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Mr Rikkard Ambrose was sitting at breakfast with his mother, sister, and a gaggle of admiring young ladies who were plying him with questions about the mine strike, ooh-ing and aaah-ing, fluttering their eyelashes and complimenting him on his bravery. Needless to say that when I stormed into the breakfast parlour, this sight didn’t exactly improve my mood.
‘And then, Mr Ambrose?’ Lady Caroline whispered, leaning closer in a way that displayed certain assets of hers to their best advantage. However, since the assets were neither inventory, cash nor receivables, Mr Rikkard Ambrose didn’t appear particularly interested. That mollified me somewhat - until I heard him say, ‘Well, Lady Caroline, after my secretary had let himself be knocked down, I grabbed the stupid boy and dragged him into the manager’s office. My bodyguard covered the door, while I pulled him out of danger.’
What?
‘Oh, Mr Ambrose!’ sighed Lady Caroline. ‘You’re so brave.’
‘Yes,’ sighed Lady Dorothea, not to be outdone by a little competition. ‘So terribly brave!’
‘Yes,’ Mr Ambrose concurred succinctly, and took a succinct sip of tea.
Excuse me? Who was it who jumped in front of whom to save him from being stoned alive?
‘Tell us more,’ pleaded Lady Caroline. ‘What did you do next? How did you save the day?’
I cleared my throat.
Everyone looked up. A broad smile spread over Lady Samantha’s face.
‘Ah, Miss Linton. I’m so glad you felt up to joining us. How are you this fine morning, after the exhausting journey yesterday?’
Everyone except Mr Ambrose. His eyes didn’t move an inch. He took another sip of tea.
‘Very well, thank you,’ I told her, staring at him. ‘Although I sometimes feel a little bit uneasy after that terrible ordeal. For some reason, I feel watched, as if someone were following me everywhere I go.’
‘Oh, my dear.’ Reaching out, Lady Samantha patted my hand. ‘That’s perfectly natural, after all that you’ve been through. All those brutes attacking you… If I’d had an experience like that, I’d be checking for strangers around corners, too. But it’s just an irrational feeling. In time it will fade.’
‘Really?’ I asked, taking a seat. A shadow fell onto my plate as Karim took up his post behind me. I heard the scrape of metal against metal as he took a tight hold of his sabre. ‘I’m so relieved to hear that.’
‘So it is true?’ Lady Caroline demanded. ‘You were really caught up in the strike? The miners attacked you?’
Ladling my toast with liberal amounts of beans, I considered how best to answer that. Finally, I decided on: ‘Yes.’
‘Dear Lord!’ she gave a fake little gasp and fanned herself, as if the mere thought of mine workers caused acute lack of oxygen. Her eyes, however, stayed hard and sharp as shards of flint. ‘That’s dreadful! You poor thing! And to live through that at your age, when you’re hardly a woman yet, nearly a child…how horrific. I’m so sorry that you were hurt.’
And not killed instead, her eyes completed the sentence she could not finish out loud.
‘So am I,’ I agreed with a smile. I’d rather it had been you.
Then the men started in, propounding their theories about the declining morality of the lower classes and the need to take them into a firm hand to save Britain’s economy. We ladies contented ourselves with throwing poisonous looks at each other, and occasionally at each other’s breakfast, in the hope the looks would be literally effective. But just because I was silent, that didn’t mean I no longer intended to haul Mr Ambrose over the coals. Oh no. I simply waited. I bided my time. As soon as there was a lull in the conversation, I leaned forward, and with a sweet smile said, ‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’
Everyone hushed. His name alone was enough to cast silence over a table.
Meticulously, Mr Ambrose speared a piece of bacon with his fork, deposited it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Only then did he look at me.
‘Yes, Miss Linton?’
‘I wanted to thank you for your generosity in lending your personal bodyguard to me.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Oh yes, indeed. I feel so much safer since I have a dangerous, armed man lurking in front of my bedroom door every night.’
‘I see.’
‘Although…’
‘Yes?’
