It may be cold outside, but it’s heating up inside these Regency manors!

It is going to be a very improper Regency Christmas!

One Snowy

REGENCY

Christmas

Two gorgeous, glittering and seasonal Regency romances from favourite authors Christine Merrill and Sarah Mallory

One Snowy Regency Christmas

A Regency Christmas Carol

Christine Merrill

Snowbound with the Notorious Rake

Sarah Mallory

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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A Regency Christmas Carol

Christine Merrill

Dear Reader,

It is always a challenge to write Christmas stories in the Regency. It’s a historical period where the holiday is defined as much by what they didn’t have as what they did. Many of the trappings we consider traditional are actually Victorian. Without carols, cards, trees and Santa, a Regency Christmas looks more like a big house party. And that can end up looking like any other Regency house party, but with the addition of bad weather.

When I began studying the problems in the North during 1811, the task became even harder. The workers were in revolt. At one point there were more British troops there than there were fighting Napoleon. Mill owners were hamstrung by embargoes that kept them from selling their cloth to countries allied with France. That included America, which had been a major source of income. There was an anti-war sentiment that is rarely mentioned in our largely patriotic stories.

The problems I was finding as I researched resonate today as much as they did then. There was a desperate need for compassion and understanding between labour and management.

And that thought led me to a story which was completely out of period, but the best primer anyone can hope for on the reflection, redemption, and charity that can be found at the heart of the Christmas season.

I hope you enjoy it.

Christine Merrill

About the Author

CHRISTINE MERRILL lives on a farm in Wisconsin, USA, with her husband, two sons, and too many pets—all of whom would like her to get off the computer so they can check their e-mail. She has worked by turns in theatre costuming, where she was paid to play with period ballgowns, and as a librarian, where she spent the day surrounded by books. Writing historical romance combines her love of good stories and fancy dress with her ability to stare out of the window and make stuff up.

Look for more great novels from Christine Merrill in Mills & Boon’s Historical romances.

With thanks and apologies to Charles Dickens.

And a question. Why did the spirits do it “all in one night”

when Marley is so specific about needing three?

That’s always confused me.

CHAPTER ONE

December 1811

BARBARA Lampett ran down the lane at the edge of the village of Fiddleton, feeling the crunch of icy mud beneath her feet and the stitch in her side from the cold air in her lungs. Lately it seemed that she was always running after something or other. She wondered if the lack of decorum on her part was the first sign of a life spun out of control.

It was really no fault of her own. Had she the choice, she’d have been in a seat by the parlour fire, staring out at the changing weather and pitying those forced to go about in it. But Father paid little heed to his own discomfort when he was in one of his moods, much less that of others.

And she could hardly expect her mother to go. Mother’s volatile nature would add warmth to the day, but it would do nothing to cool her father’s zeal. Nor was Mother young and strong enough to face the crowd that surrounded him when he spoke, or to extricate him from the hubbub he created.

The new mill lay almost two miles from the centre of the village. It was too short a distance to harness a carriage, but longer than a pleasant walk—especially on such a chill December day as this. Barbara found some consolation that the ground was frozen. She had decided to forgo pattens in favour of speed, but she did not wish to ruin the soft boots she wore by walking through mud.

And much mud there would have been if not for the cold. Ground that had once been green and lush was now worn down to the soil, with the comings and goings of wagons and goods, and the tramp of growing mobs that came to protest at the gates of the new buildings of Mr Joseph Stratford.

A crowd gathered here now. Another of the demonstrations that had been occurring almost daily thanks to her father’s speeches. Mixed amongst the angry weavers were the curious townsfolk. They did not seem to care either way for the plight of the workers, but they enjoyed a good row and came to the gatherings as a form of entertainment.

There was a sudden blast of wind and she wrapped her shawl more tightly about her, unable to fight the feeling of dread that came with the exhilaration. While it pleased her to see the people attracted to her father’s words, the path he was leading them down was a dangerous one and his actions dangerously unwise. With each passing day he seemed to grow more reckless, speaking from the heart and not the head. He could not seem to understand what his comments would do to the local populous.

But she could feel them, caught in the crowd as she was, buffeted by the bodies of angry and fearful men. There was a growing energy in the mob. Some day a chance word or a particularly virulent speech would push them too far. Then they would boil over into real violence.

When the wind blew from the east you could still smell the burned-out wreckage of the old mill, where so many of these men had been employed. That owner had paid dearly for his plans at renovation, seeing his livelihood destroyed and his family threatened until he had given up and quit the area. That had left the protestors with no work at all, and even angrier than they had been before.

It seemed the new master would be cagier. When he’d built his new mill, like the pig in the old story, he had used bricks. It loomed before her, a blight on the horizon. Every element was an insult to the community and proof that the person who had built it lacked sensitivity for his neighbours. It was large and squat and altogether too new. He had not built in the wreckage of Mackay’s Mill, which might have given the people hope of a return to normality. Instead he’d placed it closer to the grand old house where he currently lived. It was not exactly in the front park of the manor, but plainly on the estate, and in a place by the river that the Clairemonts had allowed all in the village to use as common greensward when they’d lived there. It was obvious that Mr Stratford had thought of nothing but his own convenience in choosing this site.

Though he showed no signs of recognising the impropriety of the location, he’d built a fence around a place that had once been the home of picnics and fêtes, trampling the freshness to hard-packed mud. Barbara was convinced it demonstrated on some deep and silent level that the master of it knew he was in the wrong and expected to receive trouble for it. The wrought-iron border surrounding the yard separated it from the people most likely to be angry: the ones whose jobs had been taken by the new mechanised looms.

She pushed her way through the crowd to the place where her father stood at the foot of the stone gatepost, rallying the men to action. Though recent misfortune had addled his wits, it had done nothing to dull the fire in his eye or the clarity in his voice. While his sentiments might be unwise, there was nothing incoherent in the nature of his words.

‘The Orders in Council have already depressed your trade to the point where there is no living to be made by an honest man—no way to sell your cloth to America and other friends of France.’

‘Aye!’

There were shouts and mutters, and the brandishing of torches and axe handles in the crowd. Barbara’s heart gave an uneasy skip at the thought of what might happen should any man think to bring a firearm into the already volatile situation. She was sure that the mill owner towards whom the ire was directed sat in the closed black carriage just behind the gates. From there he could listen to every word. Perhaps he was even noting the name of the speaker and any others preparing to act against him.

But her father cared nothing for it, and went on with his speech. ‘The new looms mean less work for those of you left and more jobs falling to inexperienced girls, while their fathers and brothers sit idle, dreaming of days past when a respectable trade could be plied in this country.’

The mutterings in answer were louder now, and punctuated with shouts and a forward surge of bodies, making the gates rattle in response to the weight of the crowd.

‘Will you allow the change that will take the bread from your children’s mouths? Or will you stand?’

She waved her arms furiously at her father, trying to stall what was likely to occur. The government had been willing to use troops to put down such small rebellions, treating their own people as they would Boney’s army. If her father incited the men to frame-breaking and violence they would be answered with violence in return. Mr Stratford might be as bad as her father claimed, but he was not the timid man Mackay had been. He would meet strife with strife, and send for a battalion to shoot the organisers.

‘Father!’ she shouted, trying to catch his attention. But the workers towered around her, and her voice was swallowed up by the din. Before she could speak a calming word the first shot rang out—not from the crowd, but from the door of the carriage in front of them. Even though it was fired into the air, the mob drew back a pace like a great animal, startled and cringing. Barbara was carried along with it, relieved all were safe and yet further from her goal.

The carriage door opened and Stratford appeared, leaping to the ground before his worried footman could help him and springing to the same stone post where her father stood. He climbed easily up the back of it until he stood at the top and towered over her father and the other men. He held what looked like a duelling pistol in his right hand. With his left he drew back his coat, so the crowd could see its mate was tucked into his belt. He looked like a corsair—nimble, fearless and ready for battle. Barbara could easily imagine him with a blade between his teeth, rushing the crowd.

She was just as sure that he would be the sort to take no prisoners. Though he was a handsome man, in a dark and hungry sort of way, there was nothing in his sharp features that bespoke a merciful nature. His grey eyes were hard and observant. His mouth, which might be capable of a sensual smile, was twisted in a sneer. Her father thought him the very devil, set upon the ruin of all around them.

But if devil he was then he was a handsome devil as well. Although she could think of a hundred reasons she should not notice it, she thought him a most attractive man. She schooled herself not to stare up with admiration, as she had caught herself doing on those few times she’d seen him in the village.

Perhaps she should have found him less impressive, for that sneer on his face quite spoiled the evenness of his features. While she had thought the position he took on the wall made him look taller than average, he hardly needed the advantage. He stood well over six feet. Today he was a fearsome thing, and nothing for a young lady to gawk at.

To match his physical presence he had the sort of forceful personality that seemed to incite strong emotion in friends as well as enemies. And, frightening though he might be, Barbara was sure that once she was focused on him she would not be able to look away.

‘Who will be the first through the fence, then?’ Stratford shouted down at the crowd. ‘I swear to you, that man will lose his life along with his livelihood.’

The workers shrank back another pace, huddling against each other as though seeking warmth in the cold.

The man on the post laughed down at them. ‘I thought as much. All bluff and bluster when there is no risk to you, and cowardice when there is.’

Her father turned, shouting up at him. ‘It is you who are the coward, sir. Vain and proud as well. You hide behind your gates with your idle threats, unwilling to walk among the common man and feel his pain, his hunger, his desperation.’

Stratford glared back at him. ‘I do not have to walk among you to know about you. I can go to the ruins of Mackay’s place—a mill that you destroyed—to see the reason for your poverty. If you could, you would burn my factory as well—before I’ve even managed to open it. And then you’d complain that I’d treated you unjustly. I tell you now, since you have so conveniently gathered here, that I will not listen to your complaints until you begin making sense.’

It was unfair of him to compare this gathering to the burning of Mackay’s place. Most of the men here had taken no part in that, rushing to save their workplace and not destroy it. The matter was much more complicated than Stratford made out. He was too new here to know and unwilling to listen, just as her father had said. Barbara pushed against the men around her, trying to work her way to the front again so that she might be heard.

Just as she thought she might reach her objective a man’s boot caught in the hem of her gown and she started to fall forwards under the crush. She felt a rush of panic as she realised that no one around her was noticing as she fell. They had forgotten their fear of the second gun and were advancing to disprove Stratford’s claims of cowardice.

She called out again, hoping that her father might hear and help her. But his back was to her as he shook a fist to threaten Stratford. He was too preoccupied to notice what was happening. In a moment she would be knocked to her knees. Then she would be dragged under, as though sinking beneath a human wave, and stamped into the mud in the trample of hobnailed boots.

‘Ay-up!’ She felt a sudden change, and the crowd parted around her. A hand caught her by the shoulder and yanked her to her feet with a rip of cloth. There was a shout as loud and ringing as her father’s. But it came from close at her side, easily besting the noise of the crowd. ‘Mind what you are doing, you great oafs. You may say what you like to me, but mind that there is a lady present. Have a care for her, at least. Perhaps I judge you unworthy of employment because you behave no better than animals.’

Then she was back on her feet, and the support was gone from her arm. She felt the crowd swirl around her again as her rescuer retreated. But for a moment there was a subdued quality to the actions of the mob, as though their frenzy had been defused by shame.

And the man who had saved her was back at the front of the group again, pushing past her father and climbing back onto the pillar that held the gate. She had thought Mr Stratford an intimidating figure even while behind the gates. But it was even more startling to have been so close to him, even for a moment. He had used his strength to force others out of the way, and his agility to be down to the ground and back up the fence before the mob had realised that he had been in their grasp. He was staring down at them again, his expression more disgusted than angry, as though they had proved to him that he was correct in his scorn.

‘Go home to your families, if you care so much about them. A new year is coming, and a new age with it. You had best get used to it. When Stratford Mill is open in a month there will be work for those of you willing to put aside this nonsense and tend to your shuttles again. But if you rise against me I will see the lot of you transported and run it with your daughters. They will cost me less and have the sense to keep their tongues.’ He reached towards his belt, and the group before him gasped. He withdrew not a pistol, but a purse, showering the coins into the crowd.

‘A Merry Christmas to you all!’ he shouted, his laugh both triumphant and bitter as he watched the threat dissolve as the crowd scrambled for the money. ‘Do not bother to come here again. As long as I breathe, I will not be stopped. If you destroy the machinery I will get more, until you wear yourselves out with breaking it. Take my money and go back to your homes. I have summoned the constable. If you are here when he arrives you will spend Christmas Day in a cell, longing for your families. Now, be off.’

It shamed her to watch the men of the village too on the ground to notice this new threat. They were a proud bunch. In better times they would have thrown the coins back in the face of this stranger rather than accept his charity and his scorn. But the recent economic troubles had left most of the village without work and in need of any money they might find to make any kind of a Christmas—merry or otherwise—for their families.

Her father’s rallying cries were lost in the scuffle as men scrabbled in the dirt for pennies. Barbara pushed through them easily this time, until she could lay her hand upon her father’s arm. ‘Come away,’ she whispered. ‘Now. Before this goes any further. You can speak another day.’

It seemed the mood had left him, passing out of his body like a possessing spirit, leaving him quiet and somewhat puzzled, as though he did not quite know how he had come to be standing here in front of so many people. He would come away with little struggle, and she would have him home before the law arrived. All would be well. Until the next time.

Directly above her, and removed from the chaos, Joseph Stratford observed—distant and passionless, as though he did not know or care for the pain he was causing. When she looked at him all her father’s anger and frustration seemed to rush into her. If the Lord had bothered to imbue her with reason, then why could he have not made her a man, so that other men might listen to her?

She turned and shouted up at the dark man who thought himself so superior to his fellows. ‘You blame the men around me. But you should be ashamed of yourself as well. You stand over us, thinking yourself a god. You are mocking a level of hardship that you cannot possibly understand. You act as if you are made of the same rough wood and cold metal gears that fill your factory. If I could see the contents of your heart it would be nothing but clockwork, and fuelled by the coal running in your veins.’

Just for a moment she thought she saw a change in his face, a slight widening of the eyes as though her words had struck home. And then he gave a mirthless, soundless laugh, little more than a lifting and dropping of the shoulders. ‘And a Merry Christmas to you as well, my dear.’ Then he turned and stepped easily from his perch, dropping to the ground, though it must have been nearly eight feet, and strolling back to his carriage and his nervous grooms and coachman. They came cautiously forwards to open the gates so that the carriage could get through. They needn’t have worried, for the men who had blocked the way had turned for home in embarrassed silence as soon as the money on the ground had been collected.

She pulled her father to the side of the road so that the horses could pass. But there was the signalling tap of a cane against the side of the box as the vehicle drew abreast of them, and the driver brought it to a stop so that Stratford could lean out of the window and look at them.

‘This is not the end of it, Stratford,’ her father said in a quieter voice. Now that the crowd was gone he sounded capable of lucid argument, and quite his old self.

‘I did not think it was, Lampett,’ Stratford replied, smiling coldly down at her father, staring into his eyes like a fighter measuring the reach of his opponent before striking.

‘I will not let you treat these people—my people—like so many strings on your loom. They are men, not goods. They should be respected as such.’

‘When they behave like men I will give them respect. And not before. Now, go. You have lost your audience, and your child is shivering in the cold.’

I am not a child. She was full four and twenty. Not that it mattered. But she was shivering—both from fear and the weather. The slight made her stand a little straighter, and fight the shudders until she could appear as collected and unmoved as her enemy was.

It did not seem to bother Joseph Stratford in the least that the weight of the entire town was against him. They had broken his frames once already and sabotaged the building of the mill at every turn. Still he persevered. Barbara wished she could respond in kind with that careless, untouchable indifference.

The envy bothered her. Perhaps—just a little—she appreciated the man’s sense of purpose. However misguided it might be. When she looked at him she had no doubt that he would succeed. While her father was all fire, he flared and burned out quickly. But Stratford was like stone, unchanging and unmoved. It would take more than a flash of anger to move a man like him once he had set himself to a goal.

She looked again at him and reminded herself that he was proud as well. That sin would be his downfall if nothing else was. He could not succeed if he reduced all men to enemies and herself to a faceless, valueless child.

