The Lie and the Lady (29 page)

G
etting everyone out of Mrs. Emory's apartments on the main square of Helmsley was not an issue. The ladies of the town burst out of the building like a petticoated explosion, breathlessly giggling and twittering at their Tuesday-morning excitement. Usually when a group of this size was required to move from one place to another, there would inevitably be delays, while someone needed to retrieve her gloves, another needed to visit the necessary, and yet another was not at all sure that their prescribed route was the best course.

Not this time.

No one wanted to miss this.

Leticia and Mrs. Emory walked arm in arm, the picture of friendliness—but only from the neck down. Anyone who chanced to look at their expressions knew they were opponents, forced into a truce but ready at any moment to engaged in battle again.

As the ladies of Helmsley made their way across the square and along the street leading to the mill at the entrance of town, they collected no small number of curious stares.

“We're going to see the mill!” Miss Goodhue called out as they passed the butcher's shop, to one particularly confused looking butcher. It wasn't every day a flock of women marched down the street with a goal. Women en masse, with purpose, are a fearful thing. “We are going to see if it works!”

“I want to see if it works too!” the butcher's son, about eight or nine, called back to Miss Goodhue.

“I heard it might not be safe,” the butcher told him.

“Safe enough for ladies,” Leticia called back.

After that, their retinue included more than one person of the male persuasion.

When they arrived at the mill yard, they resembled nothing so much as a small, very polite mob. And as was their mobbish tendency, they did not let the gate hold them back. Instead, led by Leticia and Mrs. Emory, they went directly through the yard, passing by the half dozen or so men offloading carts of coal and others transporting barrels of grain to walk directly up to the entrance of the windmill itself.

Two knocks later, the door swung open.

“Lady Churzy! What a complete and utter surprise to see you here today,” Helen said as she dropped to a curtsy. “And Mrs. Emory and . . . well, everyone. What a pleasure.”

“Mrs. Turner,” Leticia said, returning Helen's curtsy. “We were hoping to see Mr. Turner's mill.”

“Certainly. I was just bringing my son a tray for his luncheon,” Helen said. “He's right upstairs.”

Mrs. Emory, whose face had become more and more grim as they got closer to the mill, pounced on the opening left her. “Oh, well, we should not wish to disturb your son's luncheon . . .”

“Nonsense,” Helen replied. “I'm sure he'd be happy to help you.”

And with that Helen swept aside and let them in.

Well, not all at once. Because while getting everyone out of Mrs. Emory's apartments and up the street to the mill had not been a difficulty, fitting everyone inside the windmill was.

But they managed to squeeze in. Leticia looked back over her shoulder and saw Margaret at the very back—her height being a useful marker, Leticia had asked her to bring up the rear. Of course this meant she had no means of escaping Miss Goodhue, who chattered along happily beside her.

Or perhaps she didn't wish to escape. Perhaps Margaret had made a friend.

Leticia took a deep breath and led the group up the metal spiral staircase.

“Lady Churzy,” Turner said as her head popped up on the second floor. “What a complete and utter surprise to see you here today.”

Leticia decided to ignore his practiced speech—which was the exact same as his mother's—and dive right in before anyone could be the wiser.

“Mr. Turner. I was hoping you might show my friends and me the workings of your mill.”

“I don't see why not,” Turner drawled. Then he stepped over to take her hand and help her up the rest of the stairs.

“Hell, Mrs. Emory, Mrs. Spilsby, and . . . everyone. Is that the butcher's boy back there?” He turned his gritted smile to Leticia. She gave the same bright smile back.

“Well.” Turner clapped his hands together. “Why don't you all come up? The best place to start learning about a windmill is not at the bottom, but at the very top.”

Leticia stood next to Turner as Mrs. Emory led the pack up the spiral staircase to the top floor.

“Why is the entire town in my mill?” Turner whispered to her, nodding hello as people passed.

“Because you invited them,” she whispered back.

“I thought you said it would only be a few ladies.”

“They multiplied.”

“I'm told ladies cannot do that on their own.”

She fought every impulse that she had to shoot him a disdainful look. He fought every impulse to smirk. And soon she was fighting her own smile.

“The next time a theater troupe comes through Helmsley, you should ask for lessons,” she said.

“Was it that bad?”

“You are as wooden as a forest.”

“I'm sorry. I'm nervous. A great deal rides on this.”

“Take two deep breaths and set yourself at ease.”

He did. She could see his shoulders relaxing.

“There. Much better. You will be fine. You know this mill like the back of your hand. Besides,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “I would never have thought that you would require assistance in pretense.”

“Really? Why?” His gaze parroted hers.

“Consider how we met.”

That made the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Are you two coming?” Margaret's head appeared above them as she leaned over to look down the spiral staircase.

“Right behind you!” Leticia called out. “Shall we?” she said to Turner.

“After you.”

EVERYONE STOOD WEDGED
together on the seventh floor of the windmill. As the building was cone-shaped, this floor was smaller than those below it and more than one lady found a stray elbow in her corset. Added to that, the seven flights of circular stairs was a bit more than most people were used to climbing, and thus the atmosphere at the top of the mill was as thick with perspiration as it was with anticipation.

At least, that was to what she was going to attribute that little droplet of sweat she saw at Turner's temple. That was it. Not those nerves he spoke of. Because what reason did he have to be nervous?

It was only his livelihood at stake.

And in a roundabout fashion, her future in this town as well.

Heavens, was that damp she felt on her own brow?

