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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.