As she watched the two men, locked eye to eye in a silent battle, she was relieved that her father did not own a firearm. Though she thought she could trust Mr Stratford—just barely—not to shoot without provocation, there was no telling what her father might do when his blood was up and his thinking even less clear than usual. She reached out for her father’s arm again, ready to guide him home. ‘Come. Let us go back. There is nothing more that you can do today. If he has truly called for the constable, I do not wish to see you caught up in it.’

He shook off the embrace with a grunt and stepped back, giving an angry shrug as the carriage moved again, travelling up the road to the manor house. ‘It would serve him right if I was arrested. Then the world would see him for the sort of man he is: one who would throw an old man into jail to prove himself in the right.’

There was no point in explaining that the only lesson anyone was likely to see was that Stratford sat in a mansion at a fine dinner, while Lampett sat hungry in a cell. ‘But it would make me most unhappy, Father,’ she said as sweetly as possible. ‘And Mother as well. If we can have nothing else for Christmas, can we not have a few days of peace?’

‘I will be peaceful when there is reason to be,’ her father acceded. ‘I doubt, as long as that man breathes, we will see that state again.’

CHAPTER TWO

JOSEPH Stratford rode home alone in comfortable, if somewhat pensive, silence. The conclusion to today’s outing had been satisfactory, at least for now. The crowd had dispersed without any real violence. But if Bernard Lampett continued stirring, the town was likely to rise against him. Before that happened sterner measures would need to be taken.

In his mind, he composed the letter he would send to the commander of the troops garrisoned in York. It was drastic, but necessary. If one or two of them were hauled off in chains it might convince the rest of the error of their ways.

His carriage pulled up the circular drive of Clairemont Manor and deposited him at the door—so close that the chill of the season barely touched him on his way into the house. He smiled. How different this was from his past. Until last year he’d frequently had to make do on foot. But in the twelve months his investments had turned. Even with the money he’d laid out for the new mill he was living in a luxury that he would not have dreamed possible in his wildest Christmas wishes.

Joseph handed hat, gloves and overcoat to the nearest footman and strode into the parlour to take the cup of tea waiting for him by the second-best chair near the fire. As he passed the closest seat he gave a gentle kick at the boot of the man occupying it, to get Robert Breton to shift his feet out of the way.

Breton opened a sleepy eye and sat up. ‘Trouble at the mill?’

‘When is there not?’ He lifted his cup in a mock salute and Breton accepted it graciously, as though he owned the house and the right to the chair he usurped. While Joe might aspire to knock away at his own rough edges, affect the indolent slouch and copy the London accent and the facile gestures, he would never be more than false coin compared to this second son of an earl. Bob had been born to play lord of the manor, just as Joe had been born to work. He might own the house, but it was Bob’s birthright to be at ease there.

And that was what made him so damned useful—both as a friend and an investor. The Honourable Robert Breton opened doors that the name Joseph Stratford never would, and his presence in negotiations removed some of the stink of trade when Joseph was trying to prise capital from the hands of his rich and idle friends.

Joseph took another sip of his tea. ‘Lampett has been giving mad speeches again—raising the population to violence. Lord knows why Mackay did not run him off before now, instead of allowing himself to be scared away. He might have nipped the insurrection in the bud, and his business would still be standing.’

Breton shrugged. ‘Anne tells me that Lampett was not always thus. There was some accident when the men fought the mill fire. He has not been right in the head since.’

‘More’s the pity for him and his family,’ Joe replied. ‘If he does not leave off harassing me he will be the maddest man in Australia by spring.’

‘Anne seems quite fond of him,’ Breton said. ‘Until they closed the school he was a teacher in the village and a respected member of the community.’

Joseph reminded himself to speak to Anne on the subject himself, if only so that he might say he had. It did not seem right that one’s best friend got on better with one’s prospective fiancée than one did oneself. But Bob and Anne enjoyed each other’s company—perhaps because Bob was able to converse comfortably on subjects other than the price of yard goods and the man hours needed to produce them.

‘If Anne respects him, then she has not seen him lately. From what I have observed he is not fit company for a lady. There was a girl at the riot today who must have been his daughter, trying to drag him home and out of trouble. She came near to being trampled by the crowd and Lampett did not notice the danger to her. I rescued her myself, and did not get so much as a thank-you from either of them.’

‘Was this before or after you threatened to have the father arrested?’ Breton asked dryly.

‘In between threats, I think.’ Stratford grinned.

Breton shook his head. ‘And you wonder why you are not loved.’

‘They will all love me well enough once the mill is open and they are back to work.’

‘If there is work to be had,’ Breton said. ‘The Orders in Council limit the places you can sell your wares. As long as America is a friend of France, there is little you can do.’

‘They will be repealed,’ Joseph said firmly.

‘And what if they are not?’

‘They will be. They must be. The merchants are near at breaking point now. The law must change or we are all ruined.’ Joseph smiled with reassurance, trying to imbue confidence in his faint-hearted friend. ‘It will not do to hesitate. We cannot err on the side of caution in this darkest time. If we wish for great profit we must be more sure, more daring, more active than the others. A busy mill and a full warehouse are the way to greatest success. When the moment comes it will come on us suddenly. Like the handmaidens at the wedding, we must be ready for change.’

Breton shook his head in wonder. ‘When you tell me this I have no trouble believing.’

‘Then take the message to heart and share it with your friends.’ Joseph glanced out of the window at weather that was slate grey and yet lacking the snow he wished for. ‘When we have them here for Christmas I will wrap them tight in a web of good wine and good cheer. Then you shall explain the situation, as I have to you. Once they are persuaded, I will stick my hand into their pockets and remove the money needed for expansion.’

Breton laughed. ‘You make me feel like a spider, waiting for so many fat flies to ride up from London.’

‘But that is not the case at all, my dear fellow. I am the spider. You are the bait—if spiders use such a thing. Without you, they will not come.’

‘We will be lucky if they come at all. Here in Yorkshire you are quite far out of the common way, Stratford.’

‘And you are the son of the Earl of Lepford. There must be a few in London, particularly those with eligible daughters, who would be eager to spend a holiday in your august presence.’

‘Second son,’ Breton corrected. ‘No title to offer them. But I am rich, at least. In much part I can thank you for that.’

‘Be sure to inform your guests of the fact, should the opportunity present itself.’

Breton made a face. ‘Talking of money at a Christmas house party is just not done. They will not like it if they get wind of your scheme, Joe.’

‘That is why you will do it subtly—as you always do, Bob. They will hardly know what has happened. You may apologise to them for my lack of manners and let them plunder my cellars to the last bottle. Talk behind your hand about me, if you wish. Dance the pretty girls around the parlour while I am left to their fathers. They will think me common at the start. But by the time I leave I will have their cheques in my pocket. To one in business, Christmas must be a day like any other. If your friends wish to invest in this new venture they will see a substantial return to make their next Christmas a jolly one.’

The door opened, and the housekeeper, Mrs Davy, entered, with an apology for the interruption and a footman carrying a large armful of greenery. As he began swagging bows from the mantel, Joseph stood and quizzed the woman, ticking things off the list in his head as he was satisfied that they had been taken care of.

‘Everything must be in perfect order,’ he said firmly. ‘While nearly every mill owner in the district has had some problems with frame-breakers and followers of Ludd, it would reflect poorly on me if my guests see a lack of control over my own household. I cannot fault the cleaning you have done, for I would swear you’ve scrubbed the house with diamonds it sparkles so.’

The housekeeper bobbed her head in thanks, and showed a bit of a blush. But his praise was no less than the truth. Everywhere he went he could smell the beeswax that had been worked into the oak panelling ‘til it reflected the light from multitudes of candles and fires with a soft golden glow.

‘And the larder has been stocked as well, I trust?’

‘It was difficult,’ Mrs Davy said modestly. ‘There was little to be had in the shops.’

‘You sent to London, as I requested?’

She nodded.

‘There is no shortage of food in the city, nor shortage of people with money to buy it. My friends from the South will not understand the problems here, and nor do they wish to be enlightened of them. If they come all this way to visit me, I mean to see that their bellies are filled and their hearts light.’ He grinned in anticipation. ‘And their purses emptier at the end of the trip.’

The housekeeper’s smile was firm, if somewhat disapproving. ‘They shall eat like lords.’ She passed him the menus she had prepared. ‘If you will but select the meals, Mr Stratford.’

Given the bounty she presented, it was impossible to make a choice. He frowned. ‘There must be goose, of course, for those who favour it. But I would prefer roast beef—and lots of it. With pudding to sop up the gravy. Swedes, peas, sprouts.’ He pointed from one paper to the other. ‘Roasted potatoes. Chestnuts to roast be side the Yule Log. And plum pudding, Christmas cake, cheese …’

‘But which, sir?’ the housekeeper asked.

‘All of them, I should think. Enough so that no one will want, no matter what their preference. It is better to have too much than too little, is it not?’

‘If we have too much, sir, it will go to waste.’ From the way she pursed her lips he could tell that he was offending her to the bottom of her frugal Northern heart.

‘If it does, I can afford the loss. A show of economy in front of these investors will be seen as a lack of confidence. And that is something I will not be thought guilty of.’ He paced past her, down the great hall, watching the servants tidying, examining ceilings and frames with a critical eye and nodding with approval when he found not a speck of dust. ‘All is in order. And, as just demonstrated, you have seen to the greenery.’

‘There are still several rooms to be decorated,’ she admitted. ‘But some must be saved for the kissing boughs.’

‘Tear down some of the ivy on the south wall. There is still some green left in it, and the windows are choked to point that I can barely see without lighting candles at noon. With that, you should be able to deck the whole of the inside of the house. Clip the holly hedge as well. Trim it back and bring it in.’ He gave a vague sweep of his hand. ‘Have them search the woods for mistletoe. I want it all. Every last bit of the house smelling of fir and fresh air. Guests will begin to arrive tomorrow, and we must be all in readiness for them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

From behind him, Breton laughed. ‘You are quite the taskmaster, Stratford. Lord help the workers in your mill if this is the way you behave towards them.’

‘I mean to master you as well, Bob. I will expect you to get up from your chair to help lead the games.’

Breton looked stricken at the prospect. ‘Me, Stratford?’

‘Of course. They are your friends. You will know what it takes to entertain them.’

‘I don’t think it is my place.’ The man was almost physically backing away from the task. ‘You are the host, after all.’

‘I am that in name only,’ Joseph insisted. ‘I can manage to pay the piper, of course. But in God’s name, man, do not expect me to dance to the tune. There has been little time for that in my life, and I never got the knack of it. I fear I am much better with machines than with people.’

‘But I …’ Breton shook his head. ‘I am not the best person to stand at the head of the set for you.’

‘At best, all they want from me is a hearty meal and a full punchbowl. At worst, they are coming to gawk at what a common mess I am likely to make of a grand old house. They would do without me if they could. For I am—’ he made a pious face ‘—in trade. Too humble by half for the people who have invested in me. But the money draws them like flies. Everyone wants their little bit of sugar, Bob. We will provide it for them. Though they sneer into their cups as they drink my wine, they will not be too proud to swallow it.’

‘But must I be a part of it? If they do not want you, then surely …?’

‘You are one of them,’ Joe said firmly. ‘I will never be. I am lucky to have won over Clairemont, and will have his daughter to dance with, of course. If she means to accept my suit then she had best get used to being seen with me. The rest of the ladies I leave to you.’

‘And what am I to do with them?’ For all his town bronze, Bob could be obtuse when he wished to be.

‘Smile at them. Flatter them. Keep their glasses filled. You could do worse than following my example and taking a wife, you know. Oaksley has three daughters, from what I understand. Perhaps one of them will do for you.’

There was also the daughter of that firebrand in the village. She had not been invited to the festivities. It would show a considerable lack of wisdom to have that man and his family here, to undermine his success. But she would be a fine match for Bob. She was both pretty and intelligent, and a gentleman’s daughter as well. She was more respectable than he himself would have aspired to be just a few short years ago. Miss Lampett would be perfect for his friend in every way. Although now that the opportunity presented itself to suggest a meeting, Joseph found himself strangely unwilling to voice his thoughts.

‘I have no intention of marrying,’ Bob said firmly. ‘Not now. Not ever.’

‘Then take advantage of some more earthly plea sures,’ Joseph said, oddly relieved. ‘There will be enough of that as well, I am sure. I’ve heard that Lindhurst’s wife rarely finds her own room after a night of revels. I hope I do not have to explain the rest for you. Avail yourself of my hospitality as well. Eat, drink and be merry.’

For tomorrow we die.

Joseph shuddered. He was sure he had not finished the quote. But he’d heard the words so clearly in his head that he’d have sworn they’d been intoned aloud, and in a voice that was not his.

‘Stratford?’ Bob was staring at him as though worried.

‘Nothing. A funny turn, that’s all.’ He smiled in reassurance for, though he liked the idea of socialising with strangers no better than Bob, he could not let his nerve fail him. ‘As I was saying. I expect you here and making merry for the whole of the week. I mean to keep my nose to the grindstone, of course. But we have made a success of this venture, and you should be allowed to take some pleasure in it. There is more to come in the New Year. Now is the time to play.’

CHAPTER THREE

THAT evening, as ever, Joseph’s trip to his own bedroom was a little disquieting. Much as he knew that he owned the house, he did not really feel it suited him. It was beautiful, of course. But at night, when the servants had settled in their quarters and it was mostly him alone, he walked the wide corridors to reassure himself that it existed outside of his boyhood fantasies of success.

The place was too large, too strange and too old. It would not do to let anyone—not even Breton—know how ill at ease he was, or that this late-night walk was a continual reminder of how far from his birth and true station he had come.

It was not as if a pile of stones could come to life and cast him out. It was his, from cellar to attic. He had paid for it and had got a good price. But when it was dark and quiet, like this, Clairemont Manor felt—for want of a better word—haunted. Not that he believed in such things. In an age of machines there was hardly room for spirits. Clinging to childish notions and common superstition bespoke a lack of confidence that he would not allow himself.

With a wife and children in it, the house would fill with life and he would have no time for foolish fancies. But since the wife he was in the process of acquiring rightly belonged here, it sometimes felt as though he was trying to appease them rather than banish them. Setting Anne Clairemont at the foot of the table would restore the balance that had been lost. It had been her father’s house, whether he’d been able to afford to keep it or not. Returning a member of the family to the estate, even if it was a female, might pacify some of the ill feelings he had created in the area. It fell in nicely with his plans for the business. There was nothing superstitious about it.

It was a pity the girl was so pale and lifeless. Had he the freedom to choose a woman to suit himself, it would certainly not be her. He’d have sought someone with a bit more spirit, not some brainless thing willing to auction herself to the highest bidder just to please her father.

He’d have wanted—

He stopped in his tracks, smiling to himself at the memory. He’d have wanted one more like the girl he’d seen in the crowd today. Fearless, that one was. Just like her father, that barmy Bernard Lampett who led the rebellion against him. What was the girl’s name? Barbara, he thought, making a note to enquire and be sure. She did not seem totally in sympathy with her father, from the way she’d tried to drag him away. But neither did she support Joseph, having made it quite clear that she disapproved of him. Barbara Lampett knew her own mind, that was certain. And she had no fear of showing the world what she thought of it.

But it wasn’t her sharp tongue that fascinated him. She was shorter than Anne, curved where Anne was straight, and pink where his prospective fiancée was pale. When he’d been close to her, he’d seen a few freckles on her turned-up nose, and handfuls of brown curls trying to escape from her plain bonnet.

But it was her eyes that had drawn him in. Her gaze had been cool and direct, like blue ice, cutting into him in a way that simple anger could not. She judged him. It made him doubt himself. For could any cause be wholly in the right if it might result in harm to such a lovely thing as a Barbara Lampett, tramping her casually into the dirt? While he was sure he bore a greater share of the right than the men who stood against him, the truth of what might have happened to her, had he not intervened, weighed heavy on his conscience.

And so tonight he walked the halls more slowly than usual, thinking dark thoughts and counting the many rooms as though they were rosary beads. If the servants had noticed this ritual, they were too polite or well trained to comment. But he found himself taking the same path each night before retiring, as though he were touring someone else’s great house and marvelling at their wealth. Reception room the first, library, breakfast room, dining room, private salon, stairs, reception room the second, card room, music room, ballroom. And then a climb to the second floor: red bedroom, blue bedroom, master bedroom … There was a third floor as well, and servants’ rooms, larders, kitchens and possibly some small and useful places he had not bothered to investigate.

