She fluttered her fingers dismissively. “I grasp your point. You think since your father wanted nothing to do with you that all proper fathers behave in such a manner.” She folded her arms. “My father was a busy man, yet not only did he take me for rides on his horse and read stories, he did indeed sprawl on the floor with my toys. Moreover, I truly believe he enjoyed it.” She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “I dare you to try it.”
“Oh, be serious.”
She gazed serenely at the ceiling. “Yellow,” she sang softly.
He straightened, deeply offended. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She shrugged. “I fear there is no help for it. You’re a yellow-bellied cuckoo bird, my lord. Brought to his knees by the thought of reading to a little girl.” She sighed. “What a waste of a great, manly, handsome fellow like yourself.”
While he sputtered for some rational answer to such an outlandish statement, she turned and walked away, her skirts swaying with self-satisfaction.
However, the truly galling part of it all was that he kept watching until she turned the corner of the hall. Damn it, if he couldn’t keep his head in a disagreement with his own bride, then it was clear it was time he got the bloody hell out of Brook House!
Chapter Twenty-four
Deirdre hadn’t actually expected Brookhaven to heel obediently and appear in the parlor with a storybook in his hand—but she certainly didn’t expect him to call for his horse in a bellow the entire house heard clearly. She watched from the window as the dratted man threw himself upon his stallion and pounded away down the drive and into the city streets as if the hounds of hell were behind him.
Frowning, she hurried to the front hall.
“Fortescue, where is his lordship going?”
The butler clasped his hands behind his back. “His lordship said to inform you that he will be back by supper, my lady.”
“Fortescue, that was not my question.”
“Indeed, my lady, but that was the answer I was provided with.”
Deirdre gazed at the butler for a long moment. “He didn’t tell you where, but you know, don’t you?”
Fortescue focused his gaze somewhere over her left shoulder. “I wouldn’t presume to guess, my lady.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Fortescue, I like you.” She folded her arms and tilted her head. “That being said, you are by no means safe from my wrath. Do you take my meaning?”
“Of course, my lady,” he replied calmly. “You are implying that if I withhold information from you that I shall find hay in my bed linens and soap in my shoes.”
Deirdre smiled falsely. “If you’re lucky.”
Fortescue nodded. “However, if his lordship believes me—of all the staff in this household—to be unreliable, I shall find myself without employment.” He didn’t seem terribly worried. “What a pickle.”
Of all the staff in this household.
Ah. Deirdre smiled more sincerely. “Then by all means keep your own counsel, Fortescue. I’ve no more time for this discussion. I’m on my way to speak to …” She waited.
Fortescue pursed his lips for a moment. Then he met her gaze for the first time. “I believe Cook awaits your instructions as to the menu, my lady.”
Cook, of course. Brookhaven might have ordered a noon meal packed to take with him. Moreover, Cook adored milady’s healthy appetite. “First I’ve seen a fine lady who don’t turn up her nose at good plain food!” she’d announced stoutly.
Lovely, loyal Cook. Marvelous Fortescue. Deirdre smiled benignly upon her favorite butler in the entire world. “Fortescue, you are a marvel of diplomacy and discretion. How lucky we are to have you.”
He bowed. Then he straightened and favored her with a shadow of a smile. “The regard is mutual, my lady.”
In the kitchen, Deirdre found Cook busily preparing something large and pink and dead. A great knife that could behead a king swung down with such a thwack that various departed beast parts on the tabletop jumped like obedient minions. Swallowing, Deirdre looked away but managed a smile.
“Dear Cook, how delicious dinner looks! I do hope his lordship won’t be too late home this evening to enjoy it. I’m sure he has quite the journey ahead of him on his way to—”
Cook looked up, her flushed round face puzzled. “His silk-weavin’ factory in Southwark, milady? Why, it don’t take but an hour to get there on horseback. He’ll be home in plenty of time for my special roast, don’t you worry, milady.”
“Why didn’t he take the carriage, I wonder?” Deirdre idly toyed with a pile of greens in a bowl.
Cook smiled. “Well, milord’s not one to wait on traffic, is he, milady? Says the carriage is ‘inefficient,’ he does. So he takes a groom with him and rides across the bridge in half the time.” She pointed the gory knife riverward. “What with all them mad carters drivin’ like the devil’s after them down Weston Street, I expect milord just likes to be able to get out of the way!”
Deirdre smiled and avoided looking at the crimson blade. “Weston Street, yes. Of course.” She waved a vague hand at the grisly battlefield of beastly bits. “Well, carry on, then. It all looks so very … appetizing.”
She wasn’t going to be able to eat a single bite this evening, but at least she’d learned where Brookhaven had escaped to. She smiled to herself as she left the kitchens. “You won’t escape us that easily, my lord,” she murmured.
Once informed of their destination, Meggie didn’t waste a moment getting dressed to go out. The carriage was waiting before the front steps, although Deirdre hadn’t actually ordered it.
Fortescue bowed as he helped her into her spencer. “Do take care in Southwark, my lady. The manufacturing district can be a rough place. I’ve attached young Trenton to be your personal footman, just to be safe.”
