan of pleasure and tasted of her again. Blanche responded with all the eagerness of his dreams.

Michael closed his eyes and conjured private bowers and whispered words of love as their mouths clung and drew hungrily on one another. Pure bliss flooded through him as he brushed his hand upward, to the softness of her breast. She offered no protest. Instead, she opened her mouth, inviting further exploration.

Michael nearly exploded with the need for that and more. Only the creak of a wagon returned him to his senses. Hastily, he stood and yanked Blanche to her feet.

Ducking her head with embarrassment, she wiped at the mud on her skirt.

“Night comes early. We’d best hurry into town.” Michael cursed himself for the awkwardness of this speech, but he didn’t possess a lover’s words. He merely helped her back to the saddle, ignoring the throbbing in his loins as he climbed up behind her. He might as well try to ignore a manacle around his heart.

“I’ll not turn back,” she whispered.

She didn’t say more, leaving Michael with the uneasy feeling that she spoke of more than the road to London.

“Michael, don’t leave me here alone.” Blanche caught Michael’s sleeve as he prepared to leave her in a private parlor.

He hesitated. The knowledge that she owned a mill that worked people like slaves had shaken her, he understood. She had spent hours composing letters after they arrived at the inn. But the memory of the kiss obliged him to leave.

“I am tired of eating alone, Michael, and deserting me like this is ungentlemanly. What is the purpose, after all? Can’t we cry friends?”

“And is it friends you’re being with a penniless Irishman?” he asked mockingly. “’Tis not a puppy dog I am. I’ll be off on the morrow or the next day, and you’ll be returnin’ to your real friends. Nay, ’tis better this way all around.”

She jerked his coat sleeve again and gave him a look of exasperation. “Were I given to violence, I’d smack you, O’Toole, or whoever you are tonight. Your monetary status has no relevance to me, although admittedly, your tendency to disappear at will annoys me abominably. One of these days you’ll do that to someone who will come after you with a big stick. But that’s no matter now. I merely want some company besides my own tonight.”

Only Gavin had ever cared enough to threaten him with a stick for disappearing. Michael kneaded his brow and closed the door. “Did you have something in particular you wished to discuss? Have you changed your mind about tracing Fiona? It’s a long journey just to trace one little girl.”