Free A Flight of Fancy by Laurie Alice Eakes Page B

them later. Their likenesses, poor an artist as he was, lay in papers he had managed to sneak into his rooms at Whittaker Hall one night while the household slept.
    He had tried to sneak farther into the Hall but had failed to reach Cassandra’s rooms. Too many servants scurried about, even with Mama’s economies. But his rooms were sacrosanct, out of reach of the maids and safe for him to enter with no one the wiser, including his keeper, Major Gabriel Crawford.
    Whittaker’s fingers balled into fists on his thighs at the idea of that man staying in the home Whittaker had inherited. His rightful home, his inheritance, his legacy, the home in which his future wife resided. At least the lady he still intended to be his wife, God willing.
    Which He did not seem to be.
    His hands tightened until the muscles in his arms bulgedagainst the coarse linen shirt he wore under a leather jerkin. Cassandra was the woman Whittaker had prayed for all his life. He knew it mere days after meeting her. So why, a week before their wedding, would God destroy that intended union?
    And place him amongst men who stank of sweat and ale and worse? He would not allow any of them near his looms and cotton and silk fabrics. No one would buy such befouled fabrics. Whittaker felt unclean in the same room with their vulgar tongues and murderous spirits. He prayed for nothing more than to get out of this house and back to Whittaker Hall, try to figure out a way to see Cassandra, talk to her, convince her—
    “So are you with us or not, Geoff?” The tone of the man was sharp, impatient. Hugh, with an accent more that of East Anglia than Lancashire or any of the other northern counties. A suspiciously long way from home. But then, they raised sheep in East Anglia, so perhaps the crisis with the loss of work amongst the weavers did affect him, as he claimed—affected him enough to drive him to leave his work and join the Luddite rebellion.
    “Are you going to help us make sure it doesn’t die out?” Hugh persisted.
    “I am here, ar—ain’t I?” Whittaker tried to hide his educated accent.
    Rob, a broad-faced Yorkshire weaver out of work now, snorted. “You haven’t listened to a word we’ve said.”
    “Woolgathering.” Whittaker chuckled at his own joke.
    “It’s a woman,” said the last man in the group, Jimmy, a silk stocking weaver from Nottingham who’d helped destroy his master’s looms back in the spring.
    Whittaker, needing an ally, had stopped Jimmy from getting caught and jailed, if not outright hanged.

    “Always a woman when a man woolgathers.” Jimmy chuckled.
    Whittaker laughed too. “Aye, it is a woman. Can’t help but think about the silk of her hair when we’re talking about silk weaving. It’s so—” He stopped himself from describing Cassandra’s midnight tresses. “Like you could spin it into gold.”
    “Well, ain’t you the poet.” Hugh’s tone held a sneer. “Let’s get our work done and you can go have yourself another look at it.”
    “If you pay attention,” Rob added, “we can get it done faster.”
    “Beg pardon.” Whittaker picked up the tankard one of the men had set before him earlier and pretended to drain it. In fact, the contents went down the sleeve of his shirt, a maneuver he had practiced for hours with glasses of water. The reek of ale left behind revolted him. It seemed to seep into his pores and taint his blood.
    “Don’t you think it a bit risky going after the Hern mills?” he continued. “They’re not just two or three looms in a cottage. They’re a whole factory with guards.”
    He’d made sure of the guards as soon as the trouble began a year earlier. Not enough at first, and one shop fell to the axes of the rebels.
    “Someone is likely to get shot,” he concluded.
    “Worth the risk.” Jimmy picked up the pitcher on the table and filled each mug as easily as though a branch of candles stood in the center of the table, instead of it being cloaked in darkness.