For Love's Sake (3 page)

Laurel was so embarrassed that she did not even have time to notice how handsome he looked in his bright white suit and straw boater hat. Instead, she pedaled away as fast as she could.

CHAPTER FOUR

In the first few weeks Christopher had been at the Hathcock-Holbrooks mill, he had already grown to hate the place. He hated the town, as well. People there treated him one of two ways – they were either terrified of him, or overeager to make his acquaintance. He preferred them to fear him, except for it was unbelievably hard to get any work done with everyone bowing and quaking whenever he spoke to them. He would have rather been left in solitude, but at the present, everything needed his constant, personal attention.

When he wasn’t at the mill, which was only at night and on Sundays, he kept to himself in the hotel. He ordered his dinner brought up to his room, and only ventured outside to have luncheon Sunday afternoons. The North Carolina heat was miserable, even at night, but at midday, it was unbearable. Still, Christopher believed in sunshine and fresh air, and would not be deterred from taking it all in on his only day off.

It was on his first Sunday that he saw the girl. She sat perched on her blue bicycle in a pale blue dress. There was no hat to shade her head, and the breeze tousled her light brown ponytail. The tableau looked so innocent, yet so sensual.

Christopher began to watch for her every week.

Without fail, at a few minutes after noon, she would come coasting by, always on her bicycle, and always in her blue dress. Only now, she never stopped. She never even looked up. Perhaps he had frightened her by the way she caught him staring. He had not meant to offend her, but was so enchanted that he could not have helped himself.

“Here’s last quarter’s books, like you asked,” the secretary said, drawing him back to reality.

He was in the dim, dusty office at the mill. Even with the door closed, the drone of the machinery could be heard. It rattled the windows, and more importantly, it rattled his brain.

Christopher took the ledger from her hands. “Thank you.”

The girl curtsied clumsily and backed out the door before he could tell her that this was
not
the books from last quarter, but in fact, the quarter before that.

“This entire place is filled with imbeciles,” he said to the empty room, rubbing his pencil eraser across his forehead, tracing the grooves that formed there from years of constant scowling.

Flipping through the pages, he ran his fingers over the figures, trying to decipher exactly what numbers went with what. Whoever had been keeping the books for Holbrooks had not done a very good job. Everything was unorganized and hastily thrown together. The errors were glaring, and even without the help of an adding machine, he could easily see that nothing totaled up like it was supposed to.

“I’m going to need a new bookkeeper,” he sighed. “
And
a new secretary.”

Christopher was disgusted at the illegibility of the accounts – accounts he needed to have on hand to show any potential buyers of the mill. If he couldn’t even make them out, certainly no one else would be able to. Resisting the urge to fling the heavy book out the window, he stood up from his desk and stretched. It was hotter than hell in that office, and he needed a break, so he left his brown jacket draped across the back of his chair and walked out the door in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves.

As soon as he stepped out onto the catwalk, he was almost knocked back by the heat of the Spinning Room. Between the September afternoon, the dozens of bodies, and the machines, it couldn’t possibly get any hotter in there. Christopher studied the boys and young women on the floor, watching them run their sides in between wiping sweat from their faces with their already damp shirts.

It was inhumane.

Thundering down the steps, he hurried over to the nearest window. It was obvious that they hadn’t been opened in years, and a mountain of dead flies and moths littered the sill. Christopher brushed them aside and pushed the window up, oblivious to the dozens of pairs of eyes riveted on his back.

No one had ever dared open a window at Hathcock-Holbrooks.

“That is an improvement,” he said to the little girl at the spinning machine closest to the window. She smiled back, too afraid to voice her thanks to the enormous stranger.

Christopher went around the room, opening each window. When he was finished, he dusted his hands off, and shoved them in his trouser pockets. His eyes scanned across the faces of his employees, who looked relieved to have some fresh oxygen in their lungs. Satisfied, he decided to check the conditions of the other rooms of the mill, and left them to their work.

