chapter 2
In spite of Caroline’s protests, the hunting party was due to arrive later in the day. Her brother had ridden in late the night before, but she hadn’t spoken to him. His collusion in this base plan of Mr. Broadhurst’s robbed her of any joy she might have taken in the rare treat of seeing one of her family.
After another night spent tossing and turning while the hope she fought so hard to suppress kept whispering, You could have a baby to love, she had gone into the mill office instead of waiting for Robert to rise.
Mr. Broadhurst and Robert could welcome their “guests.” She had at least had the satisfaction of telling Mr. Broadhurst that he must be present when the members of the party arrived and would have to leave the running of the mill to her. After all, for a purported hunting party and a gathering of gentlemen, a host was expected, not so much a hostess. But in his absence, she would show him she could run the mill as well or better than him.
She spread out on her desk the shipping manifests. Making neat notes, she determined exactly how much cotton Mr. Broadhurst had bought this season. Taking over vital decisions, such as the purchase arrangements for next year, would show her husband she was more than capable. She would convince him to leave the mill to her care, son or no son.
The door opened and her brother swept into the office, bringing the scent of horseflesh and autumn air with him. He strode across the floor, his boots clomping heavily against the bare wood.
The clerks all stopped in the midst of their endeavors. Robert had never been in the mill before. He scarcely looked at his surroundings as his gaze fastened on her. She rose to greet him.
“Caro, there you are. Your housekeeper said I would find you here, but I scarcely could credit it. You must come back to the house before the others arrive.” He stopped in front of her, caught her forearms and bent to brush his muttonchop whiskers against her cheek.
She bit back her retort that someone must run the mill while he and her husband spun useless schemes. Instead she greeted him civilly, “Hello, my lord. Allow me to introduce you to the office staff.” She turned to the others in the large room filled with desks piled with ledgers and papers. “This is Mr. Smythe, our shipping clerk . . . my brother, Lord Nesham, and—”
“Hello everyone,” Robert interrupted, and briskly nodded to the occupants of the room. Returning his attention to Caroline, he searched her face. “We need to talk. I have spent the morning closeted with Broadhurst.” He looked around the open room. “Is there no private office?”
Only thin clapboard separated the private office from the main one. Conversations could easily be overheard. If her husband wished privacy for business, he brought people to the house. The house was the last place she wanted to be right now.
“Perhaps we should take a stroll.” Caroline held her hand out toward the door. Robert was the sibling who closest resembled her, with his dark hair and blue eyes, but the resemblance was fading. Whereas age had sharpened her features, it had dulled his. His skin was pasty and his frame had turned stout. He looked as if he had aged a decade since she’d seen him at their father’s funeral a year and a half ago.
“What an ugly place,” said Robert as soon as the door closed behind them.
The three-story red brick building was built for function, not aesthetics. The bricks had been left bare both inside and out. Mr. Broadhurst did not believe in sparing expenses for comfort. Nonetheless there was a beauty in its starkness. “Mr. Broadhurst would say it’s a mill, not our home.”
“I see,” said Robert, huffing alongside her.
A horse was tied to a bush near the door. Even though the crisp fall weather seemed ideal for walking from the house, Robert must not have thought so. Her husband had made the ten-minute trek daily for most of his life. Only in the last few months had he taken to ordering the gig brought around.
“Would you like a tour?” Caroline offered. Even if Robert didn’t see the merits of the place, she was proud of the mill.
“I have no desire to see the workings, but we can walk along these paths,” he said. “Are you not curious about whom I have invited?”
“No.” She stepped onto a path leading to the canal providing power for the mill.
“I invited Tremont, he is a favorite with the ladies.” Robert twisted around, looking every which way except at what was probably a sour expression of distaste on her face. His voice dropped lower. “He has fathered at least one lady’s child. Whitton is said to have a half dozen by-blows. Berkley’s wife passed during childbirth.”
