chapter 8
Jack’s rough fingers slid ever so slightly along her chin, and the air seemed thin. Her head felt light and her pulse thrummed wildly. His striped nightshirt covered a body that was hard with muscles formed by labor. He was not of her class, not a man with soft hands or bound by the restrictions of propriety.
He was not a man anyone would think she should use to father a baby, but she didn’t fear him the way she did most men. She wanted to know what his kiss was like. Perhaps she’d wanted to know him in that way for a long time.
The door rattled, and she sprang back as if bitten.
Her head spun and she gripped the back of the chair to keep from falling. What on earth was she doing?
“Sorry, I’m late, ma’am,” said the footman swinging through the door. “One of the gentlemen required a bath.”
“Would you be so good as to fetch my cloak?” she said to him, wanting a minute to let the furious flush in her cheeks cool.
“Certainly, ma’am,” said the footman. She could hear the surprise in his voice, but the servants knew better than to question her, unlike Jack.
“He will be back shortly,” she hissed.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Jack reached back for the headboard, putting a decorous amount of space between them.
“You didn’t.” But was that why she could hear each heartbeat in her own ears? He had been close enough that she could feel his heat, smell his scent. Her head swirled, and she shook it off.
She turned slowly to face Jack. He had intended a transgression all the more egregious for his being a worker employed by her husband, and she had been about to allow it, encourage it possibly. But to use him as she would use one of the gentlemen felt as if she would taint what was between them. As she met his gaze, he only watched her with concern.
Had she imagined that he meant to kiss her? Her head was muddled.
“I must be feeling the spirits.” Surely her complete lapse of judgment could be blamed on that.
A flicker of unease crossed his features. He tilted his head sideways as if to question her.
She looked at his face—really looked. By any standards he was a handsome man, with his even features, lips neither too fat nor thin, a nose that was straight and regular, brown eyes that emitted warmth and sparkle when he was amused or seriousness like they did now, but it was more than the sum of the parts.
The air charged as they regarded each other. The tick of the mantel clock seemed to slow. He glanced toward the door, breaking the spell.
She sighed. Disappointment or relief, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps both. He was neither suitable for an affair nor well enough. He was just a millworker. Did she want intimacy with a man she’d have to see all the time at the mill? Certainly it wasn’t as if she could continue an affair with him afterward.
She liked the companionable comfort of reading to him as the night settled in around them.
Did she want to ruin that by encouraging him to have sex with her?
Jack sat down on the bed and gingerly swung up his legs. He was breathing hard and his forehead was glistening with perspiration. If what little energy he’d expended standing had drained him this much, he surely wouldn’t be up to the exertion needed to copulate. No, she’d already made arrangements for tonight.
Glancing at the clock, she wished the hands had ceased to move.
It was time to meet Mr. Whitton outside.
The whiskey burned in her stomach, not giving her the desired ease to go forward with her plan. She’d meant to sip more as she went along, but left most of the strong drink till the last. And Jack had tossed the last quarter of the glass’s contents.
She had told Mr. Whitton she liked to walk to clear her head before bed. The interest that flickered in his eyes was like letting loose a herd of spiders on her shoulders. “I have to go.”
“Don’t,” Jack said simply.
But his future rested on her success too. Everything rested on her ability to conceive. She looked for a reason to stay. The fire didn’t need tending, his pillows didn’t need plumping, and it wasn’t time for his medicine.
“I think I need a bit of air to clear my head,” she said, not that she owed him an explanation.
“Stay. Read another chapter,” he coaxed.
His low voice pulled her like a flicker of light in a window might beckon a weary traveler to a warm hearth.
Mr. Whitton was waiting.
Jack arranged the covers and leaned back with a sigh, but stars above, the idea of sliding in beside him was tempting. Except there weren’t any locks on the door and a servant could interrupt them at any minute. No, it would have to be one of the gentlemen.
The footman returned with her cloak draped over his arm.
“Good night, Mr. Applegate,” Caroline murmured, and turned toward the door. “Please make sure he gets his medicine at midnight.”
The footman nodded, and Caroline moved out into the entry hall. Before she could turn lily-livered, she marched across the marble expanse and out the front door.
The cool night air pounded her and made her gasp. She should slip back inside, the temperature too frigid to encourage a late night stroll.
