Ravishing in Red (25 page)

“Why she was there is not why I mentioned it. She told me that as she sat there, the blanket moved. Which means the leg under it might have moved.”

“She is wrong.” His face tightened again. “She said nothing of this to me. If she had, I would have quickly disabused her of the hopeless illusion.”

“No, she told
me
. Do not be angry with her. And while she has great affection for you and prays she is correct, she is not given to illusions. Did you see the blanket move? Do you know another explanation, of which she is not aware?”

He glared like a man who wanted to strike a blow.

“I ask again. Have there been any sensations? Any at all?”

“No, damn you.”

“I think that you are lying.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“Not to me. To yourself. And I have no idea why.” He got up and walked around the table. He grabbed Morgan’s chair, pulled it out, and swung it around.

“What in hell—?” Morgan yelled.

He pulled the blanket away. “You could not walk now even if you were completely healed, so even the slightest change will be subtle. But try to—”

“The hell I will. Get out.”

“You will try, damn it. If there is even the smallest chance, you must try.”

“Chance? There is no
chance
, you fool! And who are you to decree that I must try? I am the one stuck here. It is my damn life we are talking about!”

Sebastian strode to the door. “Fenwood, come here.”

Fenwood hurried in.

“Throw him out,” Morgan commanded, pointing at Sebastian.

Fenwood eyed Sebastian warily.

“Fenwood, my wife says that there was movement. Small, almost imperceptible. Call the physicians to examine him. And keep this blanket off him unless he needs it for warmth. Watch for movement yourself.”

Morgan was almost apoplectic. “I will not stand for this!”

“I’ll be damned if I will let you accept this if there is a chance for better.” He grasped the arms of Morgan’s chair and leaned in close. “You will let the physicians examine you, and if they find any sign of hope, you will fight for that chance. I will make you.”

S
ebastian rode through the Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills. Four years ago the streets would have been busy and the canals full of barges transporting materials and kegs of powder. Since the war’s end, however, this elaborate factory in Essex produced only one-tenth of its former output and the yards and buildings were quiet.

It still operated, however. Men still carried sulphur into the mixing house. Others burned charcoal to go there as well. Smoke still came from the melting house where the saltpeter was prepared. Coopers sawed and pounded kegs into shape.

The men with the most dangerous jobs loitered outside the mill house. Inside the carefully mixed ingredients were ground together by the edge runner mill. Beside the brick structure a huge waterwheel in the Millhead Stream did the labor.

One of the men darted inside to pour water on the big stone, so the volatile gunpowder would not stick on the mill surface. Everyone here, in the factory and the town, risked the disaster of an explosion every day, but none so much as the men who worked the actual mill.

Down the lane and over a canal, Sebastian found the offices. He entered and introduced himself to the clerk.

Another man, tall and wiry and thin, with a heavy brow and deeply chiseled features, came out to introduce himself as Mr. Middleton, the storekeeper. He ushered him to the inner office. His rough-hewn face frowned with worry.

“We had nothing to do with that business, sir.”

Sebastian had not yet named his business, but he was not surprised that Mr. Middleton had guessed. The managers of all the royal mills would be aware of who had taken an interest in corrupted gunpowder.

“It is my hope that you can help me discover who did. I am not here to put you under a quizzing glass.”

“It would not help if you did. I am only lately come to this appointment. Mr. Matthews was here before me.”

“Then how do you know this mill had nothing to do with it?”

“We are a royal mill, sir. Owned by the Crown as you know, along with those at Flavesham and Billingcollig. Mr. Congreave’s father made it his life to ensure our army and navy had the best gunpowder, and we are proud of the quality we produce here. Better than the other Crown mills. That has been proven by science.”

“Mr. Middleton, you are the storekeeper. You bring in the materials, and you send out the gunpowder.”

“That is correct.”

“Do you know all the processes, and the transport?”

“I do at that.”

“Within that knowledge, can you guess how this bad gunpowder reached the front?”

He pondered the question. “It can’t happen.”

“It did happen. It did not fire, and it was not wet. The only explanation is adulteration by bad material or incorrect milling.”

The reality was too foreign to Mr. Middleton’s sight of the world. He kept shaking his head.

“It cannot happen at the mill, whichever mill it was,” he said emphatically. “There are too many involved. Too many checks and too many tests. Too many eyes.”

“What if it was not this mill, or another royal mill? During the war, private mills were also used. All of the powder did not come from mills owned by the Crown.”

“Most did, but no, some did not. However, our standards were demanded of them. Even if a terrible mistake were made, it would be caught at the arsenal. It is tested there.”

“Each keg?”

Mr. Middleton’s mouth folded in. “Not each and every keg, I expect. Each batch. Each day’s production. We test here, then they test there.”

“Is it possible that, knowing it is tested at the factories, someone might get careless and not test as scheduled at the arsenal?”

“Negligence, you mean. Possible, but there are others about. Gunpowder is serious business, sir. Not much is left to chance with it.”

Sebastian removed a piece of paper from his pocket. “This gunpowder was in kegs with these markings. Does that tell you anything?”

Middleton peered at the paper and the drawings on it. “That one is the mark of the Ordnance Board. It means it went through the arsenal and was checked.” He looked up and flushed. “The batch was, as I said, not perhaps this very keg.”

“And the other mark?”

He shook his head. “I do not recognize it—No, wait, maybe . . .” He lifted his pen. On a sheet of paper he copied the keg’s mark, then drew two more lines. “See here. This could be what that mark was. It could have faded, or just been marked carelessly.” He handed over both sheets. Sebastian saw how the two extra marks had turned D & F into P & E.

