Sarah Mallory – One Snowy Regency Christmas: A Regency Christmas Carol / Snowbound with the Notorious Rake (страница 3)

Just for a moment she thought she saw a change in his face, a slight widening of the eyes as though her words had struck home. And then he gave a mirthless, soundless laugh, little more than a lifting and dropping of the shoulders. ‘And a Merry Christmas to you as well, my dear.’ Then he turned and stepped easily from his perch, dropping to the ground, though it must have been nearly eight feet, and strolling back to his carriage and his nervous grooms and coachman. They came cautiously forwards to open the gates so that the carriage could get through. They needn’t have worried, for the men who had blocked the way had turned for home in embarrassed silence as soon as the money on the ground had been collected.

She pulled her father to the side of the road so that the horses could pass. But there was the signalling tap of a cane against the side of the box as the vehicle drew abreast of them, and the driver brought it to a stop so that Stratford could lean out of the window and look at them.

‘This is not the end of it, Stratford,’ her father said in a quieter voice. Now that the crowd was gone he sounded capable of lucid argument, and quite his old self.

‘I did not think it was, Lampett,’ Stratford replied, smiling coldly down at her father, staring into his eyes like a fighter measuring the reach of his opponent before striking.

‘I will not let you treat these people—my people—like so many strings on your loom. They are men, not goods. They should be respected as such.’

‘When they behave like men I will give them respect. And not before. Now, go. You have lost your audience, and your child is shivering in the cold.’

I am not a child. She was full four and twenty. Not that it mattered. But she was shivering—both from fear and the weather. The slight made her stand a little straighter, and fight the shudders until she could appear as collected and unmoved as her enemy was.

It did not seem to bother Joseph Stratford in the least that the weight of the entire town was against him. They had broken his frames once already and sabotaged the building of the mill at every turn. Still he persevered. Barbara wished she could respond in kind with that careless, untouchable indifference.

The envy bothered her. Perhaps—just a little—she appreciated the man’s sense of purpose. However misguided it might be. When she looked at him she had no doubt that he would succeed. While her father was all fire, he flared and burned out quickly. But Stratford was like stone, unchanging and unmoved. It would take more than a flash of anger to move a man like him once he had set himself to a goal.

She looked again at him and reminded herself that he was proud as well. That sin would be his downfall if nothing else was. He could not succeed if he reduced all men to enemies and herself to a faceless, valueless child.

As she watched the two men, locked eye to eye in a silent battle, she was relieved that her father did not own a firearm. Though she thought she could trust Mr Stratford—just barely—not to shoot without provocation, there was no telling what her father might do when his blood was up and his thinking even less clear than usual. She reached out for her father’s arm again, ready to guide him home. ‘Come. Let us go back. There is nothing more that you can do today. If he has truly called for the constable, I do not wish to see you caught up in it.’

He shook off the embrace with a grunt and stepped back, giving an angry shrug as the carriage moved again, travelling up the road to the manor house. ‘It would serve him right if I was arrested. Then the world would see him for the sort of man he is: one who would throw an old man into jail to prove himself in the right.’

There was no point in explaining that the only lesson anyone was likely to see was that Stratford sat in a mansion at a fine dinner, while Lampett sat hungry in a cell. ‘But it would make me most unhappy, Father,’ she said as sweetly as possible. ‘And Mother as well. If we can have nothing else for Christmas, can we not have a few days of peace?’

‘I will be peaceful when there is reason to be,’ her father acceded. ‘I doubt, as long as that man breathes, we will see that state again.’

CHAPTER TWO

JOSEPH Stratford rode home alone in comfortable, if somewhat pensive, silence. The conclusion to today’s outing had been satisfactory, at least for now. The crowd had dispersed without any real violence. But if Bernard Lampett continued stirring, the town was likely to rise against him. Before that happened sterner measures would need to be taken.

In his mind, he composed the letter he would send to the commander of the troops garrisoned in York. It was drastic, but necessary. If one or two of them were hauled off in chains it might convince the rest of the error of their ways.

His carriage pulled up the circular drive of Clairemont Manor and deposited him at the door—so close that the chill of the season barely touched him on his way into the house. He smiled. How different this was from his past. Until last year he’d frequently had to make do on foot. But in the twelve months his investments had turned. Even with the money he’d laid out for the new mill he was living in a luxury that he would not have dreamed possible in his wildest Christmas wishes.

Joseph handed hat, gloves and overcoat to the nearest footman and strode into the parlour to take the cup of tea waiting for him by the second-best chair near the fire. As he passed the closest seat he gave a gentle kick at the boot of the man occupying it, to get Robert Breton to shift his feet out of the way.

Breton opened a sleepy eye and sat up. ‘Trouble at the mill?’

‘When is there not?’ He lifted his cup in a mock salute and Breton accepted it graciously, as though he owned the house and the right to the chair he usurped. While Joe might aspire to knock away at his own rough edges, affect the indolent slouch and copy the London accent and the facile gestures, he would never be more than false coin compared to this second son of an earl. Bob had been born to play lord of the manor, just as Joe had been born to work. He might own the house, but it was Bob’s birthright to be at ease there.

And that was what made him so damned useful—both as a friend and an investor. The Honourable Robert Breton opened doors that the name Joseph Stratford never would, and his presence in negotiations removed some of the stink of trade when Joseph was trying to prise capital from the hands of his rich and idle friends.

Joseph took another sip of his tea. ‘Lampett has been giving mad speeches again—raising the population to violence. Lord knows why Mackay did not run him off before now, instead of allowing himself to be scared away. He might have nipped the insurrection in the bud, and his business would still be standing.’

Breton shrugged. ‘Anne tells me that Lampett was not always thus. There was some accident when the men fought the mill fire. He has not been right in the head since.’

‘More’s the pity for him and his family,’ Joe replied. ‘If he does not leave off harassing me he will be the maddest man in Australia by spring.’

‘Anne seems quite fond of him,’ Breton said. ‘Until they closed the school he was a teacher in the village and a respected member of the community.’

Joseph reminded himself to speak to Anne on the subject himself, if only so that he might say he had. It did not seem right that one’s best friend got on better with one’s prospective fiancée than one did oneself. But Bob and Anne enjoyed each other’s company—perhaps because Bob was able to converse comfortably on subjects other than the price of yard goods and the man hours needed to produce them.

‘If Anne respects him, then she has not seen him lately. From what I have observed he is not fit company for a lady. There was a girl at the riot today who must have been his daughter, trying to drag him home and out of trouble. She came near to being trampled by the crowd and Lampett did not notice the danger to her. I rescued her myself, and did not get so much as a thank-you from either of them.’

‘Was this before or after you threatened to have the father arrested?’ Breton asked dryly.

‘In between threats, I think.’ Stratford grinned.

Breton shook his head. ‘And you wonder why you are not loved.’

‘They will all love me well enough once the mill is open and they are back to work.’

‘If there is work to be had,’ Breton said. ‘The Orders in Council limit the places you can sell your wares. As long as America is a friend of France, there is little you can do.’

‘They will be repealed,’ Joseph said firmly.

‘And what if they are not?’

‘They will be. They must be. The merchants are near at breaking point now. The law must change or we are all ruined.’ Joseph smiled with reassurance, trying to imbue confidence in his faint-hearted friend. ‘It will not do to hesitate. We cannot err on the side of caution in this darkest time. If we wish for great profit we must be more sure, more daring, more active than the others. A busy mill and a full warehouse are the way to greatest success. When the moment comes it will come on us suddenly. Like the handmaidens at the wedding, we must be ready for change.’