“Catherine says you tried to force yourself on her,” Alden said.
Daniel’s stomach dropped. It was a more dangerous accusation than theft, and he understood why the bracelet had been planted. Catherine had moved the story farther than she had threatened to move it. There would be no safe way to repeat what she had actually asked of him in that workshop, not before these people, not under their rules.
“I did not threaten her,” he said. “I did not take her bracelet.”
“Then how was it in your drawer?”
“I do not know who placed it there.”
Pike leaned against the door. “Convenient.”
Alden stared at Catherine. “You are certain?”
She looked at the wallpaper rather than Daniel. “I want him removed.”
Pike’s satisfaction was too quick. “There is a trader at Bell Junction until tomorrow. I can have the man away before dinner.”
Alden pressed two fingers against his temple. The plantation’s new drying house had an enormous wooden ventilation carriage that Daniel had designed. The device opened twenty-four louver panels at once to regulate the heated air around tobacco bundles. The county agricultural committee was coming in two days to inspect it. If the demonstration succeeded, Alden might secure credit from the equipment syndicate. If Daniel disappeared before then, no one else knew how to adjust the carriage safely.
“The demonstration,” Alden murmured.
“I can finish the work,” Pike said.
“You cannot tell a bearing from a barrel hoop.”
Pike’s jaw flexed.
Alden turned to Daniel. “You will remain under guard until the demonstration is complete. Then you will be sold.”
Daniel had learned that a delay could be useful without mistaking it for mercy. Two days were better than one hour. Two days might also be enough time for whoever had planted the bracelet to finish doing something worse.
“Let him work without his ordinary tools?” Catherine asked unexpectedly.
Alden glanced at her. “He will be watched.”
Pike took Daniel out through the servant passage and tied his wrists loosely in front, not for necessity but for display. Outside the kitchen, a young woman named Mercy Bell stood holding a bucket of ashes. She had worked in the great house since childhood and was rarely permitted beyond its rooms. She saw Daniel’s bound hands and lowered her eyes only after meeting his gaze.
“Drying house,” he said, as if speaking to no one in particular. “The little wheel needs its wooden tooth.”
Mercy nodded once. She understood him. A missing tooth in that wheel could jam the machinery; she also understood that he would not mention it while Pike was close unless it mattered.
The overseer marched him to the carriage shed, where the new ventilation frame had been assembled on trestles. The apparatus looked like a long wooden rib cage with jointed arms and a series of sliding weights. Daniel had built it to reduce the furnace attendants’ exposure to the hot house interior. Workers could adjust the louvers from an exterior platform rather than climb amid the bundles. Alden had called it a splendid improvement and immediately demanded that it operate faster than Daniel had intended.