“There is no D & F mill,” Middleton said. “But P & E refers to the Pettigrew and Eversham Mill. It was one of several that popped up during the war, to make a profit. And to have some bad explosions. The private ones are not always so careful about that. We can control the quality of what they make, but not how they make it. This is not a hobby for amateurs.”

No, indeed. There had been some bad explosions and fires at these mills. It was one reason he had left Audrianna at the inn they had used last night, a few miles upriver. He doubted the workers here ever forgot that one spill, one slip, and they all would be blasted to heaven.

The puzzle had captured Middleton’s interest now. He took the papers back, and mused over the one Sebastian had brought. “They put their mark on fast, I would guess. Careless.”

“Possibly not. That derives from a gunner who survived. It is from his memory, which might be inaccurate or incomplete.”

“Did he remember anything else?”

“Not with certainty. He only said that the keg was easy to open. More than normal. Is that significant?”

“That is impossible to know. It suggests that the keg had been opened before, though. Most likely at the arsenal.”

Middleton did not have to spell it out, nor would he. If the keg had been opened at the arsenal, it would have been for testing. In which case, someone looked the other way when it was reported to be of bad quality.

“What is the location of this mill? Pettigrew and Eversham?”

“The property is in Kent,” Middleton said. “However, with the end of hostilities, it, like several other small upstarts, closed. I think the mill was sold.”

“Thank you, Mr. Middleton. You have been most helpful.”

Middleton’s face fell. “I did not tell you anything of note, sir. I trust you realize that and will not be reporting to anyone on my helpfulness.”

“As far as the Ordnance Board will ever know, should they even become aware of this meeting, you merely impressed on me the impossibility of bad gunpowder leaving a royal mill.”

 

 

 

 

S
ebastian tied his horse to the carriage, climbed in next to Audrianna, and told the coachman to begin.

He had not told her where he was going when he left her to wait at the inn and rode away. He could have had an urge to tumble a milkmaid in a nearby field for all he let her know.

“While we are at Airymont, I will have to tour the property,” he said. “Do you ride? You can join me. The tenants will appreciate it if you do.”

“I ride. I also sing, sketch, and play the pianoforte passably. My mother, like most others, believed all young ladies should know such things.”

He glanced at her, as if checking to see if she had been insulted by his question. She smiled to let him know that her response had been a little joke. Mostly.

He settled in for the remainder of their journey. Thoughts obviously occupied him, but he did not appear inclined to share them with her.

“Did you learn anything interesting at your meeting?”

He shrugged. “It was a brief business conversation.”

“Your business is politics and government. You probably feared boring me, and left me here to spare me. That was kind of you.”

He actually looked pleased with her gratitude. And relieved?

“However, I would not be bored to hear of it. Not at all. I am very curious about government.”

“It was nothing interesting, I promise.” He turned that smile on her, to encourage her to think about other things, or even about nothing at all except him.

“The Essex countryside is beautiful,” she mused, gazing out the window. “It is hard to believe that a factory exists a few miles away that has the potential to destroy everything we are looking at right now. The Waltham Abbey works are downriver.”

“I believe they are, now that you mention it.”

“Now that I mention it? Had you forgotten so quickly? Why, it cannot be more than an hour since you were there.”

Chagrin flashed, then resignation that she had figured it out. “I learned absolutely nothing of interest,” he reassured her again.

“I explained that I was going to decide what was of interest to me in this matter.”

“You are becoming vexed for no reason. I merely spoke with the storekeeper, and learned something about how gunpowder is kegged and transported. I did not bring you because it is dangerous there.”

She coaxed her rising anger down to a low simmer. She studied his handsome face. Smiling. Appeasing. Innocent.

He was lying. Not directly, but she should have been there. He had learned something from that storekeeper that occupied his deeper self. That was in his eyes whenever his gaze moved away from her.

She reached over and laid her glove on his. “I am asking you, please, to tell me what you learned.”

No longer smiling. Serious now. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Do not ask.”

“I must.”

He sighed, with the exasperation of a man cornered. “I learned that the gunpowder could not make it to the front unless someone deliberately allowed it, after learning it was useless.”

Her heart thickened. Not negligence, then. “It was a conspiracy. A plan. As you suspected.”

He nodded.

The implications were too disappointing to accept. “This is why I wanted to be with you. I think that you hear what you want to hear, to confirm your own theories.”

His gaze penetrated hers. “Do you really believe that I would go out of my way to hurt you, and put mere pride before your happiness?”

She did not want to think so, but he hungered for culprits as much as she did for justice. “You are better than that. However, I think that you pursue this for reasons besides pride. I think—I think that you do it because of your brother, and the life you must now share with him, and the way he was hurt. I do not think that my happiness signifies in this quest of yours at all. I am, after all, a late, unexpected, and inconvenient addition.”

His angry reaction stunned her. Frightened her. She might have slapped him. Challenged him. His glare told her she had said something she should not.

She looked away, to end the argument. It was not to be.

“Is there anything else you want to say?” he asked tightly.

She collected her courage. “Even if that is how it happened—a plan—my father was not involved.”

“Quite possibly not.”

“Assuredly not.”

He just looked at her.

She let the carriage put some miles between them and the row. Then she asked a question about Airymont, to change the subject. He answered at length.

They conversed about small, unimportant things for an hour, and she tried to ignore how the sore between had been poked so hard that it was bleeding.

A
irymont’s house sat atop a rise of land, swept by sea winds from the Essex coast a mile away. Like the London house, it displayed the grand opulence of the last century’s great manors, with two wings embracing a grand courtyard and an elaborate staircase leading to the entry in the center of the main block of stone.