‘Get out of my way, you ill-mannered lout,’ she hissed now, ‘before I take my crop to you and wipe that foolish grin from your face. I don’t know what you are doing here loitering in the doorway when you should be about some labour, but I intend to let my uncle know and you will be fired immediately.’
‘Now then, lass,’ Will said mildly, ‘there’s no need for that. I were only telling you the truth and well you know it, else why should you get in such a tantrum? Any lass who dresses . . .’
‘By God, I won’t stand here to be insulted by some . . . some yard labourer in my mother’s mill. Are you to leave now or am I to have you thrown out?’
Will’s face hardened and the amused and perfectly amicable expression in his eyes disappeared. He moved down from the bottom step and out into the yard. The sunlight fell on the short, rough cap of his hair, shading its pale brown to a pleasing, glinting fairness. He wore plain kersey breeches of good grey with stout black knee-boots and his jacket was of dark green corduroy. His shirt was a paler grey than his breeches and in the open neck was knotted a jaunty, freshly ironed red neckerchief. He looked just what he was: a labouring man who had come up in the world and certainly not the yard-hand she had thought him to be. He was a man who had, by hard work and self-education, risen from the thousands of faceless, nameless operatives who minded the mules and looms in the cotton factories of Lancashire; a man who could claim a position of responsibility, perhaps not yet of the manager class but not too far below it. He was about twenty-seven or eight with a look of good-natured tolerance, an easy-going man and yet there was a keen intelligence, a tough-fibred shrewdness about him which said he would be a hard man to take advantage of.
‘Well?’ Miss Harrison of Greenacres demanded loftily. ‘Shall I call these men to throw you into the street or will you go unaided?’ But her eyes studied his height and width somewhat uncertainly for now he was out of the shadows she could see he was taller, heavier, stronger, than any man in the yard.
‘I think I’ll stay just where I am,’ he said softly.
‘Very well.’ She turned away from lifting her chin with the disdain of the young thoroughbred she was. She raised her hand and beckoned to four brawny men who had stopped work to watch, giving their undivided attention, as did every man in the yard, to the scene at the foot of the counting-house stairs.
‘I would be obliged if you would throw this man into the street at once,’ she told them imperiously. ‘See, you four over here, if you please.’
‘I’d save your breath if I were you, lass,’ Will said pleasantly enough. ‘You don’t want to make more of this than you already have. I am here to see Mr Greenwood and I doubt he’d take kindly to a brawl on his counting-house steps.’
‘You! To see my uncle? Rubbish.’ She did not even bother to turn her contemptuous glance on him but continued to gesture towards the four men who were reluctantly moving towards her, their eyes on the uncompromising man who stood at her back.
‘They will not take me on, lass, believe me.’
‘They will if I tell them to and when my family hears of the insulting way you have addressed me my cousins will give you the biggest hiding . . .’
‘Lass, lass, give over. You’re only making a show o’ thissen. I meant no harm when I said every man in the yard was looking at you, nor offence. I was merely stating the obvious and surely to God you must know it, if that’s the way you always dress. What man could resist it? They’ve never seen such fine . . .’ Despite himself he could not help but grin and she turned, her expression menacing and her crop darted towards his chest, snapping against the knot in his neckerchief.
‘Yes? Fine what?’
Will pushed his hands through his hair in exasperation and wondered how in hell he had got into this ridiculous situation. Why had he even bothered to speak to this girl when all he had to do in the first place was step aside and let her pass? She evidently believed she was above every consideration, every rule, every discipline with which life was ordered. It was nowt to him what she wore, how she spent her days or into what trouble, as a rebel, they led her. He had meant no disrespect, none at all. He had been amused and strangely stirred by her appearance, as any man would be, but she had turned on him like a wildcat, creating this explosive situation in which not only he and herself were involved, but every damned man in the yard. There was not one moving, from nine-year-old boys, delighted by this diversion in their humdrum day, to older men who should have known better.
‘Miss Harrison, will you not lower that riding crop?’ He grinned for it was all so foolish, so childishly foolish. ‘I’d not want to have to take it from you.’ Instantly he could have bitten his tongue for it seemed she could resist no challenge; that everything said to her which she did not care for, must be opposed.
She grinned.
‘Try! Go on! Take the crop and I shall say nothing to my uncle or my cousins of your insolence.’ The end of the small whip just tickled his cheek and he felt the irritation in him stir to something else. He was a man slow to anger, equable, since his size and strength made other men reluctant to tackle him. But this bloody girl was like a persistent wasp: nothing to be afraid of but ready to sting if she could, to hurt him in any way she could, and no matter how many times he waved her away, she buzzed in again and again to attack wherever she found an opening.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, lass, be off about your business and let me take care of mine . . .’ The whip lashed out to sting his cheek sharply. She smiled brilliantly, her eyes vivid and mocking, her lips curved maliciously over her white teeth as a trickle of blood ran down his face.
‘You were saying . . . ?’ She danced away from him, her pert breasts lifting delightfully against her shirt.
