The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter by Lawana Blackwell Page B

one step per second meant sixty feet per minute, thirty-six hundred feet per hour. Which added up to over four miles daily. During his ten-year confinement, Seth figured he had walked to China and back. And uphill all the way , he thought, lifting his foot again.
    He became aware that the steps were becoming more and more difficult to take, which meant that one of the guards was tightening the screws to bring the device to a halt. Yet it seemed much too early for the lunch break. Turning to look over his shoulder was against the rules and could result in a jab in the small of the back with a club, so when the treadmill came to a dead stop, Seth stayed in place and stared at the panel in front of him.
    “You! Langford!” came a voice behind him. Seth recognized it as belonging to Mr. Baker, one of the more decent guards. He turned his head to give him a sidelong look and waited for further instructions.
    “Major Spencer wants to see you right away,” the guard said, motioning for him to step down. Seth had no choice but to obey, yet he did so with a terrible sense of foreboding. A summons from the warden could only mean bad news. Yet he couldn’t recall having done anything to deserve punishment. Oh, he had raised a row upon his arrival ten years ago, but when several guards explained to him, using their clubs for emphasis, that such behavior would lengthen his sentence, he settled down. They neither believed his protestations of innocence, nor cared, he realized. The best a man could do here was to serve his time quietly.
    “Do you know why?” Seth asked Baker while holding out his hands for manacles. The guard shrugged but gave him a wry smile.
    “Allst I know is there’s a woman in there wi’ him.”
    Immediately Seth’s pulse jumped. Elaine! But it couldn’t be so. He had lied to her when she tried to visit after his sentencing, claiming that he no longer loved her. Still, his heart clung to enough feeble hope that it gave a lurch when he was ushered into the warden’s office and she wasn’t there.
    He did recognize the woman in spite of her black veil and clothes of mourning. It was Lady Esther Hamilton, wife of his former employer, Lord Arthur Hamilton. Seth had been head groomsman on their Kensington estate until accused of stealing a gold and ruby brooch from Lady Esther’s boudoir. Lord Hamilton must have died , he thought with no emotion.
    “You may release his chains,” Major Spencer said from behind his desk to the guard. “And wait outside the door.”
    Baker complied immediately, though with a disappointed droop of the shoulders at being excluded from the meeting. As he held out his wrists again, Seth darted another glance in Lady Hamilton’s direction. Two men sat on either side of her. The young one at her right looked vaguely familiar. Benjamin? he thought with wonder.
    His last memory of young master Benjamin had been of a small face pressed against the glass of an upstairs window. Seth had happened to look up in that direction from the courtyard through the bars of the police wagon. He had locked eyes with the lad, and then the face disappeared. He’s grown so .
    The warden nodded toward a chair beside his desk, six feet away from the visitors. “Please have a seat, Mr. Langford.”
    Mr. Langford? As he obeyed, Seth felt his eyes sting at this small measure of respect directed toward him after so long. He stared at the floor, resisting the urge to wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his grayand-white-striped prison shirt.
    “I suppose you recognize Lady Hamilton and her son?” Major Spencer asked, staring through his steepled fingers. The prison warden was a man of an indeterminable age, with dark hair graying only at the temples and hooded brown eyes. A severe man he was reported to be, one almost as heavy-handed with the guards as with the prisoners, but a just one.
    “Yes, sir,” Seth mumbled, his eyes still directed toward the carpet in front of him. He heard a sniff and glanced