She looked up at him with an expression combining skepticism and playfulness. “I don’t believe you for one minute, but it’s very kind of you to say so.”
“Perfectly true,” he insisted. “Why, my sister would agree, and she—” He broke off abruptly.
“ ‘She’?” Daphne prompted.
“She knows more about fashion than any female I know,” he concluded lamely.
Daphne was certain that was not what he had intended to say, but chose not to press him. “I didn’t know you had a sister. You’ve never said anything about your family before.”
Theo shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I don’t remember much about my mother, for she died while I was still in the nursery. My father died quite—quite recently. Then there’s my sister and her husband and children.”
Daphne was more interested in the late Mr. Tisdale. “Did your father leave debts too, then?” she asked in ready sympathy. “Is that why you’re working in the mill?”
Theo nodded. “You—you might say so.”
“But what of your sister’s husband? Can he do nothing to help you?”
Theo was silent for such a long moment that Daphne began to wonder if he intended to answer at all. “He has tried,” he said at last. “In fact, he’s done more than I realized at first, but he . . . he . . . he . . .”
His words trailed off, and his gaze became fixed on something over her shoulder. Daphne glanced around and saw two or three of the mill workers congregated near the door, their heads together in hushed conversation. She had not noticed before, but the crowd had thinned considerably. All of what her mother termed the more respectable guests remained, but many of the mill workers had apparently found the festivities not to their liking and had left early. Even as her brain registered this observation, the numbers decreased by three; the little group near the door ended their conversation with nods of agreement and slipped outside as a body.
“I—I’m very sorry, Miss Drinkard, but—but I have to go,” Theo stammered. His hand fell from her waist, leaving her bereft and just a bit chilly where the warmth of his skin had penetrated the folds of satin. “Let me take you back to your mother.”
“Mr. Tisdale, what is wrong?” Daphne asked, struggling to keep up as he took her arm and practically frog-marched her off the floor.
“I don’t know, exactly. Possibly nothing.”
“But you don’t think so,” she said, regarding him keenly.
“No, I don’t think so. But I have to find out.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
He shook his head. “If I’m right and some mischief is afoot, I’d rather you weren’t mixed up in it.”
“If, as you say, some mischief is afoot, it would appear half the village is ‘mixed up in it,’ ” she pointed out, with a sweeping gesture that took in the half-empty barn. “What’s more, I’m afraid I might be mixed up in it in any case. This concerns the meetings Mama has allowed Sir Valerian to hold in our house, doesn’t it?”
He looked down into her wide, troubled eyes, and could not bring himself to put her off with reassuring half-truths. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Then surely I have some right to know!”
In fact, it would be her mother, rather than Daphne, who had a right to know if some skullduggery had been taking place beneath her own roof. But Theo, observing Mrs. Drinkard in animated conversation with the squire’s wife, had no great confidence in that lady’s discretion—if, in fact, he could make her believe anything ill of Sir Valerian at all. She had not yet noticed her daughter’s departure from the dance floor, but she might look their way at any minute, and when she did—
“All right,” Theo said. “Come with me. But if anyone should ask, you felt faint from the heat, and I merely took you outside for a breath of fresh air.”
He did not wait for her agreement, but steered her out the ill-fitting back door of the barn, wincing at the screech of the rusty hinges. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dark, but there was a full moon, and it was not difficult to tell where the men had gone, for a faint orange glow showed just over a rise in the meadow. Theo put a finger to his lips to silence the questions that trembled on the tip of her tongue, then took her hand and picked his way across the meadow in the dark. As they crested the ridge, he saw more than fifty men, all bearing flaming torches and armed with a hodgepodge of farm implements. From his vantage point, Theo could see pitchforks, shovels, pickaxes, and even something that might have been a cricket bat silhouetted against the flickering orange light.
As he stared in mounting horror, a harsh voice that could only have belonged to Abel Wilkins bellowed, “Are you with me?”
The assembled men shouted their assent.
“To the mill, then!”
“To the mill!” echoed the men, and the torches bobbed crazily against the night sky as the group set out toward the road that led to the village and the cotton mill beyond.
“Good God!” Theo stared down at Daphne, his eyes glittering in the feeble light. “They’re marching on the mill! I’ve got to stop them!”
She clung to his sleeve. “No! What can you possibly do against fifty armed men?”
“I don’t know,” he said, setting his jaw, “but I have to do something.”
“Very well, then,” she said resolutely. “I’m coming with you.”
“You, my girl, are getting out of here! Ethan Brundy’s house has a safe room. He had it put in when the house was built, for just such an emergency.” He glanced toward the barn and the field beyond. “It’s not very far if you cut across the pasture.”
“And I suppose the butler will invite me
