Starlight (34 page)

“Bloody hell.”

Her eyes rolled closed on a quiet exhale.

“Look at me,” he rasped. “I want to see it on your face. I want you to see it on mine.”

Each time he thrust to the hilt, he felt her fingers working. The desire in her eyes was a fire he stoked higher with every rough movement—until her release choked out on a little scream. She arched into him. Her pelvis ground against his, seeming intent on making blissful seconds become infinite.

The sheen of her flushed exertion was beyond arousing. Alex sipped at her temple, then roughly claimed her mouth once again, hips and tongue questing.

She cupped his cheeks and held his gaze. “So hungry. So close to what you need. You wanted me to see it. Now show me.”

The tide of his pleasure was too much to contain. He shuddered, groaned, and drove into her hot, soft slickness one last time. “God, Polly,” he gasped, neck arching back. “My Polly.”

Boneless, he sank into the bed. They wound together in sighs and contented stretches. Her smile was just as wicked, but satisfied in a way that made
his chest ache with pride. Pure masculine pride. He snuffed the candles, pulled her beneath the covers, and gathered her close.

Sleep claimed him nearly straightaway. He was simply overwhelmed. Caressing her hip and waist soothed him like no thought ever could. The perfect symmetry of man and woman. Through the fog of that lassitude, the words Polly whispered against his shoulder barely made sense.

“That was just the proof I needed, Mr. Christie.”

M
arried
only two weeks, Polly left Alex’s house without telling him, which felt like a betrayal, especially because she did so with the intention of seeing Tommy.

Meet me.

Those were the only words on a note delivered by post that morning. Tommy had signed it.

She told only Agnes that she was going. Checking in on Edmund had become habit. The little boy was fast melting her heart. His fever had long passed, and Edmund was making his first forays toward eating solid foods. When Polly peeked into the nursery, he’d been happily smashing porridge around a plate set on the hardwood floor. “Easier cleanup,” Agnes had said with an indulgent smile.

Polly tied on her bonnet and grabbed her tartan shawl, which Alex had later retrieved from the constables’ station. Spring had fully taken hold of the city, using its annual might to beat back winter.
Warmer air. Rain, but with moments of sunny brilliance. The weather didn’t match her mood. She was jittery and apprehensive, not only about visiting Tommy but about Alex’s reaction if he discovered their secret meeting. Just when she and her husband had found a measure of happiness, however tentative, she was going against his explicit demand. His
unfair
demand. But she needed to. She was bored, restless, and in need of her old sense of purpose.

She couldn’t simply abandon her old life in favor of a new one.

And Alex had been acting strange of late—more than usual. George Winchester and Julian Bennett had each been by the house several times in two weeks. Their discussions behind the locked library doors turned heated every time. Once Polly had heard Mr. Winchester shout her name and call her “an ambitious piece of gutter trash.”

It had warmed her heart when Alex threw the man out, even as she worried about the repercussions. “I won’t open this door to you again until you apologize,” he’d said, cool and calm, before slamming it in Mr. Winchester’s face.

All the secrecy coincided so closely with the upcoming renegotiation of the weavers’ contracts, and he hadn’t brought up the topic of Jack Findley again . . .

Polly’s nape prickled with dread and suspicion.

She had been kicked out of every circle. That knowledge left her at sea. She might never be involved with finding out who’d sabotaged Christie
Textiles, let alone the identity of the arsonist. How would she bear being so excluded?

Holding Alex through the night was a consolation, but even the warm temptation of his embrace didn’t reverse his demand that she leave the union and stay off the factory floor. Nor did it stave off the inevitable. A showdown was gathering, with their interests on either side.

She arrived at a tenement block even more ramshackle than those on her street and knocked on a door. Of all the people she knew, she most wanted Tommy to understand how she’d wound up married.

The door burst open. He hauled her inside.

Polly slugged him in the arm. “Let go of me! You’re acting like a rabid dog.”

“You deserve worse.”

“What I deserve is your thanks! I’ve worked to find out what really happened, and the first thing I get from you is scorn? That no one’s come looking for you has been my doing.”

“I’d have laid low just fine.”

“Living like a gutter rat. Don’t give me that bollocks.”

He nodded curtly toward a wicker chair in the small kitchen, then took a chair opposite around the solid wooden table. Mrs. Larnach’s late husband, a carpenter, had made almost all of the furniture in the tiny little flat, but he’d been gone five years. The place was slowly deteriorating.

Crossing her arms, she leaned away from her childhood friend. “Go on, then, Tommy. Make your accusations.”

He snatched her left hand. The simple gold band Alex had bestowed shone on her finger. “Married the master, have you? How could you turn against us like that?”

“Turn against you? Good God, Tommy. Think of the advantages!”

“Explain them to the assembly on Friday. I’ll drag you there, if you like.”

“I’d like to see you try.” She paused. “Wait—
Friday
?”

That no one had told her of a new meeting meant she was truly done. A complete exile.

“Yes, not that you’ll be welcome.”

“Oh, I’ll be there. And if you make trouble for me, I’ll tell them where you’ve been hiding and how we should’ve turned you over to the constables a month ago. None of them will care about the truth. No one wanted this lingering over our heads when it comes time to negotiate our contracts. They need a scapegoat so everyone can get on with business as usual.” She pointed a finger at her chest. “
I’ve
kept that from being your fate. So don’t you dare threaten me.”

He looked chagrined for a moment, then his shoulders slumped and his youthful yet haggard features pinched into a scowl. “Say your piece, then. Why did you marry him?”

