The Courteous Cad (15 page)

“Oh, dear,” Prudence said under her breath as Fanny hurried back to her own spinning wheel. Prudence could not resist calling to the children below. “Martha, Tom—be careful!”

They gave no answer, so she stepped up to her wheel again and began to turn. She quickly realized she was unequal to the task. Her labor was slow and awkward. The yarn she spun was so uneven—thick in some places and thin in others—that Jimmy was forced to return more than once to admonish her. His thick fingers pointed out the flaws in her work, and he snapped her wool threads with the flick of a hand.

Shoulders aching and her head throbbing, Prudence poured all her strength into the work. On the verge of dropping over in a dead faint, she was never more relieved to hear a whistle blow. The machinery ground to a halt.

“Come, Polly, and be quick! We must eat!” Fanny grabbed her by the hand and dragged her along with the rush of workers pouring toward a large room at the far end of the mill.

Entering, Prudence saw several long, narrow tables and wooden benches. The two women sat, nudging between other workers. Men and boys filled one side of the room, women and girls the other. Prudence searched for signs of tablecloths, napkins, plates, and silverware, but she soon realized these were luxuries the mill workers must never have seen.

Kitchen staff hurried into the dining room bearing heavy, black iron cook pots. Wooden bowls stacked at the end of each table soon held water porridge, lumps of black rye bread, and cooked onions. Diners passed the bowls down both sides of the tables. The moment each received a portion, he tipped it up and drank down the blue-tinged porridge.

“Are there no spoons?” Prudence asked.

Fanny frowned. “Spoons? Nay, but sop the porridge with your bread if ye will.”

Prudence looked down at the soggy clump. “What are these bits of white fluff on my bread?”

“Flues—from the wool. Pick them off if ye wish. As for me, I’ve learned to eat wool same as I’ve learned to breathe it.”

Dipping her fingers into the bowl, Prudence took a piece of bread, pulled away several strands of loose wool, and popped it into her mouth. So soft it stuck to her teeth, the bread was bitter and grainy. She chewed for a moment, then forced herself to swallow.

“Sometimes we have oatcake,” one of the other women told Prudence. “The cooks put one in each bowl and pour boiled milk and water over it.”

Fanny made a face. “Aye, and remember last Christmas? The master gave us potato pie with boiled bacon in it, a bit here and a bit there. But it was so thick with fat and gristle we scarce could eat it.”

“Does the master come here often?” Prudence voiced her question before tipping her bowl to take a sip of water porridge.

“After the mill was first built, he came every day,” Fanny said. “This was a good place to work in them days. The overlookers couldn’t beat us often with the master always about. But he was called to war, and off he went. His brother looked in on the mill but rarely, for he supposed it was the same as ever. Now the master is returned, but we have no hope things will go back the way they was.”

“He’s a changed man,” the other woman said under her breath. “Cares only about upping the worsted production. They say he’s in debt and wants all the money he can get his hands on—never mind us.”

Prudence mulled this information as she regarded her bowl. William Sherbourne could not possibly be in debt. His family owned a vast estate, two great manor houses, sheep beyond number, the worsted mill, and no doubt much more.

“Do ye mean to eat that, Polly?” Fanny asked, eyeing Prudence’s bowl with its cold porridge and soggy bread.

“Take it please. I shall fill my stomach at teatime.”

“Tea?” Several women exclaimed the word and then began to laugh. One set her hand on Prudence’s arm. “We never see tea nor butter nor crumpets. You’ll have nothing to eat again until supper, and now Fanny’s gone and ate the last of your porridge.”

As she spoke, the woman was rising from her bench along with everyone else in the room. The workers had been at their meal for less than half an hour, yet the whistle blew again, setting off another mad rush toward the looms and carding engines.

Stunned, Prudence sat at the table unable to move. She was hungry and tired. Her arms ached from turning the great spinning wheel. The cold stone floor had turned her feet to blocks of ice. No wonder the people wore wooden shoes.

“Oy, ma’am!” A boy’s voice rang out. “Hasten to your post, or the overlooker will take his thong to ye!”