At the foot of the stairs a round red orb like a single dragon’s eye glared at her. The steps seemed to stretch and tilt, even though she knew them to be shallow.
A form separated from the plinth where a stone lion perched. She held her breath, waiting for the dark beast with the single glowing eye to show its scales and pointed tail, but after a second she saw only a man. The eye become the tip of a cigar. Mr. Whitton.
He’d waited.
She’d hoped he had given up and returned inside to the warmth and sanity of the house. She couldn’t do this, she wanted to return back inside, but she had to.
Needing support for her shaky legs, she moved to the stone balustrade nearest him and began her descent.
“I hope you don’t mind that I came out to smoke a cigar,” Mr. Whitton said.
“No, of course not. Won’t you join me for a stroll down the lane? The canal is lovely when the moonlight hits it just so.”
“I should like to see it, then.”
Too straight to have been formed by nature, the canal was nothing more than a broad ditch dug out to power the mill. Picturesque it was not, although she supposed if one were to make the effort, it could have been made pretty. But Mr. Broadhurst had little patience for making things pleasing to the eye. He certainly didn’t want to encourage millworkers to cavort along the canal.
“I would love to have your company.” Her polite dissemblings were like sand in her mouth and nearly as hard to get out. “I dislike walking alone.”
He sucked on the cigar. The tip flared red, taunting her with its insubstantial heat.
“Seems old man winter is on his way,” she offered. She had descended into making banal observations about the weather.
He grunted rather than respond.
The macadam crunched under their feet as they walked down the drive. The silence hung over them like a heavy shroud.
“You were telling me of your travels about France. I should love to hear more.” She’d been bored to tears earlier by his dry recitation of the places he’d been. He spoke of his travels as a crusty historian might speak of a battle date and location, without relaying any stories of the men who fought or fell there.
“I spent two days in Chartres.”
“Ah, you must have seen the cathedral,” she said. “Is it very beautiful?”
“Yes, quite.”
Caroline laced her arm through his and pressed close. “Tell me what you shaw . . . saw.” Surely that would prompt him beyond monosyllabic answers.
“Lots of spires, stained glass.” He shrugged. “It was a cathedral. I saw what I’d expect to see.”
“Did it move you?” she asked.
“Move me?” he muttered.
Caroline made an mmm sound rather than try to explain what she wasn’t sure she meant.
“I can’t say as I had a religious experience, if that is what you mean.”
The dark had taken on a fuzziness Caroline wasn’t sure was warranted. And she didn’t remember the drive being so dashed uneven. She clung tighter to Mr. Whitton’s arm. “That’s good, I shuppose.”
It wasn’t as if she needed him being a zealot. After all, what true believer would commit adultery?
They walked along in silence. She felt less inclination to break it. She’d made the first effort and now her brain felt sluggish and worn-out.
Her tongue had swollen like a winter-ready caterpillar, while her toes grew wooden. Already she wished she’d stayed with Jack. He was so much easier to talk to.
The leaves crinkled with a chill wind, and those that had already fallen scuttled along the pavement like little furry creatures. Mr. Whitton’s arm tensed.
“Are you certain it is safe for you to walk alone at night?”
Was he concerned about her safety or his?
“You’ll protect me.” She wished he’d warm her. The only part of her that felt warm was the boiling mass in her stomach. No wonder sailors called it rotgut, because that was exactly what it felt like—as if her innards were dissolving in a vat of acid.
He raised his cigar, and the glowing tip seemed to dance. Caroline closed her eyes against the jagged movements, but that was worse. Everything was spinning. She opened her eyes again determined to find her bearings.
He dropped the cigar and ground it out with his heel. “Perhaps we should start back.”
She looked back to find the house wavering in the distance. The lamps burning by the doors seemed to hop about. “I’m sorry I’m not a good conversationalist.”
She silently celebrated that she’d managed to get that word around the fuzzy caterpillar in her mouth.
He grunted.
“I jush . . . just get lonely.”
“What of your husband?”
“He is a good . . . man.” Caroline searched desperately for the right thing to say and came up blank.
“What would he say if he knew you were out here alone with me?”
He’d be shouting encouragement or asking why she hadn’t met Mr. Whitton in his bedroom. “I . . . he is . . . too old. He can’t anymore.”
Mr. Whitton stopped walking.
Caroline stumbled and then looked at the ground for the rock or log that tripped her, but as she pulled her skirts back she saw nothing but the flat surface of the drive.
