She rose up slightly again, trying to hear if he had simply gotten up without waking her. Early mornings were not Caroline’s thing, and often he would be up and dressed and downstairs working on this project or that before she finally rose. But there was no sound now. The house was silent.
And then as she lay back down, her heart jumped. There was a shape at the other window, blotting out half of the faint light coming in from outside. She sat up with a jerk. “Joshua?”
He was already turned, watching her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She let her breath out, feeling her pulse pounding. “How long have you been there?”
There was a long pause; then, “Most of the night.”
“Why didn’t you come to bed?” And then, even as she said it, she realized what a foolish question it was. She slid over a little and patted the bed beside her. “Come sit with me.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then he came over and sat down. She reached out in the darkness and found his hand. He took a quick breath, then let it out again. She felt the tension in him, but at the same time she also felt in herself a great burst of elation. She squeezed his hand. “I’m listening, Joshua.”
He began slowly. Surprisingly, he didn’t start with Jessica. He started with his family. And gradually it all came out. Sometimes it was in a rush of words, punctuated with anger and disgust. Sometimes he stammered, his voice heavy with shame. Much of the time he spoke quietly, without outward emotion.
He didn’t say much about the specifics of his family—his brothers and sisters and so on. That was not his purpose. But the other all came out—the relationship between a stubborn father and a proud, rebellious son; the terrible rainy night when he had come within a hair’s breadth of killing his father; the flight into oblivion; working the great keelboats up and down the Ohio; coming to Independence and starting the freight business; Jessica; the poker games.
It took more out of Caroline than she had expected. When he talked about his obsession with Lydia McBride, she was surprised at how sharply the jealousy rose inside her. She felt strangely proud of her own ability to bear children when he spoke of Jessica’s miscarriages and what they had done to their marriage. And she felt herself recoil in horror as he told of those final days with Jessica.
He spared himself no details. He made no attempt to soften his role in what happened. She had asked to see it all, that he hold nothing back. Evidently in the night hours he had decided to give her what she asked for. But many of the things he told her about filled her with revulsion and a great sense of abhorrence. It was all she could do to stop from jerking her hand away and screaming at him to get away from her, to stay back and never touch her again.
But then something else began to stir in her. Joshua was not a warm and emotional man. He was a very private person, locking up his feelings behind stoic masculinity. As he talked on, however, she began to feel the depths of his pain, the power of his remorse, what it had cost him to tell her all of this. And she was strangely touched.
He stopped. The room was filled with the heaviness of the silence. She didn’t want to respond, not now. She wanted time to think, to choose her words with great care. But she knew he was waiting. He had laid himself bare, left himself terribly vulnerable. Now he needed to know if it had been for nothing. When she didn’t say anything for a moment, he started to withdraw his hand. She held on, locking her fingers around his tightly.
He took another breath, then very slowly he finally turned to her. “Caroline, I can’t go back and change the past. I’d have done it a thousand times if that was possible.”
“I know,” she said softly.
“If you—” He took a quick breath. “If you decide you can’t live with what I’ve done, I’ll understand.”
That required an answer, and she was at a loss for words. Could she live with those horrible images in her mind? Would they rise up to haunt her every time he reached out and touched her? She pulled his hand to her and took it with both of hers now. “Joshua,” she began, slowly, realizing how important these next few moments could be for them. “I am glad that you have told me. I will be honest with you. What you have done fills me with horror. It’s like we have been talking about another man, a man called Joshua Steed whom I’ve never met, never seen.”
“And whom you won’t see ever again,” he said with great fervency.
She nodded. “I want to believe that. I want to believe that very badly. If I couldn’t . . .” She didn’t finish.
She took a deep breath, then let it out in a long, soft sigh. “I don’t know if I can ever put these terrible images from my mind, Joshua. I don’t know if I can promise you that nothing will change in our relationship.” He started to speak, but she went on quickly. “But now it’s out and we can deal with it. And that is less terrifying than not knowing, not having you fully.”
She pulled him down to lie beside her. “You must be exhausted.”
He nodded, not looking at her. She could feel his body, through the covers, still rigid and filled with tension. She reached out and laid one hand on his face, then gently turned it until he was looking at her. “Thank you for coming up, Joshua. I was afraid I had lost, that you weren’t ever going to tell me.”
One hand came up and he laid it over hers, keeping it on his face. “Caroline, I have . . .” This still wasn’t easy for him. “I love you and the children.”
“I know,” she said. And then it hit her with sudden clarity. That was true! There was no question about that. She knew that Joshua Steed loved her more deeply and cared for her more deeply than Donovan Mendenhall had, and that had been a great deal. And Joshua loved her children intensely. She felt a great sense of wonder and gratitude. And a sudden hope.
“If I ever lose you,” he started, his voice deep and husky, “I—”
She moved her hand down across his face, putting her fingers over his lips and stopping him. “You’re not going to lose me,” she whispered. She took his hands and brought them over to her stomach, let him feel the roundness beneath the covers. “This child needs a father.” Her voice caught. “I want that father to be you.”
