Reckless Rakes: Hayden Islington

She’d naïvely not anticipated Hayden Islington would fall into that category when she’d sought him out. The fact that he did had taken her entirely unaware. She’d blindly focused on the stereotype that investigators were gruff, stocky, older men that were balding and smelled of odd, cheap places. But Hayden Islington had upended those notions the moment he’d stepped into the room, potent and masculine in all the best ways.

Even so, she should have been immune to those good looks and easy manners simply because she knew better. She neither wanted nor needed any part of what he offered with his flirtatious eyes and provocative innuendos.

Jenna pulled off her gloves and set them on the polished console in the hall, frustrated at herself for her reaction and with him for knowingly encouraging it. She’d just begun undoing her cloak when her brother Daniel stepped out of the sitting room, relief on his face at the sight of her.

“You have a visitor.” He mouthed the next words, “It’s Davenport.”

Jenna froze. Her foreman was here. That was dangerous. She didn’t want him to see her at her most vulnerable, in her own home with no one but a sick father and young brother. She far preferred to meet with him at the factory where there was no chance of her father catching wind of their situation and where there were reminders everywhere of who was in charge; her office, her desk. The idea that Davenport even thought he could call on her at home suggested he was starting to question her authority or worse, that he imagined he could take certain liberties, could aspire to a relationship with her that transcended employer and employee.

Jenna smoothed her skirts and kept her voice calm. “Thank you, Daniel. Why don’t you go upstairs while I talk with our guest?” Daniel would know what that meant. He was to go look after father, to make sure news of Davenport’s visit didn’t reach him, didn’t worry him.

She entered the sitting room and pasted on a polite smile with her greeting. “Davenport, what a surprise. I thought we weren’t scheduled to meet until tomorrow at the mill.” It was where she preferred to meet with him. At the mill she was surrounded by the trappings of her authority — an office, a desk. At the mill, her weaknesses weren’t exposed or perhaps the mill was public ground of a sort. Her home was private and he was an intruder here.

Davenport rose, belatedly remembering to play the gentleman. He might have been an officer in his previous career but he wore the manners of a gentleman like an ill-fitting suit of clothes. “My dear, you have been out. The cold has put some color in your cheeks.”

Not an intruder, an invader, Jenna amended. He dared too much with the appellation. “I am not your dear, Davenport. You overstep yourself.” She remained standing. This was a subtle battle for authority, fought with careful words and postures. To sit would invite conversation as would ringing for tea. She did neither. She wanted Davenport here as little as possible. Davenport was a tenacious man best left unencouraged. Tea or a chair would be all the opening he’d need to feel emboldened in his pursuit.

Where another man would have been put off by her rejection, Davenport merely ignored it and forged ahead with his conversation. “I came to see if there was any news of young Paulie.”

“I will send word if there is any news.” Jenna said coolly. It was an answer and a dismissal. Davenport knew it too. Something akin to anger flashed through Davenport’s eyes but was gone almost instantly, his face softening its hard features. He stepped towards her and she was careful to stand her ground.

“You don’t need to be strong for me.” His voice was low, private. It was a tone reserved for close friends or more. It was entirely inappropriate. “These are troubling times for you. I don’t pretend to know the depths of your struggles. You won’t share them. But I am here for you.” Another woman, a less discerning woman, might have found Davenport attractive. The features were there — the thick brown hair, the brown eyes that could be chocolate soft or agate hard, the strong line of his jaw, the brackets at his mouth that defined him as a man of experiences, who had seen something of the world.

However, Jenna did not find him appealing. He lacked a certain nuance, a polish to mark him as a man of distinction.

Oh, he aspired to distinction, but he did not achieve it. There was something indefinably coarse about him. He lacked a nobility of character. But he’d been an officer — even if a low ranking one — and he’d been available when her father had needed him.

“Let me help you.” He renewed his request.

Jenna offered a frosty smile. “You are my foreman, Davenport. It is not your place to help me.”

His features hardened. He did not like being put down by a woman although he tried to hide it. “I am your father’s foreman. What I am to you could be refined if you so wished. I am a patient man, Miss Priess. My offer stands.” He gave her a curt nod of his head and gathered up his coat to depart.

It was not the first time, he’d found her behavior displeasing. Neither was the first time he’d pushed his personal agenda despite it. Jenna waited until he was gone before she sat. Davenport’s ambitions were becoming problematic. He found her displeasing and yet he dared to put himself forward as a suitor. His efforts were not even subtle. He wanted the factory and he was willing to marry for it. If she gave him an inch, he’d take matrimony.

The door had barely closed when eager footsteps sounded on the staircase. Her brother clattered down the steps, his voice excited and loud in the quiet of their home as the questions began. “Did you see him? What was he like? How was the race?” Daniel was fourteen and he’d been furious that morning because she hadn’t taken him with her to see the notorious ice racer. “Were there any crashes?”

Jenna laughed at his exuberance. “There was one crash. A horse went down and Islington jumped it rather than give up the lead.” Her reaction to that event had been much like her reaction to the man; mixed. At the time, she’d wanted to be enraged over the foolishness of taking such a chance and at the same time, she’d not been able to look away. Daniel would have loved every moment of the drama. She wished she could have taken him, he had little enough excitement in his life but her business wasn’t suitable for a child and she didn’t want him to worry.

“Cor! He jumped over a horse? On ice?” Daniel gave a wistful sigh full of disbelief. “I can’t believe I missed it!” He gave her a reproachful stare. He squared his shoulders, suddenly looking more mature than he had a moment ago. “But it’s a good thing I was here. Father was asking for you. He wanted to know where you’d gone.”

Jenna sobered too. Having her father ask questions had been something she’d worked hard to avoid. She’d kept the current business of the disappearing mill workers and the subsequent consequences from her father. He was too ill and she wouldn’t have him bothered. She could handle this latest problem on her own.

“What did you tell him?” she asked Daniel, but she could guess. Her father suspected she was working too hard at the mill, intervening in the foreman’s job.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything. I said you’d gone shopping.” There was pride in Daniel’s voice and something else too, something akin to ‘I told you so. I am old enough to help you.’ He was proving to her he wasn’t a child.

“Well done.” She smiled her praise. Fourteen was a difficult age. One was not really a child but nowhere near an adult. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d forgotten what it was like to be fourteen, but Jenna would still have preferred to protect him. The issue of missing workers was a sordid one. No one was certain what was behind it although she’d heard several hypotheses bandied about in the last weeks, everything from human trafficking and prostitution rings to a mass murderer on the loose. Unfortunately, all were possible.

“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.

Chapter Three (#u8fe957ca-ca02-55d3-aaff-ff55f49f6526)

“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.