In Consequence: A Retelling of North and South (24 page)

                  
Mr. Thornton observed Margaret’s pensive face as she gazed at the ancient patchwork of fields and distant copses beyond the walls of their compartment. “Are you thinking of Helstone?” he asked softly, breaking the silence between them.

                  
She startled somewhat to be roused from her daydreams. “No ... well, yes — a little, I suppose,” she answered. She dipped her head a moment to collect her thoughts. “I was just remembering the last time I traveled this route,” she confessed somewhat hesitantly with a trace of melancholy.

                  
Mr. Thornton was quiet a moment, remembering with remorse how quickly she had defended her beloved South when he had disparaged it at tea months ago. “It must have been difficult to leave your life in Hampshire to come to Milton,” he said.

                  
Margaret looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. “Yes. Perhaps if it had not been such a shock. I had scarcely returned home from London when ... when father explained his decision,” she answered feebly, recalling the horrible despair that had descended upon her the day her whole world had seemed to collapse.

                  
“You had returned to Helstone from London?” he inquired, curious to know more of her former life.

                  
“Yes. You see, mother and father thought it would be a great benefit for me to be educated with Edith. Ever since I was nine, I spent the better part of the year at Aunt Shaw’s. I’m sure that it was a very good thing. I did learn so much, but I looked forward to the holidays and the wonderful summers at home, in Helstone,” she admitted, gaining encouragement by glancing at his attentive demeanor.

                  
“Last summer I had just returned from Edith’s wedding in London.... I had so longed to enjoy a carefree summer....” she confessed, examining her hands once more.

                  
“You were not aware of your father’s struggles?” he gently prodded.

                  
“Not at all. And my mother was also unsuspecting. It was rather alarming, to say the least, when we discovered we would soon be packing our things and leaving our idyllic home for somewhere so far and ... you will forgive me if I say, strange and foreboding,” she declared, glancing at him guiltily before returning her eyes to her lap, the bitter strain of those days evident in her speech.

                  
The broad, thick-skinned hand of the Master silently reached to cover one of her own small ivory hands and grasped it with gentle firmness. “I know it must have been a stark change from all you had known. You have endured much hardship; yet you have been a strength to your parents,” he affirmed. “But you need not be alone any longer. That is, I wish to aid you in carrying your burdens, if you will only share with me your sorrows,” he pleaded with utmost tenderness, the mellow tones of his voice enveloping her with the comfort of promised care.

                  
Margaret stared spellbound a moment at their clasped hands. The feel of his warm skin against her own was a scintillating pleasure, and the strength of his grasp a grateful release from the weight of responsibility she had long carried.

                  
She trusted him. In a flash, she considered how well he truly understood her trials. It was he who had taken pains to arrange for their arrival in Milton and never once had he acted or spoken in a way that cast judgment on her father for his choice in abandoning his vocation. He knew her father well, and was kind to both of her parents. No one else in town was more intimately acquainted with her family.

                  
Her eyes slowly lifted to him and her body stilled to see his face glow with tender compassion. Abashed by the sudden confluence of emotions rising in her breast, she sought refuge by turning her gaze to the window.

                  
He waited patiently for her to speak, wanting to hear whatever words came from her lips. The clacking drone of the train continued, heedless of time.

                  
“My mother is very ill,” she uttered tonelessly. She forced the words out, the truth they bore almost too painful to reveal.

                  
“I had suspected so, although I wished to be mistaken,” he answered so softly that Margaret felt tears prick in her eyes. “Your father is not aware of it?” he asked, knowing Mr. Hale’s natural inclination to avoid the dark pictures of discord on this earth.

                  
Margaret shook her head. “I thought at first she was just fretful because of our move. She was very much put out that father should have given up his position. She did not love Helstone as I did, but the dirt and smoke of Milton was so much the worse.” She cast a sidelong glance at him, feeling uneasy at speaking unkindly of his native city, but there was no shadow of hurt on his face, only eager attentiveness to her story.

                  
As pastures of cows and sheep, villages, and gently rolling hills passed outside their windows, Margaret began to talk freely of her mother, the impact of their move from Helstone to Milton, and the changes that had occurred in their lives. Occasionally, while she spoke, the Master’s thumb brushed slowly up and down the back of her hand, sending tremors of sensation through her entire body. But she continued on, although her voice faltered at the moments his touch overwhelmed her.

                  
When, after a time, Mr. Thornton inquired how a gentleman’s daughter from Hampshire had befriended a girl from his own factory, Margaret felt no compunction in relating how she had become acquainted with Nicholas Higgins and his daughters. She even began to explain Nicholas’s struggle to ensure that the workers were treated fairly.

                  
She stopped mid-sentence upon glancing at his bemused expression. “I’ve been talking endlessly. I’m sorry,” she stammered.

                  
“There’s no need to apologize,” he answered with a warm smile, clearly enjoying the confidence she displayed in him in all she had relayed.

                  
“But what of you? Have you lived all your life in Milton?” she asked, suddenly curious to learn more of his own history, knowing only vaguely how he had come to hold his current powerful position.

                  
Mr. Thornton shrank instinctively for a moment at the thought of disclosing the more sordid events of his past, which he had never revealed to anyone. His smile vanished but his eyes lit with new hope as he surveyed the contours of her bright, expectant face.