It was a sharp contrast to his childhood. When it had been but one room they’d lived in there had been no reason to count. As his father’s business had grown, so had the rooms. A three-room flat. A five-room cottage. A house. They had risen from poverty in the days long before the war, when trade was unobstructed and money easier. But the successes had been small, and the work hard and unpleasant. He had hated it.

He had broken from it, rebuilt the work in his own image. And now he lived in the grandest house in the county—and was not happy here either. Perhaps that was his curse: to hurry through life reaching for the next great thing, whether it be invention or business. Each time he succeeded he would be sure that this time he had gained enough to please himself. Then the success would pale and he would seek more.

The thought left him chilled, and he felt the unease that seemed to stalk him through these halls. He remembered again the eyes of Barbara Lampett, who could see through him to his clockwork heart. It made him want to grab her and prove that his blood flowed just as hot as other men’s, and perhaps a little warmer for the sight of her. If the girl were the daughter of any other man in the village he’d have at least attempted a flirtation. But she was too young and too much of a lady to understand the discreet dalliance he had in mind. Even if she was of a more liberal nature it would not do to have her thinking that sharing her charms might lead him to show mercy on her father.

While he might consider offering a bijou, or some other bit of shiny to a pretty girl, something about Barbara Lampett’s freckled nose and the sweet stubbornness of her jaw convinced him that she was likely to bargain for the one thing that he was not willing to share: clemency for the man who plotted his undoing.

He shook his head, rejecting the notion of her as the long-case clock in the hall struck twelve and he opened the door to his room. To be sure he would not weaken, it was best to leave all thoughts of her here in the corridor, far away from his cold and empty bed.

‘Boy.’

Joseph started at the sound of a voice where there should have been nothing but the crackle of the fire and perhaps the sounds of his valet laying out a nightshirt. The opulence of the room, the richness of its hangings and upholstery, always seemed to mute even the most raucous sound.

But the current voice cut through the tranquillity and grated on the nerves. The familiar Yorkshire accent managed to both soothe and annoy. The volume of it was so loud that it echoed in the space and pressed against him—like a hand on his shoulder that could at any moment change from a caress to a shove.

He looked for the only possible if extremely unlikely source, and found it at the end of the bed. For there stood a man he’d thought of frequently but had not seen for seven years. Not since the man’s death.

‘Hello, Father.’ It was foolish to speak to a figment of his imagination, but the figure in the corner of his bedroom seemed so real that it felt rude not to address it.

It must be his distracted mind playing this trick. Death had not changed his da in the least. Joseph had assumed that going on to his divine reward would have softened him in some way. But it appeared that the afterlife was as difficult as life had been. Jacob Stratford was just as grim and sullen as he’d been when he walked the earth.

‘What brings you back? As if I have to ask myself … It was that second glass of brandy, on top of the hubbub at the mill.’ When he’d rescued the Lampett girl he’d been literally rubbing shoulders with the same sort of man as the one who had raised him. The brutal commonality of them had attached itself to his person like dust, sticking in his mind and appearing now, as he neared sleep.

‘That’s what you think, is it?’ The ghost gave a disapproving grunt. ‘I see you have not changed a bit from the time you were a boy.’ Then he ladled his speech thick with the burr that Joseph had heard when he was in the midst of the crowd around his mill. ‘Th’art daft as a brush, though th’ live like a lord.’

‘And I will say worse of you,’ Joseph replied, careful to let none of his old accent creep back into his speech. No matter what his father might say of him, he had changed for the better and he would not go back. ‘You are a stubborn, ignorant dictator. Two drinks is hardly a sign of debauchery. And I live in a great house because I can afford to. It is not as if I am become some noble who has a line of unpaid credit with the vintner. I pay cash.’ He’d been told by Bob that the habit was horribly unfashionable, and a sign of his base birth, but he could not seem to break himself of it. It felt good to lie down knowing that, though he might need investors for the business, he had no personal debts.

Although why his rest was now uneasy he could not tell. The bad dream staring him down from the end of the bed must be a sign that all was not right in his world.

His father snorted in disgust. ‘No matter what I tried to teach, you’ve proved that buying and selling is all you learned. You know nothing of art, of craft or the men behind the work.’

‘If the men behind the work are anything like you, then I think I’ve had enough of a lesson, thank you. You may go as well.’ He made an effort to wake and cast off the dream. To be having this conversation at all was proof that he was sleeping. To rouse from slumber would divest the vision of the last of its power.

His father gave a tug on his spectral forelock. ‘Well, then, Your Lordship, I am put in my place. I hope by now you know that you don’t fit with the posh sort that you suck up to. You are as much of a dog to be kicked from their path as I am to you.’

‘Probably true,’ Joseph admitted. There was no point in lying about that, even to himself. Though the gentry might be forced to mix with those in trade, there was nothing to make them enjoy it. ‘But if I am a dog, then I am a young pup with many years ahead of me. Their time is ending, just as yours did. In the day that is coming men of vision will be rewarded.’

‘At the expense of others,’ his father replied.

‘Others can seize this opportunity and profit as well, if they wish to,’ Joe snapped back. ‘It is not my responsibility to see to the welfare of every man on the planet. They had best look out for themselves.’

‘That is no better than I expected from you,’ his father replied. ‘And not good enough. Believe me, boy, I can see from this side of the veil that it is not nearly enough. It is no pleasant thing to die with regrets, to have unfinished business when your life is spent and to know that you have failed in the one thing you should have profited at: the care of another human life.’

The statement made the speaker uncomfortably real. It was most unlike anything in Joseph’s own mind. It sounded almost like an apology. And never would he have put those words in his father’s mouth—no matter how much he might have wished to hear them. If things went as planned Joseph would be a father soon enough. It would not take much effort on his part to do a better job of it than his father had done with him.

‘You would know better than I on that, I am sure. As of this time, I have no one under my care. I answer only to myself, and I am happy with that.’ Surreptitiously he made a fist and dug his nails into his palm, pinching the skin to let the pain start him awake.

‘Boy, you are wrong.’

‘So you always told me, Father. Although why I should dream of your voice now, I do not know. I have only to wake up and look around me to prove that I am doing quite well for myself.’ Although, thinking on it, he could not seem to recall having fallen asleep in the first place. But it was the only explanation for this. He was not in the habit of conversing with ghosts.

He was sound asleep in this bed and having a dream. No. He was having a nightmare. If he could not manage to wake, he must try to go to a deep, untroubled rest where his father would not follow. To encourage the change he sat upon the edge of the bed and began to undress himself. While it seemed strange to do so during a dream, he could think of no other way to set things right.

As he leaned forwards to pull off his boots his father stepped closer and brought with him the smell of the grave—damp earth, a faint whiff of decomposition and the chill of a cold and lifeless thing made even colder by the season. ‘Do not think to ignore me. You do so at your peril.’

‘Do I, now?’ Joseph could not help it and stole a glance up at the spirit—if that was what it was. And he wondered when he had ever had a dream this real. He could smell and feel, as well as hear and see. He had to struggle to keep himself from reaching out to touch the shroud that the man in front of him carried like a mantle draped over his bony arm. He stared at the ghost, willing it to disappear. ‘I ignored you in life as best I could. Because of it I gave you enough money to die in comfort, instead of bent over a loom. But that was years ago. Go back to where you have been and leave me in peace.’

‘You do not have peace, if you would be honest and see the truth. Just as it always was when you were a boy, you are careless. You have not attended to both the warp and the weft. The tension is uneven. You have done much, and done it quickly with your fancy machines. But your work is without shape.’

Joseph glared into the hollow eyes before him, too angry at the slight to stay silent. ‘I bore enough of that needless criticism from you when you lived—trying to teach me to weave when it was clear I had no skill for it. The last piece of work you will ever see me make on an old-fashioned loom was the shroud I buried you in. I wove it on your old machine with my own hands. I made it out of wool in respect for custom and your trade. If you have come to me to complain of the quality, then go back to your grave without it. As for my current life—there is no basis for this criticism. I can measure my success by my surroundings. This Christmas I will have a house full to the brim with guests and a table creaking with bounty. I have a new mill. When it opens I will be able to afford to fill the warehouse with goods, ready to ship when the sanctions are lifted.’

The ghost shook his head, as though all the achievement was nothing, and waved the shroud before him. ‘Shapeless. Tear it out. Tear it out before it is too late. Your grain is off, boy.’

Joseph finished with his undressing and pulled a nightshirt over his head. Then he lay down on the bed with his arms stiff at his sides, fighting to keep from stuffing his fingers in his ears. He could hear the old man’s death rattle of a breath, along with the same repeated criticisms that had tortured him all through his failed apprenticeship.

Then he thought of the girl who had been clinging to Bernard Lampett’s arm in front of the mill. Her difficulties with her father had raised these memories in him. He felt a sympathy with her. And, for all his convictions that there could be no mercy shown, he would not rest easy until he had found a peaceful solution.

He looked at the shade of his father again, half hoping that it had evaporated now that he’d found the probable cause. But it was still there, as stern and disapproving as ever he had been. ‘If you are my own guilty conscience, the least you could have done,’ Joseph said, ‘was come to me in the form of Barbara Lampett. And I’d be much more likely to listen if you told me plainly what you wanted.’

The ghost looked at him as though he was both stupid and a disappointment. It was a familiar look. ‘It will not go well for you if you persist in talking nonsense. I came here hoping to spare you what is soon to come. My time is wasted, for you are as stubborn as you were right up ‘til the day I died.’

‘You? Spare me?’ Joseph laughed. ‘When did you ever wish to spare me anything? It was I who saved myself, and none other. I used my own brain and my own hands to make sure that I did not live as you did. And I succeeded at it.’

The ghost looked troubled, but only briefly. ‘My goal is not to make you into myself. I was a hard man in life. A good craftsman, but a poor father.’

‘Thank you for admitting the fact now that it is years too late,’ Joseph snapped, annoyed that his mind would choose his precious free hours to remind him of things he preferred to forget.

‘I bear the punishment of my errors even now. But my goal was to make you something more.’ The ghost pointed with a pale, long-fingered hand that in life had been nimble with a shuttle. ‘Here you are—proof that my job was not done. You are less than you should be. You are certainly less than you must be. That is why you must tear out what you have done. Tear out the work and start again, while you are able. It is not too late to go back. Find the mistake and fix it. Start again, before tomorrow night, or face another visitor.’

‘I have no intention of destroying the work of a lifetime to please some niggling voice in my own mind that will be gone in the morning.’ He pulled up the coverlet and waved a hand. ‘Now, go, sir. Come again as some more interesting dream. You do not frighten me, though I will be glad to see you gone. Bring the girl instead.’

He smiled at the thought. If he could choose a bedtime fantasy, she was better than most. Then he pulled the sheet over his head and rolled away from the figure, trying to ignore the strange green glow that seemed to seep through his closed eyelids. What sort of dream remained even after one ceased to look at it?

One that could still speak, apparently. His father’s voice came from just above him, unbothered by his ignoring of it. It was louder now, and Joseph had his first moment’s fright, thinking if he pulled the blankets away he might find himself inches away from a corpse—close enough to choke on the smell of rotting flesh and see the waxy vacancy of a dead man’s eyes.

‘Very well, then. It is as was feared. You will not listen to me. Be warned, boy. If you have a brain, you will heed before Christmas Eve. From here, I can see what is coming, and I would not wish that—even on you.’

‘Thank you so much, Father, for such a cold comfort.’ Joseph snuggled down into the pillow.

‘There will be three before Christmas. Look for the first when the clock chimes one tomorrow. If you have any sense you will heed them, before it is too late.’

Joseph laughed into the bedclothes. ‘You mean to ruin my sleep between here and Christmas, I suppose? And destroy every last pleasure I take in this holiday. Only you would be trying to visit me with dire predictions on this of all weeks. Come back after Twelfth Night and perhaps I shall care.’

‘Sir?’

Joseph opened his eyes.

The voice was not that of his father but of his valet, who sounded rather worried. ‘Were you speaking to me, Mr Stratford? For I did not quite catch …’

When he pulled back the covers the candles were still lit and there was no sign of the eldritch glow he had been trying to shut out, nor the figure that had cast it. ‘No, Hobson. It was only a dream. I was talking in my sleep, I think.’ It must have been that. He had come back to his room and dozed, spinning a wild fancy without even bothering to blow out the light.

His valet was standing in a litter of clothes, looking around him with disapproval. ‘If you were tired, you had but to ring and I would have come immediately to assist you.’ Hobson picked the jacquard waistcoat from off the floor, smoothing the wrinkles from it and hanging it in the wardrobe.

‘I was not tired,’ Joseph insisted. Although he must have been. Why had he been dreaming? Though he could remember each piece of clothing as he’d dropped it on the floor, he could not seem to manage to remember falling asleep at any point—dressed or otherwise.

‘Then might I bring you a warm drink before bed? A brandy? A posset? In keeping with the season, Cook has mulled some wine.’

‘No, thank you. No spirits before bed, I think.’ At least not like the one he’d had already.

There will be three.

He looked to the valet. ‘Did you say something just now?’

‘I offered wine …’ The man was looking at him as though he was drunk.

‘Because I thought I heard …’ Of course he was sure that he had not heard Hobson speak. It had been his father’s voice for certain, come back to repeat his warning. Although, looking around the room, he could see no sign of a spectre. ‘Did you hear a voice?’

The valet was looking behind him, about the empty room. Then he looked back at his master, struggling to keep the worry from his face. ‘No, sir. Just the two of us conversing.’

Joseph gave a laugh to mask the awkward moment. ‘I must be more tired than I thought. Pay me no mind. And no wine tonight, please. A few hours’ untroubled rest is all I need.’

But if there were to be another evening such as this one he doubted that serenity would be a quality it possessed.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE little corner of the Lampett kitchen set aside as a still room, Barbara inhaled deeply and sighed. After the ruckus of yesterday it was comforting to be home again, immersed in the sights and scents and sounds of Christmas preparation. There were mince pies cooling on a shelf beside the pudding bowl, and the makings for a good bowl of punch set aside against any guests they might have between now and Twelfth Night. Before her she’d arranged what fragrant ingredients she could find—dried rose petals and lavender, cloves, the saved rinds of the year’s oranges and handfuls of pine needles to refill pomanders and refresh sachets in recently tidied closets and drawers.

She glanced down at her apron, pleased to see that there were few marks on it to reveal the labours of the day. Everything spoke of order, cleanliness and control. She smiled. All was as it should be, and as she liked it.

Suddenly the back door burst open and her mother rushed into the room, dropping the empty market basket and looking hurriedly around her.

Barbara stood, fearing the worst. ‘What has happened?’

‘Your father? Is he here with you?’

‘No. He was in the parlour, reading his paper. I’ve heard nothing unusual.’ Barbara rushed to the kitchen door, opening it and staring into the empty front room.

‘On the way to the village I passed Mrs Betts. She had seen him heading towards the mill. He was carrying the axe.’

Barbara stripped off her apron, pushing past her mother to grab a shawl and bonnet from pegs by the door. ‘I will go. You stay here. Do not worry. Whatever he is up to, I will put a stop to it before any real damage is done.’

There could be little question as to what he meant to do if he had taken a tool of destruction. The papers were full of reports from other villages of the frame-breakers—followers of Ned Ludd got out of hand—destroying machinery. And of mill owners dead in their beds or at their factories by violence. While there was much that annoyed her about Mr Stratford, he hardly deserved death.

It might go hard for her family if her father was left unchecked. He could well lose his freedom over this—or his life. She thought of the pistol in Stratford’s hand the previous day. His first shot had been fired into the air. If he felt himself sufficiently threatened he might aim lower, and her father would be the one to suffer for it.

She ran down the path from the Lampett cottage, forgoing the road and heading cross-country over the patch of moor that separated the mill from the village. She splashed through the shallow stream, feeling the icy water seeping into her shoes and chilling her feet near to freezing, making her stumble as she came up the bank. The thorns in the thicket tore at her skirts and her hem was muddy, the dress practically ruined.

