Silk and Shadows(51)

"I'd like that very much." As she brushed by his chair, Slade half raised his hand, then let it drop, but his longing gaze followed her out of the room. Then he turned to his papers, his mouth tight. He had done many difficult things for his employer, but he had never realized that the hardest task would be turning a whore into a young lady.

* * *

Crawley's farm was solid and unpretentious, the stone buildings mellowed with years and weather. The only whimsical note was the thatched roof of the house, where a reed fox chased three reed chickens along the ridgepole. But the thatch was old and ragged, and the fox threatened to topple from the ridgepole, just one of many subtle signs of neglect, as if the farm had fallen on hard times.

No one was in sight, so Peregrine dismounted and knocked on the door. After a lengthy wait, it was opened by a middle-aged woman. Her round face had been designed for cheerfulness, but there were haggard lines around her mouth, and anxiety in her eyes when she found a gentleman on her doorstep.

"Mrs. Crawley?" Peregrine asked. When she nodded, he continued, "I want to speak with your husband. Is he available?"

"Aye," she said reluctantly. "Should be behind the stables."

"Thank you." He touched his hat and was starting to turn when a little girl peered around her mother's skirts, only to be pulled hastily back and the door closed. Something was definitely wrong at Crawley's farm.

Unhurriedly Peregrine made his way across the farmyard to the stables. The right side of the yard was bounded by the charred ruins of the barn that had burned the year before. The stone walls could be salvaged and the barn rebuilt, but that would be an expensive proposition, and there was little money in evidence around him.

Behind the stables, Jethro Crawley sat on a mushroom-shaped staddle stone, painstakingly repairing a broken harness with strips of new leather. As Peregrine approached, the burly farmer looked up, his hands becoming still and his eyes wary. Brusquely he asked, "What do you want?"

"I want to talk about the lawsuit you filed against the L & S Railway."

"I got nothin' to say to you." Crawley's gaze went back to the harness and he stabbed a heavy needle through a hole punched in the leather.

"Once you didn't mind talking about the subject. You spoke to a couple of dozen landowners, convincing them that the railroad was not offering a fair price. Then there was a fire here, and suddenly you dropped your lawsuit. Without your leadership, all the other litigants settled quickly. I've been wondering why."

Crawley stood, fury in his blue-gray eyes. And under the anger was fear. "I don't have to answer that, you bastard. You and your kind have done enough to me. Now get off my land!"

"Not until you've talked to me." Peregrine's tone was unperturbed, but he watched the farmer alertly and was prepared when the man swung the harness at him, the leather straps cracking like a whip.

Smoothly he stepped aside, then grabbed Crawley's wrist in an iron grip. As the farmer tried unsuccessfully to free himself, Peregrine said softly, "It was Weldon, wasn't it?"

The farmer's resistance collapsed. He licked his lips, then asked hoarsely, "How do you know so much?"

"I made it my business to know." Releasing Crawley's wrist, Peregrine stepped back, though he did not relax his watchfulness. "Weldon is my enemy as well as yours. If you will tell me what happened, perhaps I can help you get some of your own back."

The other man sat down on the staddle stone again, his shoulders bowed and his hands restlessly kneading the leather straps. "I had taken out a mortgage, and used the money to buy my oldest son land in Canada. Then the L & S decided to take a big chunk o' my farm. With less cropland, it would be harder to pay off the mortgage, so I filed a suit askin' for fair compensation. Without it, there was a chance I might lose everythin'."

Crawley swallowed hard. "Then that fellow Weldon and his secretary Kane came and suggested that it might be better if I accepted the money offered. I refused, o' course, I needed the money and all I wanted was a fair price. Weldon said that was a pity. I'll never forget his eyes—like a snake's. He never came back here, but after that things began to happen. My sheep were poisoned, and I lost almost the whole flock. I had a small herd o' milk cows, and one night some bastard shot half o' them. And then..." His voice choked, and he stopped talking.

"That was when the barn burned?" Peregrine prompted.

The farmer nodded. "The barn and the granary both. It was arson, no question, but there was no sign of who'd done it. Most o' the corn harvest had just been stored, which meant we didn't make any money at all last year, but that wasn't the worst."