“Do not patronize me, sir. Answer the question.”
He smiled at her again, leaving a mark. “Still fighting back, I see. Well done.”
“And the answer?”
He huffed a breath. “The Drew family is tightly knit with the baron. He infests them with the same poison that consumes him – corrupting, tainting, corroding. They are lost.”
As he spoke, barely constrained passion bubbled perilously near to the surface of his explanation. She failed to discern what sort of passion, but sensed the anger, regret, and concern stirred into the stew of his festering response. Her curiosity swelled until she could not restrain a question.
“So, you have a family?”
He peered at her again, his features wracked with indecision. Slowly, however, the granite of his expression melted into something softer, and his eyes reappeared from the shadows. He turned away.
“Yes. A mother and a sister.”
He lapsed into silence, offering nothing further. After a minute, he cocked his head at her. “You mentioned small brothers.”
Morgan hesitated, not wishing to disclose too much. Unneeded information might make the unearthing of her ruse too easy. “Half-brothers. Much younger and left adrift when my father died. And my father’s sister lives with us.”
“And you bear the burden of supporting them?”
“Yes. Gladly. They are my family and all I have in this world.”
Steadman nodded slowly with a look of approval. “You are a good sort, Morgan Brady. Many a young man would simply leave their family to rot.”
“I am not ‘many a young man.’”
“As I have noticed.”
As they continued down the road in relative silence, Morgan wondered about Steadman. What kind of man washe? Had he lefthisfamily to rot? She wanted to believe better of him but feared the truth.
Chapter Seven
“They all tell the same story as Nott and Thrup did yesterday.”
Morgan voiced her conclusion as she and Steadman left another interview with farmers, their fourth in two days. When he cut dark eyes at her, the breeze caught his unruly locks and splayed them across a grizzled cheek. She tamped down an erupting tremor to upbraid herself silently. He was as out of her reach as the condemning stars in the night sky.
“They do,” he said. “Same intruders, same demands, same contract. Same offers from Dunwoody beforehand to sell their land.”
Morgan mounted her horse and urged it toward Broad Chalke before Steadman called out.
“Wrong direction, Mr. Brady. Today, we go this way.”
She swung her horse in the road to join him already traveling the opposite direction. “To Salisbury?”
“Yes.”
“Are there others to interview in Salisbury?”
“No.”
She waited, but he offered no clarification other than grinning boyishly at her, inviting. She rolled her eyes. “Right, then. I will play your game. Why do we travel to Salisbury?”
“Simple,” he said while inspecting his nails. “It is nearby, and I know an excellent tailor.”
The jocular tone of his reply raised alarm bells. “A tailor? For what purpose?”
He turned in his saddle to flash that wicked grin that threatened to slay her every time. “To replace that excuse of a suit you wear.”