It was a risky journey. But if she wished to catch her father before he did harm she must trust that the ground was solid enough that she would not be sucked down into the peat before she reached her destination. Even the smallest delay might cost her dearly.

When she reached the front gate to Stratford’s mill she found it chained and locked. She wondered if Mr Stratford had left it thus, or if her father had gone through and then locked it behind him, the better to do his mischief in privacy. For a moment she imagined Joseph Stratford, working unawares in the office as an assailant crept stealthily up behind him, axe raised …

She threw herself at the wrought-iron bars, crying out a warning, shaking them and feeling no movement under her hands. And then she was climbing, using the crossbars and the masonry of the wall to help her up. Mr Stratford had made it look simple when he had climbed to face the crowd. But he had not done so in a sodden dress and petticoats. She struggled under the weight of them, stumbling as she reached the top. What she’d hoped would be a leap to the ground on the inside was more of a stagger and a fall, and she felt something in her ankle twist and give as she landed.

It slowed her, but she did not stop, limping the last of the way to the wide back entrance. She passed through the open dock, where the vans and carts would bring materials and take away the finished goods, through the high-ceilinged storeroom waiting to hold the finished bolts of cloth. She passed the boiler room and the office and counting house, which were quiet and empty, and continued on to the floor of the factory proper, with its row upon row of orderly machinery, still new and smelling of green wood and machine oil.

From the far side of the big room she heard voices. Her father’s was raised in threat. Mr Stratford’s firm baritone answered him. The two men stood facing each other by the wreckage of a loom. Her father’s axe was raised, and the look in his eyes was wild.

Stratford must have been disturbed in working with the machinery. He was coatless, the collar of his shirt open and its sleeves rolled up and out of the way, with a leather apron tied around his waist and smudged with grease. In one hand he held a hammer. Though his arm was lowered, Barbara could see the tensed muscles that told her he would use it in defence when her father rushed him.

‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘What are you doing, Father? I have come to take you home for dinner.’

‘Go home yourself, gel, for you do not need to see what is like to occur.’ Father’s voice was coarse, half-mad and dismissive. There was nothing left of the soft, rather pedantic tone she knew and loved.

‘Your father is right, Miss Lampett. It is unnecessary for you to remain. Let we gentlemen work this out between us.’ Stratford sounded calm and reassuring, though the smile he shot in her direction was tight with worry. His eyes never left the man in front of him. ‘You will see your father directly.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ she answered. ‘In jail or at his funeral. That is how this is likely to end if I allow it to continue.’ She hobbled forwards and stepped between them. And between axe and hammer as well, trusting that neither was so angry as to try and strike around her.

‘Miss Lampett,’ Stratford said sharply. ‘What have you done to yourself? Observe, sir, she is limping. Assist me and we will help her to a chair.’ He sounded sincerely worried. But she detected another note in his voice as well, as though he was seizing on a welcome distraction.

‘My Lord, Barbara, he is right. What have you done to yourself now?’

Her father dropped his axe immediately, forgetting his plans, and came to take her arm. Sometimes these violent spells passed as quickly as they came. This one had faded the moment he had recognised her injury.

Stratford had her other elbow, but she noticed the handle of his hammer protruding from an apron pocket, still close by should he need a weapon.

‘I fell when climbing down from the gate. I am sure it is nothing serious.’ Though the pain was not bad, and she could easily have managed for herself, she exaggerated the limp and let the two men work together to bear her forwards towards a chair.

‘The front gate?’ Stratford said in surprise. ‘That is nearly eight feet tall.’

Her father laughed, as though lost in a happier time. ‘My Barb always was a spirited one as a youngster. Constantly climbing into trees and taking the short way back to the ground. It is a good thing that the Lampett heads are hard, or we’d have lost her by now. Sit down, Barbara, and let me have a look at your foot.’

She took the seat they had pressed her to, and her father knelt at her feet and pulled off her muddy boot, probing gently at the foot to search for breaks.

She sat patiently and watched as Stratford’s expression changed from concern to interest at the sight of her stocking-clad leg. Then he hurriedly looked away, embarrassed that he’d been caught staring. He gave her a rueful smile and a half-shrug, as if to say he could hardly be blamed for looking at something so attractive, and then offered a benign, ‘I hope it is nothing serious.’

‘A mild sprain, nothing more,’ her father assured him.

For a change, his tone was as placid as it had ever been. He was the simple schoolmaster, the kind father she remembered and still knew, but a man the world rarely saw. She wanted to shout into the face of the mill owner to make him notice the change.

This is who he is. This is who we all are. We are not your enemies. We need you, just as you need us. If only you were to listen you might know us. You might like us.

‘Would it help for her to sit with her foot on a cushion for a bit?’ Mr Stratford responded as he was addressed, behaving as though she had twisted an ankle during a picnic, and not while haring to her father’s rescue. ‘My carriage is waiting at the back gate, just around the corner of the building.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ she said. This had hardly begun as a social call, though both men now seemed ready to treat it as such. While she doubted her father capable of guile, she did not know if this new and gentler Stratford was the truth. What proof did she have that they were not being led into a trap so that he could call the authorities? Even if he did not, at any time her father might recollect who had made the offer and turn again to the wild man she had found a few moments ago.

‘A ride would be most welcome,’ her father said, loud enough to drown out her objections. His axe still lay, forgotten, on the floor behind them. For now he was willing to accept the hospitality of a man he’d been angry enough to threaten only a moment ago.

‘Then, with your permission, Mr Lampett, and with apologies to you, miss, for the liberty …’ Joseph Stratford pulled off his apron, tossed it aside, then reached around her and lifted her easily off the stool and into his arms.

While it was a relief to see how easily he’d managed her father, it was rather annoying to see how easily he could manage her as well. He was carrying her through the factory as though she weighed nothing. And she was allowing him to do it—without protest. The worst of it was, she rather liked the sensation. She could feel far too much of his body through the fabric of his shirt, and her face was close enough to his bare skin to smell the blending of soap and sweat and cologne that was unique to him. Such overt masculinity should have repelled her. Instead she found herself wishing she could press her face into the hollow of his throat. At least she might lay her head against his shoulder, feigning a swoon.

That would be utter nonsense. She was not the sort to swoon under any circumstances, and she would not play at it now. Though she did allow herself to slip an arm around his neck under the guise of steadying herself. His arms were wrapped tightly, protectively, around her already, and such extra support was not really necessary. But it gave her the opportunity to feel more of him, and to bring her body even closer to his as he moved.

‘It seems I am always to be rescuing you, Miss Lampett,’ he said into her ear, so quietly that her father could not overhear.

‘You needn’t have bothered,’ she whispered back. ‘I am shamming.’

‘As you were when the crowd knocked you down yesterday?’

Then he spoke louder, and directly to her father. ‘If you would precede us, sir? I do not wish to risk upsetting the lady with too rough a gait. Tell the coachman of our difficulties. Perhaps he can find an extra cushion and a lap robe so that Miss Lampett will be comfortable on the journey.’

‘Very good.’

As her father hurried ahead, Stratford stopped to kick the axe he had been wielding into a darkened corner. ‘Though you may not want my help, I think it is quite necessary today, for the safety of all concerned, that we play this to the very hilt.’ He started again towards the carriage at a stately pace, stopping only long enough at the door to lean against it and push it shut behind him. ‘Do you really wish to protest good health and risk your father remembering and using his weapon?’

She shifted a little in his grasp, feeling quite ridiculous to be treated as some sort of porcelain doll. ‘Of course not. But I do not wish you to make a habit of swooping in to care for me when I am quite capable of seeing to my own needs.’

‘Your independence is duly noted and admired,’ he said. Then he dipped his head a little, so he could catch her scent. ‘Though I find your infirmity has advantages as well.’

She slapped hard at his arm. ‘You are incorrigible.’

‘You are not the first to have told me so. And here we are.’ He said the last louder, for the benefit of her father, to signal that their intimate conversation was at an end.

She frowned. Stratford could easily have ridden the distance between the manor and here, or perhaps even walked. To bring a full equipage and servants to wait after him while he worked was just the sort of excess she had come to expect from him—and just the sort of thing that was angering the locals. Or it could mean that he had a sensible fear of being set upon, should he travel alone and vulnerable along a road that might be lined with enemies.

He set her down briefly, only to lift her again, up into the body of the carriage, settling her beside her father on a totally unnecessary mound of cushions, her injured ankle stretched out before her to rest on the seat at Stratford’s side.

The carriage was new, as was everything he owned, and practically shining with it. The upholstery was a deep burgundy leather, soft and well padded. There were heavy robes for her legs to keep out the cold, and a pan of coals to warm the foot that still rested on the floor. The other was tucked up securely, the stocking-clad toes dangerously close to the gentleman there. The foot was chilled, and she resisted the urge to press it against his leg to steal some warmth.

Stratford had noticed it. He stared down for a moment, and then, as unobtrusively as possible, he tossed the tail of his coat over it and shifted his weight to be nearer.

Barbara warmed instantly—from the contact with his body and the embarrassment accompanying it. It was a practical solution, of course. But she would be the talk of the town if anyone heard of it. And by the smug smile on his face Joseph Stratford knew it, and was enjoying her discomfiture.

Then he signalled the driver and they set off, with barely a sway to tell her of the moment. It was by far the richest and most comfortable trip she’d taken, and she had to struggle not to enjoy it. Her subdued pleasure turned to suspicion, for at another signal to the driver they proceeded through the unlocked gates down the road towards Clairemont Manor.

‘This is not the way to our home,’ she said, stating the obvious.

‘My house is nearer. You can both come for tea. I will send you home once I am assured that you are warmed and refreshed, and that no harm has come to you while on my property.’

‘That is most kind of you,’ her father said.

It was not at all kind. It was annoying. And she was sure that there must be some sort of ulterior motive to his sudden solicitousness.

But when she opened her mouth to say so, her father went on. ‘There are not many who are such good neighbours.

And are you new here, Mr …?’ He struggled for a name. ‘I am sorry. My memory is not what it once was.’

Barbara coloured, part relieved and part ashamed. She needn’t worry that her father was likely to turn violent again, for it was clear that he had lost the thread of things and forgotten all about Mr Stratford while concerned for her ankle. But what was she to do now? Should she remind him that his host was the same man who, according to her father’s own words, treated his workers ‘like chattel to be cast off in pursuit of Mammon’? Or should she continue to let him display his mental confusion in front of his enemy and become an object of scorn and pity?

Stratford seemed unbothered, and responded with the barest of pauses. ‘We have met only briefly, and I do not fault you for not recalling. I am Joseph Stratford, and I have taken residence of Clairemont Manor now that the family has relocated closer to the village.’

Her father gave a nod in response, still not associating the man across from them with the evil mill owner he despised.

‘Would you do me the honour of an introduction to your daughter, sir?’

As her father presented her to this supposed stranger with all necessary formality, she thought she detected a slight twitch at the corners of Stratford’s mouth. If he meant to make sport at the expense of her father’s failed memory she would find a way to pay him out. But, after the briefest lapse, he was straight-faced and respectful again, enquiring after her father’s work and commiserating with him on the closing of the little school where he had taught, and his recent difficulties in finding another occupation.

Mr Stratford had changed much since the last time she’d seen him brandishing a pistol and taunting the crowd. Though she could not say she liked him, she’d felt an illogical thrill at the power of him then, and the masterful way he had come to her aid. Now she was left with time to admire him as he conversed with her father, displaying intelligence and a thoughtful nature that had not been in evidence before. She found herself wishing that things could be different from the way they were and that this might be their first meeting. If she could look on him with fresh eyes, knowing none of his behaviour in the recent past, it might be possible to trust him. But she could not help thinking that this display of good manners was as false as her sprained ankle.

He had let the groom help him on with his coat again before they had taken off, and she could see that it was the height of London fashion, tailored to perfection and designed to give a gentlemanly outline to the work-broadened shoulders she had felt as he carried her. He was clean-shaven. But his hair was a trifle too long, as though he could not be bothered to spare the few extra minutes that the cutting of it would take. A lock of it fell into his eyes as he nodded at something her father had said, and he brushed it out of his face with an impatient flick of his hand. Though she could not call them graceful, his movements were precise. She could imagine that these were hands better at tending machinery than creating art, more efficient than gentle.

He made conversation with her father in an accent carefully smoothed to remind the listener of London, though she doubted that his tongue had been born to it. He spoke nothing of himself or his own past. But in the questions that drew her father to conversation Barbara heard the occasional lilt or drawl that was the true Joseph Stratford. He was a Northerner. But for some reason he did not like to show it.

She looked away before he could catch her staring. Even if he was nothing more than a tradesman masquerading as gentry, he deserved more courtesy than she was giving him. They were drawing up the long drive towards the great house where she had played as a child. That was before Mary had died, of course, and before her sister Anne had grown into such a great and unapproachable lady. Had the manor changed as well? she wondered. Were the places she’d hidden under chairs and behind statues the same or different? Although she wished the circumstances had been different, she very much wanted to see the place—just once more.

She could feel the eyes of the other man on her, watching her reaction to the house. So she worked to relax her posture and not stare so, or appear eager for a visit to it. It was little better than staring directly at him to admire his property as though she coveted or desired the luxury he took for granted.

‘I had a friend who lived here once,’ she blurted, to explain her interest.

‘And perhaps you will again,’ he replied easily.

She looked up sharply into a face that was all bland innocence. The carriage pulled up before the great front entry, and as it stopped he signalled for the door to be opened, allowing her father to exit first so that he might help her on the steps.

For a moment they were alone again, and he touched her hand and smiled. ‘There is no reason for us to be enemies,’ he said.

‘Nor any particular reason for friendship,’ she reminded him, drawing her hand away.

‘I think it is too soon for either of us to tell,’ he announced, ignoring her animosity.

The process of entering the house was much the same as their setting off from the mill had been, with him carrying her while she protested, her shoeless foot waving in the air. There was a flurry of alarm amongst the servants, many of whom recognised her and her father.

‘Put me down now,’ she insisted. ‘Talk of this will reach the village. It will be the ruin of me.’

‘If it is, your father is right here to set them straight.’ He was smiling again, as though he knew how likely it was that her father would have no real memory of the event, for good or ill.

‘I would prefer that no explanation be needed,’ she said.

‘And I would prefer that people think me less of an ogre,’ Stratford replied. ‘I will not have you limping about my house while I offer no assistance. Then it will get round that I let you suffer as a punishment to your father.’

For her own sake, and to preserve her reputation, he explained in a loud voice for the benefit of the staff that Miss Lampett had fallen, and he did not wish to risk further injury until she had rested her foot. But as he did so his hands tightened on her body, to prove to Barbara that he was enjoying the experience at her expense.

‘You may put me down, and I will take my chances,’ she said, glancing at a parlour maid who stood, wide-eyed, taking in the sight. ‘I feel quite all right now.’

He pretended that he had not heard, and called for tea to be brought to the library, carrying her down the wide hall and depositing her on a couch by the fire.

How had Mr Stratford known, she wondered, the calming effect that the presence of books had on her father? Though he seemed to have more difficulty with people since the accident, the printed word still gave him great comfort. The Clairemont Manor library was the largest in the area and the best possible place to cement her father’s recovery.

As the servants prepared tea, her father stood and ran a hand along the rows of leather-bound volumes. Stratford studied the behaviour and then invited him to help himself to whatever he liked, lamenting that business gave him little time to enjoy the books there.

Her father gave a grateful nod and fell quickly to silence, ignoring the cup that had been poured for him, and the plate of sandwiches, in favour of the Roman history in his hand.

Stratford gave her a wry smile. ‘While your father is preoccupied, would you enjoy a brief walk down the corridor? If your ankle is better, as you claim, a spot of exercise will assure me that it is safe to send you home.’

She wanted to snap that she did not need him seeing to her safety. She had not wanted to come here at all. And now that she was here she would go home when she was ready, and not at his bidding. But it would be shaming to discuss her father’s rude behaviour while she shared a room with him, so it was best that she allow herself to be drawn away.

‘That would be lovely,’ she lied.

He went to fetch her boot and helped her with the lacing of it, commenting that the lack of swelling was an encouraging sign. Behind a placid smile, she gritted her teeth against the contact of his fingers against her foot and ankle. He was very gentle, as though he cared enough not to cause injury to a weakened joint. But she suspected the occasional fleeting touches she felt against her stocking were not the least bit accidental. He was touching her for his own pleasure. Much as she did not wish to, she found it wickedly exciting.

