Provocative in Pearls (24 page)

“Mr. Travis,” an old man called. “The master’s daughter is here. She should be a ghost, but I don’t think she is.”

A door opened, revealing yet another chamber, this one full of smaller lathes and a long table covered with bits of iron and steel. Mr. Travis peered through spectacles, then removed them and peered some more.

He was a big man, with sandy hair going white, and a ruddy face as hard as the iron he worked. The smile that broke did much to soften it, however, and for a moment Hawkeswell thought the man would weep.

“That can’t be Miss Thompson, Isaiah. That there is a lady born if ever I saw one. A fine lady who has lost her way, I think.”

“It is truly I, Mr. Travis,” Verity said, playing along.

Travis advanced on them, peering hard and frowning like a comic actor. He came very close and crouched down so he could look up under the rim of her hat. “I’ll be damned. So it is. The years have made the girl a woman, and the woman a lady at that.”

Verity embraced him, then introduced Hawkeswell. “I would like to visit with you for a short while, if it will not interfere too much, Mr. Travis.”

“No one here to say you can’t, so I take that to mean you can,” he said. “Best if you visit as long as you want and need, because when your cousin returns, he’ll not take kindly to another visit.”

He led them to that other room and closed the door. Hawkeswell examined the bits and pieces of metal on the worktable, and the tools and lathes. This must be where the secret lived. Those other lathes used bits formed here by Mr. Travis, and the nature of the bit itself was probably the secret.

“I wrote to you, Mr. Travis, to tell you that I was alive and well,” Verity said. “Did you not receive my letter?”

“It came, and it gave me such joy and relief. It is an odd thing to grieve for someone, and later learn she is still alive. A most peculiar experience.”

“So peculiar that you could not write back?”

“Your cousin also learned that you still lived. He came down here, to forbid me to write back. Said he would let me go if I did, and the mill be damned. Said I would be responsible for all these people having no work. He will not be happy to learn we talked today.” He lifted two chairs off pegs high on the wall and set them down.

Verity sat. Hawkeswell declined.

“We have much to discuss while we have the opportunity, Mr. Travis. Before we talk of the business, I need to ask you where Katy is. I wrote to her as well, as soon as—” She glanced to Hawkeswell. “As soon as I felt able, but sent it through the vicar, who I now learn has left.”

“Left he did. Lost the situation. The man with the living put a relative of Mrs. Thompson in his place. Mr. Thompson believed the last vicar had used the pulpit to foment discord. That means he often spoke of your father with more praise than he used in speaking of the current occupant of the big house.”

“And Katy?”

“She is nearby, just not right here. She lives on the parish’s charity now, in a cottage not far from the canal.”

They moved on to talk of the mill itself. Hawkeswell listened, but he also studied all those bits of iron and machines that Travis used in here.

Travis described the trouble last winter, which he thought Bertram handled in the worst way, and the general discontent of the workers on account of a decrease in wages now that the war was over and cannon and muskets were not needed.

Verity took her leave of Mr. Travis with promises to return very soon. Once outside she expressed her concern. “I always suspected that Bertram had not filled my father’s place well. He forbade me to come down here once he became my guardian, and it has been years since I spoke to Mr. Travis alone. He has much more to tell me, I am sure.”

“You mean, tell you when I am not with you.”

“It is no insult to you. He does not know you, or where your mind is on all of this.”

“He is not sure that I am not in collusion with Bertram, is what you mean.” He could hardly blame Mr. Travis, when Verity also was not convinced of that.

“You are an
earl
. He will not speak freely in front of you, whatever he thinks of your involvement with Bertram. The House of Lords has hardly been sympathetic to such as these people.” She strode down the lane with purpose. “Now, I must find Katy.”

T
he cottage near the canal lock proved to be a hovel of stone and old thatch. A kitchen garden grew in the rocky soil surrounding it, and only shutters would hold out the elements or cold.

