“But Sir Ethan needs to know,” Theo insisted.
“Aye, but think, lad. Ethan can’t stay here forever. His lady wife likes London—and he likes his lady wife too much to disappoint her. Then, too, he’s standing for Parliament. Soon or late, he’ll return to London, and as soon as he’s gone—” He drew a hand across his neck.
Theo did not interpret this gesture literally—he doubted that any throats would be slit—but understood it to mean that Wilkins’s vengeance against the informer would be swift and sure.
“But you’re not eating,” Ben protested in a very different voice, his shrewd gaze falling on the empty expanse of table before Theo.
Theo shrugged in a not entirely successful attempt at nonchalance. “I—I’m not really hungry,” he lied.
“You will be, by the end of the day,” predicted Ben with the confidence of long experience. “Here, take some of this.”
He tore off a large piece of bread from his loaf and handed it across the table. A hunk of cheese and an apple followed the bread.
“I can’t take your food!” Theo protested, although his neglected stomach growled in anticipation.
Hearing this, Ben’s knowing gaze dropped to Theo’s middle. “Your belly says otherwise.”
“Yes, well, I forgot—I overslept this morning, and barely had breakfast. I forgot that I would need something for the middle of the day.”
“You won’t forget again,” Ben said reassuringly. “You’ll remember to bring something tomorrow, but until then, you’d do best to take this. We’ve five more hours yet, you know.”
“Five more hours,” echoed Theo in failing accents.
“Could be worse,” Ben pointed out. “One of the first things our Ethan did when he inherited the mill was cut working hours from fourteen to ten.”
Alas, Theo could not share Ben’s enthusiasm for “our Ethan’s” generosity. By the end of the day, his back ached and his hands throbbed, several of the blisters by this time having broken open. He wanted nothing more than to collapse onto his own bed (or what passed for his own bed, at least for the nonce) and sleep the clock ’round. Instead, he would have to get up at dawn the next morning and do it all again. He was denied even the luxury of a brief nap, however, for upon entering the boarding house, he was met at the door by Mrs. Drinkard, who urged him to hurry and wash up for dinner.
“For we must dine a bit early tonight, in order to set the dining room to rights for tonight’s political meeting,” she explained, clearly in some agitation lest the location Sir Valerian had chosen for his meeting should fail to find favor in the Parliamentary hopeful’s eyes.
Theo glanced over her shoulder at Miss Drinkard, who was engaged in arranging chrysanthemums in a bowl that stood on the small table in the foyer. She wore a coarse cotton apron over the same blue satin gown she’d worn to dinner the previous evening, this time enhanced with a single strand of pearls which contrasted jarringly with the apron. He wondered if this added touch was in anticipation of Sir Valerian’s visit—and, if so, whether it had been her own idea or her mother’s. As if aware of his scrutiny, she looked up from her task and their eyes met in the mirror mounted on the wall over the table. Her lips curved in an apologetic little smile, and her eyes held a silent plea for understanding.
“Of course,” Theo told his hostess. “I shall be back down directly.” With this assurance, he gave the ladies a nod and betook himself up the stairs to his room.
Back in London, his dinner preparations would have included trading his buckskin breeches and blue tailcoat with its gleaming brass buttons for the form-fitting black pantaloons and black tailcoat deemed suitable for evening. Perhaps, he reflected for the second time in as many days, it was just as well that he’d brought no such garments with him; one could hardly scramble into one’s evening clothes, and thanks to Sir Valerian and his political gathering, he would not have had sufficient time to turn himself out in style in any case.
Resolved to do the best he could in the time he had, he stripped off his sweat-soaked work clothing and poured water from the pitcher into the bowl. This would long since have grown cold, but if his presence had been very much de trop when he’d gone to the kitchen in search of it the previous evening, he suspected it would be doubly so tonight. He bathed himself with water that was just as cold as he’d expected, then arrayed himself in the same clothing he’d worn to dinner the previous evening; if it was acceptable for the daughter of the house to wear the same garments two nights running, he reasoned, then it must surely be so for one of the tenants.
Finally, he picked up his hairbrush and swept it through his golden locks—and muttered a curse under his breath at the cloud of lint produced by this simple act. He strode across the small room to the window, threw open the sash, and stuck his head out, then brushed his hair so that the resulting snowfall drifted to the ground below rather than onto the floor. Having finished with this task, he stripped off the brown tailcoat he’d just put on and, in the absence of a lint brush, shook it vigorously out the window before putting it back on and descending the stairs once more to the dining room.
Mrs. Drinkard’s high hopes for the evening had apparently communicated themselves to the other residents, for it seemed to Theodore that all of them (all except himself, anyway) had gone out of their way to appear to advantage. Mr. Nethercote wore a crimson velvet coat that would have been the height of fashion in the last century, and Mrs. Jennings had chosen to air a set of garnets that might have been much improved by a thorough cleaning. Even