She focused on the child and saw it was Tom Smith. He knew her. She could see it written in his face.

“Come, ma’am!” he urged again. “You’ll lose your place at the wheel sure enough!”

Without a word, Prudence gathered her skirt and followed Tom back into the work area. The machinery was moving at full speed again, the rattle and roar deafening, and every worker bent to the task. As the boy knelt to crawl beneath the carriage, Prudence resumed her position before the billy.

The hours crept by. She labored over her machine, determined to master it. But her threads broke and tangled. Her spindles snapped. Her carriage jammed. And all the while, the women and men around her produced reel after reel of beautiful white woolen yarn.

Throughout the afternoon, Jimmy patrolled the aisles, watching his crew. Stopping at Prudence’s wheel most often, he barked at her to do better or she’d be sacked before the day was out. Nearly in tears from exhaustion and hopelessness, she merely nodded and prayed for strength to endure.

As the sun began to sink, the dim light hindered her work even more. By evening, she could hardly breathe and had coughed until she felt her lungs must burst. Dust and lye drifted in the air, clogging her nose and throat.

The teaseler machine, she learned at the evening meal, was the cause of most of the pollution. Before shearing the sheep, the shepherds washed them in a strong solution of lye. When the animals were sheared, the dried and powdery lye came away with the wool. The teaseler’s object was to shake out the lye and dust. This it did—and so well that no one in the mill could breathe with ease.

Dinner had been more brown bread and water porridge. Prudence was so hungry she ate it without bothering to brush away the flues. Hunched over her bowl, she rubbed at the dust in her eyes as she sopped up every drop of porridge with the soggy bread.

She would die of this, she realized. If God saw her through to the end of the evening, she would surely cough herself to death in her bed that night. Her friend Betsy Fry went into prisons, tended the ill and aged, and brought food and blankets to children who were obliged to live in the cells with their parents. That or be cast into the street.

But Prudence had not lasted a single day in the mill. A voice in her ear taunted her.
You are a sorry thing,
it said.
You are nothing but a pampered, silly girl with golden curls and pink cheeks.

She had left her billy in a tangled, knotted mess before dinner. As she returned to it now, she saw the overlooker studying her handiwork.

“Well, ye have given me a bit of a surprise,” he said, stepping back so she could take her place at the wheel. “I thought ye were good for naught. But this is acceptable work. Ye learn fast, lass, faster than most. Ye will have this same machine on the morrow.”

Confused, Prudence peered at the billy she had abandoned in despair a half hour before. Now each spindle stood at attention, its white yarn neatly spun to an even texture and wrapped around it in perfect symmetry.

“Carry on, then,” Jimmy said. “We shut down when we can see no more.”

Prudence leaned over her carriage, stunned at the workmanship. How had this happened? Was she at the wrong billy? Bewildered, she glanced to one side and caught Fanny winking at her. The woman held a finger over her lips.

Confused, Prudence bent to turn her wheel. She spotted young Tom below the spinner. One of his hands was filled with cardings, but the other gestured for silence just as Fanny had done.

They knew.

Realization coursing through her, Prudence straightened and looked about the mill. At every position, workers cast glances her way. One man tipped the brim of his cap. Another did the same. Two women gave quick curtsies. Children under the looms and spinners smiled shyly.

They all knew!

Turning quickly to her billy, Prudence began to rotate the wheel. What did this mean? Would the workers reveal her identity to the overlookers? or worse, to the master himself?

Or would they expect something of her that she could not give? Would they expect an avenging crusader who could save them from their misery and woe?

Prudence groaned at the thought. She was, in truth, quite silly. Her sisters and their friends all had termed her so. Though she protested the label with vehemence, she could hardly prove them wrong. She had spent much time flirting with boys, shopping for bonnets and gowns, giggling with her friends, and other such nonsense. In the whole of her life, Prudence acknowledged, she had accomplished nothing intellectually profound, demonstrated no outstanding craftsmanship or skill. Indeed she had done very little beyond singing and embroidering pillows.

Opening her carriage, Prudence cut the yarn on the perfectly executed spindles and set them aside. One of the women had replaced her mess—Fanny, no doubt. Setting empty spindles in their places, Prudence started her wheel again. As the carriage rolled away from her, the white cardings stretched out to their full length, and the spindles began to fill.

