“I should like to hear more about this political gathering, Mrs. Drinkard,” urged the aspiring lawyer. “What is it all about?”
“Now, that’s just what I don’t know,” confessed his hostess. “Sir Valerian said he wished to hire a room where he might meet with some of the mill workers. I daresay Mr. Tisdale can tell us more,” she suggested, turning expectantly toward Theo.
He shook his head. “I don’t know any more than you do. Less, in fact.”
“But surely someone at the mill must have spoken of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Drinkard, clearly in some dismay that the meeting might prove not to be the brilliant coup she had hoped for.
“If they did, I never heard of it. But,” he added quickly, seeing her distress, “recall that today was my first day there. It might be that the workers would not care to discuss a matter of such importance in front of a stranger.”
“Yes, that is very likely the case,” agreed Mrs. Drinkard, brightening a little. Belatedly realizing that this assumption was hardly flattering to her newest tenant, she added hastily, “Not, of course, that we don’t know how very amiable you are, Mr. Tisdale, but the men at the mill will not be so well acquainted with you.”
As she had known him scarcely more than twenty-four hours, Theo was hard pressed to hold back a grin. “I am obliged to you, ma’am,” he said meekly, and had his reward when he glanced at Miss Drinkard to find her smiling gratefully at him.
Alas, this proved to be the one bright point of the evening meal. Holding his fork in his blistered hand proved to be an agony, and as the brisket of beef to which Mrs. Drinkard treated her guests that evening was somewhat tough, wielding his knife was even worse. As a result, he ate little in spite of his hunger, but excused himself from the table as soon as he could do so without giving offense, and returned to his room, where he wanted only to seek oblivion in Morpheus’s embrace.
Unfortunately, he had reckoned without Sir Valerian’s political gathering. He had hardly settled himself between the sheets before the first arrivals appeared, as evidenced by the sounds of tramping footsteps beneath his window, followed in quick succession by the rapping of the door knocker and Mrs. Drinkard’s voice welcoming the mill workers with a careful blend of hospitality and condescension. That same voice assuming a very different tone was sufficient to inform him that Sir Valerian himself had arrived.
But Theo’s troubles were only beginning. As his room was directly over the dining room, the sounds of the gathering drifted up the chimney flue, obliging him to pull first the covers and, finally, the pillow over his head in a futile attempt to muffle the voices that grew increasingly agitated as the meeting progressed. And then, quite suddenly, two words rose above the babel of voices, two words that caused Theo to throw off the pillow and bedclothes, and to sit bolt upright in his bed.
The words were “Ethan Brundy.”
8
Listen for dear honor’s sake.
JOHN MILTON, Comus
THEO CROSSED THE SMALL room in three strides. Kneeling before the fireplace (heedless of the discomfort to knees cushioned by nothing more than a thin cambric nightshirt), he thrust his head in, the better to hear the angry voices that drifted up through the flue. While the voices were not difficult to hear, distinguishing the words they spoke was quite another matter. The speakers often talked over one another, to such an extent that Theo wondered if the people in the room directly below could understand each other any better than he could understand them himself. Occasionally, however, a word or phrase made itself heard, and these were enough to fill him with foreboding: “Employer? Slave-driver, more like!” “—getting above himself—” “—while he lives like a king” and, most ominous of all, “—time to take action—”
Action? What sort of action? Theo instinctively leaned forward, as if by doing so he might more easily understand any specifics offered for putting this vague threat into practice. Alas, if any such specifics were put forward, Theo never heard them, for he was distracted at that moment by a light knock on his door.
He jerked upright, and cracked his head on the brick lintel. Muttering imprecations under his breath (although whether these were directed toward the unyielding lintel or the uninvited caller, even he could not have said), he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the protests of his aching muscles.
“Coming!” he called, then snatched up the breeches he had discarded earlier and tugged them on, stuffing his nightshirt into the waistband. Having made himself decent, if not entirely presentable, he opened the door—and was stunned to see Miss Drinkard standing in the corridor just beyond the threshold, bearing a tray with a bowl of steaming water, a jar of some unguent, a pair of scissors, and a roll of cotton lint. Theo eyed this last with disfavor. If he never saw a shred of cotton again, it would be all too soon.
“I—I’m sorry to disturb you,” she stammered, blushing a little at the sight of his déshabille.
“Well, now that you have, what do you want?” Annoyed and more than a little embarrassed at being interrupted in the act of eavesdropping, Theo spoke perhaps a bit more sharply than the situation warranted.
“It was nothing. Just—I beg your pardon—I should not have—”
She began to back away, and Theo instantly regretted his show of temper. “No, don’t go. I’m a brute to lash out at you. It’s just that, well, it’s been a hard day.” As if in proof of this statement, he raked one abused hand through his disheveled golden curls.
“Yes, I’m sure it must have been,” she said, halting in mid-flight. “That was why I came. I noticed you weren’t