When he returned, he could hear the supervisor’s voice from all the way down the hall. Pushing the door open, he saw the man screaming and pointing at the windows, which were now closed.

“Whoever touches these windows again is out of here! Do you understand me? This is
my
mill and no one does anything without asking my permission first.”

Christopher leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. He debated on whether or not to correct the man openly, but then decided it was best to do it in private. Although he was the first person to admit that his people skills were lacking, he understood that no one liked to be made to look like a fool.

“Will you be with us long, My Lord?” A middle-aged woman stopped him in the lobby of the hotel that night. She cornered him against a side table, and he had no choice but to speak to her.

“No,” Christopher said.

The woman clasped a hand to her bosom. “What a shame! We’ve never had a member of the aristocracy visit before, and the Hospitality Committee has decided to throw a party in
your
honor!”

“That’s very kind,” he said, trying to push past her. “But I can’t be bothered with that. I am sure you understand.”

“But I don’t understand at all!” she argued, going as far as to place her hand on his wrist. “Everything has been decided! Food has been ordered, music arranged, and all the best families have been invited.”

Christopher politely, but firmly, removed her hand. “I am afraid you will have to tell the Hospitality Committee that there has been a change of plans.”

“I am the chairperson!” her voice quivered. “I coordinated everything myself, and if it falls apart, I’ll be the laughingstock of the county.”

People having supper in the dining room craned their necks for a better view of the commotion. They whispered among the tables, pointing at him and shaking their heads in disgust. What sort of monster would make a grown woman cry?

Christopher stood in the lobby, his face burning from the heat of their gazes. “
If
I were to attend this party in my honor, when might it be?”

The woman looked up at him through her misty eyelashes. “A week from Thursday,” she said, producing a delicate white handkerchief from between her breasts to dab her tears. “Eight o’clock on the lawn by the Confederate Veterans Memorial. It’s beside the courthouse, you cannot miss it.”

Outraged that he had been press-ganged into attending the party, he shoved past her and headed up the stairs to his room. Christopher ripped off his tie and stiff white celluloid collar, slinging them both down on the bed. He pulled off his jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat before he sank into the armchair in the corner.

“Damn,” he whispered. Parties like that were all the same – men excited to ‘rub elbows’ and women eager to pawn off their unmarried daughters on the unsuspecting newcomer. At twenty-seven, Christopher had no intention of marrying anyone, and the idea of masculine camaraderie had lost its appeal after University.

He ordered up a bottle of whiskey, ran himself a bath, and settled down in front of the open window with a cigarette. From somewhere in the distance, music floated in on the breeze that fluttered the curtains around him. The last thing Christopher thought of before he drifted off to sleep was that he did not have to go to back to the mill for one entire day.

Bright morning sunlight beamed through the window, which had been left open from the night before. He tried to pull the blankets over his face, but it was no use. Christopher had hours to kill before luncheon. The idea of spending them in bed was not as appealing as it had originally seemed.

From the hotel porch steps, he set off walking, unsure of where he was going, but knowing that he was restless.
At home in England he would walk for miles to clear his head, and he was sure that, although the scenery was different, the overall effect would be the same.

It wasn’t long before he found himself ambling down a dusty dirt road too far from town. A quick glance at his pocket watch told him that he would need to turn around if he expected to make it back to the hotel in time to see his little enchantress fly by. Christopher turned on his heels and headed back in the direction that he came.

At a dusty intersection, he saw a figure approaching from the east. It was the only other human being he had seen on the road all morning. Waves of heat danced across the red dirt, and he could not make the person out until they had gotten very close to him.

In a rare twist of fate, it was his bicycle girl.

Laurel saw the man and assumed that he must be lost. Without looking to see who it was, she slowed to a stop, intending to offer her assistance. She was horrified to discover that he was her employer.

“Are you lost?”

Christopher squinted at her in the noonday sun. “No.”

Laurel started to pedal off.

“Wait!” he said, scratching his chin and looking down each of the four roads. “Town is
that
way isn’t it? No? Well, could I walk with you?”

