by Lisa Bingham
“Maybe I should wait until—”
“Go.”
She would have stood her ground and argued further, but the gentleness of Charles’s expression was her undoing. Not wanting to fall to pieces in front of him again, she gathered her skirts and hurried upstairs.
* * *
“And how can such a wee laddie put away so much in that little tummy, eh?” Charles murmured.
He held Adam cradled in his palms, gently bouncing the baby, speaking nonsense to the bairn. The babe had finished his milk and issued a lusty belch, but he didn’t seem inclined to fall back to sleep as his sister had done. Instead, he regarded Charles with wide blue eyes, appearing to hang on every word that Charles said.
The faint creak of a floorboard alerted Charles, and he looked up to find Willow peering at him from the top of the stairs. She wore that frilly wrapper that he had seen once before. The one with the pale little flowers and yards and yards of ruffles and lace.
“There’s your mum. You’ll have to tell her how we men held down the fort during the night. Nary a dish has been done, we’re afraid to admit. Nor have we tackled the laundry. It seems we spent the night walking and rocking and talking, but that’s a fine thing for a da and his bairns to be doing, isn’t it?”
Adam’s lips lifted in an expression that was half smile, half yawn, but Charles decided to interpret it as good humor.
“And how is Adam’s mummy feeling this morning?”
Willow’s smile was sheepish. “Much better, thank you.”
“A night’s rest is as good as a cure, isn’t it, Master Adam.”
The baby stretched contentedly.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
Charles shook his head. “We’re just about ready to blast the new tunnel. But with the funeral...”
He’d forgotten to tell her, but when she nodded, he realized that one of the other women must have relayed the information to her.
“What time will it be?” she asked.
“Eleven. I’ve arranged for Creakle and Smalls to come watch the children for us.”
That caused a ghost of a smile. “I had planned to ask them as well, so I’m glad they already know.” She shifted uncomfortably, her fingers pulling the neck of her wrapper tighter. Then she murmured, “I’ll get breakfast started.”
“No need. There’s a plate waiting for you in the warming oven. Nothing too fancy, I’m afraid. Just egg and toasted bread.”
Willow padded barefoot toward the kitchen and Charles tried not to stare. She was a dainty lass, through and through.
She disappeared for a moment behind the partition, but he heard her soft exclamation. “You made toad-in-the-hole.”
“Sorry. Told you my skills were a wee bit limited.”
Willow appeared almost immediately, juggling her hot plate as she hurried to the table. “No, you don’t understand. At school, we were only allowed eggs on special occasions. And toad-in-the-hole? There was only one cook who would bother to take the time to make it.”
“So you went to a boardin’ school, then?”
She seemed to freeze at the question, then looked up at him with something close to guilt in her eyes. Charles watched as her skin paled, her freckles growing even more pronounced. She seemed to war with her own thoughts for a moment before saying, “I attended the Good Shepherd Charity School for Young Girls.”
The pronouncement was made hesitantly, almost painfully. Then she looked up, clearly waiting for a response.
Not knowing what she meant for him to say, Charles offered, “Oh, aye? Did you like it there?”
“No!”
The word burst from her lips so forcefully that Adam started in Charles’s hands, his little head turning toward the sound.
Charles had the feeling that he’d suddenly stumbled into a famed minefield.
“It must have been hard for you. Being away from your family.”
“My mother had already passed away by that time. Da and I tried to keep up, working in the mills and all. But there was an accident. A boiler exploded and he was badly burned.”
Too late, Charles realized he knew so little about Willow that he’d blundered into painful territory.
He knew enough about the culture of mining communities to anticipate what had happened next. A mill wasn’t so different. Like Batchwell Bottoms, the factory had probably provided company housing, company meals, company stores. But if a man couldn’t work, he’d be cut loose.
“So, even though the accident occurred through no fault of his own, he was...let go?”
Willow regarded him with surprise. “Yes,” she whispered.
“How long was he out of work?”
“He never really recovered enough to...go back to work.”
“Ach, lassie,” Charles said, his heart aching for what must have occurred. With no job, Willow and her father would probably have been penniless and homeless.
“I tried to keep up with my own mill job at the time.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
Charles regarded her in disbelief. Child labor was an all-too-real fact in England—in America, too. But in his opinion, it was a horrible practice. As much as he’d deplored his own existence in the foundling home, at least he’d been kept out of the workforce until he’d been old enough to ken the dangers.
Willow poked at the toasted bread on the plate, then at the egg that had been cooked into the hollowed-out spot in the center.
“We were able to get by for a time, but then the debt collectors began gathering.” She met Charles’s gaze again, her shoulders stiffening in a way that was at once defiant yet wary. It hurt his heart, the way she seemed to brace herself for criticism. “They sent my father to debtor’s prison and me to Good Shepherd.”