“Hello, everyone, and thank you for your interest in the Turner Grain Mill,” Turner began, his voice clear and booming. A practiced presentation, but rightly so—he had to do this well. “As you might know, my father, the late Lewis Turner, built this mill almost twenty years ago. I was a lad of nine when it opened—”

Leticia's eyebrow perked up. Considering her own passage into her thirties a few years ago, the math would indicate that she was older than Turner. For some reason, the thought was just . . . disturbing.

“And therefore I have been with her for her entire life,” he continued, reaching out a hand to pat the rough brick of the walls, the smooth wooden beams of the machinery.

“Or lives, you should say,” Mrs. Emory piped up from the front of the group. She maintained her straight back, her broad stance, taking up as much room in the crowded space as possible. She looked to her underlings for support, but only Mrs. Robertson (whose employment was, after all, in Mrs. Emory's hands) nodded in agreement.

“Quite right, Mrs. Emory,” Turner replied with a cheerful smile. (Turner? Cheerful? Was the sky about to fall too?) “This is not the original structure. Nor the second structure. But after the first fire, we rebuilt in haste and without thought to safety—and that was my mistake. I thought only of reopening, of providing Helmsley with a mill again. That the rickety wooden frame we'd built burned again allowed us—the millwrights and me—to take our time and build a strong, proper mill in its place. As you can see now, since there are a dozen of you, seven floors up and not a worry in the world.”

The superior tilt to Mrs. Emory's mouth dropped as she realized that, indeed, she was standing inside the mill with a dozen of her closest townspeople and there was nary a squeak to the floorboards.

“It also allowed us to make improvements to the mill—but we'll get to those later.” He smiled broadly, warming to his subject. “That very large iron pole above your heads is the wind shaft connected to the cap and the sails outside. It turns these gears here”—he pointed to a rather intense and heavy-looking set of large-toothed gears, attached to another long pole, this one perpendicular and running down through a hole in the floor—“and drives the energy of the wind down to the grindstones two floors below us. Where we are milling grain right now. Shall we go see?”

“But . . .” Margaret began, however, a very quick look from Leticia kept the young lady from spouting her logic. Not yet, Leticia silently pleaded. Just wait.

Everyone trooped down the same circular staircase they had come up, but this time led by Turner, with Leticia positioning herself right behind him.

As they passed the sixth floor, Turner pointed out the large basins full of grain being fed via funnel to the floor below. “We bring the grain up with pulleys in sacks,” he said, pointing to behind the basins, where a pallet of empty grain sacks sat. “We use enough pulleys and counterweights that one man can pull up five hundred pounds of grain.”

“That used to be my Harold's job,” Mrs. Emory said stiffly. “Why, if he'd been working here when the fire broke out, he would have been trapped.”

“Actually, he would have been able to get down via the stairs, the pulley system, or by jumping to the balcony a few floors below, but perhaps it was for the best that he overslept that morning,” Turner answered.

Mrs. Emory turned a particularly mottled shade of sour.

“Shall we?” Turner asked, leading the group to the next floor.

When they had all marched past the fifth floor on their way up to the top of the mill, they had spared a bare glance for all the mechanical noise and white powder floating through the air, but now they could gawk at their leisure. Here were the guts of the mill itself.

“If everyone would stay close to the staircase, please. We are not quite used to giving tours,” Turner said as he moved toward the grindstones themselves. There were three sets of them. “These are granite, specially cut in France,” Turner was saying. “I had to take a trip to Dover especially to get them.”

Was it possible that Turner . . . winked at her as he said that? And was it possible that she blushed in response?

Heavens, she was as bad as Margaret.

“Grain is funneled from above at a steady pace—not too much at once, lest we choke the system.” Everyone craned their necks up to see the grain being fed via funnel and slope to the grindstones. The butcher's boy looked like he was about to stick his head directly underneath the flow of grain. Miss Goodhue pulled him back. Then did the same for Margaret, equally interested in the mechanics.

“These tentering bottles are weights that keep them counterbalanced, so the stones can grind at different consistencies. We can make flour that's a fine grind, a medium grind, and a coarse grind, depending on how you like your bread. And that flour, once ground, flows down to the sifters on the floors beneath, which divide it all into their weights.”

“Amazing,” Leticia said, taking her own cue. “And to think all of it is powered by wind.”

“Actually, not all of it.”

“Aha!” Mrs. Emory cried, and drew the startled looks of everyone around her. “Therein is the problem, Mr. Turner. That you have a windmill is all well and good, but it's not just a windmill, is it?”

“No.”

“And you haven't the experience running a mill on steam power, do you?”

The corner of Turner's mouth ticked up, ever so slightly. “No, I haven't.”

“So we are to be subjected to your experimentations?” Mrs. Emory was really building to her topic, letting her passion and vehemence sway her, if not those around her. “To the smoke, the noise, the heat, the danger?”

“I don't understand,” Leticia said sweetly. “What danger? We are all perfectly safe right now.”

“Of course, this is safe. This is fine, running the whole operation on the wind. But Helmsley is a small town, built on tradition. Really, if you were to ever turn that machinery on, who knows what havoc it would wreak!”

“But, Mrs. Emory . . .” Turner said, his brow coming down in confusion, “it
is
on.”

All the blood drained from her face. A murmur went through the ladies around her.

“Didn't you notice on the top floor?” Margaret asked, unable to keep the mechanical disdain out her voice. “None of the gears were turning. Down here . . . everything is.”