Linda Needham Read Online Free

Everingham.’”
    A cold clot of stillness hung in the room, Everingham’s suspicion keeping Hollie frozen in place with visions of a damp and dreary jail cell, of the gallows, oblivion.
    The silence was broken at last by the squeak ofSummerwell’s quiet defense. “Sounded like Spindleshanks to me, sir.”
    Everingham took the broadside from Summerwell and dropped it onto the table. “Indeed.”
    “Yes, indeed, sir.” Summerwell brightened, approached the table, and lifted a stack of handbills. “We found a lot more ’n that: page after page of this sedition stuff.”
    Haskett nodded eagerly at his master. “Hanging on lines downstairs they were, sir, stretched every which way between the rafters. An’ dripping with words from every page. Looked like a bleedin’ laundry room on a Monday afternoon.”
    “We were so sure that we’d found Spindleshanks’s shop, we packed up a few boxes and brought ’em back with us.”
    Hollie’s heart collapsed and fell into her stomach. So that was the chicanery they’d been up to when they went back inside after they’d shackled her to the wagon seat. Rifling her bedroom, digging around for evidence.
    Everingham’s eyes flickered for the briefest moment, a lick of searing flame against her cheek, then he turned his blazing attention from her and moved closer to the paper-cluttered table, the lamp casting deep shadows across his face as he spread his broad hand across one of the stacks of paper.
    “Where are these boxes of evidence now, Summerwell?”
    Summerwell’s chest rose. “Still waitin’ out in the wagon, my lord.”
    This seemed to please Everingham; it tightened a muscle in his jaw that served as a smile.
    “Take a close look here, Summerwell: do you recall seeing any of this in the shop?” Everingham gestured at the sea of sedition: her printing shop flayed open, ready to be dissected, every handbill and placard familiar to her and ultimately indicting.
    Hollie wanted to rage at Everingham, for the drowning hollowness in her chest, for the echoing memories, for stealing her voice, her words.
    “Oh, yes, my lord,” Summerwell said, picking up a handbill. “We found plenty of these, announcing a meeting of handloom weavers in Leeds.”
    At Rennick’s mill, only three nights ago. She’d barely escaped with her skin, had nearly lost her cloak and that blasted tricorn and its wig. And now here she was, trapped and about to be exposed, chilled to the bone but fiercely clinging to a familiar point of heat in her heart, a spot of courage and outrage.
    Because Everingham had left her alone at the doorway. She took a quarter-step backward, just to see how far she could move away.
    Clank went the blasted chain.
    Everingham’s dark eyes found hers sharply from across the room and narrowed as he studied her more deeply. He slid his smoky gaze along her cheekbone and across her mouth, then back to her eyes, questing where he didn’t belong, with a scorching interest that sifted through her flannel and had nothing to do with sedition or treason or shackles.
    “What else, Summerwell?” he finally asked, holding her gaze fast with his own.
    “I do remember this piece, sir, though I don’t think we brought it along. ‘The Lancaster Hymn,’ it says. ‘Smuggled out of Lancaster Prison by Captain Spindleshanks to lift the spirits of the victims and innocents of the wicked massacre in St. Peter’s Fields.’” Summerwell jabbed his finger at a large-font block of print, and Everingham turned his attention back to his bailiff.
    Just in time, because, dear God, when she’d taken her slow step back, her heel had lifted out of the shackle. The iron band was too large for her foot when she pointed her toes. Freedom! So unexpected and precious it took her breath away.
    While Everingham studied her broadsides at his graceful, lordly ease, while Summerwell read aloud from them, and the three other men focused all their attention on the heaping mound of sedition, Hollie