Chapter Seventeen
A textile factory going at full steam was an awesome sight to the uninitiated—and a terrible assault on unprotected ears. The noise began at the gates, where huge high-wheeled wagons pulled by teams of six horses or mules came in a steady stream from Liverpool, thirty miles to the south. There the cotton had been off-loaded from the fleets of packet ships shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic. These wagons made the very ground tremble, and the clattering racket of the iron-rimmed tires on cobblestone filled Preston’s main street with mind-numbing noise from first light to dark.
Inside the carding sheds, machines screeched and moaned like demented spirits. First, huge rollers covered with iron teeth drew the tangled fibers into straight, even rows. Then another machine began to roll the fibers over and over one another to form “slivers,” loose ropes of cotton yarn. From there they went to the “spinning mules,” hundreds of them, spitting out continuous lines of threads, as many as sixty-four at a time.
But it was in the long, low building that housed nearly two dozen of the great steam-driven power looms where the noise was so thunderous that it vibrated the skull and made it nearly impossible to speak. Even in the building next to it, where the boilers that fired the steam engines were housed, the noise of the looms was as real and as palpable as a living presence.
For the most part it was women who tended the weaving machines. As a boy, Derek hadn’t understood why so many of the women who worked in the factories always spoke loudly. They seemed to be screaming at everybody, even when they were just making idle conversation. He no longer wondered why. They stood at the machines from seven a.m. to seven p.m., battered by the incessant roaring, from whose noise they were relieved for only an hour, their dinner break, plus two brief stops—one midmorning and one midafternoon—to clean the machines and gulp down s
ome tepid water, or perhaps some cold coffee, before the machines started rolling again.
Three great boilers provided the steam for the power looms. Derek Ingalls had moved into the boiler room from the unloading sheds at the age of fifteen. When he had first started, he had been one of the lads who “lapped” the cotton—laid it out in bundles of similar-size fibers—when the bales were first opened. Now he shoveled coal to feed the insatiable bellies of the boilers. He worked without a shirt, and his upper torso—wet with perspiration from the heat and the labor—almost glowed in the dancing firelight. There were three shovelers. Derek was the youngest and the toughest. Four years of shoveling for ten to twelve hours per day had turned his developing body into something hard and muscular.
The man working alongside Derek tapped his shoulder. He was pointing toward the door. Surprised, Derek turned. His surprise was even greater when he saw Peter standing there, motioning to him frantically. He turned, threw the shovel-load of coal into the gaping mouth of the boiler, then stuck his shovel into the coal pile.
The foreman was on him like a hawk on a straggler pigeon. “Eh, mate, where do ya think yer goin’?”
Derek hesitated for a moment. England’s unemployment was so horrendous that there were a dozen men for every job available. Often new men were so desperate for work that they would accept a lower wage, so the owners looked for the slightest letdown or misstep as an excuse to fire a person. Derek pointed to the door. “It’s my little brother, sir.”
The foreman looked, then nodded. He had a son a year younger than Peter who also worked in the cutting room. The boys were not close, but friendly. “All right,” he muttered, “but make it snappy.”
Peter stepped outside when he saw Derek was coming. Derek didn’t even wait for the door to close. “What is it, Peter? What’s the matter?”
His brother clutched at his arm. “Mr. Morris is here, Derek.”
“The owner?”
“Yes, the young one. The son. The lady who runs the front desk fainted. They’ve taken her to hospital.”
“So?”
His grip tightened on Derek’s arm. “Mr. Morris is fumin’. He needs someone who can read the orders. Says he needs ’em today.”
Derek was staring at his brother. “You can read.”
“He don’t want no kid, Derek,” Peter exclaimed in disgust. “He wants a bloomin’ adult. Go there. Tell him you can read.”
“But I can’t read.”
“You can!” Peter shouted up into his face. “You’re getting better all the time.”
“I . . . I’m still learnin’, Peter.”
Peter slugged him on the shoulder. “It’s three schillings more a month, Derek. Three schillings!”
Derek straightened, his mind racing.
“Do it, Derek, do it!”
He gulped hard. “All right.”
Peter started away. “I’ve got to get back. I snuck away. Don’t tell him how you knew.”
He nodded, half-numb. This was crazy. He could lose everything.
No! It exploded fiercely in his mind. I won’t pass this up! I won’t.
In a moment he was back inside and to the foreman. He took a breath. He was taking a terrible risk. If Morris and the foreman ever got together . . . He swept his hat off. “They want me up front.”
“What?” the foreman roared.
“Mr. Morris is here.”
The foreman looked startled for a moment, glancing nervously at the door. “Old Man Morris?”
“No, his son.”
“And what does he want you for?”
Derek shrugged, trying to look appropriately perplexed.
“All right, but you get your behinder right back here. What am I supposed to do for a shoveler in the meantime?”