Verity’s heart broke when she saw it. She wanted desperately to see Katy again, but she almost hoped they had been directed to the wrong place.

Hawkeswell stepped out of the carriage. She handed him the basket of food that she had bought in Oldbury.

He handed her down in turn. “I will wait here,” he said.

She had been debating how to ask that of him. It touched her that he understood how she would want time alone with Katy. Not only were there things to discuss that she did not want Hawkeswell to hear, but there were emotions that required privacy too.

“It may be some time. Do you want to take the carriage and come back?”

“I will walk down to the lock and watch the show for a while. If I decide to take the carriage, I will let you know.”

She carried the basket to the door of the cottage. Her knock caused movements within; then footsteps approached on a wooden floor. The door opened to reveal Katy, thinner now, and her hair whiter than it had been, but still sturdy and unbowed.

She frowned at the fine bonnet and dress in front of her, and angled her head to see the carriage beyond her little garden.

“It is I, Katy. It is Verity.”

Katy gripped the threshold, stepped outside, and peered hard at Verity’s face. Recognition entered her eyes, along with tears. She pulled Verity into an embrace so encompassing, so warm, so
familiar
, that Verity wept too.

“My child,” Katy cried softly. “My dear child.”

 

 

Was that your husband out there?” Katy asked. She had insisted Verity take the one chair and she sat on a stool not far away. “He is a handsome man.”

“He is at that.” Too handsome, perhaps. It had been her undoing, and continued to be. Combined with his station it made him very sure of himself, which made her a little less sure of herself in turn. “He can be very kind,” she added, because she did not want Katy worrying about her. He
could
be very kind. “He brought me here so I could find you and let you know that I was alive and well.”

“I had long given up hope of seeing you again. This is like a miracle to me. If he can be kind, why did you run away, child?”

How like Katy to know at once she had run away. But then, in the past, when she ran away, she ran to Katy.

The embrace outside had reminded her of why, and filled her heart with nostalgia. Those arms had comforted a child after a mother’s death, and a girl again after a father’s. When that governess scolded too much, or Nancy chastised, she would slip away sometimes, knowing all the while that she would pay for it, and go down the hill to Katy’s cottage to be embraced and comforted again.

The scent and softness of this woman had stayed with her the last two years. Now, sitting in this little sad cottage with its rough plank floor, she felt more thoroughly herself than she had for many years.

Yet she could not honestly answer Katy’s question. She did not want to worry her by describing what Bertram had threatened.

“I ran away because I did not truly agree to marry.” She explained her plan, and how she had hoped to get free once she came of age, and come home and put Bertram out. She told Katy all of it.

“It was the plan of a child,” Katy said. “Your father’s child, for there was much of his mind in it, but still a child who knew little of the world. You are here now, though, and if that lord can be kind sometimes, being back in that marriage will not harm you. You will be safe, at least.”

“I have learned more of the world now, and I am content at last, now that I have seen you.” She leaned toward the stool and gave Katy another embrace. “And Michael? How does he fare?”

Katy’s eyes closed, and Verity knew she had touched a sorrow. Her heart sank.

“He has been gone a long time now. Longer than you. I thought nothing of it at first; it was not the first time he left as you know, but . . .”

“Where did he go?”

Katy slowly shook her head. “I do not know. Sometimes I would dream of him and you, together the way you were as children, and worry that the dream meant he also was dead.” She dabbed her eyes and forced a smile.

“But since you were not, as I can see with my own eyes now, perhaps the dream meant nothing at all.”

“Was he possibly arrested? He could be rash in his talk, Katy. Perhaps he was involved in something and put in gaol.”

“If so, not in Shropshire or Staffordshire. If he had stood at the sessions, I would have been told. Mr. Travis would have heard of it.”

Verity took Katy’s hands in hers. “So all this time you have been waiting, not knowing whether to mourn him or not.”

“Or you, child. Or you.”

