Secrets of Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

with
his prominent Adam's apple. "Anything else, my lord?"
    "Yes. Is there grain to be found in this parish?"
    "Only at famine prices—but of course there's flour
aplenty at the house if that concerns you—"
    "Not for me, man! The miners can't work if they
have no bread, and from the looks of some of them, I'd swear they haven't eaten
a sound meal in days." Donovan's hard gaze bored into the agent. "No
thanks to the pittance they've been paid of late."
    "And which will be righted at once, my lord, just
as you've ordered!" Henry Gilbert began walking backward to the entrance
of the stable, giving no heed to the steaming piles of horse dung squishing
under his feet. "You wish the miners to have grain, then?"
    "Buy enough bushels so that every man has a decent
share to take home to his family."
    "It will cost, my lord—"
    Gilbert didn't finish, his eyes growing round as
serving platters as Donovan tugged off his coat and threw it over a post, then
grabbed a shovel from against the wall and advanced
toward him. With a sharp intake of breath, the man turned on his spindly legs
and fled while Donovan sank the shovel into a pile of dung and musty straw,
muttering under his breath, "Blasted fool."
    It appeared that the stable was as much in need of
attention as everything else around this dismal place, he thought mutinously,
heaving his ripe-smelling burden into an empty stall.
    It might have been dusk last night when he'd arrived at
his Cornwall estate, but there had still been enough light for him to see that
the huge house his father had bequeathed to him was in a sorry state of
disrepair. Crumbling chimneys, cracked windows, a vast overgrown lawn—and
inside, enough dust to choke a man, faded furnishings fit for no more than
firewood, and two slovenly housemaids who had been hired in Weymouth by Henry
Gilbert before he'd taken up his employment in Cornwall. One woman was as plump
as a sausage and the other was passing pretty but had a hard, calculating look
and reeked of cheap cologne.
    It had been disheartening and maddening, especially
since Donovan had seen his welcome as a smug otherworldly message from his
father—marry fast, and the quicker he'd have the funds to improve his miserable
surroundings. But he didn't give a damn about the house or the surrounding
estate, and he thought he'd feel the same about Arundale's Kitchen, too, as he'd
been told the place was called, until he'd ridden out there with Gilbert just
after sunrise, wanting to see the rest of the trap that his father had
contrived for him.
    Until he'd seen the careworn, expressionless faces of
the tin miners as they hiked to work, some from as far as six or seven miles
away, and more than he cared to remember with pallid cheeks gone hollow from
sparsity of food.
    When he had questioned some of the men, he'd been met
with stoic tight-lipped silence, until at last a brave few came forth with the
wretched truth about their mine cap'en, as they called Jack Pascoe, a
pock-faced, red-haired fellow as wiry as a bantam rooster who'd cut their wages
by half—only the latest of his transgressions, apparently—and who cared nothing
about the wives and children starving at home. Equal parts ambitious and cruel,
Pascoe had long ruled his domain by threatening life and livelihood, the miners
with no choice but to shoulder their lot or face utter destitution.
    So Donovan had quietly taken the bastard aside and told
him to be off the property by noon, promising a full month's wage if he left
the mine without saying a word. Jack Pascoe's watery blue eyes had filled with
rage, but he'd nodded and stalked back into the countinghouse.
    Watching him, Donovan had taken perverse pleasure in
undoing a part of what his father had done; yet he knew as he sank the shovel
under another pile of manure that he'd just as much been affected by the miners' misery . . .
    "But don't get yourself too affected,"
Donovan muttered to himself, straightening just as Henry Gilbert