Derek didn’t wait to hear what the foreman’s muttered answer to his own question would be. He grabbed his shirt and in an instant was out of the door.
* * *
Alexander Morris looked nothing like his father. He was nearing fifty and had gone quickly to corpulence. His father, the old man who had founded the factory and made it into one of the largest in Lancashire, was still, at seventy-two, lean as a buggy whip and tougher than a blacksmith’s anvil. But though the younger Morris looked nothing like him, as he glared balefully at Derek it was obvious there had been some inheritance of the old man’s genes.
“You can read?”
“Yes, sir.” It was all Derek could do not to stammer.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen, sir.”
“Comin’ up or already there?”
“I was nineteen last October, sir.”
The narrow little eyes ran up and down Derek’s clothes, black with coal dust. “You’re in the boilers now.”
“Yes, sir. Four years as a shoveler.”
Morris swung around, grabbed a large ledger book and shoved it in front of Derek with a faint sneer. His thick forefinger jabbed at a line of writing. “Read this.”
Derek leaned over, conscious of a roaring in his ears. For a moment he thought he was going to faint. He squinted a little. Thankfully, the cursive was not too elaborate. “‘Robert T. Little, Esquire. 71 High Street, Putney, London.’” He straightened, sure that the quaver in his voice would betray him.
Morris sat back, still scowling, but more interested now. “You know your numbers too?”
“Yes, sir.” Fortunately, Derek had found numbers much less complex to grasp than the alphabet.
Morris stood up abruptly. “What’s your name?”
“Derek Ingalls, sir.”
“You got another set of clothes?”
“Yes, sir. At home, sir.”
There was a trace of amusement. “I’ll give you two weeks. If you don’t work out, you’re out of both jobs. Fair enough?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. You’ve got thirty minutes to get home and be back here in something that doesn’t stink of sweat and coal dust. I’ll send word to the boiler room to find a replacement.”
It was all Derek could do to just walk out of the office and down the path without breaking into a run. But the moment he rounded the corner he gave a whoop and headed for the cutting building. He didn’t have to go in. Peter’s face was pressed against the end window, his eyes round as two china plates.
Derek stopped. He was grinning from ear to ear. He nodded, then punched his fist into the air. There was a moment’s expression of disbelief, then a faint cry came through the glass. “All right!” Peter shouted. “You did it! You did it!”
* * *
“Mr. Steed?”
Joshua swung around sharply. Doctor Hathaway was at the doorway. He was wiping his hands on a towel. In three great strides Joshua was to him. Olivia and Will were not two steps behind him.
Hathaway smiled. “You can go in.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. She did very well.”
“And the baby?”
His smile broadened even further. Had it been any other day, Joshua would have been struck with the oddness of Hathaway’s mood. In his proper, Bostonian ways, he rarely smiled, and when he did it was usually a thin, tight-lipped expression that came out as more of a grimace. But there was no mistaking it now. The man Joshua Steed had found practicing medicine in St. Louis and brought to Independence so he could specifically help Jessica Steed carry a child; the man who had been greatly frustrated when that same Jessica Steed had refused to see him after she miscarried—that man was now immensely pleased. “I’ll let Mrs. Steed tell you that,” he said.
He looked down at the children. “You let your father have a few minutes with your mother first, then you can go in.”
Caroline looked up as Joshua slipped into the bedroom. Against the pillow, she looked drawn, washed out. Her eyes were filled with weariness, but a soft smile instantly lit her face. He went to her quickly and took her free hand. “Are you all right?” he asked, half whispering.
She nodded.
/> His eyes moved to the small bundle cuddled inside the crook of her other arm. She reached over and pulled the blanket carefully down. A tiny round face appeared. The eyes were closed, the nose a button stuck between fat, round cheeks, the mouth small and half-puckered. The head still looked a little squashed from the trauma of birth. Caroline pulled the blanket back further. Now he could see a shock of dark hair, thick as a rug but fine as goose down, still wet from the baby’s birth.
“It’s a girl, Joshua.”
He dropped to one knee so he could get a closer look. “Really?” he breathed.
“Are you disappointed?”
He instantly frowned at her. “Why would I be? It’s our baby. Boy or girl. It’s our baby.”
She smiled, deeply pleased.
He reached out with one finger, his face filled with wonder. “I can’t believe it. Look at all that hair.”
Caroline laughed. “Not only that, look at the color.” She turned a little, moving the baby more into the light.
Joshua leaned over to peer more closely. At first glance it looked black with the wetness, but then he saw it, and he smiled broadly. “It’s red,” he exclaimed.
“Yes, much more than mine. She’s going to have my mother’s hair.”
“That’s wonderful. Our own little carrot top.” He reached out, half gingerly, half in eagerness. Caroline lifted her to his hands. He straightened, holding the baby out at arm’s length and looking at her in awe.
“Well,” Caroline said after a moment, “now that we know it’s a girl, we have to settle on a name.”
“I already have.”
Her eyes widened a little. “But the other day you said you weren’t sure.”
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