Bronwyn Scott - Reckless Rakes - Hayden Islington

“So,” Daniel asked again. “Will Islington help us?”

“ Us ?” She noted his use of the word. “What do you know of all this?”

Daniel straightened his thin, adolescent shoulders. “I know Paulie is missing, that he’s not the first. Other workers have been missing for weeks now and it’s serious enough that you want an investigator to help you find them.”

Jenna nodded. She wouldn’t lie to him. The situation had become dire enough she feared having to close down until the situation was resolved. Her mill couldn’t function without enough workers to fill the shifts and in the dead of winter, she wasn’t sure where she’d come up with new ones.

Her workers had started disappearing over two months ago. Since then, it had been one or two a week, which might not sound terribly significant but when a mill was run by forty-five to fifty men and young boys, a ten percent attrition rate was quickly reached as was the mill’s ability to function. The workers were hired from gangs that came from Manchester and Leeds. Couple that with the winter weather and the difficulty of getting another work crew in before spring, it was no wonder she was worried.

Until this week, she’d been able to fill the empty spots from the small worker pool available in town. Now, with Paulie’s disappearance, fear was rampant. She was well aware of the rumors surrounding the Priess mill disappearances. The workers available were reluctant to work for her, afraid they too might be among the next to disappear. Not even the prospect of higher wages could entice them.

She was starting to panic. If she couldn’t fulfill her orders for bobbins, they would lose money and future contracts. It would be a financial disaster. Even worse, if the workers’ suspicions of foul play reached her father’s ear, it would devastate him. The winter had been cruel enough as it was. This last might just finish him off.

Her father was known in the area as a champion of workers’ rights. He was proud of the conditions in his mills, the fairness of his wages and his concern for his workers well-being. It would destroy him to know those ethics were being questioned to say nothing of what the practical realities of a shutdown would do to the business. She’d not lied to Islington when she’d said she’d pay handsomely. The Priesses were wealthy, but they wouldn’t be if they lost the mill and its income.

“You’re dodging my question, Sis.” Daniel prompted patiently. “Will he help us?”

“I don’t know.” Jenna hedged, drawing her mind back from the dark abyss of her thoughts. There was no sense worrying about what ifs just yet. “Maybe.”

“Then he didn’t say no?” Daniel argued hopefully.

She couldn’t bear to disappoint him, or to let down her father. Her father didn’t know it, but he was counting on her. Right now, she was all that stood between the family business and ruin. “Islington said to come back tonight.”

“Will you?” Daniel asked quietly, sensing if not fully understanding that she was somehow conflicted over that decision.

“Yes.” She offered him a reassuring smile, hoping her answer would convince Daniel a return visit was all it would take to secure the help they needed. Maybe she was even trying to convince herself Islington would say yes. He’d not promised her anything. Still, what choice did she have? He was the only investigator she had. With the winter roads, it would be spring by the time she corresponded with an investigation company in a larger city and arranged for someone to come. Spring would be too late.

Islington was her only choice. Up until this afternoon’s meeting, she’d liked to think he’d been serendipitously dropped into her lap just when she needed him — well, not him precisely, but an investigator. Now, she wasn’t sure serendipity had anything to do with it. The only investigator she could get her hands on was a notorious seducer. Nonetheless, she had to go back. If she didn’t, she’d never know what Islington’s decision was. If she didn’t go back, the failure to engage an investigator would be on her shoulders. But if she went back and Islington refused, she could be content knowing she’d made her best effort and the fault lay with him.

There. She’d made her decision she told herself firmly. She would see him again tonight. Going back was the only choice, the right choice for her family and the mill. The tremor of excitement the decision elicited had to do with the satisfaction of a decision made, the idea that she was moving forward, making progress. It had nothing to do with a pair of blue eyes that undressed a woman in a glance and a mouth that inspired the most decadent of daydreams. Nothing at all. It was ridiculous to think it did.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard of! Are you serious?” Logan gave Hayden a disapproving stare over the foaming head of his ale, the taproom noisy around them. “You’re actually thinking about taking on a case right in the middle of racing season? You haven’t taken on a case for five years and now you suddenly have an itch to investigate?”

“He’s got an itch alright.” Carrick mumbled into his mug.

Logan shot his disapproval in Carrick’s direction. “If I’d known she was the one to scratch it, I would not have brought her. I thought she was like all the others.”

Hayden stifled a smile. Logan would not take to being teased at the moment. He knew what Logan had thought. He’d thought it too. But Miss Jenna Priess had sought him out on far different ‘business’ than the usual. The taproom was loud and boisterous around them, the crowd in a good mood after the excitement of the racing that morning, followed up by a winter fair in what passed for the village green in the white months. It was a night for celebration. It was not a night for quarreling with one’s best friend. What Logan needed right now was pacification.

“It’s not a case.” Hayden offered. Hardly. A case implied briefs and files and research, interviews with people who knew the victim. This was not a case. Nor was it going to turn into one. “I’m going to make a couple of inquiries. If I’m lucky, I’ll have a few leads for her to follow on her own. With the right information, she can probably find someone to wrap it all up without my help.” It was the same argument he’d made with himself that afternoon. An afternoon, he noted, that he had not spent rolling in bed with a lovely woman, but thinking instead. What he’d come up with was a compromise his conscience could live with and that was it: get her some leads, nothing more.

His argument had been more successful on himself than on Logan. His conscience had been appeased but Logan was not. Then again, Logan hadn’t been in the room with her, hadn’t seen the emerald fire in her eyes when she’d talked of her predicament. Logan hadn’t heard her sincerity of tone when she’d spoken of her father, he hadn’t been subjected to the idea that he was in the presence of a good woman who wanted something more from him than celebrity sex.

Logan leaned across the table to be heard over the din of the tavern, his tone earnest. “Hayden, we have money invested and obligations to keep. I don’t know that there’s time for this and we can’t back out. We are centered here for the winter but we have visits to make elsewhere. The Derwentwater merchants want us to see their lake, there’s Morecambe’s ice festival and Keswick after that. I can’t pay them back if we don’t show up. The festivals are already planned,” Logan reminded him. “We have to keep those commitments. I need your head in the game.”

Obligations meant more than just showing up. People expected a show. Once word of today’s antics on the ice made the rounds, the expectations would be doubled. Hayden Islington was expected to win and do it in grand fashion. Merchants and earls didn’t sponsor events centered around losers.