Once Again a Bride by Jane Ashford Page A

government is, yes, hanging young Englishmen for attacking the new machinery. Frame breakers they call them.” Alec shuffled through the papers on his desk. “Here.”
    Charlotte came to join him. She leaned over the page and read aloud:
    Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking,
    When Famine appeals and when Poverty groans,
    That Life should be valued at less than a stocking,
    And breaking of frames lead to breaking of bones.
    If it should prove so, I trust, by this token,
    (And who will refuse to partake in the hope?)
    That the frames of the fools may be first to be broken ,
    Who, when asked for a remedy , send down a rope .
    She turned to look at him, her coppery eyes intense with feeling. “But what can be done to help them?”
    Those eyes were very close, and the anxious sympathy he saw in her face was such a relief and a revelation. No one close to him had been moved by the emergency he felt rising around him every day. No one seemed to want to hear or understand, while Alec felt the world was teetering on the brink with so few—so very few—people straining to save it.
    He was suddenly aware that their shoulders were touching. Hers was warm against his coat sleeve. Under the dowdy black stuff of her gown was a slender, rounded body. She was lovely, he thought. He hadn’t quite realized. It had taken the touch of her warm and ardent spirit. Such a small shift would put his arms around her; a mere bend of his head would set his lips on hers.
    Shocked, he stepped back. This young woman was living under his roof and his protection, in company with his sisters. “I’m doing all I can for my own people in Derbyshire.” It came out rather stiffly.
    “That’s what these letters are about?”
    “Yes.” He didn’t mean to be dismissive, but her nearness was deeply unsettling.
    “There are so many. Do you need help? Perhaps I could…”
    “I believe I have matters well in hand,” Alec lied.
    Charlotte drew back at the undeniable snub. “I mustn’t keep you from your work then.”
    “Thank you.”
    She turned and strode out with a rustle of skirts. Alec sank into his desk chair and grappled with his entirely inappropriate impulses. Charlotte Wylde was alone—without family or any other protector—and under his authority as executor. She was extraordinarily appealing. She was recently bereaved, though how she could be mourning his reprehensible uncle he could not… She sometimes seemed even younger than her age—nineteen, he had discovered in his uncle’s papers… Of course, she was not a total innocent. She was a widow not a deb… one of his most agreeable liaisons had been with a widow. An utterly different case!
    They were barely acquainted. She had entered so readily into his concerns… the quick sympathy in her eyes… for the workers, not for him. She was his aunt, for God’s sake! He snorted. This was maddening and pointless. The best thing would be to banish all thought of her from his mind. Alec returned to the letters awaiting his attention, and struggled for some time to follow his own excellent advice.
    ***
    Ethan watched the houseguest storm up the stairs and wondered what had happened in the study to make her angry. Not likely to be Sir Alexander; he was never impolite. Must have been the visitor. There was a strange little man—refused to give his name, glared at Ethan like he was a thief when he tried to take his coat. They’d never had a caller like him before.
    Ethan was suddenly reminded of Harry Saunders. Everybody back home knew Harry was a poacher, though nobody could prove it. He had the same half-furtive, half-sly, and insolent air about him as the man just gone. Harry was a sneak, always popping up where least expected and slipping a few rabbits or even a deer out from under the noses of the gamekeepers. He enjoyed it, too; wouldn’t trade the poaching for honest work despite some run-ins with the magistrates. The visitor was like that, only on the other side