“I will discover what became of him, Katy, even if it is not happy news, so you do not have to wait much longer.” She looked around the tiny cottage, dark with its two small windows. “This must be uncomfortable when it rains, and in winter.”

“I count myself lucky to have it. After Michael left, I was put out of the works’ cottage where we lived.”

It was not supposed to happen that way. Part of the agreement with Bertram had been that Katy would never be put out. This further evidence of Bertram’s betrayal infuriated Verity. She had difficulty hiding her anger.

“I will see that you have more comfort in the future.” She wanted to be more specific. She almost was before she remembered that she had no power to promise anything. She would have to request permission from Hawkeswell to help Katy. She would have to petition him in order to have a crumb of her own inheritance used to benefit this dear woman.

She stood, and went to the small table on which her basket rested. “I have brought you things for later, but a few for right now too.” She unwrapped a meat pasty and a hunk of cheese. “Let us share, while you tell me all about my neighbors. Give me only the joyful news, Katy. I already know the rest.”

 

 

H
awkeswell watched the barge waiting for the canal lock to do its work. Held in place by two hefty gates, it floated higher as water rushed in. The piles of coal on its bed could not defeat the forces of nature, and its deck rose until it lay higher than the gates themselves. Then the gate ahead opened slowly, and the barge floated away.

The Birmingham canal curved ahead, one of many twists as it followed the lay of the land between Wolverhampton and Birmingham. Even so it could not avoid some hills, and steam engines had been set up to pump enough water to ensure the canal could function on them.

Bills regarding canals kept being proposed in Parliament, as men eager to make money either moving goods, or making the goods to be moved, petitioned for permission to cut these waterways. As a result he knew more about canals than most. He knew that this was not the best canal, but rather narrow, and complicated by the big curves of its serpentine path. Even so, it was far better than trying to haul that barge’s coal overland.

He walked back toward the carriage, checking his pocket watch as he strode. Verity would probably want to stay with Katy a good while longer.

He had thought, when she spoke of the woman, that Katy had the place of a nurse or governess in her affections. Seeing their reunion, watching their joyful embrace and the tears flow, had disproven that. Instead Verity had meant exactly what she said. Katy was like a mother to her.

The area appeared safe enough. He decided to take the carriage after all, and sent the coachman to inform Verity that he would return in two hours.

 

 

L
osford Hall rested on a hill, at the end of a lane that wound through trees. As Hawkeswell approached he thought it a handsome property, but its setting lent it an air of mystery. That would be appropriate for the man who lived there now.

Jonathan Albrighton received him in a library stuffed with books and papers. Not all had come with the house. Unbound volumes and stacks of pamphlets mixed with the neat bindings normally found in a country house of this size.

“I am pleased that you called. I was hoping that you would,” Albrighton said.

He appeared thinner than Hawkeswell remembered, but still carried himself with a manner that implied both deference and arrogance at the same time. His dark hair was pulled into an old-fashioned tail, and his dark eyes, his whole countenance, invited one to confidences and trust, as always. Hawkeswell knew, however, that no matter how long one looked and how often one confided, the mind behind those eyes would forever remain unknown.

“So you knew I was in the area.” He did not bother to make it a question. “Word does spread quickly in the country, doesn’t it? As a JP, you no doubt hear it before many others.”

“It only confirmed what I expected. You would have to come eventually, to see about your wife’s inheritance.”

They sat in comfortable chairs, the kind a man could read in for hours. No doubt this man did. Albrighton had been a most studious student at university, and everyone assumed he would become a don himself. Instead he had chosen a nomadic existence, traveling far and wide, his stays in London always of uncertain duration.

That, combined with an income of ambiguous origins, had led Hawkeswell, Summerhays, and Castleford to conclude that Albrighton was involved in activities of ambiguous legality, perhaps even for the government.

“So you have become a country gentleman,” Hawkeswell said, admiring the library. “Although it suits your intellectual interests, somehow I can’t see you contented here long. Of course, serving as a magistrate gives your curiosity more active purposes.”