The man said nothing.
Her stomach continued to rot. The opportunity was slipping away. Did she have to spell it out for him letter by letter? “I have needs,” she whispered.
“And you had your brother gather together men so you could pick one to service your ‘needs’?”
“God no!” She stared at the man, but his features were too blurry for her to understand.
“I . . . no. Nothing to do with . . . arrangements. I thought, since you are here.” Her head bobbed back and forth without her meaning it to. She struggled to gain control of her body, which felt as if it were ready to fall off her bones. Finally, the drink was hitting her. She had a moment of realizing the sensation of not caring must be what heavy drinkers sought. “I wished I’d given Mr. Broadhusht a baby and now he can’t . . . can’t . . .”
“Perform?”
“Yesh.” Finally, Mr. Whitton seemed to understand.
“You want me to give you a baby?”
“Yesh.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
Caroline rolled her eyes and then wished she hadn’t, as the world kept right on rolling after she stopped moving her eyes. “ ’Nough.”
He tugged on her arm and moved her into the dark shadows of the trees.
The rough bark bit into her back and startled her out of a stupor. She knew she’d moved because they weren’t on the paved drive anymore, but she could not remember how. He bent and pressed his mouth against hers. Her head lolled to the side. He repositioned her head. The smell of cigar smoke hung thickly on him.
His tongue thrust between her lips as his hand closed around one breast. He tasted sour and smoky, like a wet ashcan. She fought her revulsion and tried to pretend she liked his kiss, while a new hoard of spiders with cold clickety-clacking legs crawled over her. But it was too much. Her gorge rose in her throat. She futilely shoved him as she dropped to her knees and was sick all over his thighs.
Sometime in the night, her room had stopped spinning, but with the morning light her head pounded. She was afraid to move for fear her stomach would revolt again. And what in heaven’s name had she told Mr. Whitton? She vaguely remembered asking him to give her a baby. How could she have been so stupid?
Her cheeks burned as she remembered the humiliating apologies, blaming the cigar and Mr. Whitton’s calm questions about the canal, which he found and immersed himself in, while she fretted about him drowning—in four feet of water. But he emerged wet, cold, and uninterested. Oh he had been gentleman enough to drag her weaving, unresponsive-to-commands-body back inside. At her insistence, he’d left her slumped on a bench in the entry hall.
She wasn’t entirely certain how she made it to her bedroom. She thought she might have crawled up the stairs and then slithered along the wall. For a person with two good legs, her inability to ambulate was shameful.
Groaning, Caroline rolled to her side. She would have pulled a pillow over her head to block the excruciating light, but she’d had all her extras taken down to Jack. Her stomach boiled like a witches’ cauldron.
Jack. Would he be open to a brief affair with her? She’d thought he was about to kiss her when the footman interrupted them. She’d have to move Jack to a bedroom with locks on the door. All the guest bedrooms were occupied. Her pounding head protested solving a problem as if an engineer decided to install hydraulic looms and they were knocking back and forth against her skull.
“Ma’am, did you want woken?” her maid asked in a booming whisper.
Caroline jerked upright. “What o’clock is it?”
“It’s gone seven, ma’am.”
Heavens, she never slept past six, let alone seven. She would be late for the mill office. “I will be down directly.”
Moving slowly, Caroline swung her feet to the floor. Her head pounded, but at least her limbs functioned. Her maid had brought a large basin and towels, and Caroline reached to strip off what remained of her petticoats—apparently she hadn’t made it into a nightgown.
But the moment she tried to stand up, her stomach rebelled. She swallowed hard, trying to control the revolt of her body. How on earth was she going to function today, feeling as if she’d been bowled over by a locomotive?
The visitors had started shortly after dawn. The footman dozing in the chair beside Jack jerked awake and then went out across the tiled floor to open the door. He returned with an uncertain look on his face and asked if Jack was “at home.”
After a couple of minutes back and forth, Jack realized he could turn the visitors away. But of course he didn’t.
He scooted up and leaned against the extra pillows. He appreciated the well-wishers, he really did, but his leg ached and he wanted Mrs. Broadhurst’s quiet presence.
“You’re a lucky fellow . . . but I guess you ain’t out of the woods yet,” muttered Abel while rolling his cap in his hand. “George stopped the doctor, and he told us to give you a couple of days of rest afore visiting.”
