His Very Own Girl

by Carrie Lofty

  The shock passed, and she fought. Tooth and claw had nothing on a Calton girl in the grips of unspeakable anger. He was a reptile. Positively inhuman. A factory could burn to the ground, and he would rather enforce baseless accusations or grab at her breasts.

  “Let me go, you pile of vomit.” She grunted and twisted in vain. Something in her shoulder gave way with a little pop. She cried out at the sharp pain. “Bloody let go!”

  Livingstone held fast, and with all the men indoors, Polly could not rely on the scared, stunned women, who huddled to keep the children safe—especially the older lads who wanted a closer look at the blaze.

  “You were warned,” he growled, giving her arm another painful jerk. “You and your lot. You know any hint of violence would mean no mercy.”

  “As if any member of the Gowan family has ever advocated violence! Now, let me go. You’re not a pig in a uniform—just an overseer! You just want to maul me like a doxy.”

  Leaning close, he breathed against her temple. “You’re little better, you uppity bitch.”

  Polly had used the moment of stillness to recover her breath and to lull the dullard into slacking his grip. She twisted away, turned, and landed a hard punch to the underside of his chin. His head snapped back with a sick grunt. Her satisfaction didn’t last long. Livingstone brought up his knee and slammed it into her stomach.

  Polly dropped to the ground, gasping. “Evil son of a bitch,” she whispered.

  By now other men had gathered, including two constables. They looked brutish and wan in the thin sunlight. Distantly she heard Connie shouting for help, calling men from inside the factory to come to Polly’s aid. She feared they wouldn’t be fast enough.

  “Get the others we want,” Livingstone told his cohorts. “The usual: MacNider, Larnach, Nyman. Even that old woman. What’s her name?”

  “Agnes Doward,” came a firm voice. Agnes stood just behind Livingstone. Polly, looking up from the pavement, wanted to wave her off. But her friend’s posture was resolute. She wore a shawl around her thin shoulders, and her disheveled hair flipped and twisted in the breeze. “That’s me.”

  “At least one of you scum has good sense. Not eager for a beating, old woman?”

  “Not exactly. Which is why I’ll refrain from saying anything more to you.”

  Agnes’s age was completely indeterminate, a contradiction of smooth skin and gray hair. All Polly knew was that she had four grown children and had lost her only grandchild, a wee baby girl, to cholera during the previous autumn. Like many of the most active union members, she had little to lose.

  Polly fought to her feet, supporting her stiff shoulder. She glared at Livingstone. “You won’t have this unjust right much longer,” she ground out, for him alone. “Look around. One day they’ll realize how powerful they are. Nothing you do will hold back that tide.”

  He sneered. “They’re sheep, and you know it.”

  His activities had attracted some attention, but as Polly glanced up and down the street, she silently admitted the truth. Most people didn’t want to get involved, especially against those two looming constables and their fierce truncheons. Fear created the inertia she had fought for years, and her father before her. Not that she blamed her fellow workers. There was pain to be found in fighting the way of things. Pain and danger.

  But most days she just wanted to shake them all, to rile them to action, to prove what they could accomplish if they held together. Wasn’t fighting worth making sure a gutless rat like Rand Livingstone no longer had the unchecked power to bully?

  His hard-faced accomplices dragged two men out from the mill. Les, with his angular, spindly body, was easy enough to spot, as was Hamish Nyman’s flaming red hair and full beard.

  “Where’s the other one?” Livingstone asked. “That young nuisance, Larnach.”

  “Nowhere to be found, sir.” The nameless enforcer shoved Les along. “Even a few punches got nothing out of nobody. He didn’t show up for work.”

  Polly’s heart sank. Tommy Larnach had been one of her father’s most loyal and trusted young allies, practically as much a son as were Heath and Wallace. Tommy’s limp was a testament to that day when, a decade earlier, at the mere age of fifteen, he’d taken a terrible beating so her father would be spared an unjust punishment.