“He gave me no choice,” she said, her tongue dry and thick. “What’s worse,
Da
gave me no choice.”

“Tupped you, then, did he? Did you laugh with him after? Telling stories of our simple ways?”

“Shut your filthy mouth and see reason. He’s had nothing to gain by mingling with our people, or
learning the names of everyone on the mill floor. At least he’s
tried
when no one else has.”

Tommy’s dark hair looked like tousled shadows even when lit by the spring sunshine streaming through the kitchen’s only window. “Is that how he caught your eye? Or was it the other way around?”

“I’m certain he came to Glasgow with no intention of marrying a penniless factory girl. Had he any sense, he’d have taken after a local debutante with money and connection.” She forced a breath of calm. “Can’t you see? This is our chance. Finally, someone with influence and an interest in hearing me out.” She pushed away from the table. “And I dare you to say I shouldn’t do what I can to keep Ma safe and secure. Look me in the eye and tell me I don’t have that right—bloody hell, Tommy—that
obligation
.”

“You’re a whore, then.” So calm. So devastating.

She banked a shudder. “Think what you like. But he didn’t need to marry me. Had he just been looking for a quick go, he’d have left off without a backward glance.”

Said so bluntly, and said to another person—not rattling inside her addled mind—she realized just what Alex had done. He was arrogant, stubborn, and occasionally blind to emotion of any kind, but he was
good
. She believed that, just as she believed he would be the one to bring change to their forgotten little corner of the city.

“Then tell me why he’s thrown in with the other masters, eh?”

Her ribs felt tight. “How so?”

The leer Tommy sported left no room for doubt. He believed what he was going to say. “Mr. Alex Christie, your new husband, has entered into an agreement with the rest of their lot. They want to reduce wages this year—reduce costs to make up for the sabotage losses.”

“No. I don’t believe you.”

“Why else do you think we’re having this meeting? Rob Callaghan heard it from the overseer at Bennett’s.”

“Jack Findley? He’s the one pointing the finger at you! There’s no reason to trust his word.”

“It won’t matter once Hamish starts talking strike.” He smacked his fist into his palm. “About time.”

“You’d have everything undone. Now, on the verge of being able to get what we deserve?”

“How can you believe that so blindly, when your husband’s a liar?”

The room dipped and swam before her eyes. He wouldn’t. Not with his principles. She couldn’t imagine Alex Christie harboring such devious motives. He walked in a straight line and thought in a straight line. That he could’ve been using her to undermine the union was not only an entirely new fear, it was too hurtful to contemplate.

“I’ll find out, Tommy.”

His dubious expression was at least a change from the violent twist of his lip. “Find out what?”

“What he knows. What he’s agreed to. If they intend to provoke a strike just to break us down, they must have plans to bring in workers from the Highlands or Ireland. That sort of arrangement can’t
be concealed, not down on the docks. And if they believe we’ll sit idly by, they’re dead wrong.” She met Tommy’s gaze head-on. “You know how hard I’ve worked, when no one else thought I should. Trust me, just as I trusted your word. I can be the ally we never thought we’d have.”

With his thin, rugged features still dubious, Tommy nodded. For a second she caught a glimpse of the boy she’d grown up with. They’d shared the scant treasures life afforded. Now he seemed willing to share a little bit of belief.

“You’re a mad girl. You know that, right?”

“Says the devil himself. And Tommy?”

He scuffed his toes against the bare wood floor. “What?”

“What do you know about the night I was arrested?”

“That it happened. Something about prostitution? I assumed it was just gossip started by the pigs or the masters. But you were with him, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Trying to find information about Jack Findley.” She ignored his look of disbelief. “The night I was arrested, the constables had my shawl. I’d left it by accident at Old Peter’s. Someone turned it over to the police as evidence against me. I need to know who that was. Maybe it was a master or the police, as you said. But maybe . . .”

Feeling as if she were being watched by a thousand eyes, as if the walls had ears, she whispered a name. She shouldn’t trust Tommy either, but when it came to steering clear of another stint in prison, he might have just enough sense to be tenacious.

“And what will you do in the meantime?”

A tremor of foreboding settled at the base of her spine. “I’m going to find out what my husband’s hiding.”

Alex
awoke in the middle of the night, his heart racing. He sat up and fumbled for the lamp’s wick to check the time. The clock on his bedside table read half-past three. With an arm over his eyes, he flopped back onto the bed. His heart still thudded at a tremendous rate, as he searched through wisps of sleep to catch the remnants of the dream that had shocked him to wakefulness.

Nothing came. He may as well have blamed a plain white wall for his anxiety.

Polly was not in bed beside him. He kicked out of sheets and tugged on his dressing robe. The floor was cold against his feet despite being early May. He’d been in Scotland for three months. Disconcerting that it seemed so long. And he had another year and a half to go.

Not that he thought it likely he’d last that long. Winchester and Bennett were primed to ruin his chances. If their all-or-nothing strategy of revenge against the union went ahead as planned, they would destroy more than Alex’s chances at earning his father’s bequest.

A whole community stood poised on the verge of collapse.

As did one very new, very precarious marriage.

He shoved a hand through his hair, wondering why he hadn’t smacked Bennett across the mouth
when afforded the chance. First he’d reminded Alex of the masters’ unanimous agreement to decrease wages. At the first hint of Alex’s hesitation—because, Christ, he was more uncertain than ever about that decision—Bennett had blamed Polly. Insulted her.

Alex regretted his restraint, no matter how disastrous it would’ve been.