Then he rose and went ahead to open the door for her, standing respectfully to the side so that she might pass. She forced herself to stifle the unquiet feeling that it gave her to have him at her back—even for a moment.

It was possible that this latest offer masked something much darker. Perhaps he had designs upon her virtue. For, this close, she could not deny the virile air that he seemed to carry about with him, and the sense that he had a man’s needs and would not scruple to act upon them. She gave a small shudder, barely enough to be noticeable.

‘Is the house too cold for you?’ he prompted. ‘If so, I could have a servant build up the fire, or perhaps bring you a wrap …’

‘No, I am fine. I suspect that I took a slight chill on the moors.’

‘Your clothing is still damp from the fall. And I took you away from the tea I had promised.’ He frowned. ‘But I wished to speak alone with you for a moment, so that you might know I bear you no ill will because of recent events.’ He rubbed his brow, as though tired. ‘One can hardly be held responsible for the actions of one’s parent. I myself have a troublesome father.’

He stopped.

‘Had,’ he corrected. ‘I had a difficult father. He is dead now. For a moment I had quite forgotten.’

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she said politely. ‘I assume the passing is a recent one, if you still forget it?’

He looked away, as though embarrassed. ‘Almost seven years, actually. It is just that he has been on my mind of late. He was a weaver, you see.’

‘You are the son of a weaver?’ she said.

‘Is that so surprising?’ There was a cant to his head, a jutting of the chin as though he were ready to respond to a challenge. ‘With all your father’s fine talk of supporting the workers, I did not think to find you snobbish, Miss Lampett.’

‘I am not snobbish,’ she retorted. ‘It merely surprises me that my father would need to tell a weaver’s son the damage automation does to the livelihoods of the men here.’

‘What you call damage, Miss Lampett, I call freedom. The ability to do more work in less time means the workers do not need to toil from first light to last. Perhaps they will have time for education, and those books your father finds so precious.’

‘The workers who are put from their places by these machines will have more time as well. And no money. Time is no blessing when there is no food on the table.’

He snorted. ‘The reason they are without work this Christmas has nothing to do with me. Was it not they and their like who burned the last mill to the ground and ran off the mill owner and his family? Now they complain that they have no source of income.’

‘When men are desperate enough, they resort to desperate actions,’ she said. ‘The owner, Mr Mackay, was a harsh man who cared little for those he employed, taking them on and casting them off like chattel. It is little wonder that their spirits broke.’

‘And I am sure that it did not help to have your father raising the rabble and inciting them to mischief.’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.

‘That is a lie,’ she snapped. ‘He had nothing to do with that argument. He did not support either side, and worked to moderate the cruelty of the one with the need of the other.’

Stratford scoffed. ‘He saves his rage for me, then, who has not been here long enough to prove myself cruel or kind?’

‘He was not always as you see him,’ she argued. ‘A recent accident has addled his wits. Until that night he was the mildest of gentlemen, much as you see him now. But of late, when he takes an idea into his head, he can become quite agitated.’ When he recalled the scene she had come upon at the mill, just a short time ago, he must know that ‘agitated’ was an understatement. ‘Mother and I do not know what to do about it.’

‘You had best do something,’ Stratford said. ‘He appears to be getting worse and not better. If you had not come along today …’ He paused. ‘Your arrival prevented anyone from coming to harm, at least for now.’

From his tone, it did not seem that he feared for his own life. ‘Are you threatening my father, Mr Stratford?’

‘Not without cause, I assure you. He is a violent man. If necessary I will call in the law to stop him. That would be a shame if it is as you say—that the rage in him is a thing which he cannot control. But you must see that the results are likely to be all the same whether they proceed from malice, madness or politics.’

‘Just what do you propose we do? Lock him up?’

‘If necessary,’ Stratford said, with no real feeling. ‘At least that will prevent me from having him transported.’

‘You would do that, wouldn’t you?’ With his understanding behaviour, and his offers of tea and books, she had allowed herself to believe—just for a moment—that he was capable of understanding. And that if she confided in him he might use his ingenuity to come up with a solution to her family’s problems. But he was proving to be just as hard as she’d thought him when she’d seen him taunting the mob of weavers. ‘You have no heart at all to make such threats at Christmas.’

Joseph Stratford shrugged. ‘I fail to see what the date on the calendar has to do with it. The mill will open in January, whether your father likes it or not. But there is much work I must do, and plans that must be secured between then and now. I will not allow him to ruin the schemes already in progress with his wild accusations and threats of violence. Is that understood, Miss Lampett?’

‘You do not wish our coarseness and our poverty to offend the fancy guests you are inviting from London,’ she said with scorn. Everyone in the village had heard the rumours of strangers coming to the manor for the holiday, and would be speculating about their feasting and dancing while eating their meagre dinners in Fiddleton. ‘And you have the nerve to request that I chain my father in our cottage like a mad dog, so that he will not trouble you and your friends with the discomfort of your workers?’ She was sounding like her father at the beginning of some rabble-rousing rant. And she was foolish enough to be doing it while alone with a man who solved his problems with a loaded pistol.

‘There was a time when I was little better than they are now,’ he snapped.

‘Then you must have forgotten it, to let the people suffer so.’

‘Forgotten?’ He stepped closer, his eyes hard and angry. ‘There is nothing romantic about the life of a labourer. Only a woman who has known no real work would struggle so hard to preserve the rights of others to die young from overwork.’ He reached out suddenly and seized her hands, turning them over to rub his fingers over the palms. ‘As I thought. Soft and smooth. A lady’s hands.’

‘There is no shame in being a lady,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could manage. She did not try to pull away. He could easily manage to hold her if he wanted to. And if he did not respond to her struggle the slight fear she felt at the nearness of him would turn into panic.

His fingers closed on hers, and his eyes seemed to go dark. ‘But neither is there any pride in being poor. It is nice, is it not, to go to a soft bed with a full belly? To have hands as smooth as silk?’ His thumbs were stroking her, and the little roughness of them seemed to remind her just how soft she was. There was something both soothing and exciting about the feel of his fingers moving against hers, the way they twined, untwined and twined again.

‘That does not mean that we should not feel sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves.’ He was standing a little too close to be proper, and her protest sounded breathless and excited.

‘Less fortunate, eh? Less in some ways, more in others. Without the machines they are fighting I would be no different than they are now—scrabbling to make a living instead of holding the hands of a beautiful lady in my own great house.’

It was not his house at all. He had taken it—just as he had taken her hands. ‘I did not give you leave to do so,’ she reminded him.

‘You gave me no leave to carry you before either,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to, and so I did. You felt very good in my arms.’ He pulled her even closer, until her skirts were brushing against the legs of his trousers. She did not move, even though he had freed her hands. ‘It is fortunate for me that you are prone to pity a poor working man. Perhaps you will share some of that sweet sympathy with me.’ He ran a finger down her cheek, as though to measure its softness.

She stood very still indeed, not wishing him to see how near she was to trembling. If she cried out it would draw the house down upon them and bring this meeting to a sudden end. But her words had failed her, and she could manage no clever quip that would make him think her sophisticated. Nor could she raise a maidenly insistence that he revolted her. He did not. His touch was gentle, and it made her forget all that had come before.

He seemed to forget as well, for his voice was softer, deeper and slower. ‘Your father broke one of my looms today. But it will be replaced, and I will say nothing of how the destruction happened.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, wetting her lips.

‘If you wish to make a proper apology, I would like something more.’ His head dipped forwards, slowly, and his lips were nearing hers.

Although she knew what was about to happen she stayed still and closed her eyes. His lips were touching hers, moving lightly over them. It was as it had been when he had touched her ankle and held her hands. She could feel everything in the world in that single light touch. Her whole body felt warm and alive. Hairs rose on her arms and neck—not from the chill but as though they were eager to be soothed back to smoothness by roving hands.

She kissed him back, moving her lips on his as he had on hers. His mouth was rough, and imperfect. One corner of his smile was slightly higher than the other, and she touched it with the tip of her tongue, felt the dimple beside it deepen in surprise.

In response, he gave a playful lick against her upper lip, daring her. Her body’s response was an immediate tightening, and she pressed herself against him, opening her mouth. And what had been wonderful became amazing.

He encircled her, and his arms made a warm, safe place for their exploration—just as they had when he’d carried her. The slow stroking of hands and tongue seemed to open her to more sensations, and the tingling of her body assured her of the rightness of it, the perfection and the bliss. Although she knew all the places on her body that he must not touch, she was eager to feel his fingers there, and perhaps his tongue.

Just the idea made her tremble with eagerness, with embarrassment, and the knowledge that had seemed quite innocent was near to blazing out of control. And it was not only his doing. Even now she had taken his tongue into her mouth, and it was she who held it captive there, closing her lips upon it.

She could tell by his sigh of pleasure that he enjoyed what she’d done. But his only other response was to go still against her. His passivity coaxed her to experiment, raking his tongue with her teeth and circling it with her own, urging him to react.

He had trapped her into being the aggressor. At the realisation, she pulled away suddenly. He let her go, staring down at her in mock surprise, touching his own lips gingerly, as though they might be hot enough to burn his fingers.

‘Stop that immediately,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘You have stopped it quickly enough for both of us. And now I suppose you wish me to apologise for the way you kissed me?’

‘Only if you wish me to think you any sort of gentleman,’ she said, feeling ridiculous.

‘But I am not a gentleman,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Isn’t that half the problem between us? I sit here, a trumped-up worker, in a house that should belong to my betters, had they not lost it through monetary foolishness. My presence in this house upsets the natural order of things. My touching you …’

‘That is not the problem at all,’ she snapped. ‘I do not care who you are.’

‘If you do not care who I am, it was highly indiscriminate of you to allow me the kiss. And even worse that you returned it.’

‘You are twisting my words,’ she said. ‘I meant that it should not have happened at all. Not with any man. But especially not with you.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said with an ironic laugh. ‘I might be the best choice for such dalliance. If you complain to your father, I would be obligated to do right by you. Then my house and my fortune would be yours. You might trap me with your considerable charms and force me to marry you.’

‘But to do that I would have to admit to Father that you had touched me, Mr Stratford. I think we can safely say that such a circumstance will never happen. Not for all the money in the world, and Clairemont Manor thrown into the mix. Now, please return me to the library.’

He smiled in triumph, as though that had been his end all along. ‘Very well, then. Let us go back to your father, and both of you can be gone. I trust that now we have spoken on the subject I will see no more of you, or be forced to endure any more of your father’s tirades? For, while I can see that there is more than a little madness to them, they cannot be allowed to continue. If arms are raised against me and the opening of the mill disrupted, or my equipment damaged further, I will be forced to take action. While I am sure that neither of us wants it, you must see that I do not intend to be displaced now that I am so near to success.’

He turned and led her back towards the library. As he opened the door he made idle comments about the furnishings and art, as though they had just returned from a tour of his home. It was all the more galling to know that some of the things he said were inaccurate, proving that he knew little more about the things he owned than how to pay for them. He really was no better than he had said: a man ignorant in all but one thing. He had made a fine profit by it. But what did that matter if it had left him coarse and cruel?

As they entered, her father looked up as though he had forgotten how he had come to be there. ‘I think it is time that we were going, Father,’ she said firmly. ‘We have abused Mr Stratford’s hospitality for quite long enough.’

Her father looked with longing at the book in his hands.

Joseph Stratford responded without missing a beat. ‘I hate to take you from your reading, sir. Please accept the volume as my gift to you. You are welcome to come here whenever you like and avail yourself of these works. It pleases me greatly to see them in the hands of one who enjoys them.’

Because you have no use for them, you illiterate lout, she thought. She responded with a smile that was almost too bright, ‘How thoughtful of you, Mr Stratford.’

Her father agreed. ‘Books are a precious commodity in the area, and it is rare that we get anything new from London that is not a newspaper or a fashion plate.’ He wrinkled his nose at the inadequacy of such fare to a man of letters.

Stratford nodded in sympathy. ‘Then we will see what can be done to correct the deficiency. If there is anything you desire from my library, send word. I will have it delivered to you. And now it appears that your daughter is properly recovered. If I may offer you a ride back to the village?’

Her father stood, and the men chatted as they walked to the door as though they were old friends. In a scant hour Bernard Lampett had quite recovered from his fit of rage, and Mr Stratford was behaving as though the incidents in the mill and in the hall had not occurred. If he remembered them at all, he appeared untouched by them.

But in the space of that same hour Barbara felt irrevocably changed, and less sure of herself than she had ever been.

CHAPTER FIVE

LATER that evening the guests began to arrive, and Joseph was relieved to have no time to think of Barbara Lampett. Even when he should have focused his energy elsewhere, he could feel the memory of her and her sweet lips always in the background. It had been madness to take her out into the hall. He had known that he could not fully trust himself around her. When they were alone he should have limited himself to urging her to moderate her father’s actions. But he’d had the foolish urge to show her his house, so that she might see the extent of his success. There might even have been some notion of catching her under a kissing bough and stealing one small and quite harmless kiss. He had been eager to impress her, and had behaved in a way that was both foolish and immature.

All of it had got tangled together in an argument, ending with a brief and heated display of shared emotion. It had been as pleasant as it had inappropriate. While such little indiscretions happened all the time, ladies like Barbara Lampett did not like to think themselves capable of them. She would not wish to be reminded, nor to risk a repeat display. He would not see her again.

And that was that.

He turned his attention to more important matters. After the rejections in today’s post, it appeared that his house would be barely half-full for Christmas. There had been several frosty refusals to the offer of a trumped-up tradesman’s hospitality. But it would not matter. Even one or two would be plenty—if they were rich enough and could be interested in his plans.

As promised, he let Bob take the lead in introductions and in the planning of activities, doing his best to respond in a way that was not rough or gauche. His casual offer that tomorrow’s skating on the millpond might end with cakes and punch served in the empty warehouse was accepted graciously—once the ladies were assured that it was quite clean and that no actual work was being done. While they were there he would arrange a tour of the tidy rows of machinery. Breton would make mention of the successes they’d shared with the production and sale of such looms to others. The seed would be planted.

Before they returned to London one or two of the men would come to Bob, as they always did after such gatherings, making offhand remarks about risk and reward. A discreet parlay would be arranged in which no money would change hands. There would be merely a vague promise of it, for such people did not carry chequebooks with them. They carried cards and wrote letters of introduction to bankers, who stayed in the background where they belonged. But if they offered, they would deliver. Honour was involved. A true gentleman’s word was as good as a banknote.

He frowned as the last of his guests took themselves off to bed, leaving him free for a few hours of rest. He was tired tonight, after last night’s uneasy rest. Dinner had tired him as well. It was like speaking another language, dealing with the gentry and their need to seem idle even while doing business. So much easier to deal with the likes of mad Lampett. Though he was of a changeable nature, he would at least speak what was left of his mind.

For plain speaking, Lampett’s lovely daughter was better than ten of the milk-and-water misses he was likely to see this week. Even Anne Clairemont, whose family had put in a brief appearance this evening, had looked puzzled by the conversation, and nervous at the prospect of a little skating on a properly frozen pond. He would not have faulted her if she had politely excused herself from it. But she had looked from her father to him, blinked twice and then forced a smile and declared it a wonderful notion.

Miss Lampett, in a similar situation, would have likely announced to the assembly that the whole trip was a thinly disguised attempt at business and refused to take any part in it. For some reason the imagined scene did not bother him. He could just as easily imagine drawing her out in the hall to remonstrate with her, only to have the conversation degenerate into another heated kiss.

When his valet had left him for the night he settled back into the pillows and pulled the blankets up to his chin, closing his eyes and thinking of that kiss. He really shouldn’t have taken it. It had been improper and unfair of him to take advantage of her innocence. But he would do it again if he had the chance. That and more …

He awoke hungry. It made no sense. The clock was only striking one, and dinner had been a feast, stretching late into the evening. He had partaken of it with enthusiasm. But it was gone from him now, leaving his guts empty and gnawing on themselves in the darkness.