  Yes, Polly had more than one reason to hate Rand Livingstone.

  And Tommy had been Polly’s first and only lover. To think him capable of this destruction added an extra layer of agony to the place where Livingstone had kicked. Had Tommy been in the mill, he would’ve had at least something of an alibi.

  One brute crossed his bulky forearms. “To the police station, boss?”

  “Oh, no. We got special orders from Winchester. He wants the new mill master to know their faces. It’s Christie’s property. His charges to press. But he needs to meet them first.” Livingstone glanced at the men in uniform. “Either of you got a problem with that?”

  Neither objected. Hatred curled in Polly’s gut. Once again, she and her kind were on their own. But she needed to stay calm despite the abuse of power—at least for now. Being the eldest child of Graham Gowan meant notoriety. His peaceful dedication to workers’ rights spanned three decades. Polly’s youth and gender would not protect her forever, especially if the masters discovered that she now served as her father’s right hand.

  “Come on, then.” Livingstone prodded her in the lower back, always touching her more than was necessary. Little pinches and grabs reinforced what more humiliating damage he could do if the moment appeared.

  Polly kept her eyes forward, her jaw fixed. “You remember that time I connected the toe of my boot with your bollocks?”

  He growled and twisted her sore arm. The pain was worth it for his infuriated expression. “You pompous whore.”

  She kept her voice pleasant. A real smile shaped her mouth. “Next time I won’t make that mistake. I’ll rip them clean off.”

  “Shut up.”

  He shoved her into the back of a police wagon. She was joined by five more suspects. Her tartan shawl offered little protection against the slinking late-winter cold. Once inside the wagon, seated on a hard, shallow bench, she huddled closer to Agnes. The older woman’s closed eyes silently proclaimed her boredom with this routine, even as ash still colored her hair.

  “It gets a little tedious, being so popular,” said big, gruff Hamish.

  “You just wish you got as much attention from one of the MacMaster sisters.”

  “No, that’s the wish of a spindly know-it-all like you.” Hamish stroked his full beard. “I get my hands plenty full of the pretty lassies.”

  Polly grinned. They could be unruly, thickheaded, bitter people, but they were her people. Even in the midst of this crisis, they found ways of holding the fear at bay. And they were loyal. Les, in particular, would lie down in front of a team of galloping draft horses if it meant protecting union secrets.

  Holding her aching arm, she squinted through the bars of the wagon’s lone window, assessing the pewter sky. The temperature had dropped. Calton was hardly a pretty area on the most brilliant of days. In fact, the eventual sunshine of late spring and summer would only accentuate every crack in the tenement sandstone. But when licked by March’s drizzle and cold, the buildings stood as dark, hulking shadows amid the ghostly gray. No color.

  Their only hope was what they made for themselves.

  Livingstone’s aim gave her just the hope she’d needed. No one from the union had yet to meet the new master of Christie Textiles. Union committeemen collected information like birds building nests. What they had gathered about Alexander Christie did little to round out his image. Indeed, he was Sir William Christie’s eldest child, born to an English noblewoman who had died during his infancy. Raised in London for a time by his mother’s family, the boy eventually moved to New York City after Sir William remarried a Welsh commoner. Now he taught astronomy at an American university in a place called Philadelphia, and was widowed with one ch
ild.

  But his personality, politics, and plans—even his appearance—were as opaque as the clouds. How could she strategize against someone she’d never met?

  Now she would. Polly would know her enemy, just as she would discover the identity of the saboteur.

  The wagon chugged to a stop. Livingstone jerked the double doors open, his hand on Polly’s upper arm faster than she could have imagined. She stumbled to the pavement, where flint-sharp ice crystals chapped her cheeks. Agnes emerged last, as Les helped her down—more of that gentlemanly behavior that seemed so out of place. It was just his way.