Jack didn’t feel so lucky, but he nodded.
“I’d say he landed on a mighty soft pillow,” said another, whistling as he craned his head toward the tinwork on the ceiling.
“Thinks he deserves to live here and was bound to get here any way he could,” said George, who’d been his closest friend before he married and his wife popped out three babies. Now, George had little time for him. Or they no longer had much in common. George concentrated on feeding his family, while Jack worked hard to avoid one.
“I didn’t want to be brought here,” he objected.
George patted his shoulder and gave a small mocking smile that took the sting out of his words. “I know, but you enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Take care in what you wish for,” muttered another man, evoking a chorus of murmured agreements.
Jack pushed his lips together. He had wished to earn a better life, not be pampered because he was injured. “I’d rather be working.”
“We took a collection to help you out.” George thrust a bundled handkerchief in Jack’s direction.
“You shouldn’t have.” Jack eyed the clinking bundle with trepidation. He didn’t want their charity, but he’d been the one to start such collections before. Just last year he’d gone around for Mattie’s mother to help pay for her husband’s burial. Taking the money was like admitting he would never be able to support himself again.
“You could pay the doctor.”
To not take the collection would undoubtedly make the others think he thought so much of himself that he didn’t need their money. In truth, he had a good-sized stash at home. He’d been saving for years.
George pulled back the handkerchief. “ ’Course, I could always give it to Martha. Wants a new stove, does she?”
It was too much to hope that the argument he’d had with his stepmother hadn’t been repeated all around the village. He’d said things he shouldn’t have, but so had Martha. The more he’d tried to stay calm, the more she shouted, while his father drank more gin.
Jack reached for the handkerchief. The bundle was slim, probably no more than a few shillings in total. Would his misfortune have been worth more if Martha hadn’t been shouting that he thought he was too good to live like the rest of them? “Thank you.”
Jack tucked the handkerchief under his pillows. A few of his family members hung back near the wall. He hadn’t expected his father to manage the walk with his back, nor did he expect Martha with all the little ones, but an emptiness yawned inside him. Were the rest siding with Martha? His shoulders sagged with weariness.
The deep ache in his anklebone made him grit his teeth. He didn’t think he was better than anyone. He just hated a life lived with nothing to show for it. He wanted to put a mark on the world, make something of himself, earn enough to live easily.
After a spell, Lucy shouldered her way through the throng. Her blue eyes were big and her heavy blond hair looked as if she’d pinned it up without a mirror. “Jack!”
He sighed. Once upon a time he’d liked that Lucy often looked like she’d just tumbled out of bed. Now he wondered whose bed besides his she’d tumbled out of. Not that Lucy would be stupid enough to get caught playing two men against each other. And lately she’d been laying claim to him in more and more obvious ways. As he always did when a girl started to think she owned him, he’d made excuses and stopped spending time alone with her. Or at least avoided intimacies that could lead to getting trapped.
She made a show of plumping his pillows and adjusting his covers.
“Leave it,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed for just a second before she patted his hand as if he were just a grouchy boy. They both knew she was hanging onto him because she thought he might be the one to make a better life. He was already a lead mechanic, even though he was younger than the other mechanics by a decade. But the time had long since past when he would have proposed if he was going to. He should have made a clean break months ago.
Jack caught the glances at the bottom of his bed, but ignored the blatant curiosity.
A maid came in carrying an ash bucket, and a footman followed with a coal bucket. The two bent and made quick work of cleaning the remains of last night’s fire and getting a new one flaring. The villagers watched and tried to stay out their way. The servants pretended they weren’t there and left without fanfare once their duty was discharged. But it had dampened conversation.
“Best be getting on before the horn blows.” One of the men ran his thumbs along the underside of his braces as if they had grown too tight. They needed to get to the mill before work started.
Jack didn’t protest. Instead he thanked everyone for coming and wished for another dose of laudanum. The gray wall between his pain and him had been lowering for hours, until it was just a thin wisp of nothingness.
They all filtered out while the footman looked uncertain as to whether he should hold the door. He settled for standing near, probably to make sure the silver salver or the vases on the table near the entrance didn’t exit with any of his visitors.
Lucy didn’t leave. Instead she sat down in Mrs. Broadhurst’s chair and reached for his hand.
“Would you be needing anything before I leave you, sir?” asked the footman.