Caroline’s spine tightened as Robert listed the men he’d invited as if he were offering her a particularly delectable array of virile sweetmeats. “These are not your usual cronies.”
“No, I went to great length to invite men who might appeal to you, which was difficult enough. We hardly know you anymore, Caro.”
He should have known she wouldn’t have an affair. Her heart thumped oddly. Mr. Broadhurst had her brother the viscount acting the roll of procurer. She would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation were it not for the seriousness of it.
“You have only to let me know if you take a liking to any particular gentleman, and I will facilitate an alliance.”
Caroline stopped walking. The cold air burned her heated cheeks. “You are laboring under a misunderstanding. I have no intention of forming an alliance with any of the men you’ve invited.”
“You have another man in mind?”
“Of course not.” Barely restraining a sniff of impatience, Caroline resumed walking. Ahead of her a few millworkers filed out, swinging their dinner pails. As far as bloodlines went, one of them would be much closer to Mr. Broadhurst. She scanned for a particular man who always caught her eye. A heavy sigh left her when she didn’t see him. He’d been absent last week too. She hoped he wasn’t ill.
She lowered her voice. “I shall not do this. I will not. Mr. Broadhurst is mad to speak of it.”
Robert blinked once, then twice. “He assured me you wanted a child—that you were in agreement . . .”
She had wanted a child, she’d said so many times. It was the only thing that allowed her to get through nights with her husband without turning into a bedlamite. But it was not to be. “Not this way.”
“But you sent that letter saying that while you were overjoyed by the birth of Sarah’s latest, you couldn’t help but feel melancholic that you had not been so blessed.”
Caroline’s breath snagged. Mr. Broadhurst must have retrieved the sheets on which she’d poured out her anguish then tossed in the dustbin. She’d written a proper note expressing her felicitations, and not her disappointment. “I did not send that.”
Robert jerked her to a stop. “Did you write it?”
Knowing he had read the letter felt a bit like he’d pried open her deepest secrets and exposed them. A pang in her chest stole her breath as she shrugged away striving for nonchalance. “I wrote it, but I copied the parts I wanted to say in another letter. I threw that version away.” Months ago. How long had this scheme been in the works?
“I should have known the letter was not your usual fare, but I thought you were finally revealing your innermost feelings.” Robert rubbed his face and his shoulders slumped. “Hell, any feelings.”
Caroline stiffened, her nails biting into her palms. “Just because I am reserved, does not mean I am without feelings.”
But if she poured out her private thoughts in letters, she would just give everyone a case of the doldrums. A lady didn’t complain about her circumstance, her loneliness, her isolation, or the lack of affection in her life. What good would complaints have done? So she wrote of inconsequential things like the weather and asked after her nieces and nephews.
“I thought it strange you commented twice on Sarah’s baby and the pages had the look of being pressed out after being crumpled. But I took it as your way of expressing your willingness to go along with Broadhurst’s plan,” said Robert.
“I may have had a moment of weakness when I wrote that, but I did not send it. Mr. Broadhurst must have.” She should have shredded the stupid missive or burned it. She stroked her index finger with her opposite thumb. “I want no part in his scheme. I am resigned to my condition. I just want the mill.”
“Caro. He wants a child, and you must want one too. Even if you did not mean for me to see that letter, I saw yearning in every word you wrote.”
Blackness ate at her insides. Was her brother to gang up on her too? “I will not speak of it anymore.”
Didn’t he understand it tore her apart to even think of a child? If she dwelt on how much she wanted a baby of her own, she wouldn’t be able to return to work. And the work fulfilled her. Robert wouldn’t understand, but running the mill was what got her out of bed every day.
She had thrown herself into learning the mill to fill the empty hours of her days, and perhaps a bit of her husband’s ambition had transferred to her. Her family would never understand her fascination with the manufactory.
She’d been raised to believe that people of quality did not sully their hands with industry, but such a foolish attitude was part of what brought her father to insolvency and forced him to trade one daughter for the funds to marry off the rest.