  The office of Christie Textiles was a modest affair when compared to some of the masters’ grand places of business. Situated halfway down toward St. Enoch’s Square, the squat, four-story building resembled in shape the dull bricks used for its construction. Heavy overcast clouds leached the walls of their deep red. A modest sign hung over the front door.

  “The sign’s been painted anew,” Polly said to Agnes.

  “New master. It’s little Will Christie’s boy, come home.”

  “Home.” Polly whipped off her head scarf with a sharp flick. The breeze played keep-away with loose strands of her hair, but she hardly cared. She was just too riled. “He was neither born nor raised here. If you expect to find familiarity in him, my friend, you’ll be hurt and disappointed.”

  Agnes shook her head. “He’s got Calton blood in his veins, though. No denying.”

  “I’ll give you that. But masters are masters. They’re never truly new.”

  Alex wanted a break from the expense reports and informational pamphlets spread across his desk. Numbers of a distinctly commercial variety clogged his thoughts. There remained so much to learn. Not for the first time, he wondered how his father had successfully insinuated himself into so many varied businesses. Had he really learned each industry as thoroughly as Alex was trying to learn the textile trade? Or did enterprises eventually come to resemble one another, so that the commodity no longer mattered?

  He shrugged out of his coat and tugged at his ascot, so cross that he finally yanked off the silken noose. No matter how well his father had managed, Alex was not a businessman. The only way he knew to approach a topic was to study it from the ground up to the limitless sky—an aim made more trying because of Edmund’s health. His minor illnesses and occasional fevers wore on Alex’s stores of patience. Esther, Edmund’s wet nurse, would leave in three weeks to join her extended family in London. He would need to find another woman to care for him. Soon.

  The break he’d imagined was quiet and still, a moment to collect his frustrated thoughts. Instead, he endured the arrival of a police constable called Andrews and the mill’s overseer, Howard McCutcheon.

  For ten minutes, Alex listened as the men related the events of the late morning. Each passing description stiffened his ligaments and fused his bones in a combination of distress and outrage. McCutcheon went first: an explosion, a fire, a complete work stoppage. The mill’s workers had spread out onto the streets or gone home. Some might even be in hospital with burns from fighting the blaze.

  The constable’s words were even more alarming. Sabotage, he said. Union agitators.

  Alex took a deep breath and glanced at the papers, charts, and figures littering his desk. The time for studying was over. If agitators threatened his business, he would go to war.

  “You’re certain it was intentional? No accident of any kind?”

  “Explosives were used, sir,” Constable Andrews said. “No accident at all.”

  Alex slammed his fist against the desk and glared at the men until their gazes lowered. “I will not have my mill jeopardized and loyal employees endangered!” Only when he recognized his burst of temper did he force his voice to quiet. “What about suspects?”

  With unkempt hair and his upper lip encumbered by a large mustache, Andrews did not fit Alex’s image of an efficient officer of the law. But the man’s posture and determined expression offered some comfort. “My officers will bring in the usual collection of riffraff and union whips.”

  “I’ll want to see them personally—the union people, I mean. Intimidation is not a strategy they will utilize to any good effect. I guarantee it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said both in unison.

  Alex almost did a double take. He was unused to men snapping to his commands with that combination of unease and obedience. Many had responded to his father in a similar fashion. Never to Alex. Yet he appreciated the moment for what it was: expedient, uncomplicated. He would get results.

  A banging noise downstairs in the lobby caught Alex’s attention. “See what that’s about,” he told McCutcheon.

  But by the time the overseer reached the door, a knock sounded from the other side.

  “Who is it?” Alex shouted. A headache had burst across his brow. His factory. His chance at beating Josiah Todd and protecting his son—literally in flames. He would see the damage himself, if only to make granite out of his firm resolve.

  “Constable Utley,” called a voice.

  Andrews raised his brows, which were nearly as thick as his mustache. “See? My men.”

  Alex was unconvinced, because Andrews appeared equally surprised. Something was not as it seemed. He resented the deception, but it was not his most pressing concern. He nodded to McCutcheon.