She was shocked, and it showed. “If you’d like…”

The two of them set off down the dusty road together. For a long time, they walked in silence. Neither of them spoke, and Laurel was thankful for that. Finally, it was she that broke the spell.

“Why were you all the way out here? This is a long way from town.”

Christopher had his hands in his pockets, turning some change over and over between his fingertips. “I suppose I could ask you the same question.”

“I visit an old neighbor. She needs the company.”

He nodded, thinking that she looked incredibly young. He also realized that the pale blue dress she wore every single Sunday was probably the nicest one she owned, and even then it had been mended at least half a dozen times.

Laurel could not figure out why he kept looking at her. She had been admired by men before, but that did not seem to be exactly what he was doing. Staring down at the handlebars of her bicycle, she fumbled for something to say. “So…do you like North Carolina?”

“It isn’t England,” Christopher replied.

“Thank God,” Laurel blurted before she realized what she had said. “I didn’t mean to insult your home…I’m sure it’s a real nice place…I’m sorry.”

 
“It’s all right.”

“No. That was rude. I think I’m nervous.”

Christopher cocked an eyebrow at her. “Nervous? Why?”

“It’s just that you’re my boss, and…”

“Your boss? You mean you work at the mill?”

Laurel pulled her bicycle to a halt and stared up at him. “I’m a spinner.”

“Since when?”

“For the past five years,” she said.

Christopher crossed his arms over his chest. “I had no idea.”

Without a word, Laurel jumped on her bicycle and started pedaling, not looking behind her to see if he was following.

Christopher jogged to catch up with her. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“I’m not embarrassed!” She prayed he would think the color on her cheeks was from the sun, and not because she was, in fact, mortified.

“Then why are you running away from me?”

Laurel slammed to a stop, letting him catch up with her.

Christopher put his hands on his hips, panting. He had not ran like that since he was a boy. “You’re much faster than I am,” he said. “That, and you have about ten years on me…”

“I wasn’t running away.”

The man did not look convinced.

“I wasn’t!”

“Of course not,” Christopher replied, appeasing her. “My mistake.”

Laurel frowned. She did not like this man. She didn’t trust him any farther than she could throw him. “I think you can find your way back to town, now,” she said. “Just follow this road, and it will take you right past your hotel.

As she pedaled away, Christopher called out to her. “Thank you for the pleasure of your company, Miss…”

“Graham,” Laurel answered.

“Miss Graham,” he said to himself. The enigma of the girl had been ruined. She was nothing more than a mill worker.

One of his employees.

Yet that did add an entirely new facet to the young lady. Certainly a girl that pretty could do better for herself. Christopher wondered why she was not already married.

CHAPTER FIVE

Deirdre peeled off her stockings and dipped her bare feet into the cool water. Laurel was already up to her knees, wading across the creek that ran through the woods near the mill. Further down, some of the older boys jumped and splashed each other, clad in only their underwear.

Minnows nipped at Laurel’s toes as she tiptoed across the muddy creek bed. Wading was one of the most enjoyable activities on a balmy late summer afternoon that she could think of. She wriggled her toes, watching the little fish dart away in the clear water.

“Aren’t you getting in?”

“Maybe in a little while,” Deirdre replied. “It’s just so relaxing to sit here.”

Gathering up her skirts, which were already soaked at the hem, Laurel plodded back to the bank. She lay back against the cool grass under the shade of the trees. Shards of light cut through the branches above, covering her skin with hundreds of tiny shadows, which moved across her body as the wind blew the leaves.

Before long, Deirdre fell asleep, lulled by the babbling of the water as it meandered over rocks, creating miniature waterfalls and tiny whirlpools.

Running her fingers across the lush green grass, Laurel breathed deeply. She wished that every day could be summer, and that none of them ever had to go back to the mill again. Her mind drifted to the days when she lived on her grandparents’ cotton farm. Money was always tight, and food was never plenty, but there had been a never ending supply of fresh air – something she took for granted before she went to work in the mill, before years of cotton dust accumulated in her lungs and began to make her cough.