He had not known want like this since he’d become master of his own life. This was the kind of nagging hunger he’d felt as a child, going to bed with an empty belly and knowing that there would be nothing to fill it again tomorrow. It was a kind of bleak want that existed in the body like an arm or a leg: something that one carried with one from moment to moment, place to place, always there and impossible to cast off.

But it was easily rectified now. He had but to sit up in bed and ring for a footman. He would explain the need and have it filled. It would mean getting some poor maid out of her bed to do for him. But what was the point of having servants if one could not make unreasonable demands upon them?

When he opened his eyes, the room was strange. Not his own bedroom at all, but a different, emptier room, filled with a strange, directionless golden haze.

From the corner of the room there was a sigh.

Joseph sat bolt upright now, searching for the source of the sound. And with it he found the origin of the glow. A man sat in the corner—a Cavalier, in a long well-curled wig and heavy-skirted coat. The light seemed to rise from the gold braid upon it, diffusing into a corona around him.

This man was a stranger, and yet strangely familiar. He looked around the room and sighed again. He glanced across at Joseph and gave a pitying shake of his head. ‘When I was summoned here, I must admit I expected better. These are not the surroundings to which I am accustomed. But I suppose if there is no problem, then there is no need …’ The Cavalier gave another heavy sigh.

‘Just what do you mean by that?’ snapped Joseph, rubbing his eyes. ‘I grew up in a room not unlike this one, and …’

As a matter of fact he’d grown up in a room exactly like this one. Its appearance was softened somewhat, by the glow of the phantom and by his own fading memories, but it was the same room. It was where he’d felt the hunger that plagued him now, which was still as sharp and real as ever it had been.

‘I belong at the manor and have been sent to fetch you back to it,’ the man said bluntly. ‘Although even that is no treat. For I must tell you the place under your governance is not as nice as it once was.’

‘Now, see here,’ Joseph said, sitting up in his bed only to realise that it was not the thing he’d lain down on but a narrow bunk, with a rush mattress and thin blankets that could not keep the cold from his feet. ‘You need not take me back, for I did not go anywhere. I am still there, fast asleep and dreaming.’ This time he gave himself a hard pinch on the back of the hand, not caring if the spirit before him saw it.

‘I was told that this had been explained to you. Three visitors would come. We would show you your errors. You would learn or not learn, as was your nature …’ He droned in an uninterested way that said he did not care what Joseph learned, so long as he did it quickly and with as little bother as possible.

Joseph glared at the spirit, annoyed that it was still before him. ‘I was told by my father. Who is dead and therefore should not be telling me anything. While he said there would be three, he did not say three of what. If there was any truth in it he might as well have said four, thus counting himself.’

‘Do not think you can reason like a Jesuit to get yourself out of a situation that you yourself have created.’ The Cavalier sighed again, and flicked a lace handkerchief in front of his nose as though offended by the stench of such humble surroundings. ‘Be silent and I will explain. And then we might be done with this vision and go back to the house.’

‘But you are not real,’ Joseph argued. It was most annoying to be lectured at by one’s own imagination. And then he placed the identity of the thing sitting before him. ‘You are Sir Cedric Clairemont, and nothing more than a portrait hanging in the gallery on the second floor. This room is the place where I was born. I am blending memories in a dream.’

Sir Cedric gave a resigned glare in his direction, and sighed again as though facing a difficult child. ‘Let me put this plainly, so that you might understand it. I would say I am as real as you, but that would lack truth. I was real. Now I am a spirit, as is your father. As are the two that will come after. By the end of it you will know where you were, where you are and what you will become.’

‘I know all these things for myself, without your help. I will not be frightened into a change of plans by some notion created out of a second helping of trifle after a roast pork dinner.’

‘Touch me,’ commanded the spirit.

He did look almost real enough to touch, and just the same as he did in his portrait. But from what memory had Joseph created the man’s voice, which was a slightly nasal tenor? Or his mannerisms as he swaggered forwards with his stick and looked down at Joseph with amused superiority? This man was not some ghost from a painting, but so real that he felt he could reach out and …

Joseph drew his hand back quickly, suddenly aware of the gesture he’d been making—which had looked almost like supplication.

The ghost stared at him with impatience. Then he brought the swagger stick down upon Joseph’s head with a thud.

‘Ow!’

‘Is that real enough for you, Stratford? Or must I hit you again? Now, get out of the bed and take my hand—or I will give you a thumping you will remember in the morning.’

The idea was ludicrous. It was one thing to have a vivid dream. Quite another for that nightmare to fetch you a knock to the nob then demand that you get out of bed and walk into it.

‘Certainly not.’ Joseph rubbed at the spot where he’d been struck. ‘Raise that stick to me again and, dream or not, I will answer you blow for blow.’

Sir Cedric smiled ironically. ‘Very well, then. If you wish to remain here I can show you images of your childhood. Although why you would wish to see them, I am unsure. They are most unpleasant.’

As though a candle had been lit, a corner of the room brightened and Joseph felt increasing dread. It was the corner that had held the loom.

‘Tighten the warp.’ He heard the slap and felt the impact of it on the side of his head, even though it had landed some many years before on the ear of the young boy who sat there.

‘S … sorry, Father.’ The young Joseph fumbled with the shuttle.

The man who stood over him could barely contain his impatience. ‘Sorry will not do when there is an order as big as this one. I cannot work the night through to finish it. You must do your share. Sloppy work that must be unravelled again the next day is no help at all. It is worse than useless. Not only must I do my own part, I must stand over you and see to it that you do yours. You are worse than useless.’

‘I was too small,’ Joseph retorted, springing from the bed and flexing his muscles with a longing to strike back. ‘My arms were too short to do the job. All the bullying in the world would have made no difference.’

‘He cannot hear you,’ the ghost said calmly. ‘For the moment you live in my world, as much a spectre to him as he is to you.’

‘It was Christmas. And it was not fair,’ Joseph said, trying to keep the childish petulance from his voice.

‘Life seldom is.’

‘I made it fair,’ Joseph argued. ‘My new loom is wider, but so simple that a child can manage it.’ The weavers of Fiddleton and all the other places that employed a Stratford loom would not be beating their children at Christmas over unfinished work.

But the ghost at his side said nothing, as though Joseph had done no kindness with the improvement. He held out his hand again. ‘Do you need further reminders of your past?’

Without thinking, Joseph shook his head. The past was clear enough in his own mind without them. It had been hard and hungry and he was glad to be rid of it. ‘I made my father eat his words before the end,’ Joseph said coldly. ‘He died in warmth and comfort, in a bed I bought for him, and not slaving in someone else’s mill.’

‘Take my hand and come away.’ Sir Cedric sounded almost sympathetic, his voice softer, gently prodding Joseph to action.

Joseph turned his back on the vision and reached for the arm of the spectre, laying his hand beside the ghostly white one on the stick he held. The fingers were unearthly cold, and smooth as marble, but very definitely real to him in a way that the man and boy in the corner were not. ‘Very well, then. Whatever you are, take me back to the manor and my own bed.’

There was a feeling of rushing, and of fog upon his face, the sound of the howling winds upon the moors. Then he was back in his own home, walking down the main corridor towards the receiving rooms in bare feet and a nightshirt.

‘What the devil?’ He yanked upon Sir Cedric’s arm, trying to turn him towards the stairs. ‘I said my bedroom, you lunatic. If my guests see me wandering the house in my nightclothes, they will think I’ve gone mad. All my plans will be undone.’

If this was a ghost that escorted him, the least it could do was to be insubstantial. But Sir Cedric was as cold and immovable as stone. Now that they were joined Joseph could not seem to pull his hand away. He was being forced to follow into the busiest part of the house, which was brightly lit and brimming with activity, though it had been empty when he’d retired.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Stratford. Did I not tell you that I am a spirit of the past, and that you might pass unseen through it?’ The ghost sniffed the air. ‘This is the Christmas of 1800, if I have led us right. It is the same night when we saw you clouted on the ear. Well past my time, but the holiday is much as I remember it from my own days as lord here, and celebrated as it has always been. The doors are open to the people of Fiddleton. Tenants and villagers, noble friends and neighbours mix here to the joy of all.’

The ghost gave a single tap of his stick and the ballroom doors before them opened wide. The same golden glow Joseph had seen before spilled through them and out into the hall, as if to welcome them in.

This is how it should be.

The thought caught him almost off guard, as though the sight of this long-past Christmas was the missing piece in a puzzle. The rooms were the same, the smells of Christmas food very nearly so. But it was the people that made the difference.

Even in mirth, his current guests were polite and guarded. The men considering business looked at him as though calculating gain and loss. Anne’s family treated him with an awkward combination of deference and contempt. A few others avoided him, acting as though the wrong kind of mirth on their part would admit that they did not mind his company and would result in some life-changing social disaster.

But the very air was different in this place. It was not simply the quaint fashion of the clothes or the courtliness of the dancing. There was a look in their eyes: a confidence in the future, a joyful twinkle. As though there was no question that the future would be as happy as the past had been. But they were not bending, more than ten years on, under the weight of a never-ending war, or the feeling that their very livelihood might slip from their fingers because of the decisions made by men of power and wealth. They were dancing, singing and drinking together, unabashed. The spirit was infectious, and Joseph could not help but smile in response to the sight.

There was a pause in the music and he heard the laughter of young girls—saw a pair, still in the schoolroom, winding about the furniture in a game of tag.

‘Do you not wish they would stop?’ the ghost prodded gently. ‘It is most tiresome, is it not? All the noise and the bustle?’

‘No. It is wonderful.’ For all the quiet dignity of the party he was throwing, there was something lost. It lacked the life of this odd gathering so bent on merriment. He could see village folk amongst them—the grocer, the miller and younger versions of the same weavers who had threatened only yesterday to break the frames in his factory. But now they danced with the rest, as though they were a part of the household.

He cast a questioning glance at the ghost.

‘It is the annual Tenants’ Ball,’ Sir Cedric supplied. ‘Held each Christmas night—until the last owner could no longer keep the spirit of the season or afford the house.’

‘Perhaps if he had been a wiser steward of his money and not spent it on frivolities such as this he would still reside here.’ But his own conscience told him that was an unfair charge. The celebration he was throwing was far more elaborate than this, and not a tenth as happy.

‘He seems successful enough there, doesn’t he?’ Sir Cedric raised his stick and pointed towards the corner, where stood Anne’s father, Mr Clairemont, looking happier and less careworn than he had done since Joseph had known him. And there was Mrs Clairemont, who showed a change even more drastic. Eleven years ago she had been a gracefully aging beauty. Now she was grey, pinched and nervous.

‘Whatever the reason, the Clairemonts are gone from here and none of your concern. I hear the house is held by a harsher master now.’ The ghost gave him a look one part disappointment and one part disapproval, followed by another heavy sigh.

‘I am harsh because I did not invite the whole village for Christmas dinner?’ Joseph waved a hand at the assembly. ‘How was I expected to know of this? It is not as if I was born of this area. The cottage we began the night in was miles from here. Clairemont said nothing of this responsibility when he sold me the house.’

‘And you are so tragically robbed of speech that you could not enquire.’ The ghost nodded in mock sympathy.

Now the lord of the manor was offering baskets to the families that had come, shaking hands and slapping backs as though every last man was an old friend. If the Clairemonts were still in the house, it must mean that the woman he now meant to marry was somewhere in the throng—and no older than the girls at play. He searched for the pair he had seen and dismissed earlier, but there were so many children, and they seemed to swarm out of doorways and hiding places, tearing down the halls, heedless of the other guests.

Then he spied Anne. Even now he could not quite manage to think of her as ‘his’ Anne. The unfamiliarity of her youth made it no easier. This little girl was as unlike her in manner as she was like in face. In childhood there had been none of the sombre grace that the woman carried now. She was a mischievous imp who did not care that her hair ribbons had come untied so long as she was not caught by the one who followed.

And the other, following close on her heels, was just alike. A twin? Or very nearly so? For the girls were very similar in looks. If they were not birthed together, then no more than a year could have separated them.

‘Mary! Anne! Wait for me.’ A third girl appeared, as though out of nowhere, seemingly forgotten as the game of hide-and-seek went on without her. When he turned to the sound of her voice he saw a hanging on the wall that had concealed her still rustling back into place.

Focused as she was on the two who had passed, she did not see him until it was too late, striking his legs with a surprisingly solid thump. ‘Excuse me, sir.’

As he reached out a hand to steady her, her little face turned up to his. Barbara Lampett. It must be her. For there was the same turned-up nose. And those were her blue eyes, as bright and searching as a beacon, with the curiosity of unvarnished youth. No one had told her not to stare, or taught her to cloak the energy of her spirit in courtesies and false manners.

He felt the same connection he had at the riot, and again in this very hall. But this was different. Tonight she knew nothing about him. She’d had no chance to form an opinion, no reason to think him anything less than a gentleman. She had no cause to dislike him. She was smiling at him with those same pursed lips that had shown such disapproval this afternoon.

The thought staggered him. Seeing her here, as she had been, he very much wished that he might have met the girl full-grown tonight, and had even the smallest opportunity to let the woman she had become see him as anything else than an enemy.

He steadied her, and stepped out of her way. ‘No harm done, Miss Lampett. Go and find your friends.’

But the other girls had come back for her, grabbing her hands and pulling her away, paying no heed to him.

‘Barbara, what are you waiting for? Come.’

Then she was gone from him, with one passing look and a tip of her head, as though she could not quite make out his purpose in standing in the hall, staring.

‘Who is the man in the nightshirt?’ she said to the nearest girl, looking back at him again.

‘What man?’ Her friends looked back, through him.

‘I … Never mind.’ Barbara smiled and looked away again, as though the memory of him was already fading.

‘She saw me?’ he said in wonder, looking down at his own hand as though he could still feel the muslin of her gown under his fingers.

‘It seems so,’ said the ghost, barely interested. ‘There are those who see the world around them plainly, and those who don’t. Miss Lampett is more perceptive than most.’

Joseph thought again of her ill opinion of him. That was hardly a sign of keen perception. Her animosity seemed to be shared by most of the community.

‘And some others can learn to see properly if they are shown,’ the ghost added.

‘You are speaking of me, I suppose?’ Joseph answered.

‘You do seem to be most singularly blind to your surroundings.’

‘I see it more as an ability to avoid distractions and to focus on the future.’

‘Really?’ It was more a question than a statement. ‘The future is not my purview. There is another …’ The ghost stopped for a moment and gave a slight shudder. ‘You will see soon enough how clear a view of the future you hold. But for now I bring you to the past so that you might learn from it. Do not forget it, my boy.’

‘Stratford! What the devil? Joseph, get up immediately. What are you about, sleeping in a common hallway?’

Joseph started awake, focusing in confusion for a moment on a man’s legs, before looking up into the worried face of Breton. ‘Hallway?’ he echoed in puzzlement, struggling to remember the details of the previous evening. It had begun normally enough. But now …

He looked around him. He was slumped on the floor in the hall, in front of the ballroom, still clad in his nightclothes. He stood up quickly, glancing around to make sure they were alone. ‘Did anyone …?’

‘See you? Dear God, I hope not. I am sure we will hear of it if they have. But you must consider yourself fortunate that I am an early riser and can help you out of this fix. What happened?’

‘I am not sure. I must have roamed in my sleep. I had a very vivid dream.’ And vivid it must have been. He could see the bruise on his hand where he had pinched himself. And feel a small knot on his skull where he had been rapped by the Cavalier’s beribboned walking stick.

‘Well, you look like the very devil. Grey as a paving stone and just as cold.’

Joseph turned behind him to the curtain that hung on the wall and swept it aside, to reveal a small alcove with a stone bench just large enough to hide a pair of lovers. Or a girl playing at hide-and-seek.

‘I did not know of this before now,’ he said numbly to his friend. ‘But I dreamed it was here.’

Breton was staring at him as though he were as barmy as Bernard Lampett. ‘If you wish to search the house for priests’ holes, it might be best to continue when fully dressed.’

‘Perhaps so.’ He frowned. ‘But I am surprised I had not noticed this before.’

His friend took him by the arm, tugging him towards the back stairs. ‘That is little shock to me. It has nothing to do with the running of the mill. That is all you seem to care about lately.’

‘Unfair,’ Joseph charged. ‘I care about many things. It is not as if I am made of clockwork, you know.’ Who had told him he was?