She concentrated, wanting to justify the overlooker’s confidence. But her mind wanted to wander. How useless her carefully crafted disguise had been. Tom Smith had recognized her at once, and he must have whispered the news. Within minutes, the information must have spread that Miss Watson was inside the mill.

“Watson’s workers,” these very people had chanted when they spied her carriage on the road. They saw her as a champion, a defender of those who could not defend themselves. And she knew beyond doubt that she would fail them.

The cavernous room was almost pitch-black when the whistle blew to end the day. Prudence heaved a sigh as the waterwheel stopped and the machinery groaned to a halt. She had discarded her shawl in the warm room, but now she wrapped it around her head and shoulders.

“Prudence, why do you do this thing?” The deep voice startled her. “What do you mean by it?”

Her surprise turned to relief. “Mr. Walker,” she breathed out. “It is you. Thank God.”

“Thank God you have not been found out by the overlookers.” He took her elbow and steered her into the crowd flowing toward the mill’s door. “Why do you play this game?”

“I want to help these people. I needed to see for myself what they endure. And now I have.”

“You have seen, and so what? Will you ride in a carriage to Thorne Lodge and beg the baron and his brother to call off the overlookers? Will you ask them to slow production of the worsted? Will you plead for cleaner air and better food?”

“I could. I might.” She stepped out into the road. “They do listen to me.”

“Listen? Yes, because you are pretty and charming. Will they make a change here? No. This is their livelihood, Prudence. It is the livelihood of the villagers, too. You must not interfere. Go back to London. Take tea with your sisters; call on your friends; go to the shops.”

“Stop it!” she cried, jerking her arm away. “I shall not surrender so easily. You were taken from your people, shipped off to England, paraded before royalty—and you submitted. You resigned yourself to your fate. But I shall do no such thing!”

“Go home, Prudence,” he ordered. “Go home tomorrow, and do not return to this place.”

“I cannot leave,” she told him. “My heart will not allow it.”

They were nearing the inn now, and she parted from him without another word. Slipping into an alley beside the brick edifice, she retrieved a dark cape she had stowed behind a stack of firewood. She tugged off the mobcap and gave her head a shake. Curls drifted out onto her shoulders as she tied the cape in place over her ragged dress.

She could think of nothing now but a bath. Warm water would ease the knots in her arms and soothe the swollen ache in her legs. And food. Oh, she must order a late supper— breads and cheeses, oxtail soup, cake . . .

Dear Lord,
she lifted up in silent petition,
please let the kitchen have chocolate cake.

“There you are at last!” The innkeeper’s wife rushed toward Prudence when she stepped through the door. “We had all but given you up! Fell down from the Chevin, my husband said. Fell and broke her head. That’s what he said, but you are well!”

“Yes,” Prudence managed. “Well enough.”

“You must hear my news at once!” The woman clasped her hands together in unbridled joy. “He has come to call on you! Come twice! The first time was this morning not long after you had gone away. And then he sent a messenger to ask if you’d returned. And what do you think—but he came again himself!”

“Who? Who called on me?”

“Mr. William Sherbourne, of course! And can you imagine? He has written you a letter!” She presented the white missive as though handing over a treasure. “There! Written in his very own hand, it is. And sealed! Sealed with the family crest—just there in the wax. More to the point, he bade me farewell and said he would hope to see me on the morrow. What do you think of
that
, Miss Watson?”

Prudence thought many things all at once. First, that she would not be at the inn tomorrow, for she fully intended to go to the mill again. Also, she thought that Mr. Sherbourne, despite his protests to the contrary, had become rather persistent in his courtship. Most of all, she thought that it might be quite nice to greet William again—perhaps stroll to the church, take tea together, chat of amiable things.

The memory of his kisses in the glade swelled, nearly enveloping her with their sweetness and passion. She lingered a moment on the wisp of reminiscence. Then she forced her attention elsewhere.

“I have not eaten today,” she told the innkeeper’s wife. “Would it be possible—”