The smoky brown softness of his eyes darkened dramatically. He put up a hand to his cheek, then looked at the blood on his fingers. His voice was ice cold and round the yard there was a concerted hiss from a dozen or more throats as the men pressed in closer.
‘You need a good thrashing, Miss Harrison, and have done for a long while, that’s what I’m saying, and if you were mine I’d see you had one before this day was out. And every day until you had learned some manners.’ Before she could close her astounded mouth or blink her incredulous eyes he had taken her crop away from her and with a gesture of contempt snapped it in two over his bent knee. He threw it to the ground and her gaze followed it, the expression on her face quite unbelieving.
The yard was as silent and still as the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. There was no movement beyond that of the horse’s tail as it swished at the flies which tormented it. The men waited, stunned by the big man’s impudence. They waited for Miss Tessa to erupt into the savagery of which they knew her to be capable but the sound of another horse entering the yard turned all heads except those of Will Broadbent and Tessa Harrison, who continued to stare challengingly at one another. Not until Charlie Greenwood spoke did Tessa Harrison tear her gaze away.
‘Tessa, what are you doing here?’ He threw the reins of his horse to the waiting boy and walked tiredly towards the doorway, his eyes somewhat vague as though he had things on his mind other than his mill and was merely being polite.
‘Charlie, this man has . . .’ She turned angrily to him.
‘Not now, sweetheart, I have been . . .’
‘But, Charlie, you cannot mean to let this pass. He has . . .’
‘What pass, Tessa?’ He had reached them by now and as though he had only just become aware of the tension in the yard he turned to look about him and at once every man and boy sprang into action and the yard became alive again.
‘What’s been going on here, Tessa?’ he asked, but his slumped shoulders and strained expression said he really did not want to know and at once, to Will’s surprise, she went to him and took his hand.
‘It’s nothing, Charlie, really. Some small disagreement, resolved now but what . . . ? Is there news of . . . ?’ Her voice was soft, amazingly so, Will thought, the flashin
g eyes and furious clenching of her jaw completely gone as her concern for her uncle showed in her face.
‘Aye, two hours since . . . but . . .’ He sighed deeply.
‘Not . . . ?’
‘Yes, dead, poor little mite . . . a girl . . .’
‘Oh, Charlie, I’m so sorry. And Laurel . . . ?’
‘Sleeping now. I stayed with her. That’s why I’m late.’
He turned away from her abruptly and found himself face to face with Will Broadbent. Conscious suddenly that he was saying more than was decent before a stranger, his voice was sharp.
‘Do you have business here, Mr . . . er . . . ?’
‘Will Broadbent, and I believe we have an appointment, Mr Greenwood, eight thirty sharp, but I can come back, sir, if you’re . . .’ Will was polite and yet he showed no humility for he was a man who knew his own worth. He was courteous as a man should be, not just with this man who he hoped would give him the vacant post of under-tackler, but with anyone who, in his opinion, deserved it. Unruffled, honest of expression and sure of himself, but in his eyes was a look which conveyed his sympathy, the sympathy one man shows another who is grieving. Mr Greenwood was not himself and though Will had taken precious time to come to see him, it would not be right to press the man at this moment.
Tessa Harrison might no longer have existed for all the notice he now took of her. He was here by appointment, one made by Mr Greenwood only yesterday when Will had approached him in the yard. Naturally, he was well aware that employment at the Chapman factory was hard to come by for every job which fell vacant had two dozen applicants waiting to fill it. It was like working in heaven, it was said, compared to the dozens of other mills in the valley. Besides the decent working conditions in their mills the Greenwood family had built a school and all those who worked here, into the second generation now, could read and write, were well set up, healthy and cheerful, with none of the deformities which were to be found in the mill where Will presently worked. That was one of the reasons he wanted to leave it and be decently employed without the dreadful necessity of trying to get a day’s work from operatives who were underpaid, underfed and exploited by the unscrupulous owner.
The repeal in 1846 of the hated Corn Laws, which had made rents high and living low, had alleviated matters somewhat for the lower classes as the price of bread came down, but there was still hunger, disease, squalor, long hours and hard labour in most textile mills. There were still strikes in which strikers’ families starved and men, maddened by despair, ran amok, smashing, killing. But the ‘hungry forties’, as they were calling them, were surely done with now as trade boomed, mills prospered and unemployment was on the decline. The cotton towns, though they were for the most part a hideous, unplanned sprawl of delapidated cottages, broken pavements, rutted tracks and open drains, would surely improve with the Greenwood family’s living example of how things might be done. A decent day’s work would be rewarded with a decent wage.
‘You’re after the job in the spinning room?’
‘Aye, sir. I want to work decent and . . . well, where I am now . . . it’s not to my liking, but if you’re . . . I can come back . . .’
‘No . . . no, come up, Broadbent, and we’ll talk about it.’ Charlie Greenwood turned to his niece who still held his arm. ‘You’d best be off home, sweetheart. Nay, don’t pull your lip at me, lass. You shouldn’t be here in the first place, you know that.’ He smiled affectionately, then without allowing her to speak again turned away and, indicating to Will to follow him up, began to climb the stairs.