They mounted the steps and Breton hurried him towards his room, his valet and his clothing. ‘Sometimes I wonder. But, if you have them, tell me of these other interests. I defy you to name one.’

Now that he was pressed, Joseph could not seem to think of any. Unless he could count Lampett’s fractious daughter as an interest. If the spirit of Sir Cedric had taught him anything, it was of his desire to see another of the smiles she had worn as a child.

In response to his silence Bob gave a snort of disgust. When he spoke, the amusement in his voice had been replaced with sincere annoyance. ‘That was where you should have announced your excitement at your impending engagement. Have you forgotten that as well?’

‘Of course I have not forgotten.’ But he had responded too late to be believable.

‘I might just as well have included it as part of your business. It is little more than that to you, isn’t it?’

‘Little more to her as well,’ Joseph said, a little defensively. ‘Her father wishes her back living in this house. This is the most efficient way to accomplish it.’

Breton pushed him towards his room. ‘Once she is here, you will notice her as little as you do your own furnishings—or that hole in the wall you found so fascinating. And that is a pity. Anne is a lovely girl, and deserving of better.’

There was that prickling of his conscience again, and the echoing warning of his father to unravel his plans and start fresh. Perhaps that was what he’d meant. His other business plans were sensible enough. He hardly needed a wife to cement his place. But he could think of no honourable way to back out of the arrangement he had made with Clairemont.

‘There is nothing to be done about it now,’ Joseph said with exasperation. ‘We are as good as promised to each other. Everyone knows I mean to make the announcement on Christmas Eve. I cannot cry off, even if I might like to. The scandal to the girl would be greater than any that might befall me.’

‘Then the least you can do,’ Breton said more softly, ‘is to recognise that you have won a prize, and treat the girl as such. For if I find that you are neglecting her, or making her unhappy, I will be forced to act.’

Joseph looked at his friend as if for the first time. Bob, who had been ever loyal, friendly and trusting, was acting as strangely as though he had been receiving nightly revelations as well. He looked angry. It was disquieting.

‘Very well, then,’ Joseph answered, searching his friend’s expression for some understandable reason for this change. ‘I will take your words to heart. Although it will not be a love match, I will make sure that she does not suffer for my neglect.’

His friend sighed. ‘I suppose it is as much as I can expect from you. But see that you remember your words.’

And mine as well.

The echo of a voice from the portrait gallery caused him to start nervously.

His friend gave him another suspicious look. ‘Is there something wrong, Joe?’

‘Nothing,’ he said hurriedly. ‘You are right. I have been working too hard. I have not slept well for two nights. And I am neglecting Anne. Today I will change. I promise. But for now I must dress. I will see you in the breakfast room shortly.’ He backed hurriedly into his bedroom and shut the door before the conversation could grow any more awkward.

He would make a change—if only to avoid another night like the one he’d just had. Although, with the minimal direction his nightly ghosts had given him, God only knew what that change was supposed to be.

CHAPTER SIX

‘WILL that be all, Miss Lampett?’

Barbara checked carefully through the list she’d set for herself to finish the Christmas shopping. A matching skein of wool to complete the warm socks she was knitting for Father, and the new fashion plates that her mother would enjoy, along with enough lace to make her a collar. ‘I can think of nothing more.’

‘Do you want this sent round to the house, Miss Lampett?’ The girl behind the counter looked at her expectantly.

There was plenty of space left in her market basket on top of the groceries: three oranges, one for each of them, and a pound of wheat for her father’s favourite frumenty. The roast she’d got from the butcher sat in the bottom of the basket, wrapped tightly in brown paper so that it would not spoil the rest. The poor bit of meat was leaner than she’d wished for. But then so was the butcher. What with the war, and the general poverty of the area, Christmas itself would be sparse for many people, and she had best be grateful that her family had the money to purchase a feast.

Barbara counted the remaining coins in her purse, calculating the pennies needed to reward the boy at the end of his journey. ‘No, thank you. It is a fine day, and not far. I will carry this myself.’

The shop girl gave her a doubtful look and wrapped the package carefully, placing it on top of the others.

Barbara hefted the basket off the counter, feeling the weight shift. It was heavy now. In a mile it would be like lead on the end of her arm. Her muscles would ache with carrying it. But she smiled in gratitude, to show the girl that it was all right, and pulled it to her side, turning to go.

‘Allow me, Miss Lampett.’ Without warning, Joseph Stratford was there at her side, as suddenly as he had been two days past in front of the mill. He had a grip on the basket handle, and had pulled it from her without waiting for her to give him leave.

‘That will not be necessary,’ she said, trying not to sound breathless from the shock of the sudden contact. It was strange enough to see him in the village, shopping amongst the peasants in the middle of a work day. But it was doubly disconcerting to have him here, close to her again, after the intimacy of yesterday.

‘Perhaps you do not think it necessary,’ he agreed. ‘But I would not be able to stand aside and watch you struggle with it. You had best take my assistance, for both our sakes.’

‘I would prefer not.’

‘But I would not be able to sleep, knowing I had left a lady to carry such a burden.’ He smiled at her in a way that might have been charming had she not known so much of the source. ‘I can hardly sleep as it is.’

The charm faded for a moment, and she saw shadows under his eyes that had not been there two days ago. Maybe her father was weakening him, after all. She reminded herself that he deserved any suffering he felt, and gave him a false smile in return. ‘Heaven forefend that you are uneasy in your rest, sir.’ She reached again for the basket, but he pulled it just out of reach.

‘Come. You and your packages will have a ride home in my carriage.’

‘It is a short distance,’ she argued.

‘The weather is turning. Come with me, and you will stay warm and dry.’

‘My reputation …’

‘Will be unharmed,’ he finished, glancing at the people around him for confirmation. ‘I mean you no mischief. I will take you directly home. It is on my way.’ He looked around with a glare, cowing the shop girl and the other customers. ‘No one will cast aspersions if I attempt to do you good. They can see plain enough that you are resisting, but I am giving no quarter. Come along, Miss Lampett.’

Then he and her basket were ahead of her, out of the door and walking towards the large and entirely unnecessary carriage. She had no choice but to trail after.

As she passed, his groom jumped to attention, rushing to take the basket, get the stair down and hold the door as he helped her up. Across from her, Joseph Stratford leaned back into the seats as though he was ascending to a throne.

Then he smiled at her, satisfied. ‘There. As you can see, you are perfectly safe, and still in clear view of those in the street. I am all the way over here—properly out of reach of you. There will be no such incident as there was the last time we were alone together.’

‘I had no doubt of that, Mr Stratford. I would die first.’

He laughed at her for her primness. ‘You are a most ungrateful chit, Miss Lampett. One kiss did you no permanent harm. And, if you will remember the altercation outside the mill two days past, you must admit I have shown concern for your welfare. If I was as awful as you pretend, I would have let the mob trample you.’

‘You would not have.’ He’d moved with such speed to get to her side that she was sure it had been all but involuntary.

He looked surprised. ‘You give me credit for that much compassion, at least. Thank you for it.’

The silence that came after served to remind her just how unequal things had become, and just how unfair she was being to him—even if she did not particularly like the man. ‘I deserve no thanks, Mr Stratford. I owe them to you. At least for that day. I am perfectly aware that if you did not save my life, you at least spared me serious injury.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He seemed almost embarrassed that she had noticed the debt she owed.

‘But now you are giving me a ride, when I told you I did not wish one. After yesterday …’

‘Can you not accept this in the spirit with which it was given?’ he asked with a smile. ‘It is foul outside, but it appeared that you wished to forgo even the help of a delivery boy and struggle home by yourself. There was no reason for it.’

He looked at her sideways for a moment, and then out of the window, as though his next comment was of no consequence.

‘Perhaps I remember what it was like to count pennies as though they were pounds, and do without the smallest luxuries.’

He had guessed her reason for walking? ‘Then I also apologise for the comment I made in our last conversation, accusing you of being unsympathetic to those in need.’

He was frowning now, and hardly seemed to speak to her. ‘You were right in part, at least. I had meant, when that time passed, to remember it better. I pledged to myself that I would be of aid to those who were impoverished, as I had been while growing up. It seems I have forgotten.’

‘Do not think to make my family an object of pity to salve your stinging conscience,’ she snapped. ‘If you wish to offer charity, there are others that need more of it.’ Then she looked out of the window as well. She felt bad to have spoken thus, for it was very ungrateful of her. He seemed able to put her in the worst temper with the slightest comment. But then, he could arouse other emotions as well.

Her cheeks coloured as she thought again of the kiss. When she’d accepted this ride, had there been some small part of her that had hoped he would attempt to do it again? Was that what made her angry now? She was a fool if she thought that his offer had been anything other than common courtesy. She meant nothing to him. Nor did the kiss.

‘It is hardly charity to offer another person a ride on a cold and rainy day,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll wager you’d have accepted if the offer had come from Anne Clairemont or her mother.’

‘That would not have been likely,’ she said.

‘Why not? You were friends with the Clairemont girls as a child, were you not?’

She turned and looked at him sharply. ‘What gave you that idea?’

His gaze flicked away for a moment. ‘You mentioned it as we were driving towards the house yesterday.’

‘I said I’d had a friend there. But you said “girls” just now. I did not mention Mary.’

‘Perhaps Anne did,’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘Mary was her sister, then?’

The idea that Anne might have mentioned her seemed highly unlikely. Something about the calculated way he spoke made her suspect he fished for information and was piecing the truth together with each slip Barbara made. ‘Mary has been dead for quite some time,’ she said, praying that would be the end of the conversation.

‘What happened to her?’

‘There was nothing mysterious about her death. She took ill, faded and died. If you wish to know more you had best ask your fiancée, Miss Clairemont.’

‘I have not offered as of yet.’

‘But you will. The whole village knows that the festivities you have organised are meant to celebrate your engagement to her.’

‘Do they, now?’ His voice had dropped briefly, as though he was talking to himself. ‘I did not know that the world was sure of plans that I myself have not spoken.’

Were they not true? Anne seemed sure enough of them, as was her father. But Stratford’s response gave Barbara reason to fear for them. It would be most embarrassing should they have misunderstood this man’s intent so completely and allowed themselves to be used to further his business. ‘I am sorry. Perhaps I was mistaken.’

‘Perhaps you were.’ He was looking at her rather intently now, as though trying to divine her opinion on the subject.

She reminded herself that she had none. Perhaps she was a little relieved that he was not riding with her or kissing her while planning to marry Anne. She had no wish to hurt that family again by seeming too interested in Mr Stratford. Nor did she want to do anything that might encourage him to become interested in her if he was otherwise engaged.

But his eyes, when seen this close, were the stormy shade of grey that presaged a violent change in the weather. The slight stubble on his chin only emphasised the squareness of his jaw. Now that she had noticed it she found it hard to look away.

He broke the gaze. ‘Then again, perhaps you were not mistaken about my engagement. I have not yet made a decision regarding my future, or that of Miss Anne Clairemont.’

She looked down at her feet, embarrassed for having thought anything at all other than cursory gratitude that she was not walking in the rain. ‘Either way, it is rude of you to discuss it with me. And, I might add, it does not concern me whatever you do. You might marry whoever you like and it will not matter to me in the slightest.’

‘It is good to know that. Not that I planned to seek your approval.’ This was more playful than censorious, and delivered with a strangely seductive smile, as if to say it was in his power to make it matter, should he so choose. ‘But why do you say that the Clairemonts would not offer you a ride if you needed one? They seem like nice enough people, from what I know of them.’

Perhaps enough time had passed that they were better. Barbara was not sure of the mood in the Clairemont household. But she would rather cut her tongue out than ask Anne, for fear the answer she might receive would open old hurts afresh. She gave a firm smile. ‘It is an old family quarrel, and nothing of importance. I would not seek to bother them if I did not have to.’

‘But I would like to hear of it, all the same.’

‘You will not hear it from me,’ she said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. ‘You are new to Fiddleton, Mr Stratford, and might not know the ways of small villages. When one lives one’s life with the same people from birth, it sometimes happens that one makes a mistake that cannot be corrected and that will follow one almost to the grave.’

‘Are you speaking of the Clairemonts, then? What mistakes could you have made to render you less than perfect in the eyes of this village? From where I sit, I see a most charming young woman—and well mannered.’ He smiled. ‘Although not always so to me.’

‘You do not always deserve it, sir.’

‘True enough,’ he agreed. ‘But you are kind to others, modest, clearly devoted to your family. And beautiful as well.’

‘Though too old to be still unmarried,’ she finished for him, sure he must be thinking it. ‘The verdict has already been rendered as to my worth in that regard. I have learned to accept it.’

‘Then we are of a kind,’ he said. ‘Although I am the worse of the two of us. I have just got here, and I have made myself universally hated. But I do not let it bother me. I do not care a whit for the opinions of the locals. I am who I am, and they had best get used to it.’ He looked her up and down again. ‘If they think less of you, for some foolish reason or other, I cannot give their views much credence.’

Between the kiss they had shared and the look he gave her now, she suspected he had got quite the wrong idea about it all. He was hoping that there had been a man involved in her downfall. But their trip was almost over, and he had offered no further insult, so it was hardly worth correcting him. As long as they were not alone again he would give her no trouble.

But his disregard for his own reputation bothered her. ‘Perhaps you should care what people think. There are worse things than social ostracism, you know. Mill owners have been accosted in their own homes and on their ways to and from the factories they own.’

‘That is why I carry this,’ he said, patting the bulge in his pocket and reaching in to draw out the handle of a pistol.

‘Are you really going to use it?’

‘Do you doubt my bravery?’

‘I do not doubt your foolhardiness,’ she said. ‘It has but one bullet in it. If there is trouble, there will likely be a gang behind it.’

‘Then I will be forced to appeal to the garrison for aid, and it will not go well with them,’ he said, as though that settled the matter. ‘I do not seek violence, Miss Lampett. But if I feel myself threatened I will resort to it. You need have no doubt of that.’

She imagined the possible consequences with a sinking heart. ‘Since the violence you describe is likely to be turned against my father, I believe we have nothing more to say to each other. It is fortunate that we have arrived at my home.’

Stratford glanced out of the window. ‘So we have.’ He turned and tapped on the door to signal the driver. ‘Another turn around the high street, Benjamin. The lady and I are not finished with our discussion.’

‘And I have just said we are.’ She reached for the door handle, only to fall back into her seat as she felt the carriage turning. ‘This is most high-handed of you, Mr Stratford.’

‘But, knowing me as you do, you must expect nothing less of me, Miss Lampett.’ He smiled again, as though they were doing nothing more serious than dancing around a ballroom. ‘The subject we discuss is a serious one. I think I may have found an agreeable solution to several dilemmas at once. But it requires your cooperation, and the chance for us to speak privately for a little while longer—as we are doing now.’

Which explained the ride, she supposed. She should be relieved that he had not sought her out of any deeper desire for her company. But, strangely, she was not. ‘Very well, then. Speak.’

‘As you say, in a small village news travels fast. You say that you know of my plans for the Christmas holidays?’

‘You are entertaining guests from London. The only people of the village who will be in attendance are the Clairemonts. If it is not an engagement, then I suspect the gathering has something to do with the opening of the mill.’

‘Why would you think that?’ he asked, surprised.

‘Because you are the host of it. Having met you, Mr Stratford, it seems unlikely that the people coming are old friends.’

‘Ha!’ Rather than being angered by her insult, he seemed amused by it.

She continued. ‘Everything you do has to do with your business in some way or other. This Christmas party is like to be the same.’ Then she allowed her true feeling of distaste to show. ‘It is vulgar in the extreme to use the Lord’s birth as a time for doing business, if that is what you mean to do.’

‘Whether you have reached your conclusion from local gossip or shrewd deduction, you are correct, Miss Lampett. I am entertaining investors from London.’ He gave a slight frown. ‘Because, apparently, I think of nothing but business.’ He paused for a moment, as though he had forgotten what it was he meant to say. ‘I do not have quite so many guests as I had hoped. There were more negative replies in today’s post.’

‘Probably from gentlemen who understand the impropriety of it,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Or perhaps they do not wish to associate with one who is in trade, even though he offers them the opportunity to do it far from the prying eyes of the ton. It does not matter, really. As you have pointed out, they are not my friends. But I need only one—perhaps two—to come, agree and invest. Then, for me, this Christmas will be a happy one.’

