An Untitled Lady by Nicky Penttila

Author:Nicky Penttila [Penttila, Nicky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781943192007
Amazon: 1943192006
Publisher: Wondrous Publishing
Published: 2015-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

{ 23 }

While Malbanks rode ahead on his roan, Heywood, Clayton, and Nash followed in the older man’s sideboard, carrying every bucket the servants could find. Mrs. Heywood forced a quickly packed basket of food on them, choice cooked morsels that wouldn’t last an hour. But the cook also packed two loaves of bread and bottles of water underneath.

“Hell of a way to break up a party, Quinn,” Heywood muttered, his concentration on the team of horses. Clayton, squeezed between them on the bench, nibbled at a leg of pheasant.

Nash couldn’t eat. Even the smell of the bird turned his stomach. How could he have said those things to Maddie? How could he have said them in mixed company? In any company? If a person could melt, she would have melted in front of all of them, he was sure of it. And that look—not angry, that he had been braced for, but deep green pools of pain.

And for what? For standing up to Malbanks, a feat which in all rights should have gained her praise. And now he’d left her, with those rigid shoulders aching for a touch, with the sniping biddies of Mosley Street. He was the worst husband, the worst lover. No wonder she couldn’t say she loved him. After that performance, he couldn’t even love himself.

The gray-orange bloom of the fire lit the sky but darkened the streets they traveled. It was slow going, though Clayton had taken to calling out a warning, fire-truck, make way. They looked very little like any fire-truck Nash had seen, but the calls did have some effect. They turned into the lane leading to Malbanks Mills less than twenty minutes after Maddie had sounded the alert.

Flames danced from the last of the three seven-storey manufactories, the newest one. A blessing, as that one was farthest from the others, separated by the two-storey warehouse and counting house; even if it went, the others might be saved. Some two hundred people scrambled about, lending an odd sense of day to the night-dark scene. But something else was odd about the picture.

Clayton caught on first. “Why is no one going to the river?” The people, shadows in their dark clothing, congregated in front of the new mill, facing away but keeping a good distance from the flames.

“Blast it all!” Heywood snapped the reins, and the wagon lurched. Nash made out what he’d seen: Malbanks holding his horse, on the wrong side of the road, with a crowd of workingmen on the right side, arrayed to block his way toward the cindering building. As Malbanks turned his back to tether the stomping horse, a stone flew at him from the other side. It missed him, striking the horse’s head. It reared in fright, and the man, suddenly dwarfed, jumped back. He turned to face the crowd, and Nash saw the rifle in his hands. Malbanks hadn’t been merely tethering the horse, but arming himself.

Another stone flew past him. He lifted the gun to his shoulder.

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