For a moment, she looked so young, so fragile, that Charles could imagine how she must have looked all those years ago. He could all but see her standing on the steps of the charity school, her hair a wild tangle of curls, her cornflower-blue eyes too large in her face, her freckles the only spots of color to her pale skin.
“Ach, lassie, you must have been so frightened.”
Her brows creased in confusion. Somehow, she seemed puzzled by his response.
“You don’t hate me?”
“Hate you?”
“I—I came into your house under false pretenses. My father was a debtor. He was sent to prison.”
Charles lowered Adam into the basket, tucked the blanket around him, then turned back to Willow.
“And that has aught to do with you. By my account, it was a string of unhappy accidents that led to such an unfortunate situation, not a lack of character. But then, the whole idea of debtor’s prison has always left a bad taste in my mouth. In my opinion, men such as your father need a hand up, not incarceration.”
He’d said the wrong thing again. Her eyes were filling with tears.
He hurried to kneel beside her.
“Please, don’t cry. It rips me up inside when you’re sad. There’s nothing on earth that I want more than to make you happy.”
She blinked quickly, wiping at the moisture beading on her lashes.
“You don’t understand. I’m not like the other girls.” She waved a hand in the vague direction of the Dovecote. “I’m not pretty or refined. I went to a charity school—and even the other students there looked down on me. They said the stain of my father’s actions would be my burden to carry for the rest of my life. That I would have to live in penance—”
“Stop!” Charles stood, pulling her into his arms, his chest burning with a slow, simmering anger.
What kind of people would say such a thing? To a child who had already had her whole family torn away from her through no fault of her own?
“They were wrong, Willow. About you and your father. If anyone is to
blame, it’s whatever faulty equipment or negligence or...act of nature caused the mill’s boiler to blow. It’s untenable that anyone—let alone a teacher or a person who has control over a child—could ever say such a thing. And for it to be a charity school...” He drew back so she would see the fierceness of his expression. “The Bible defines charity as ‘the pure love of Christ.’ What you experienced wasn’t love.”
She looked up at him with such wide, disbelieving eyes that he couldn’t prevent himself from saying, “They should have loved you, Willow.”
Then he brushed his lips over hers, willing her to believe him, to know that she was loved.
Even if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud.
* * *
While Willow finished her breakfast, Charles went outside to clean the snow away from the stoop and make a path to the lean-to and the road, then milk the goat.
Unaccountably, she was grateful to have a few minutes alone to absorb everything that had happened.
He’d kissed her.
Not a peck on the cheek like they’d shared at their wedding. No, it had been filled with tenderness and devotion.
And that had been after she’d confessed the truth about her father and her upbringing.
She felt a prickle of tears, but forced them away. No more crying. No. More. If anything, she should be shouting from the rooftops.
Charles didn’t look down upon her for being the daughter of a debtor, as so many men would have done. He didn’t question her own morality or her reputation.
If anything, he understood.
The fact still shuddered through her in a wave of astonishment. The headmistress of Good Shepherd had never passed up an opportunity to warn Willow that her prospects for marriage were ruined and that her reputation as a woman of good character was already irreparably destroyed. Again and again, she’d informed Willow that there was no future for her other than a life of drudgery. The best she could hope for would be a service position.
That was why Willow had been willing to agree to a marriage of convenience. If she were meant for such a life, she would rather choose it under her own terms than Mistress Owl’s.
But Charles hadn’t seemed to see such limitations. In fact, he seemed to think that she’d been wronged.
Taking her empty plate to the dry sink, she set a pot of water on the stove to heat for washing, then hurried upstairs to change her clothes.
Mindful of the fact that the funeral would be held later that day, she briefly considered whether she should don her old Sunday-best dress. It was the only thing she had that was pure black. But even as she reached for it, she hesitated. So much had changed for her—and in such a short amount of time. She wasn’t the same person who had hidden behind the ill-fitting clothes from a charity box. Now...
She was Charles’s wife.
Even if it only lasted a little while.
In the end, she chose a black skirt and a black-and-gray tweed jacket. She was pressing against the boundaries of mourning, but since she’d have her cloak on most of the time—and it was black as well—she didn’t think anyone would think ill of her choice.
As she rushed downstairs, she found Charles with his hands braced on the table, leaning over to study the chart that they’d made.
“Come look at this,” he said, without turning around.
She moved beside him, and when he looked up, he opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to lose his train of thought.
“You look so bonny.”
He spoke with a tone so full of wonder that she could scarcely credit the comment was meant for her.
Her hands smoothed down the ornate jet buttons of the jacket. “It’s just something that Lydia gave me. I don’t have any pretty things of my own.”
Charles’s lips twitched. “I know.”
Her mouth dropped open, and he laughed.
“When are you going to burn those ugly black tents you wore those first few weeks you were here?”
“There’s nothing wrong with them!”