He was on the top road which led from Crossfold to Edgeclough where he had lodgings, when she rose from the spiky bushes of gorse which lined the track and amongst which she had been sitting, coming, it seemed to him in that moment, from the very ground beneath his feet.
It was almost noon and the sun fell directly on the glossy cape of her dark hair which had escaped the chenille net. The beauty of it caught his breath, then his irritation, at himself for being so affected by it and at her for her foolhardiness in being here, alone, sharpened his voice.
‘Good God, Tessa Harrison, what the devil are you doing up here by yourself? Don’t you know there are all manner of ruffians on these moors? Have you no sense? And what is your family thinking of to allow it?’
She shook her head and shrugged as though to ask what that could possibly have to do with him.
‘Did you get the job?’
‘Why should you care?’ His voice was set and closed.
She smiled and he felt his heart lurch against his breastbone; then he turned away so that she might not see his face. It appeared that she bore him no ill-will for what had happened in the yard, indeed, now that it was over and done with, she found it amusing. She had a quick, hot temper, her smile said, but she was not one to harbour a grudge nor to sulk over it, as many women would, and her refreshing candour moved him in some strange way.
‘It’s nothing to me, really,’ she answered lightly. ‘Just put it down to curiosity. There were fifteen applicants, you know. I wondered what you had that they hadn’t.’
‘And have you decided?’
‘I was hoping you would tell me.’
He sighed and turned back to her. ‘Don’t you think you had better get on your horse and go home as your uncle suggested?’
‘I rarely do as people suggest, as you must have noticed.’ She lifted her autocratic head then grinned impishly and he could not help but smile back.
‘That’s true, and yes, I got it. I start next Monday. Nice chap, Mr Greenwood.’
‘I know. We all are in the Greenwood family.’
‘Really?’ His smile was rueful now and he raised his eyebrows.
‘Mm. Though I’m not related by blood, of course.’
‘Oh, aye. How’s that then!’ He found himself responding to her completely natural manner. It seemed not to occur to her that they had met for the first time only that morning, or even that he was to be employed in the family mill. She found him intriguing. He interested her and so she satisfied that interest in the only way she knew how. She asked questions regardless of his station in life, or hers.
‘My mother was adopted. She has no idea where she came from.’ She sat down on a sun-warmed rock indicating that he should sit beside her and again it seemed an entirely natural thing to do.
‘Oh, aye.’ His eyes were very soft as he studied this amazing girl who could in one moment be a bold-faced minx, and the next almost demure. He hesitated for a moment as though debating with himself on whether to speak, then:
‘I was t’same,’ he said quietly.
‘The same?’
‘Aye. Came with a cartload of others to Abbotts when I was no more than a nipper and I’ve bin there ever since. Mind you, I was a strong lad. God knows where I’d come from but wherever it was they’d fed me well, so I survived. I think that’s why I love these hills so well, this moorland . . .’
‘Why, Mr Broadbent?’ She was quite enthralled and again he was bewildered by the mercurial changes in her moods. He felt a thrill go through him to have captured her complete attention, then a surge of irritation at feeling it, but he went on nevertheless for it was delightful to have those incredible eyes gazing so earnestly into his.
‘Because we were shut up so much. It wasn’t until I was a man grown that I could please myself, you see, then I discovered all this.’ He waved a hand in the general direction of the great sweeping moorland which lay all about them and her own eyes followed the gesture. ‘When I was a child I spent my Sundays, first at church where the millmaster’s wife seemed to think it her duty to send me and my companions, then cleaning the machines on which the following day we were to labour. We had no time for tramping the moors, I can tell thee, even if it had been allowed, which it wasn’t, or we’d the strength, which we hadn’t. Apprentices, as we were called, were not well fed, Miss Harrison, and we had to be in the loomgate or jennygate from five in’t morning until eight at night. It was a long tim
e for a child.’
‘You seem to have done well on it, Mr Broadbent.’ It was not meant as a criticism, merely a statement of fact. Her eyes ran over his broad shoulders and the long strength of his limbs and as they did so they narrowed approvingly and she felt a not unpleasant flutter in the vicinity of her throat as the pulse there quickened. He really was a most unusual man with his strong, good-humoured face, his lazy, slanting smile. He had a way of talking, articulate and open, and though now and again he fell back into the way of speech of the working man he appeared to be, he was what she supposed would be called well educated. He was looking at her now in that gleaming, speculative way which she recognised, despite her youth, as the admiration of a man for a woman. He liked her, she could tell that, despite the battle they had fought in the mill yard. And that was another thing. Not many men would have had the daring – which she admired – to stand up to her in that way.
‘Aye, well . . .’ He grinned disarmingly and she leaned closer to him, her eyes filled with her curiosity. ‘If you promise not to send for the nearest constable I’ll tell you how I came to thrive where others didn’t.’
‘Oh, please.’ She hitched herself even closer and he wondered at the trust and confidence of this girl. Though he 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.
Shining Threads Page 6
