The Rose of Winslow Street (25 page)

Michael delivered another round of thudding knocks, then called out their presence. “No one is here,” he said.

Libby walked down the path toward the closest windmill. “No matter. I think I can get inside and learn what I need to know.” Each windmill had a door at its base wide enough to push a wagon inside for delivering grain. A flimsy board was pushed through a bracket, but Libby easily lifted it aside. It was even louder when she stepped inside the windmill.

And there it was. The exact same grain hopper that automatically fed the millstones with a steady stream of kernels. How many times had she sketched it as her father tinkered with the design? She craned her neck to look up into the tower. The cantilevered wind shaft was her father's most distinctive innovation, but it was near the top of the windmill.

“I need to get up there,” Libby said, already stepping toward the rungs that were built into the side of the structure.

“Let me go,” Michael said. “You are not dressed for climbing ladders.”

Libby ignored him and grasped a rung above her head. His hand was like a manacle around her wrist.

“It is not seemly for a woman to climb ladders,” he said. “Tell me what to look for and I will go.”

“Michael, now is not the time for a lecture on proper womanly behavior.” Ignoring decorum, she gathered her skirts up and draped them over her arm. “I need to see the shaft for myself. It is the only way I will know for certain if it is exactly what I sketched for my father.”

Michael's face clouded with concern as he studied the spur wheels, shafts, and countershafts that reached up into the interior of the space. This was an alien technology to him and she knew there was no way he could communicate precisely what he was seeing.

“It will only take a moment,” Libby said as she lifted herself up the first rung. She hoisted herself up quickly, moving into warmer air as she neared the top. The higher she climbed, the more narrow the space as the walls drew closer to the machinery. All to the good, as it would make it easier to inspect the wind shaft.

When she reached the top, she clung to the top rung of the ladder with one hand while she turned to study the shaft, so close she could touch it if she was foolish enough to let her fingers come near the rotating blades of metal. She studied the break lever, the winding gear, and the distinctive cantilevered wind shaft. It was exactly the same as her father's design.

Jasper had lied.

She should feel vindicated, shouldn't she? Here was proof that her brother was a liar and a thief and could no longer maintain an unblemished reputation in her father's eyes, but all Libby felt was sad. As she stood there, listening to the steady grind of her father's magnificent machine, she wondered if she should even tell him what Jasper had done. What good would it do to destroy the one perfect thing her father valued in this life?

“Is it your father's design?” Michael's voice called up into the clerestory of the windmill.

“Yes,” she whispered. She realized he would not be able to hear over the clattering of the machinery. “Yes, it is,” she called out louder. There was no point remaining up there in the sweltering heat at the heart of her brother's betrayal, so she turned to face the ladder and begin her descent.

A rasp drew her attention. She looked at the gear behind her and gasped in horror. The hem of her skirt, caught in the metal teeth of the rotating wheel, started dragging her toward the machine. She tugged at the fabric, but it did not pull free of the slowly turning wheel. She tugged so hard her fingernails tore against the fabric, but the teeth continued to pull her skirt further into the gears.

“Michael!” she screamed. “Michael, come quickly!”

The fabric of her skirt was pulled taut, with no more left to give before she would be pulled off this ladder and into those relentless grinding teeth. Could she get out of this dress in time? Not with the way it was fastened all the way up her back. It was impossible to tear her eyes away from the sight of that wheel, but Michael was coming. The wall was shaking as he bounded up the ladder.

“Hurry,” she shouted as she tried in vain to pull her dress free, the metal gears pulling her closer and closer. She might as well have tried to hold back the tide. Michael scrambled as high as he could until his shoulder brushed against her thigh. His eyes narrowed as he assessed the situation. Without a word, he reached toward the wheel and grabbed a handful of fabric. The veins on the back of his hand bulged and his knuckles turned white as he pulled. His arm trembled under the force of his pull, but only a few inches of cotton pulled free. The wheel kept turning and dragging Libby farther away from the wall.

“Turn around and hold the ladder with both hands,” he said. But Libby was spellbound by the sight of the gears dragging more and more fabric into their teeth.
“Do it,”
Michael ordered. She would have to trust him. She let go of her skirt and turned around to cling to the ladder with both hands. The muscles in her arms were weakening under the strain of fighting against the wheel.

Beneath her thigh, the muscles in Michael's shoulder bunched and strained. He groaned through tightly clenched teeth as he struggled to wrench the fabric free. She prayed for God to help Michael, to send just another ounce of strength into those mighty muscles. She heard the tearing of fabric, and with blessed relief the tension dragging at her dress lessened, then ceased entirely.

She was free.

She was free, but she was shaking so badly she could not trust herself to speak. A glance down at Michael showed him to be heaving in gulps of air, trails of sweat trickling down his face. The mundane clatter of the machinery and blowing of the wind filled the tower, indifferent to the epic battle for her very life that had just taken place.

“Th-thank you,” she managed to stammer.

“You are welcome, Libby.” He sounded as winded and shaken as she. A ragged laugh broke through his lips. “I am truly an idiot. I should have bargained with a marriage proposal before freeing you.”