“There’s everything wrong with them,” he said wryly, then straightened. He reached to caress her cheek with one knuckle. “I’m guessing they were more offerings of charity by your charity school?”
She nodded.
“Then you should burn them.”
“You can’t possibly mean that! They still have plenty of wear in them.”
“And every time you wore them, you’d be reminded of the unkind people who forced you to accept them.”
“I could cut them down and make something,” she offered. But she was losing the power of her argument.
“I’d be happy to burn them for you.”
“You will not!”
“Then I’ll have Sumner or Lydia do it for me. I’m sure if I asked, they’d be willing to do it.”
“You will do no such thing, Charles Wanlass!”
Her retort merely caused his smile to widen—and the effect was intoxicating. The hard angles of his face relaxed, became almost boyish.
“Only if you promise never to wear them again.”
“I...” She wanted to tell him that he was ridiculous, but she couldn’t say the words. Not when so much of what he’d said was true. He’d filled her life with so much joy that she couldn’t bear the thought of wearing the dresses that had brought her so much humiliation. “I promise,” she finally said.
His eyes crinkled at the corners as his smile became an all-out grin.
“Good. Now, come here.”
Before she knew what he meant to do, he tucked her between his arms, then pointed to the chart with one hand.
“I’ve crossed out some names. I had a chance to go through the shift logs in the mine, and these men were on duty.”
He pointed to a host of eliminated suspects.
“Which leaves only three names,” Willow said breathlessly.
“Three miners. Theo Caruso, Francis Diggory and Orie Keefe.” He pointed to a separate list that still contained Misters Hepplewhite and Wilmott, and the train employees.
“I don’t think Mr. Hepplewhite or Mr. Wilmott should be part of our list. Jenny was joining her husband. They were already married.”
“True.” Charles picked up a pencil and drew a line through their names. “That means we’ve narrowed the list down to eight. That’s considerably smaller than it was, and we’ve eliminated the two miners, Wilmott and Hepplewhite, who live in the block where Gideon traced the blood trail.”
“Oh!”
Willow wriggled free from his loose embrace, hurrying to open the drawer where the linens were stored. Digging to the bottom, she withdrew Jenny’s journal.
“I was able to retrieve this from the Dovecote. It’s Jenny’s.”
He opened it, rifled through the pages for a moment, then met Willow’s gaze.
“Did you read it? What did she write just before she died?”
Willow hesitated, then mentally kicked herself. Charles had been so accepting of everything else, why not confess her final secret?
“It’s written in script. I never learned to read script. I barely learned to read or make my block print.”
There was no shock, no dismay. If anything, his features became even kinder. Handing her the book, he said, “Then tuck it away again. We’ll look at it together. Tonight. After the funeral.”
He couldn’t have known that with that simple response, he mended a hole in her heart that had been there since she’d been forced to leave her father. In that instant, he’d conveyed to Willow that it didn’t matter where she came from or what circumstances had led her to his door.
He cared for her.
Just the way she was.
“Thank you, Charles,” she whispered.
His brows rose.
“For what?”
She was
n’t sure how to explain—not without encouraging the return of her tears. So she smiled and said, “For helping me. For helping the twins.”
His eyes grew warm and gray, like a lake after a refreshing summer storm.
“There’s nothing that I’ve ever wanted to do more.”
Chapter Fifteen
Before dressing for the funeral, Charles went outside one last time, intent on gathering enough firewood for the rest of the evening and the following day. Even more importantly, he wanted enough dry firewood on hand for Willow to use while he was at the mine. He would have to leave long before dawn. He and his men would be blasting the tunnel in between the shift change, and it was Charles’s custom to check the charges and the priming cord again and again to make sure that everything was properly set and every safety precaution had been taken. That meant that Willow would be on her own for a few hours, and he didn’t want her going outside. He could milk the goat before he left, lay the fires, and then the house would be warm for his family when they awoke.
He was reaching for the ax that was kept on a hook in the lean-to when a deep voice said, “Let me do that. You’re so absentminded lately, you’ll probably lop off your own foot.”
Charles glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t rise to the bait. “Hello, Gideon. How are the Pinkertons?”
“Nervous. It seems that the brides are being more docile than usual. Except for the ladies who keep sneaking over here between mealtimes, there haven’t been as many attempts by the girls to slip the coop, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
“Maybe they’ve finally resigned themselves to being under your men’s guard.”
Gideon made a noise that was half laugh, half groan. “I doubt that.”
He grabbed a log from the pile, set it on the stump that Charles reserved for that purpose, then swung, slicing it neatly in half.
Normally, Charles would object to anyone taking over a chore that he regarded as his own. But Gideon seemed to need the exercise to take the edge off his mood, and Charles...
Well, he was feeling just fine.
He leaned a shoulder against the door frame and relaxed even more as Gideon sliced the halves into quarters, then tossed them into a pile.