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Simpson and Carson fell into a discussion of shafts and gears and levers. Carson made notes and drawings on a slate he’d brought along. Tom leaned over the diagrams with eager curiosity.
“Perhaps your young friend would like to be a builder,” Daniel said to Macklin.
“Waterworks is certainly an up-and-coming discipline,” the earl replied. “We’ll see if Tom’s interest lasts. He’s always taken by new ideas. But he tends to move on once his curiosity is satisfied.”
On the walk back to the house, Daniel managed to get Miss Pendleton to himself by the simple expedient of moving slower and slower until the others had pulled well ahead. Yet solitude didn’t bring her back from far away. “It’s fortunate Simpson knows someone who can design the millworks.”
“What? Oh, yes.”
She’d been immersed in details of the project, full of enthusiasm, laughing with him as Carson’s helper took a sledgehammer to Frithgerd’s corridor wall. But now she’d gone muted, guarded, and suspicious as she’d been when they’d first met. Daniel loathed the change. “I’d feared the water wheel would take longer,” he tried. “Two weeks is much better than I expected.”
Miss Pendleton merely nodded. She scarcely looked at him.
An image flashed on Daniel’s inner eye, repeating as quick as an eyeblink. A carriage driving away, with no acknowledgment from the passengers as the vehicle grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared around a bend in the road. Again, and again, without mercy. “Don’t go.”
“What?” His companion turned, stared, her attention definitely caught.
Had he spoken aloud? Surely not. The pictures had been momentary, barely grasped and then gone. And they made no sense whatsoever. Of course she would be going. She didn’t live here. She wasn’twithhim in any conventional sense. And thus she would be leaving. In her gig, not a traveling carriage. As she always did. Desolation was inappropriate. Desolation? Ridiculous.
Miss Pendleton touched his arm. “Lord Whitfield?”
He’d stopped walking. His chest felt tight. What the deuce? He moved, a step and then faster. “We should make sure Carson remembers to engage the bricklayer.”
Puzzled, Penelope strode after him. They both knew that Henry Carson needed no reminders; he’d proved his competence over the last few days. So what had caused the strain in Whitfield’s face and the urgency of his tone? She felt a leap of sympathy even though she didn’t understand. Had he said, “Don’t go”? She wasn’t sure now. He’d muttered. The pain in his face had distracted her.
Penelope’s dark memories, the despair she’d felt at the idea of watchers looming over her, receded a bit. She hurried to catch up with him.
“What news on the piping?” he asked when she reached his side.
“Elm is recommended. The pipes can be made from trees in your woods.” He knew this. She’d told him.
“Tom wants to see how they are bored out.”
“So you said.”
“Did I? You have a marvelous memory. I don’t know how I got anything done without you.”
Penelope found his joking tone irritating. But if he wanted to pretend the last few minutes had been just as usual, she couldn’t stop him. He wasn’t obliged to explain himself to her. Pushing aside a brush of hurt, she said, “I wanted to talk to you about your mother.” She’d been trying to find a time to tell him her theory.
Whitfield started and looked at her as if she’d said something bizarre. “My mother?”
What was the matter with him today? “I have an idea about her notebooks,” she replied.
“Notebooks?”
It was a perfectly simple word. There was no need to look at her as if she was daft. “I think they might be in code.”
He couldn’t have looked more astonished. “Code?” he repeated.
“Or call it a private writing system,” Penelope went on. “Some people invent those to keep their personal thoughts private. There’s Leonardo da Vinci’s mirror writing, for example.”
Once again, he stopped on the path. “You cannot be comparing my mother to da Vinci.”
“Well, no. Or only in this one sense. Creating a hidden way of writing.”
“But why would she do that?” Whitfield looked bewildered, then annoyed. “Would she go to such great lengths to keep from revealing herself? Was that really necessary?”
Penelope blinked at the anger in his voice.
