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Miss Pendleton’s breath sighed out. Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, what difference does it make?” Her tone was angry and impatient. “It’s only a matter of time until you find out. I don’t know why I thought I could keep secrets.” She raised her chin and stared at him. “My father was Sir Jared Pendleton, baronet. He had a place in Lancashire, where I grew up.”
The last two sentences seemed at once jerked out of her and practiced. As if she’d recited them many times before in just that defiant manner.
“Papa died three years ago, and my brother, Philip, came into his title.”
The mysterious brother, who always caused her to look resentful and desolate.
“But Philip…” Her brief silence seemed full of heartache. She took a breath and gathered her thoughts. “From the beginning then. Some years ago, my father opened a small coal-mining operation on our land, as others had been doing. Philip was curious about the workings. He followed every step in the process. He used to visit the new factories in Manchester too, to see how they worked. Mechanical things always fascinated him.”
She paused. Daniel nodded to show that he was listening. In fact, he was riveted. Not by the tale she was telling, which seemed mundane so far, but by her willingness to share it.
Miss Pendleton sighed again. “When Philip looked at these innovations, he didn’t see ingenuity or financial opportunity, as some do. He saw a vast future of oppression. That was one of his pet phrases. He predicted a wave of ugliness about to break over our heads. People viewed as cogs and gears instead of individuals. An ocean of soot and smoke. He could be so eloquent, describing that scene. He gave one chills.” She wrapped her arms around her ribs. “And he was determined todosomething about it. Change is inevitable, he used to say, but thedirectionof change can be shifted. That was his obsession.” She fell silent, as if she couldn’t bear to go on.
Daniel waited. When she didn’t speak, he said, “But then he died.” She’d mentioned that her brother was dead. Bereavement didn’t quite explain her silence, however. There was more to this.
“Before he wasmurderedlast August at the Peterloo Massacre.” Her eyes burned again, with a harsher light than before.
Daniel nearly took a step back under that glare. “Peterloo? The Luddite riot in Manchester?”
“It was a gathering to hear speeches about parliamentary reform.”
“Sixty thousand men, didn’t they say? That seems more like an insurrection.”
“Unarmed men,” she responded, though her face showed ambivalence. “And the government called in mounted cavalry to cut them down, as if Manchester was a battlefield and they were the enemy instead of English citizens.”
“You were there?” Daniel was shocked at the idea.
“Of course not.”
“But you’re a radical.”
“No.” Miss Pendleton sank into the desk chair, suddenly looking very tired. “No, I’m not. Wasn’t. Ever.”
She leaned back, looking more like the exhausted young lady who’d first arrived at Rose Cottage than the vibrant creature who’d lusted after his documents.
“I wasn’t like Philip,” she continued. “I helped our local people without thinking too hard about the cause. Families starve, you know, when they lose their livelihood to the new machines.”
“I have seen it,” said Daniel. “So your brother was a Luddite?”
Miss Pendleton gave a toneless laugh. “If you knew how often I’ve heard that question. Did he join the frame-breakers, when did he, who are his associates? I don’t think a baronet was the sort of man accepted into their secret circles, but I’m not sure. Philip didn’t tell me anything.”
“So you wouldn’t be endangered,” Daniel guessed.
“I’d like to believe he thought of me in that way. But I don’t.” The last word was clipped. She rubbed her forehead. “There was a long inquiry after Peterloo. Lord Sidmouth’s agents are extremely…thorough. I was questioned at great length about my brother’s activities. They found it difficult to believe that I knew nothing of them.”
“Even though you gave your word?” Daniel hadn’t expected anything like this. He didn’t like to imagine her being accused. His feelings about the Manchester marchers were more complicated.
Miss Pendleton was staring at him as if he’d spoken in a foreign language. “My word?”
“That should have been enough.”
“Should it?”
“Of course.”
She blinked. “Well, it wasn’t. Lord Sidmouth’s people found my ignorance impossible to fathom. I had to assure them of it some hundreds of times before they were convinced.” She shrugged. “Or gave up. They let me go anyway.”
“Let you—”
