The Bachelor's Bargain by Catherine Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

permitted to go with me.”
    “You are right,” Anne said, though she was unsure how sad this turn of events might be.
    “My point is that you are a maid, and you cannot go independently selling lace to Sir Alexander or stealing it from the marquess. You could be put in prison like your father . . . or worse.”
    Anne rubbed her eyes and focused on the long windows. Where the curtains had been left open, moisture on the glass panes had traced fantastic curls that made her think of a dragon’s misty breath. She envisioned the lace she could design of that undulating, magical pattern of swirls and shadows. Of course, no one would purchase a piece of lace so imaginative. The aristocracy wanted their standard roses and bows, perhaps a fern or two, and if they were unusually daring, a cherub or an urn.
    “Here is my advice,” Prudence said, offering her seventh new stratagem that night. Anne had counted them. “You should forget you ever made that lace panel. It was a foolhardy notion in the first place, thinking you could sell it to Sir Alexander. You are too much the dreamer, Anne. You have no practical sense.”
    Anne wondered, as she often did, how lace would look dyed in all the colors of the rainbow. At the moment, blonde lace was becoming all the fashion, lavishly trimming dresses, caps, pelisses, and aprons. Only a woman with especially dry hands could make blonde lace. In the summer it must be worked in the out-of-doors, and in winter it could be worked only in special rooms built over cow houses, where the animals’ breath warmed the air. The smell in those rooms, as Anne well knew, was pungent, but the soot from any form of flame heat would damage the lace’s fine threads.
    “This is what you should do, Anne,” Prudence said. It was her eighth attempt at dispensing advice. “You should start another piece of lace, this one more marketable, strewn with roses and lilies and such. In one or two years’ time, if you save your wages from your work for the duke’s family and add to it what you earn from your next lace, you should be able to go back to Nottingham and eventually pay an attorney to defend your father.”
    One or two years. Anne thought of her father living night and day in the darkness of his small prison cell. How different from the snug parsonage with its quaint library, writing desk, and warm rugs. He had suffered from ill health for many years, and Anne feared he could not live much longer in the confines of a prison.
    It was not his physical strength that would suffer so much as his spirit. Mr. Webster considered his books sustenance, his pen and inkstand friends, and his pulpit the very breath of life. His communion with God through prayer and Bible reading were foremost—followed by his determination to serve mankind. He viewed the Luddites and their war against machinery as a cause as noble as the great Crusades, and he was willing to give his life on their behalf. Without Anne to secure his release, he surely would.
    She had made it her mission to free the man who had given her breath, taught her to love Christ, and provided the educa- tion she valued above all else. Yes, Anne was a Christian, and she did all in her power to honor God. But she had been given a mind and will and strength of her own. She had talent and ambition, and she intended to use it all on her father’s behalf. No man would stand in her way. The devil might try to waylay her, but he would not succeed.
    “Here is what you should do,” Prudence whispered. Suggestion number nine. “You should go down to Tiverton with me for church tomorrow and then take the afternoon off to visit the new mill that Mr. Heathcoat has built. Though I dislike the prospect of losing you, perhaps you might ask for an interview with Mr. Heathcoat himself and show him what you can do with lace. If he has any sense at all, he must put you to work as a designer of embroidery patterns for the machine lace he is manufacturing.”
    Anne turned her