Too late, Theo realized they might wonder how he had come by this information. But no, there was an uncomfortable shuffling of feet, and a moment later one of the men—Theo couldn’t remember his name—tossed his pickaxe to the ground and took up a position beside him.
“Tisdale is right,” he declared.
“Er, you might want to hold onto that,” murmured Theo, nodding toward his abandoned weapon. Aloud, he continued to press his point. “What about you, Jack? When you were so sick and couldn’t work for a week, did he withhold your pay? Or yours, Gerry, when you were obliged to go to Staffordshire and take care of your mum after your father died?”
There was a further shuffling as first Jack and then Gerry took up positions flanking Theo. Two hundred to four, Theo thought. Things are looking up.
“Did you never think,” Theo went on, inspired to new heights of rhetoric, “that, because he knows what it’s like to work in the mill, he might be doing what he can to make sure things are better for all of you? That that’s why he wants to stand for Parliament in the first place?”
“Sir Valerian Wadsworth says he’ll do more for us than Brundy ever did!” declared Wilkins, unwilling to give up without a fight.
“A man you met, what, two months ago?” Theo scoffed. “And what evidence do you have that he’ll do as he says, or even think of you at all, after the election is over? What do any of you really know about him?”
“Sir Valerian is a man of his word!” The reply came, not from Wilkins, but from one of his supporters.
“What? Just because his father was someone important?” challenged the latest in a long line of hereditary dukes. “Surely you know better than that!”
“Why else would he care about helping us, when we can’t even vote?”
“Because if you torch the mill, he can point to your actions and tell those who can vote that Sir Ethan Brundy can’t even keep his own affairs in order, much less the nation’s. He’s using you—all of you—and you’re playing right into his hands.”
It was a tactical error. No man liked to be played for a fool, as he had discovered for himself when he’d realized that La Fantasia’s supposed affection for him had been no more than her conviction that in him she had found a greenhorn who could be manipulated into making her a duchess. Whatever the difference in their respective births, these men had no less pride than Theo himself. In fact, it might be argued that pride was all they had. In such a case, they would surely cling to it all the more tightly.
“All right,” Theo said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Go ahead and torch the place. But how are you going to feed your families tomorrow morning, or the day after that?”
“This ain’t the only mill in the world!” bellowed a harsh voice.
“I’ve worked a power loom for twenty years,” boasted another. “I could find work tomorrow.”
“Yes, working fifteen-hour days,” agreed Theo, nodding in agreement. “That’s assuming, of course, that any mill owner is willing to take a chance on a man who’d just burned his previous place of employment to the ground.”
“Who’s to know?” retorted Wilkins. “Unless you intend to talk.” He lowered his weapon, but any relief Theo might have felt was negated by the realization that the knife in the man’s hand was now aimed directly at his chest.
“It’s a country village,” Theo pointed out, determinedly ignoring the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Can you—any of you—honestly believe it would remain a secret for long? Do you think no one has noticed that you’ve all slipped away from the party, and if the mill is burned to the ground by morning, no one is going to put two and two together?”
“That’s enough!” bellowed Wilkins. He rushed at Theo, only to be brought up short in mid-stride by the last voice he had ever expected to hear.
“What the devil’s going on ’ere?”
Theo had never heard his brother-in-law speak in that particular tone of voice, and hoped to God never to be on the receiving end of it. Still, at that moment it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
“Ethan!” Theo let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God!”
Sir Ethan paid him not the slightest heed, but addressed himself to his rebellious workers. “Well?”
There was a moment of rather abashed silence, then everyone seemed to be talking at once.
“Wilkins said—”
“Sir Valerian—”
“—said we deserved—”
“—told us we ought to—”
“Oh, so it’s Sir Valerian, is it?” Sir Ethan remarked knowingly. “That explains a lot.”
And then the demurrals began.
“I never wanted to—”
“—always said he was—”
“—seemed a bit shady to me—”
“—I didn’t mean to—”
Sir Ethan silenced their protestations with one upraised hand. “Men, it’s very late and I’ve been traveling for three days. Let’s all go ’ome and get some sleep, and I’ll ’ear you out in the morning. Let’s say, eight o’clock.”
And just that simply, it was over. With much shuffling of feet and many shamefaced glances, the men took themselves off, lowering their makeshift weapons as if wondering how such things had ever come to be in their hands.
“I’m deuced glad to see you, Ethan,” Theo said as soon as they were alone. “I’m not sure I could have held them off much longer. Truth to tell, I’d decided my letter must have gone amiss.”
“Your letter?” echoed Sir Ethan, regarding his young kinsman with an arrested expression.
“I sent you a letter telling you that Wilkins was bullying the workers and that I was afraid some kind of trouble was in the wind. When you never came, I thought you must not have received it.”
Now it was the mill owner’s turn to look sheepish. “Oh, I received it, all right. I burned it without ever opening it. I’m sorry; I recognized your ’andwriting, and thought you were begging me to let you leave the mill.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt I would
