Shining Threads by Audrey Howard

was to be an employee in her family’s mill, like hundreds of
other men, he could very easily mistake her friendliness as an invitation for something else, which would not be hard to do, he admitted. A man might take advantage of what she seemed to offer and
though it was doubtful any man would achieve much with this fireband, he thought wryly, she would be seriously offended. And yet why should it concern him , he asked himself as she smiled
winningly up at him, her eyes like grey crystal in the vibrant beauty of her face, and he did not know the answer.
    ‘Should you not be getting home?’ he asked, suddenly aware that he himself was not immune to her attraction, to the interest she showed and the pleasure she seemed to find in his
company. What man can resist a pretty woman who hangs on his every word? Though he knew it was probably only the reaction of a girl bored with her own class and curious about his. He could
not resist her .
    ‘Oh, no, please go on.’
    He allowed himself to smile again, his eyes on her curving mouth. ‘Well . . . I used to steal from the larders of those who had more to eat than I did.’ His face became serious and
her soft . . . dear God . . . soft pink mouth dropped open in awe.
    ‘Where . . . ?’
    ‘Every place I could find with a window I could open. Not the poor, of course, since they had nowt worth stealing anyway, but on most nights I would slip out when the others fell into
their exhausted sleep and find a house which looked as though the occupants fed on more than cold-water oats and pigswill.’
    ‘ Pigswill? ’ She shuddered and pressed her shoulder against his.
    ‘Aye, for that’s what the others ate, lass. At first I’d hardly the strength to walk the necessary miles, for these houses were not close to the mill, as you can imagine . .
.’
    ‘No, indeed.’
    ‘. . . but gradually, with the food I ate, and I only stole what was nourishing, and the milk I drank, I became stronger and could go further afield. I was a very resourceful lad, Miss
Harrison,’ – and you are a resourceful and strong man, Will Broadbent, and will go far, she had time to consider – ‘and I meant to survive. I used to enjoy those walks,
striding out in the summer night when it was warm and all scented with the aroma of wildflowers, or the heather drifting down from the hills. I had known only the stink of the mill, you see, and
the spinning room and all the unwashed people who worked there.’
    ‘Of course.’ Her eyes were enormous in her pointed face, a face bemused and wondering, and he had the most overpowering inclination to place his mouth on the one which parted in
fascinated interest as he told his tale. He tore his gaze away to stare into the sunlit valley below, then he grinned.
    ‘Promise me you won’t breathe a word to your uncle or I’ll lose me grand new job afore I start?’
    ‘My uncle? Why?’
    ‘One of the larders I robbed was at Greenacres.’
    ‘Oh Lord, you didn’t?’ He could see he had impressed her enormously, as would anything which was out of the ordinary, different, or smacked of defiance of authority.
    ‘I did, Miss Harrison. I helped myself to a turkey leg which I knew would not be missed, a lump of the most delicious cheese which I have since discovered was from our own Lancashire,
drank a pitcher of milk, thick with cream, and some plum pudding. It was Christmas, you see.’
    He had not said it to gain her sympathy, just to demonstrate why he had remembered the exact meal on which he had dined that night in the house in which she herself was probably upstairs
sleeping. But somehow his words moved a soft and dangerous thing inside her and she took fright at it since this man was a stranger after all.
    She cleared her throat and blinked her eyes as though to clear the fog of curious emotion which blurred them, then stood up quickly and turned away for she did not want him to see and wonder
over her sudden agitation. In her mind’s eye she