Page 4

“For a woman?” she responded sharply. “Or for the children of Irish immigrants who fled the potato blight ten years ago?” Her father had been keen to hire his countrymen, even as he tried to build his reputation in England. However, the Crimean War had been a strange boon to the linen industry as Her Majesty’s Army leaned heavily on her father’s mills for their linen supply.

“My apologies, my lady, I did not mean to offend.” He never did. Ignorance and entitlement had a way of warping a man’s soul. He never meant to offend and yet his apologies never quite struck the mark.

He wiped his lips with his napkin as he finished the slice. James likely had little idea the sweat and effort that went into producing that linen. But Mariah knew. Had known since she was a girl.” I forgot that you had an interest in plays,” he added before he drained the remainder of his tea.

Of course he did. She wondered if he had ever read her letters past the first one. Why had she thought to share her work with him? Mayhap he looked down on her for being a woman, or in trade. Or perhaps it was the subject of her play, Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen of Ireland, that so offended him. Perhaps it was the Irish language she had included in the prologue.

Oh, well, it was better she knew his true character early in their marriage than fall in love with him and learn it too late.

“I am also v-visiting my father at his mill before I go to the school.” Then I will stop by the tenements I am constructing with what remains of my dowry.

“Your father?” His gaze jerked toward her, the surprise on his face a departure from the mask of casual charm he had maintained throughout the duration of their conversation. “You did not mention you were visiting your father.”

“I stop by several times a week. I did n-not know it was of interest to you.”

Abruptly abandoning his chair, her husband surged from the table. “I should like to go with you into Barnsley today,” he stated, less a query than a declaration. “Where are the blasted servants around here?”

Wincing slightly at her merchant class faux pas, she too rose to ring the bell pull. “I do not need to be waited on hand and foot, so I often dismiss them if it is only me for breakfast.” Despite his desire for respectability, her father had carried an aversion to a large number of the servants. Likely being born on a tenant farm in County Mayo had instilled some humility into him.

Her husband hummed neither in approval nor judgement, and went to the door.

“When will we leave?”

She held in a sigh. At least he was asking and not telling, she supposed.

“I usually leave on the hour.”.

Mariah rested her fingers on the bellpull as several footmen entered as her husband left. She could not take her eyes from the painting of Bedford Grange, still attempting to divine the reason behind her husband’s fascination with the image.

Something was afoot, and it was up to her to determine quite what it was.

2

As the St. George carriage pulled away from Bailey Hall, James took in the imposing Jacobean structure gradually growing smaller behind him. Although he had spent time at the hall in his youth, he had little attachment to the building. It was a symbol of a legacy he did not want, one heavy with the scent of flax and smoke in the air. Not like Bedford Grange.

Shifting on the velvet squab, he drank in the image of his wife before him. She might not be out of place in London but for the muted colors of her carriage gown, her wool pelisse a dark gray, her gown a blue linen that matched the midnight blue of her eyes.

A sudden tremor passed through him as the mention of eyes again conjured the specter of Harrison, his brother’s unblemished visage from the painting flitting across his mind’s eye like a ghost. As the carriage lurched forward, he was pulled back to that convalescent ward in Portsmouth, where the stench of rotting flesh had first met the sight of the jagged cavity carved across his brother's face. To distract himself from a memory he wished desperately to forget, he tapped his walking cane and looked across the carriage at his wife expectantly.

“Speaking of old Harry, where is the fellow? Why is he not staying at Bailey Hall?”

Mariah started as if she had not expected him to speak. Her brow furrowed like she was considering her words carefully. “He was delayed. Besides, he says he does not care to see…m-memories of his previous life. He prefers to stay in town if he visits.”

A pair of venomous serpents coiled within his chest, their sudden awakening sparking a fury he was loath to examine deeply. “So, not only has he visited you alone in the past, but he has corresponded with you since I arrived.”

His wife bit her lip, which did nothing to prune the lust that laced his anger. “I already told you that Harris—, that is, M-Mr. Reed stays in town at the Crown and the Loom.”

“Why is it that you write to him so much, dear lady wife? Could it be you wed the wrong brother? Though I suppose your father would not have let your dowry go to a mere soldier.”

Disgust etched across his wife’s face as he immediately regretted the juvenile words he had spat at her as he pulled back a curtain to distract himself. Where was this anger coming from? The word jealousy nudged at his consciousness just as the smoke surrounding the carriage told him they were close to Barnsley.

“My father and your brother do have something in common, you know,” her lovely face still strained in a mask of disgust. “They are both ten times the man you are.”

James absorbed the words like a physical blow, however as he pulled back the curtain with his walking stick the sight outside of the window was an even stronger punch to the chest.

“What has happened here?”

His wife gave a puff of breath across from him.