“We have to have this conversation, Caro, whether you will it or no.” Robert’s voice dropped low. “Broadhurst has not asked you to do anything so terrible.”
Caroline laughed, but it sounded more like glass breaking and she broke off midway. “No?”
“He wants a son and an heir. Is that so much to ask?”
“I have been a dutiful wife, but to command me to commit adultery is beyond the pale.” She folded her arms, proper deportment be damned. She’d never given her husband a reason to regret marrying her—other than not giving him children. And if the fault lay with him . . . she should not suffer for it.
Robert rubbed his face. “You have to, Caroline, we need his money. Papa . . . Papa mortgaged everything. Without the Broadhurst funds I would not survive. Nor would Mama. Sarah, Amelia, and the twins’ husbands all expect their payments.”
Were all her family members leeches to her marriage? Caroline’s throat constricted. She fought for the equanimity to deal with this too.
All her adult life had been filled with silent mantras about how a lady behaved. She did not shout, she did not rail, she pushed down any violent emotion until it no longer threatened her sanity. She’d been stifling her feelings so long, it was odd she couldn’t manage to now.
“You will not survive? Or will all of you have to stop going to Brighton in the summers, Newmarket in the fall, and London for the social season?” Her voice trembled under the strain of suppressing a shout. What kind of family did she have that they demanded again and again that she sacrifice for their comfort? “Mama will have to stay at inns in the Riviera instead of the best hotels? Amelia will have to settle for only ten new ball gowns?”
Robert blinked and took a step back. “Since Papa died, I alone have been to London to take my seat in Parliament. I let the London house and take rooms in Cheapside. Mama hasn’t been back to the continent. My wife complains that she and the children have nothing to wear.” He lifted his hand, patting the air. “Besides, our sisters know nothing of this arrangement. Hell’s bells, I knew nothing of it before inheriting. But there are loans on top of loans . . . mortgages on everything. I was counting on the payments to sort this out.”
“I should have thought the bride price Mr. Broadhurst paid for me would have taken care of the family finances.” Caroline’s anger curled tightly into a black ball in her stomach.
“God knows it should have. We all thought it did. If I had any idea Papa was spending so beyond the estate income, I would have curtailed my expenditures years ago. But I am obligated to make payments on all the loans to family and others. Papa . . .” Robert’s shoulders slumped. “Papa all but ruined us. In the end only family would loan him money.”
Resigned, but not surprised, she asked, “Mr. Broadhurst is still paying?”
“Yes, of course. It was part of the settlement. The second settlement.” Robert’s brow furled. “I don’t know if Papa recorded why there are two settlements, and I haven’t made it through all the paperwork yet. I should have read it all, but I thought you were in agreement with this plan.”
“No, I never agreed to such an abomination.”
Robert pensively studied her. “We . . . Papa never thought your husband would live so long. No one thought you should be stuck in North Country for more than a half-dozen years. We all expected you would be a wealthy young widow, and that would make up for any comparison you might suffer if you were brought out with any of our sisters.”
Caroline cast about for a place to look. The trampled brown grass at her feet offered no comfort. Her brother’s assessment of her lack of attributes in comparison to her accomplished sisters stung. Even though she’d never been thrust in the fishbowl of the marriage mart where her plainness and inability to carry a tune would matter, the thought that no man would want her when one of her sisters was available still cut like a knife.
Long before leaving the schoolroom, she’d heard her parents’ worried conversations about how she would fare in London. She was too bookish, too plain, too retiring, while her older sisters Sarah and Amelia were beautiful, accomplished in the arts, and vivacious. Their youngest siblings had taken after Sarah and Amelia, not her. With five daughters to see settled, their parents expected her to be a huge burden. Instead she’d been the first to marry.
It was silly. She didn’t want another husband and had never found the endless rounds of festivities in London enjoyable. The throngs of people overwhelmed her. And marriage was something she wanted no part of ever again. When Mr. Broadhurst passed, freedom would come . . .