  A tumble of people spilled into Alex’s office. The room was not exactly small. It was, in fact, larger than his father’s library in that distant New York mansion. But as it quickly filled with roughly a dozen people, the office became a noisy prison cell. Two? Maybe three constables? Plus men who looked like hired muscle, and a few ragged, thinner folk covered in ash. Factory workers?

  Then . . . red hair. The exquisite red hair of a young lady who would barely stand as tall as Alex’s chest.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Constable Andrews said. His mustache contorted into a sneer as he stared at the same woman. “Should’ve known we’d see you behind this. Mr. Christie, this is Polly Gowan. Graham Gowan’s girl. She’s the first I’d have personally dragged down to the station.”

  Alex blinked. The redhead had a name as lyrical as her hair was remarkable. He found himself staring. Outright staring. His heartbeat was a steady hammering in his chest—not because of the anger he’d only just stoked, but from a rush of sensual awareness.

  Before he could remember his mind, his manners, his office full of strangers, he strode toward the little woman. Standing over her made him feel like a towering giant, powerful and strong. That feeling did not dim when she jerked up her chin. If anything, the blood in his heart raged even faster.

  The shaky, eager way his body took note of her soap-fresh scent and trim waist was only going to complicate matters. Already he knew that he’d take thoughts of her to bed that evening. Pick over them. Analyze them. Relish them.

  She wrenched her arm away from the brute who held her captive. But she didn’t run or flinch or weep. Her bright green gaze collided with his. She stared him down with as much force and certainty as any man. Alex fisted his hands against a rush of pure, primal excitement. Sudden combustion.

  He had never felt its like.

  That she was a suspect only added an edge of violence to his body’s dizzying response.

  “Who are you?” he snapped. His voice was so low and curt as to sound wholly unfamiliar. “And what the hell did you do to my mill?”

  chapter two

  Polly stared up at the man Constable Andrews had referred to as Mr. Christie. She had expected some equivalent of a desk clerk, stooped and thin. Or just the opposite—a fat man with heavy jowls and a pocket watch worth more than her parents’ tenement flat. Instead, Mr. Christie was the worst sort of challenge. He had caught her off guard.

  Where was his coat? And his neckcloth? She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a gentleman so informally dressed—if ever. The shock of finding a hint of chest hair poking out from the collar of such a fine, expensive shirt was dangerously
distracting. The contrast of wild and civilized was as pronounced as the stark white cloth lying against his tanned neck.

  And despite her indignant temper, she had to admit that Agnes was right: he was a man born of Calton stock. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a hard jaw designed to absorb life’s toughest punches.

  That didn’t mean he knew how to fight. Could he bully, cheat, terrorize? Oh, yes. Of that she had no doubt. No one became a mill master without some sort of underhanded ambition and trickery.

  But to win against her? She wouldn’t allow it.

  “I’m Polly Gowan. The policeman in your pocket said as much. And I sure as hell didn’t try to burn down the place where my family’s worked for three generations.” She lifted her brows. “I believe that’s longer than the Christies.”

  He scowled. Good. She enjoyed her victory if only to distract herself from his coloring. Tanned skin, yes. Hair like aged gold with bright tips the shade of ripe wheat—just the length to invite a woman’s eager hands. His eyes were amber and green swirled together in a permanent whirlpool, deep and wild. The perfect hazel.

  She crossed her arms, disgusted with herself, especially when the sting of her injured shoulder reminded her exactly which interests he represented. The distress of the day’s events had tossed her concentration to the four winds.

  “You’d be right,” he said, his words clipped. “But the Christie name hangs above the front door.”

  “Thanks only to your workers. Without the men manning the buckets, you’d have lost the entire mill today.”

  For the first time since striding toward her like a bull charging a red cape, he broke eye contact. “Is that right, Constables?”

  “Save your breath,” Polly said. “They won’t take a piss without Livingstone’s say-so.” She hooked a thumb back toward the man’s looming bulk.