“I’ll take care of him,” Lucy said before Jack got his mouth open.
The footman screwed up his face and then shut the door.
“Great. I need help to piss.” Jack sat up. He’d bet his last ha’penny Lucy wouldn’t help him.
She recoiled. “Jack!”
“Better call him back.” Jack reclined against the pillows.
“But—”
“Don’t you need to get to the mill?”
“I’m not working today. I’m here to take care of you.”
Jack ground his teeth. The last thing he needed was more people taking care of him. And he’d rather she wasn’t around when Mrs. Broadhurst checked in on him. Last night he was certain she would have allowed him to kiss her were it not for the interruption. He just hoped it wasn’t only the haze of intoxication offering him encouragement. “Lucy, go to work.”
Lucy reached to brush his hair away from his forehead, and he batted her hand away.
She scowled at him. “Why didn’t you take me to London with you?”
Jack closed his eyes. He’d postponed marriage and a family of his own partly to help out his stepmother and his father, but mostly to not have his future held hostage by a wife and children. Once a man was responsible for more mouths than his own, he couldn’t take risks. “Lucy, I don’t need you weighing me down.”
She patted his arm. “Looks to me like you’ll need my help when you go back to London now. Your sister told me you have a job there.”
He pushed her hand away. “Lucy—”
“I would go with you, Jack. I want to live in London.”
Did she plan on supporting him until he was healed? “In that case, you really should go to the mill. You’ll need the money for your fare, because I’m not taking you. You go to London on your own. We’re done.”
The whistle at the mill blew, announcing the workday had begun.
“You don’t mean that,” she said.
He did mean it, and he’d said it before. “Go to work, Lucy. I don’t want you anymore.”
She pouted and sulked, then stormed at him for leading her down the primrose path and not being willing to make an honest woman of her. He’d never lied to her or ever implied he’d marry her. Desperately, Jack tried to get her to leave. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be fit for work again. I’ll probably be a beggar from here on out.”
She looked around the room. “If this is the kind of charity you’ll receive, it may not be so bad.”
Hadn’t she heard him? Jack rolled his eyes. “Don’t count on it.”
Lucy cast him a skeptical look. “Mrs. Broadhurst has never taken such a special interest in any other accident victim.”
A flash of uneasy excitement raced through Jack. Last night, had she been hinting that he might have other benefits to recovering under her care? In the cold light of day it was too fantastic to believe she might stoop to a liaison with him. “She had her reasons. She wants the little ones out of the mill and in school.”
Perhaps she wanted an excuse to get away from her guests. Her staff were as confused as he was about her motives, but it hadn’t stopped them from speculating or grousing about the extra workload. “But I won’t be taking any more charity from her as soon as I’m back on my feet.”
Jack put his arm over his eyes. He had to stop thinking about Mrs. Broadhurst in that way. She was married, and he’d never consorted with married women. But if she were a widow . . . and he wasn’t dependent on her care . . . and they were friends of a sort.
Lucy rubbed his arm. “Take me to London with you.”
“No.”
She leaned over, pressing her breasts into his chest and breathing against his chin. “Jack, you have a job there, don’t you? It’ll be lovely.”
“It’s not a certainty, especially not now.” He was still going to London, but the last thing he wanted was Lucy following him. “I told you I wouldn’t marry you.”
She frowned. “I’ll find work to help out. You’ll need my help.”
He wasn’t in any shape to support a wife, and he’d be damned before he depended on a woman to support him.
The door opened and Lucy sat up rapidly.
“Oh, excuse me,” Mrs. Broadhurst said.
Jack winced. He lowered his arm. Lucy belatedly jumped to her feet and bobbed an awkward curtsy.
But Mrs. Broadhurst was already pulling the door shut.
“Wait.” He sat up and pushed the covers down.
Mrs. Broadhurst hesitated in the doorway, lit by the rosy streams of the rising sunlight. Her brownish-purple-colored gown this morning was buttoned to her neck. He regretted that he wouldn’t get to see the morning sun on the skin of her shoulders.
And how was she doing after her bender last night?
Her lips pursed and her eyebrows were drawn together as if she were hurting.
“I need to use that room again.” Damn was that the best he could think of to keep her from leaving? “It’s not urgent. I’d just like to wash up.” But damn Lucy for making it look as though they were still a couple.