“Broadhurst married you for our bloodline.”
Caroline swiveled on her brother. “Then let Sarah or Amy or one of the twins produce another baby. I’ll stuff a pillow under my dress. Let one of them throw herself on the Broadhurst money altar. Why am I the only lamb put out for slaughter?” Caroline winced. She didn’t really think of herself as the sacrificial lamb. She preferred a quiet life. Mr. Broadhurst had given her that. Until her husband’s demand, she would have considered herself content to wait until she was a woman of independent means.
The blood drained from Robert’s face. “That’s not fair. We’ve all done things, Caro. I promised my vote on bills I cannot like to gain alliances with at least three of the men I invited. And I have done my best to further your husband’s interests. I’ve secured contracts to supply cloth for the military. Sarah, Amelia, beyond declaring the best fabrics come only from Broadhurst mills, have always insisted he be accepted in polite company when you’ve come to town. Fortunately, you have not availed yourselves of our hospitality so much. You do not know how our reputation suffers. He makes everyone so uncomfortable.”
Fighting for calm, Caroline closed her eyes. They had done nothing compared to what she’d done. They hadn’t had to lie with an old man pawing them and poking them. They hadn’t had to go through years of not feeling welcome outside her home. But she drew the line at this base manipulation.
She took in a couple of slow breaths. With the letter pouring out her personal heartbreak, Robert had likely been acting under the assumption that she wanted a child badly enough to have an affair. She could hardly fault him for providing what he thought she wanted, no matter how wrong he was. And she didn’t want to spend her time arguing with him, when Mr. Broadhurst was truly the cause of their contention. “You have not told any of these gentlemen of this plan, have you?”
“I have hinted to one or two you are lonely. But I didn’t think it would do to tell all of them. It would not do to have them lining up at your bedroom door.”
As if that would happen. She’d be lucky if any of them were interested in her. “Perhaps Mr. Broadhurst should pay one a stud fee,” she mused.
“He offered,” said Robert dryly. “I did not think that would be the best course or necessary.”
Caroline scarcely had a second to decide if she was mortified that her husband thought her so lacking in wiles that he thought he had to pay a man, or if he had just decided it might be expedient.
“Caro,” said Robert in a quiet voice. “I suppose you will marry again after Broadhurst passes, but consider, your choices will be so much better with Broadhurst wealth.”
A shudder ran down her spine. The last thing she wanted was to allow another man the right to use her body at will. “I cannot conceive of a prospect more unpleasant.”
“You don’t wish to marry again?” Robert’s brow knit. “You have always told us you were content in your marriage.”
He truly didn’t know her. “No. Are you saying I couldn’t return home to Nesham Hall? Hasn’t my husband’s contribution to the family coffers earned me a place there?” She didn’t exactly want to return home as a widow either, but she couldn’t imagine living so close to the mill if it were no longer hers. She would have to purchase another house, perhaps close to her family.
Robert tilted his head to the side. “Of course you can come home. I just thought you’d want a child. Don’t you want a baby?”
“If God did not grant me one through my marriage, then I don’t wish to commit adultery to have one.” Therein was the crux. “I want the mill, Robert. I know how to run it.”
Besides, who else could Mr. Broadhurst leave it to? He had no one else.
One of the millworkers joined the others and settled his hands on his hips while watching her. His unbleached muslin shirt puffed around his braces. Recognition jolted her. She always noticed him when she entered the mill. Worse yet, he always seemed aware when she looked in his direction.
The chill wind ruffled his dark hair, which had been neatly barbered. More used to his hair being too long and unruly, she stared at him. Where had he been? He smiled at a comment a young woman tossed in his direction. The man’s attention shifted back to Caroline and his eyes tightened.
Catching herself, she resisted the urge to change her direction and go toward him. It wasn’t as if he’d beckoned to her. He didn’t watch her because she was beautiful like her sisters. He probably watched her with the wariness of a man who suspected she could end his employment with a snap of the fingers. Her fascination with him was entirely misplaced.
