Page 35 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“My Lord.” She laid a hand on the file, planting her fingers over the text and hiding the names of the mills and factories from him. He was startled she had done it, even more startled that she leaned toward him, coming close to captivate his attention. Her lips were just a few inches from his. His hands tightened together beneath the desk, his fingers locking, so he did not reach up toward her. “Do not rescue Thomas from that environment because of guilt or a wish to help me.”
“It’s not that.”
“Isn’t it?” she countered. “Because you can surely see for yourself that there are thousands in the same situation.” She nodded at the papers in front of him. “Helping one man will not help them all.”
“I know.” He nodded, somberly.
“They’re a necessary evil, I know that, these places.” Though she was hardly pleased by the idea as she released the papers and leaned back. “As my brother says, I used to complain about having no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
“What does that mean?” Horace was struck by the words, sitting straight.
“Don’t wallow in self-pity,” she explained with a shrug. “There’s always a man who has life harder than you.”
“I suppose so.” Yet Horace was still not content as he looked down at the paper before him. “Perhaps these ‘necessary evils’, as you call them, will not always be so.”
“That’s a grand idea,” she murmured.
“I will go and see them.” He thought about standing up, full of determination, then remembered just what she had done to him and sat very still again. She seemed to have noticed.
“Are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Then why…”
“Don’t ask,” he begged.
“Oh.” Her eyes widened.
It was there again between them, the unsaid, the certainty, the desire. She didn’t run and escape him, and neither did he order her to flee the room.
The door opened.
“Ah, Adam, there you are.”
Adam’s entrance seemed to dispel the tension. Orla grabbed the Shakespeare book and returned it to its place on the shelves as Horace sat forward, gesturing to the papers.
“Would you make arrangements for me to visit one of my factories, please?”
“Visit?” Orla spluttered, managing to knock multiple books off the shelf as she did so. “But your health, my lord. If there is something in the air at those places that has made you ill…”
“Then it could be making others ill, Orla, could it not?” he asked. She didn’t counter again, she just continued to stare at him, open-mouthed. “Adam, would you assist me in making the arrangements, please?”
Adam walked forward, a new skip in his step, as he smiled broadly.
“I’ll make the arrangements at once.”
“Oh, and Orla? Would you come with us, please?”
***
“Down there is my family shop,” Orla said, pointing through the carriage window. “Fine place it is, though not particularly busy these days. Oh, and down there is where I used to play with the other girls. We’d play blind man’s buff when the boys weren’t looking.”
“Really?” Horace was hypnotized by Orla. Their entire journey, the two of them sat together and talked, pointing out things to one another on their journey, and about their pasts.
The carriage left the shopping streets and turned toward the factories.
“It always seems to be grey in this part of town,” Orla observed, retracting her hand from the window.