Deirdre looked up … and up … at young Trenton. The lad was a burly giant with a round face and bland eyes who made the Brookhaven livery look positively military. “Good heavens,” she breathed. “Are we expecting to face an army?”
Fortescue nodded. “It might seem so when you arrive, my lady. It would not be wise to become separated from Trenton.” He glanced down at Meggie. “Are you listening, Lady Margaret?”
Meggie grinned up at him. “Don’t be soft, Fortie.” She reached up to take the giant footman’s enormous hand. “Trenton’s my friend.”
Fortescue seemed overly alarmist to Deirdre as well. “We’re only going to visit a factory,” she reminded him.
He gazed at her with a slight crease between his brows. “The factory is safe enough, my lady. It is the journey there and back that worries me.”
Half an hour later, Deirdre gusted a great sigh as she stared at the unchanging scene out the carriage window. Traffic had come to a halt just on the city side of the London bridge as what seemed to be half the carters in England converged on the one path to cross the Thames to Southwark’s acres of factories.
Carriages and carts lined up in ragged queues that seemed to stretch forever before and behind them. How frustrating when one could see the other side of the river perfectly well from here.
Meggie was grumbling already. “I’d rather swim it.”
Deirdre peered down at the filthy river and shuddered. “I’d rather die. You’d not get the stink from your hair for years.”
However, after another thirty minutes of Meggie’s whining and groaning, Deirdre was seriously contemplating tossing the child in and letting her try. At last the carriage began to roll, eliciting cheers from Meggie and great relief from Deirdre, who’d narrowly been saved from the gallows for murder. This matter of motherhood was even more annoying … er, taxing … than she’d previously realized.
Once across the river, Deirdre began to see the reason for Fortescue’s concern. The factories were huge ugly buildings, some of them more than four stories tall! Her eyes had become used to the ornate and graceful facades of Mayfair, making these grimly undecorated edifices all the more intimidating.
Not only did the buildings seem foreboding but the streets themselves were unswept and filthy. Dark alleys pierced the rows of stone walls, dank tunnels full of furtive movement and the occasional alarming noise. The inhabitants were the worst, however. Nearly everyone entering or leaving the buildings seemed underfed and shabby—all except for the occasional relatively well-dressed fellow with prosperous equatorial dimensions who gazed suspiciously at the fine carriage and shooed and shoved the lesser citizens from his path.
“Overseers,” thought Deirdre.
“Bullies,” muttered Meggie.
Belatedly, Deirdre tugged the curious Meggie back from the carriage window and pulled the shade. Kidnapping and ransom weren’t as common as they had been twenty years ago, but it didn’t serve any purpose to advertise the presence of the wealthy and vulnerable Brookhaven ladies.
At last they arrived before the gates of a factory that made the others appear even shabbier and filthier in comparison. Brookhaven’s crest was painted upon a sign above the gates, but there was no other indication of what lay within the high walls. When Trenton helped her out of the carriage into the spotless, bare courtyard, Deirdre hesitated. What had seemed a daring and amusing way to get under Brookhaven’s skin now seemed rather childish and dangerous.
Meggie, however, felt no compunction at towing Deirdre directly to the door and opening it wide. They stepped through it to find themselves on a small platform before a large open room full of machines.
Chapter Twenty-five
The noise that met their ears was astonishing. Great clangings and bangings of metal on metal from the immense looms, the roar of a furnace somewhere unseen, the shouts of people used to communicating over the din, all in a great hot blast that made Deirdre long for the filthy street outside.
Then she saw Brookhaven standing partway up an open staircase that ran up one high wall. There were other rooms, of course. Someone must keep books and records and … she hadn’t the faintest idea actually. She’d worn woven fabric every day of her life and never once wondered how it came into being. Someone must have shouted something to Calder, for he turned from the man he was speaking to and spotted them standing there. He stared for a long moment. Deirdre wondered if he was contemplating ignoring their presence, but then he began to descend the crisscrossing stairs, running lightly down them with great familiarity.
As he approached, she breathed deeply and raised her chin. She was lady of this factory, too, blast it, and she could visit any time she wished!
Surprisingly, Calder did not seem all that displeased to see her. “Good afternoon, my dear. Would you care for a tour?”
Having girded her loins for argument, she could do nothing but sputter and nod at such a mild greeting. Soon she found herself at the far top of that staircase, close to the ceiling, attempting to ignore the spindliness of the railing while Calder explained the goings-on below them. Meggie, having flatly refused to climb at all, sat on the distant bottom step, gazing with fascination at the nearest loom.
“So you see,” Calder was saying, “by consolidating all the processes beneath one roof, we are able to operate at much higher efficiency.”
Deirdre gazed at him with fond exasperation, wondering how many times this afternoon she was going to hear that word. He continued, giving her expression no notice. “Before, the spinning and then the weaving would have been done by the workers in their homes. That made the quality very difficult to assure—not to mention that some workers were not as dependable as others.”
Truly, everyone did seem to be working hard. They seemed cheerful, she was glad to see, and more prosperous than many she had spotted on the way down Weston Road. Of course Brookhaven would pay well. He would also demand the best from them all, which they were obviously glad to give him.