She leaned her forehead against the rung of the ladder, still shaking too much to trust herself. “No g-gentleman would push a lady in such circumstances,” she said through chattering teeth.

“I am not a gentleman. I am a warrior, and we use whatever advantage we can get.” He gave her an affectionate slap on her rump. “What of it, Libby? I think you owe me a little something after this.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. If she had the energy, she would tell him she owed him everything and that there was nothing she would not give to him. She wanted to give him her heart, her devotion, and every one of her tomorrows. She wanted to give his sons a mother. If it belonged to her, she even wanted to give him that stupid house.

A wave of exhaustion overcame her and she sagged against the ladder. Michael felt it and braced a hand against her back to prop her up. “Careful,” he warned. “This sometimes happens after a battle. Following great stress, a body can lose all its strength. We need to get you down quickly.”

All the way down the ladder, Michael guided her and talked in soothing tones while she tried to force energy into her depleted muscles. When her feet hit the straw-covered ground, she used the remainder of her strength to turn into Michael's arms and let him hold her.

Libby's fingers entwined with Michael's as the two of them walked back to the train station. From the moment her feet had landed on solid ground, they had not let go of each other. First he held her, murmuring soothing words into her hair while tremors racked her body. When she felt the need to give thanks to God, Michael held her as she knelt in the straw and said silent words of thanks. Never had she prayed like this in front of another, and it felt oddly intimate as Michael fell to his knees beside her and said a prayer along with her. As they walked back to the train station, the torn hem of her dress trailed in the dust, but Libby did not care. She was alive and walking beside the man she loved. She had no idea how they would resolve the conflicts that lay between them, but they would find a way. She had found her man and could not let him go.

As they walked, Libby turned her face toward the estuary, savoring the brackish smell on the breeze as it rolled across the water. Normally, she did not care for the briny smell of a marsh, but at this moment it meant she was alive, and she breathed deeply, wanting to encapsulate this moment in her memory forever.

She could not doubt that Michael truly cared for her. No one could fake the look of terror in his eyes as he came bounding up that ladder. He wanted to marry her, even though she was at odds with her father and might never come into possession of the house on Winslow Street.

“Someone is coming,” he said.

Ahead of them, a man in a cart was prodding a pair of draft horses down the country lane toward them. His wagon was loaded down with sacks of grain. “I wonder if this is the man who owns the windmills,” she said.

As the wagon drew closer, Michael lifted his hand to flag the man down. The clopping of hooves slowed, then stopped. “My pardon, “ Michael said. “Are you the miller who owns those fine windmills down the road?”

The man straightened with pride. “That I am,” he said in a thick New England accent.

“My friend and I have come from Colden to admire these windmills,” Michael said. “I had heard they were very distinctive and wished to see them for myself.”

The man knocked his straw hat back to study Michael, probably afraid of a possible competitor for the county's milling work. “It is a new design. Brand new,” he said laconically.

“Would you tell us where you obtained the design?” Michael asked. “We are from Colden and will pose no threat to your business this far north.”

The man's demeanor relaxed a bit and he nodded. “Hop on board.”

The miller's name was Caleb Standish and on the short ride back he explained how he built his first windmill four years ago. He explained how the cantilevered wind shaft meant it was easy to adjust the mill for whatever he needed to process. Mostly he milled corn, wheat, and barley, but he used one as a fulling mill and one for crushing oil seeds. After seeing to his horses, Mr. Standish invited them inside his home to show them the paperwork for the mills.

“Here is the basic design,” he said, bringing forth a document that looked exactly like one of Libby's cutaway sketches. “It is different from most windmills, so you might need to hire an engineer the first time you build one. I can recommend a fine man from Boston.”

The miller continued to explain the internal workings to Michael, but Libby's focus darted to other papers on his desk. She couldn't read any of them but would recognize the name Sawyer if it appeared somewhere on the paperwork.

Finally, Michael asked the question she had been dying to hear. “Who do I contact about licensing this technology?”

Mr. Standish gave a brusque laugh. “That is the curious thing. It is a woman who sells it. Let me see if I can find her name.” Libby's heart skipped a beat and she shot a glance at Michael. She had expected that Jasper would have kept his cards close to his chest, but perhaps he had hired someone to take the patent to market. The miller pulled out another drawer and began riffling through papers, but Libby was worried. Unless Jasper's name appeared somewhere in those papers, it would be difficult to accuse him of outright theft of the technology.

“Mrs. Regina Sawyer,” the miller said, thrusting a paper in front of Michael. “She's the one who signed off on the license. These new windmills are expensive, but they have paid me back many times over. I suggest you get in touch with this Sawyer woman for a license.”

Libby sank into a chair. Why would Jasper drag his wife into this? Her mind reeled, but Michael was thanking the miller for his help and preparing to leave. Libby felt like a sleepwalker as she nodded to the miller and followed Michael out the door.

Michael's boots thudded on the wooden planking of the train station platform. They still had ten minutes before the arrival of the train that would take them back to Colden and the tangled mess of Libby's family.