It appeared that her father was right about the man, if that was how he measured his happiness. ‘There would be far more joy for all should you choose to spend that time in meeting your neighbours, sir. If you could not manage that, then perhaps you could release the Clairemonts from their obligation to attend? For I suspect it will pain them greatly to see their home treated as the London Exchange.’

‘It is no longer their home, Miss Lampett. It is mine to do with as I please.’

‘But I do not see why you wish to tell me of it. It is no business of mine,’ she said, almost leaning out of the window in an effort to put space between them.

‘On the contrary. I mean to make it your business. I understand that there has traditionally been a gathering of villagers at the house for Christmas. You have been in attendance at it, with Miss Anne Clairemont and her sister.’

‘But that was years ago,’ she admitted. ‘Not since …’ Not since Mary died and the Clairemonts shut up the house at Christmas. But the circumstances were no business of Stratford’s.

‘You and your family will honour me with your attendance this year as well,’ he said. ‘I am short of ladies, and there are likely to be several young bucks who would prefer an eligible young partner to dancing with their sisters.’

‘On our limited acquaintance, you expect me to sit in attendance on your guests? That is rude beyond measure, sir.’

‘Nothing of the kind. I invite you to be one of my guests. There would be no obligation to dance if you did not wish to do so. Though should you meet someone and form an attachment to him it would solve the question of your unmarried state quite nicely. Between your father’s trouble, and the problem you have hinted at with local society, it must be difficult for you to be so removed from the company of equals.’

It was. Though she tried to control it, a wistful longing arose in her at the prospect of a chance to put on her nicest gown and dance. ‘I do not need your help in that situation,’ she said primly. ‘I am quite fine on my own.’

‘So you keep telling me. But I need your help, Miss Lampett,’ he said, his hands open before him. ‘My business negotiations, whether they are improper or no, are at a delicate juncture. I dare not risk your father giving another angry speech while the investors are here to see it. Nor do I wish to call the law down on him with Christmas dinner.’

‘Then I think you would want us quiet at home for the holiday, and not dancing at the manor.’

‘On the contrary. I have seen your father’s interactions with you. When he is concerned about your welfare, all thoughts of violence go quite out of his head. If you told him that you wished to come to my party he would not disrupt it for fear of spoiling your enjoyment.’

‘Even so, I would not trust him for any length of time in the company of strangers.’

‘Then I shall send him a selection of books from the library. Old favourites of mine that are sure to occupy his mind for the duration of the week.’

‘Old favourites of yours?’ she said in surprise. ‘You gave me to understand that you had no time for books.’

‘Not now, perhaps. But I’d read most of the volumes in the Clairemont library long before my arrival here. In the coming year, when the mill is employed, I hope to have some evenings to myself and might read them again.’

‘You said you were a weaver’s son,’ she said, thinking of her father’s recalcitrant students and wondering if she had misunderstood him.

‘I did not say I was clever at the trade. I was a horrible weaver, and no amount of teaching could make me better. I was more interested in books than the loom. When Father did allow me to go to school I taught myself, in whatever way I could manage.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I fear I was a grave disappointment to him.’

‘But why did you remain involved in the trade? Surely there might have been another occupation more suited to your tastes?’

‘The life I wanted was forever closed to me, for I was not born a gentleman, Miss Lampett. It appeared that, no matter my lack of skill, I was destined to weave. So I redesigned the loom to make it easier for my clumsy fingers to manage. The machines to be used at the factory are of my own invention.’

Somehow she had imagined him purchasing the frames he used with little knowledge of their workings. But there was real passion in him as he talked of cold and unfeeling machines, and an energy that drew her in like a lodestone. It was only with effort that she noticed the fact that there was no mention of anyone other than himself.

‘Is that why the talk of frame-breaking bothers you so? It must be difficult to see your work destroyed.’

He shrugged. ‘Not really. Before coming here, my business was mostly in the supplying of other mills. When their looms were damaged by vandals, I made additional money in the repair and replacing of their machinery. While the production of cloth is a risky business, there can be no surer trade right now than the making of a thing that is useful, and very much in demand, but needs to be purchased multiple times when it is ruined. That business was the source of my wealth. Though your father and his friends might seek to see the end of me, like men have been my making.’

‘You view the misfortune of others as the source of your success?’ she said, amazed at how far removed he was from the people around him.

‘So it has been. But enough of me and my business. Tell me what your response to my offer is likely to be.’

‘It would be most improper for a single lady to accept an invitation from a gentleman if there is no understanding between them,’ she said, wondering what he could be thinking to ask her in this way.

‘Of course.’ He pounded his fist against his leg once, in irritation. Then he gathered himself a little straighter. ‘Please accept my apologies. It was forward of me. I will extend a formal invitation, in writing, for your whole family to join in whatever activities take place. There will be nothing to upset your father, I assure you. There will be dinners, dancing, games. I expect that it will be a very jolly time. If your parents do not wish to come, you must come alone—in the company of Miss Anne Clairemont and her family.’ He gave her a firm look. ‘There will be no trouble on that front. The doors of my house are open to you.’

There was a faint emphasis on the word ‘my’ to remind her that things had changed. She wondered if he would put the situation to the Clairemonts in the same blunt tone. It almost made her pity them.

But, no matter what he did, it would not be as it had once been. The merriment would not touch the community that it bordered. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘It hardly seems appropriate to celebrate when so many people are unhappy.’ They had reached the gate of the cottage again, and she looked longingly in the direction of her home.

‘How very pious of you.’ He had noticed their destination as well, and tapped to signal the driver. ‘It is a lovely day. Let us make another pass of the high street, shall we?’

‘Do you mean to hold me prisoner in this carriage until I agree to your scheme?’

He held his hands up in a symbolic gesture of release. ‘The thought had occurred to me. But I will let you go home to consider this and see if you do not think it a temporary respite from our troubles. Either way, the mill will open in January. Change is coming and there will be no avoiding it. Once it is open, and at least some of the locals are employed in it, we will find them less likely to raise a hand against me. Until then we must find together a way to stall your father from upsetting my plans—or I will take steps that are pleasant to neither of us.’

The carriage drew smoothly to a stop, and when the door opened he went before her, offering his hand to help her to the ground. Then he signalled for a footman to carry her basket to the house and returned to his seat, closing the shiny black door behind him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN she was through the door of the cottage she saw her father waiting in the front room, arms folded across his chest. Today she did not fear him so much as dread the weight of his displeasure.

‘Well?’ There was so much disappointment in the one word that Barbara glanced behind her, out of the open door and down the road, thinking that the burden of carrying the weight of her loaded basket could not possibly have equalled this.

She turned back, squared her shoulders and explained. ‘Mr Stratford offered me a ride from the shops because the weather was changing.’ She gave a little shake of her cloak to show the patter of icy drops that had hit her in the short walk from the carriage to the house. ‘He was quite insistent. It seemed that I was likely to create more of a scene by refusing than accepting. So I relented.’

‘There was time enough for someone to come from the village and inform me of the fact and be gone again,’ her father said suspiciously. ‘One would think that a man on foot could not best a team of horses in traversing the distance.’

She cleared her throat. ‘Mr Stratford was deep in conversation with me as we neared the house. To continue it, he turned the carriage and we travelled once more around the village.’

‘Thus it became a social drive.’ Her father shook his head. ‘That is a demonstration of the perfidy of the man. It is much like the mill—offered as an olive branch to the people of this community, only so he can snatch it away as they draw near. He took you, just as he took their jobs, and he dangles you like a bauble, just out of reach, and plays with you at his leisure.’

‘Hardly, Father. We talked for but a few moments. The carriage remained on the high street and I sat in the window of it. I am sure that many in the community could see me and know that nothing untoward was happening.’

The argument seemed to have no effect on him, for he went on with increasing anger. ‘The man is the very devil, Barb. I swear. The devil. He is here to ruin the village and all the people in it with his new ideas and his cheap goods. Nothing can come of cheapening the quality of the work, I am sure. It is the veritable road to hell.’

‘And nothing to do with the matter at hand,’ her mother added firmly from behind him. She looked past him at her daughter. ‘You say that you were seen the whole time? The carriage took no side trips, nor left the sight of the high street?’

‘Not at all, Mama.’

‘You could not have waited until the rain had passed? Or hurried home before it?’

‘I did not want to spare the penny for the boy if I did not have to. The basket was heavy. And Mr Stratford would not take no for an answer.’

Her mother nodded. ‘The offer of transport was fortuitous, even if there was an ulterior motive. What did you speak of?’

‘His business.’ And Mary, of course. They had spoken of her. But it was hardly worth mentioning.

‘Then it had nothing to do with you?’

‘Just as I suspected. It was an effort to turn you against me, and the village against us. The man is the devil,’ her father insisted.

‘Enough!’ her mother snapped, ignoring her husband again and turning back to Barbara. ‘We must deal with the more important matter first. And that should be the honour of our only child, which has not been harmed in the least by the trip, whether it was social or practical.’

‘He invited us to the manor for Christmas,’ Barbara added. ‘He suggested that there might be gentlemen there, and dancing.’ She tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, as though it did not matter one way or the other. She did not particularly wish to meet gentlemen. There was one in particular that she might like to know better, but her father was probably right to call him a persuasive devil who was best avoided.

Still, it had been a long time since she’d danced—with or without demons. Would it really do any harm?

‘Dancing at the manor? Of course you should go, then.’ Her father’s sudden change caught them unawares, as it often did. Though he had been angry only a few moments before, now he was smiling at her. ‘You have not been since last Christmas, and you always enjoy it so. Visiting Anne and Mary will do you a world of good.’

She shot a worried glance over his shoulder to her mother, and then said, ‘Father, Mary is dead. The Clairemonts no longer live at the manor. There has not been a Christmas celebration there in six years.’

‘I know that,’ he said quickly, embarrassed at his lapse. ‘I only meant that you would be better off dancing at the manor than driving on the high street with Lucifer in a silk waistcoat.’ He darkened again, as suddenly as he had brightened. ‘A silk waistcoat made by hands that slaved for pennies so that he might ride high and mighty like a prince.’ His eyes lit at the sound of his own words. ‘I must write this down. It will be the basis of my next speech.’

‘You do that, Father.’ Barbara hurried to the little desk in the corner, setting out paper, uncapping the ink and trimming the nib of the pen. Then she pulled out his chair and took time to settle him there. It seemed to give him comfort, for he sat down and began writing industriously, staring out of the window before him into the sleet-streaked sky as though the next words were written on it and he could pluck them from the air.

‘Come into the kitchen, Barbara. Let us see what you have brought back from the market.’ Her mother turned quickly, but not before Barbara could see the trembling of her lip that was the beginning of tears.

‘A moment, Mama.’ She hurried to the sewing basket, to conceal her mother’s Christmas gift. Then she followed her out of the room.

By the time she had reached her in the kitchen her mother was more composed, though clearly worried.

‘What are we to do, Mama?’ she whispered. ‘He is like this more and more.’

‘There is little for us to do. There is no changing him.’ Her mother gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘He changes often enough on his own. Like the tides, he goes to extremes at both ends.’

If he continued thus there would be no chance of him returning to employment, and they would end their days living off the dwindling inheritance her mother had received from her own family. Barbara thought of the pennies in her purse again, and gave quiet thanks to Mr Stratford. Even if he was the devil, he had saved her the bother of a wet walk.

Her mother seemed to be thinking of him as well. ‘Tell me about this Christmas invitation you have received. It does seem to be a lone bright spot in the day.’

‘I told him it was improper,’ Barbara said, frowning. ‘For I did not think Father would approve.’

‘Your father is lucky to remember from one minute to the next why he hates the man. We will tell him that you are gone to see Mary. For if there are gentlemen there, as he said …’ Her mother was thinking forward, hoping for a bright future in which a wealthy stranger would appear with an offer and solve all their problems.

‘But I refused,’ Barbara said, dashing her hopes.

‘Oh,’ said her mother, properly disappointed.

‘He offered again—including the family. When I told him that there was no way Father could manage such a gathering, he offered a selection of books as Christmas gifts—to keep him home and quiet over the holiday. He said he would send something written, so that I would know he spoke with sincerity.’

‘A written invitation to the manor?’ Her mother positively glowed with the prospect.

‘I doubt he will remember,’ Barbara said hurriedly. ‘I am sure it was said only in passing, to make conversation. It was just an effort to be social.’

‘A most curious effort, then.’ Her mother was looking closely at her, trying to determine what she might be concealing. ‘He has made no attempts at civility to the rest of the village. And yet he singles you out. A gentleman would know better than to make promises he cannot keep—especially when he is courting another.’

‘One can hardly call him a gentleman, Mother. He is in trade. He admitted to me that he was a weaver’s son.’

‘Really?’ Her mother’s eyebrows arched. ‘You speak like your father, my dear. It is idealistic to set men of business firmly below us and to act as though birth is all. Perhaps realism would be a better path, considering our circumstances. It is possible to be a gentleman and poor as a church mouse, while the weaver’s son dines and dances in a manor. The world is changing. While we might not approve of all the changes, we must make the best of them. Let us hope that Mr Stratford is as good as his word.’

And his offer proved true. A short time later, while her father still pondered his latest diatribe, there was a knock on the door. Outside, the same coach that had deposited her waited for the liveried servant who held a properly sealed and decorated invitation and a package of books.

Before her father could say otherwise, her mother had snatched it from the poor man’s hand and instructed him to wait upon the response. Then she pushed her husband’s work aside and reached for paper and pen.

‘As usual, Satan sends his handmaidens in fine garments to tempt the unwary,’ her father barked.

The footman looked rather alarmed and peered behind him, unaware that he was the handmaiden in question.

‘Nonsense, dear. It is an invitation to the manor. Nothing more. It can do us no harm to accept, surely?’

‘Well, then.’ Her father beamed. Then he waved a hand at the man who waited. ‘My regards to Lord Clairemont, his wife and his daughters. Tell them to be wary, just as they are merry.’ Then he opened the first of the books and immediately forgot the source of his discomfiture.

The man gave a hesitant nod, and waited upon the hurriedly scribbled response from her mother before returning to the carriage.

Mother and daughter returned to the kitchen.

‘You cannot mean for us to go, Mama,’ Barbara whispered. ‘Look at Father. There is no way for us to keep the pretence that it will be as it was. And no way to predict, once he is there, what he will say in front of Mr Stratford and his guests. It would be better if we refused politely and stayed home.’

‘It would be better if your father and I stayed away. But there is no reason why you cannot go,’ her mother said firmly. ‘While I like dinner and a ball as well as the next person, I am content to sit here with your father and allow you to get the benefit of an invitation. He said there might be gentlemen?’

‘Friends from London.’

‘Stratford means to marry Anne. She and her parents will be there to recommend and chaperone you. I am sure, if you wrote to her, she would offer you a space in their carriage so that you needn’t walk to the manor.’

‘That was what Mr Stratford suggested as well. He said he would speak to them. But I do not think they would like it very much. Perhaps there is another way.’ Although Barbara could think of none.

‘I will not let you walk to the manor in dancing slippers. Nor will I allow you to refuse this invitation,’ her mother said, giving her a stern look. ‘I will write to the Clairemonts about it. I will choose my words with care. Perhaps, after six years, you should not blame yourself for something that was no fault of your own, and they should find it in their hearts to forgive you.’

It was not nearly enough time, Barbara was sure. It had been just this morning that she’d met Lady Clairemont walking down the street and seen the way the lady looked sharply in her direction, and then through her. ‘Please, Mother, do not.’

‘There is no other way. This is an opportunity that you dare not turn down. If there were other suitable men anywhere in the area I might think twice. But if there is a chance of a match amongst Mr Stratford’s guests we must seek it out for you. One of your old gowns will have to do. But we can trim it up with the lace you bought this morning and I am sure it will look quite nice.’

‘Mother!’ Despite her best efforts, her mother had seen into the shopping basket. ‘That was intended as a gift.’

‘For someone who has less need of it than you,’ her mother said, laying a hand on hers, ‘it would do my heart good to know that you are out in society again—even if it is only for a day or two. I will write the letters, and then we will see what can be done with the gown. You must go where you are invited, Barbara, and dance as though your future depended on it. For it very well might.’

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