                  
“Born and bred,” he answered with a furtive grin. He took a deep breath and shifted his glance. “We lived on the east side of Milton, in a comfortable town house. My father worked in the cotton trade.”  

                  
He paused. A shadow passed over his features, and Margaret’s heart lurched with desire to banish his sorrow. “Father told me ...” she whispered. “I am sorry. It must have been so very hard for you ...” she choked out the words. She gave his palm a squeeze and gently laid her other hand over his in sympathy.

                  
He searched her face with fierce hope and incredulous wonder that she might care to understand him. Seeing only earnest tenderness in the bewildering depths of her blue-gray eyes, he longed to take up her hand and kiss it fervently as a flood of love and gratitude for her existence almost overwhelmed him. He turned his gaze to their hands, marveling at the magnitude of meaning that this simple gesture held. The feeling of her delicate hands surrounding his own was an unutterable, sensuous delight.

                  
He wanted to tell her everything that his heart had endured. He wanted her to know how much he needed her to heal it. All the pain and emptiness, all his self-doubt, would be wiped away if she would only love him.

                  
“After my father died, we could no longer keep the house. I needed to find work, and my mother wished to get away. No one offered us help; there was too much ... embarrassment in our situation,” he continued solemnly. “We moved west and southward a ways to Altrincham, not too far from Milton, but far away enough. We found lodgings that were barely suitable, and I found work in the draper’s shop. Fanny was only a small lass — three or four. It was a strain for my mother to care for her properly when she would have taken work herself to help pay off my father’s debts. I was proud to keep them both from starving. My mother’s plan gave me hope that we would resettle ourselves once we paid all. Never would she allow that I should hold my head in shame,” he recounted.

                  
“It was not your fault that your father took his life. You did everything right and bore responsibility beyond your years. It was just that you should be given reward for your honesty and diligence. Is that not how you came to work in the cotton factories?” Margaret interrupted him with her ardent reassurances.

                  
He could only smile at her vehemence on his behalf. “Yes,” he answered. “When old Mr. Oglethorpe discovered I had come to pay him the money my father had borrowed four years earlier, he offered me a job in his mill — Marlborough Mills,” he explained.

                  
“You must have been a quick study,” she teased him, her eyes shining proudly at the thought of his position now.

                  
“I was determined to know everything,” he answered with a gleam in his eye. “And I am relentless when set to work. I believe that is my greatest strength — if it is not construed as stubbornness,” he added with a grin.

                  
Margaret grinned bashfully in return, remembering how Higgins had compared him to a bulldog for his strong determination.

                  
“When did you become master?” she asked.

                  
“I took over when Mr. Oglethorpe died. It was his request. I was two and twenty. I am now one and thirty. ”

                  
Margaret studied him with a glimmer of admiration and respect. She knew of no other man who had risen to such a position of responsibility at so young an age. How his years must have been full of toil and care, she considered with a new wave of compassion.

                  
And so they continued to inquire about and compare the lives they had led before the threads of circumstance had woven their fates inextricably together upon the Hales’ arrival in Milton.

                  
Midway through their journey, they alighted the train for a short walk about the platform together. They conversed briefly with Fanny and Claire Lawrenson, who introduced them to a well-dressed young gentleman by whom they had been entertained for many miles. His father, a London banker, was still talking animatedly with Mr. Lawrenson onboard the train.

                  
At the warning whistle, Mr. Thornton led Margaret back to their compartment, relieved to find it still unoccupied. Margaret adjusted her skirts as she seated herself while Mr. Thornton lowered the window. The air had grown humid as the noon hour approached.

                  
Taking his seat next to her, Mr. Thornton was at once preoccupied with the notion of holding her hand again. He hesitated only a moment before following this impulse, reaching over to reclaim her small hand.

                  
Margaret smiled to feel this welcome contact again. “We are still a long way from Milton?” she asked, endeavoring to cover with a flurry of words the flustered thrill she felt at his touch.

                  
“We have more than an hour yet,” he answered, his face beaming at her acceptance of his gesture.

                  
Margaret shied away from the warm gleam in his eyes and turned to the window, watching farmers work in sun-soaked hay fields as blue-black rooks soared overhead.

                  
Content to bask in the pleasure of this newfound unity, they remained silent while the train gently rocked and swayed, the wheels underneath them clacking in steady pronouncement of their forward progress.

                  
Before long, Margaret’s eyelids grew heavy, the warm and indolent atmosphere tempting her to sleep. In hazy comfort, she felt the Master’s arm nestled along hers. She took one last blurry look at the passing fields before she succumbed to peaceful slumber.

                  
Mr. Thornton smiled as her head slumped to rest against his shoulder. He had watched her fight her drowsiness with tender amusement. He, too, felt the inclination to nod his head and take rest in unconsciousness, but he could not relinquish so precious a moment.

                  
He was spellbound by her closeness, studying with reverent fascination the long lashes now still, the gentle slope of her nose, and the rose-colored lips which parted slightly in sleep, their full luxuriant softness beckoning him to touch them. He fought the urge to raise his hand and pass his thumb over that tender skin which protruded so temptingly. He would not disturb her, knowing, too, what passions would be aroused in him if he followed every instinct.