His family worked at the mill, except she’d decreed that no child under nine could work. She remembered the man standing to the side as she told the middle-aged woman who answered the door that the youngest children should attend school. The woman protested, but he had quietly said it was best they learned as much as they could, while they could. Caroline had been pleased he understood the value of education even if the woman did not.
As far as sacrifices for family went, Caroline could have had it worse. Mr. Broadhurst always made certain she had fashionable clothes, beautiful jewelry, and the latest books. She hadn’t been put to work in a mill at the age of five. Her duties to her husband were mild compared to the life the millworkers led.
“Sarah said you might make use of her husband, if needs must.”
“For Pete’s sake, does everyone know?” she exclaimed.
The millworker squinted over his shoulder as if asking if she needed assistance.
Her mind spinning, she shook her head, silently rebuffing the worker’s concern. She deliberately dropped her arms.
The worker gave one last questing tilt of his head before entering the mill. Heart pounding, Caroline swung away from the sanctity of the brick building, where once again she’d drawn that man’s attention.
For pity’s sake, if she were to do this, he would be just as good a potential sire as any other. He at least appeared concerned about her.
“I consulted with Sarah and Amelia,” her brother said, “because I thought Broadhurst might have been trying to secure you a second husband. Besides, Amy said you would object to married men.”
“I object to all men.”
“If you were to form a tendre . . . oh never mind.” Robert waved off the thought. “I did not realize that Broadhurst had been made a widower twice before. I thought he had been building his wealth and only married late in life.”
Caroline rubbed her forearm. “Why would you have known? You were only sixteen when I married him.” Little more than a year older than she’d been, but they’d both been so young. She hadn’t known her husband had been married twice before until he told her in his study a week ago. He’d always rebuffed her inquiries into his life before her. “Did you know he asked for Sarah’s hand first and then Amelia’s?”
Papa had decided that if the daughters were interchangeable, he might as well offer up the one daughter who would be hard to marry.
“Caro, none of us had anything to do with Papa’s decision for you to marry Broadhurst. I’m certain if Sarah or Amy had been told to marry him, they would have.” He furled his forehead again. “He has shown me his will. Your entire inheritance is contingent on having a son to inherit.”
Her gut knotted. She must have misheard. Just because he didn’t want to leave the mill in her hands didn’t mean he would will away all his wealth. “He doesn’t intend to leave me penniless, does he?”
“Yes. Broadhurst has entirely cut you out of his will.” Robert reached out.
She recoiled. Her ears buzzed and her fingernails cut into her palms. This was how she was repaid for being an obedient wife? Her insides blackened and curled like paper tossed in a fire. How could he do this to her?
Her brother softened his tone. “If you do not give birth, everything will pass to a man named Granger.”
Her spine tightened as if a knife had been thrust in it. Granger? That man made Mr. Broadhurst look like a saint. Granger’s mills ate up workers, spit them out broken, and left them to the poorhouse or an early death.
“We could sue for your widow’s portion, but it might take years. And if Papa did not properly secure it in the marriage contract, who knows if you will ever get more than a pittance. Bloody hell, Papa made such a mess of things.”
Robert’s earnest expression made her insides churn.
“I don’t know what I can do to make sure his wealth stays with you if you don’t want a child.”
Caroline stared at the mill. She’d put years into learning the operation. The idea of it being snatched away from her left her feeling cheated, but Mr. Broadhurst’s plan to leave her destitute was like the ground turning to liquid under her feet.
A knot fisted in her chest. She’d tried so hard to be a good wife, a perfect lady, and to keep alive her hope of independence she had to commit adultery.
“Caro . . .” Robert rubbed his hand over his face. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do . . . but—”
A horrible grinding screech and thump emanated from the mill. Caroline’s shoulders came up, while Robert jerked.
Shrill screaming rent the air. Shouts and cries followed. Picking up her skirts, Caroline ran, as no proper lady ever should, toward the brick building.