So why should you be any different?
She felt a moment of shame at that thought—yet she did not wish to be simply another employee, after all. She might make a fool of herself with this ridiculous battle, but winning the war would be worth it.
She gazed at the magnificent man next to her with concealed longing. So very, very worth it.
“Now if you’ll look up, you’ll see what makes this factory so superior to all the others.”
The fierce pride in his expression captivated her for a moment more, then she turned her gaze obediently upward.
Above them all ran a crisscrossing of lines drawn by no plan that she could fathom. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she realized that the lines—no, belts!—were moving. Like a strange reproduction of the warp and weft of the looms below, they were strung between and among each other. Then she realized that all tangents seemed to meet above where the great huffing steam engine was housed. A single steel rod as thick as her thigh rose from that housing, rotating and winching all the belts where they wound over it at different altitudes.
It looked like something a madman would arrange but Brookhaven gazed up at it with intense satisfaction in his eyes.
“You see, by attaching all the individual machines to the primary gears of the steam engine by this system of belts and pulleys, the entire factory runs as one.” He almost smiled. “Almost as if it is alive.”
Deirdre saw the set of his jaw relax and his near permanent frown unfurl. In that instant, she realized something very important about her husband. Calder was a man who had lost faith in everything but the mechanical, in what he could see and repair and that would never leave him. This, then—this great, wheezing, whirring, clacking organism of a factory—this was the true home to Calder, the man, not the marquis … although perhaps also the clever lonely boy within. Enfolded within its mechanical outlandish arms, he was as unguarded and happy as she’d ever seen him.
She gazed back at the factory floor and—just for an instant—she grasped the harmony of the seemingly random movements below her. Like a great, nightmarish merry-go-round ride, the entire place rose and fell as one beast, as if it inhaled thread and power and exhaled the finished woven fabric. Then she blinked and all returned to chaos beyond her comprehension.
“It’s very …” There was no help for it. She had to say it. “Efficient.”
A high compliment in Brookhaven’s estimation, for he nodded with brisk satisfaction. “Thank you.”
This was all very enjoyable—at least she was at his side—but she had a reason for coming here today. She didn’t simply fight for Meggie, she fought for herself. After all, if his own child couldn’t get through to him, what chance had a not-quite-perfect wife?
Knowing that her words would dissipate the truce between them, she raised her chin and assumed an arch expression. “So these machines take the place of people?”
He blinked in surprise, but he was still in the role of good teacher. “In a way, I suppose they do. It takes less manpower to run my factory than to piece the work out.”
Less manpower—or less emotion? He even kept his workers to a minimum so that he could have as little interplay as possible with humanity. She leaned over the railing and pretended to observe the workings. “So you buy them—”
“I have them built especially.”
She nearly sobbed at the affection and eagerness in his voice. “So you have them built and you bring them here and …” She waved her hand vaguely at the ceiling, “and you wind them up like tin soldiers and they spit out fabric?”
“Superior fabric.”
Of course, superior—because who would want the imperfect, the flawed … the human? She straightened to look him in the eye. “What happens to them if you neglect them?”
Ah, now he began to be suspicious. “What do you mean?”
She folded her arms. “What happens if you leave them out in the rain? What happens if you never oil them? Or check those belt things?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “What happens to them if you leave them out at Brookhaven until they are seven years old? What happens if you lock them in a house and refuse them a Society life?”
He was glowering now, but she went on,
her voice rising. “What happens if you refuse to speak to them for days at a time or to say one bloody kind thing—ever!—and they begin to blame themselves that they will never, ever be good enough—!”
“Enough!” The sharp blade of his command sliced through her tirade. He glared at her with eyes like glowing coals. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re speaking of. I am nothing like that.”
“Oh! You are the stubbornest, most arrogant, irredeemable—” God, she was without words to describe him to himself. She gave up. “You … you sod!”
Then she whirled in a flutter of skirts and ran from him, flying down the narrow wooden stairs without a thought to falling, until a hard hand came about her elbow and jerked her hard against that chest of iron.
Chapter Twenty-six
“You little fool.” Calder’s voice was harsh in her ear. “You’ll kill yourself.”
She would not deign to struggle for his amusement. “Let me go,” she bit out. Though she teetered with one foot still in space, she would not cling to him.
“If I let you go, you’ll fall to your death on this staircase.” His voice was but a growl. It reverberated through her, ensuring that the tremors in her body were not of fear.
“What would that matter to you?” A plague on him, for making her voice break so!
His hand tightened on her, tugging her fully against his body. He bent his head until she could feel the heat of his breath on her ear. “If I should come up with yet another dead wife, I fear my reputation would never recover.”
That he could be so cold, at that moment, with her body plastered to his and her desperate tremors obvious to his senses—whether he thought her afraid or aroused, either meant he was nothing but solid ice within!
In which case, she refused to allow him to freeze her as well! Slowly, she raised her gaze to meet his cold one. Then her free hand lifted to stroke tender fingertips from his brow to his rigid jaw. She traced the corner of his mouth with one feather-light touch. “Then you must stop provoking us to flee you, my lord,” she whispered.
Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02] Page 12
