Starlight (2 page)
Authors: Carrie Lofty
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Historical, #Fiction
Pocket Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Carrie Lofty
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Pocket Books paperback edition July 2012
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Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson
ISBN 978-1-4516-1639-2
ISBN 978-1-4516-1641-5 (ebook)
To Keven
Because we both like cake.
Words cannot express how often my creative process was stimulated by correspondences with Zoë Archer and Lorelie Brown, both of whom influenced aspects of plot and characterization. I’m saying all of that with a straight face. Thanks to Ann Aguirre, whose dare in late 2010 skyrocketed the first draft into existence, and to Fedora Chen for her eagle eyes.
As always, Cathleen DeLong has been the caretaker of my crazy. You are the rock to hold down my helium balloon. *waves*
Camaraderie is essential in a business where insecurities make trouble like pesky gremlins. I’m glad to be part of the Circle Divas, the Broken Writers, and the Loop That Shall Not Be Named. I am also grateful for my friendships with Sarah Frantz, Jenn Ritzema, Karen Martin, Rowan Larke, and my ever-supportive family: Keven, Juliette, Ilsa, and Dennis and Kathy Stone.
Kevan Lyon and Lauren McKenna remain professionals without peer. I admire your individual skills as much as I appreciate your validation and encouragement. Thank you both.
Alex and Polly make me smile whenever I think of them. Class conflict that matures into a happy ending has always been one of my favorite romantic themes. I’m happy to have had the chance to bring these two disparate characters together.
During the Victorian era, Glasgow flourished. With a population that topped one million, it was the fourth largest city in the world. The milling industry that had been the mainstay of its early success was replaced, as demonstrated within these pages, by heavy maritime manufacturing. The need for a powerful seafaring presence was a key component of Britain’s expanding empire.
The possibility of love across societal boundaries was far more likely in Scotland than in England. Self-made men were respected for their contributions to the city’s prosperity, and the aristocracy did not hold as much sway. As a result, class confines were not as difficult to surmount as those separating the Protestant and Catholic faiths.
The difficulty of life in urban areas such as
Glasgow cannot be denied. But the Victorian era also offered remarkable potential. Because Scottish legislation has permitted access to classrooms for both boys and girls since 1696, I like to think a woman as clever and independent as Polly could have prospered—even when confronted with the most challenging circumstances.
As always, I look forward to your comments! Please contact me by email at
[email protected]
. I also welcome you to visit
www.CarrieLofty.com
and to follow me on Twitter (
@CarrieLofty
).
New York City
November 1880
A
lexander
Christie slumped into a supple leather armchair. With that artless collapse, his elbow struck a stack of papers on the nearby desk. A dozen star maps dumped onto the floor. Almost dispassionately, he watched them fall and scatter. He had intended to work upon returning from the will reading at his late father’s brownstone mansion, but even the most engaging astronomical puzzles would not capture his attention now. The drama of the long afternoon made higher thought impossible.
Sir William Christie had been dead for three weeks, his stout brawn laid low by months of crippling pneumonia. Yet his influence, even from beyond the grave, remained undeniable.
“Glasgow,” Alex said aloud, as if testing the word—the very idea of it.
From the other room came the sounds of a baby’s cry. Alex looked up, his neck aching and stiff against that sudden movement. On a burst of restless energy,
he shoved up from the decadent chair and crossed to the larger of the suite’s two bedrooms.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked Edmund’s nurse.
“No, sir.” Betsy, a quiet Irish widow with two grown children of her own, glanced at him from where she stood over Edmund’s bassinet. “Just a touch fussy this evening. But better than he has been, the poor little mite.”
Still so small, so fragile. Delivered four weeks early, Edmund had been beset with health problems since the birth that had taken his mother. This recent bout with the croup was only just relenting.
Alex wondered if fatherhood would ever get easier. The edge of fear that cut under his skin never dulled. He walked to the bassinet. Betsy had swaddled Edmund in a length of pale green cloth, concealing his arms and legs in the tucked-in way that seemed to offer him comfort.
“I’m sure you could hold him, if you like,” Betsy said softly.
Another slice of fear. Five months on and Alex still found no surety. No confidence in his abilities. The prospect of doing something wrong pushed like bricks against his chest.
“No. The boy needs his rest. We’ll be traveling on with my brother and sisters to Newport tomorrow midday. You’ll all be ready by then?”
“I’ll make sure of it, sir. Esther is just down to fetch supper for us both,” she said, referring to Edmund’s young wet nurse.
“Good.”
Betsy could not travel to Scotland. A trip into New York or to his father’s palatial summer home in Newport was one thing. Prying her away from her family in Philadelphia was quite another, although Esther had family in London. He would not ask such sacrifices of either woman, even if he were of a mind to consider Sir William’s ridiculous challenge.
No matter his internal strife, Alex could not resist touching the silken down of Edmund’s dark, wispy hair. He knew that texture and he knew that precious scent.
Throat tight, he pulled back before he truly woke his infant son. Then there would be no rest for anyone.
“I shall retire,” he said to Betsy. “Awaken me if you require assistance.”
The nurse nodded and resumed her place in a nearby rocking chair, where a tangle of colored yarn spilled out of a carpetbag. Within seconds she had returned to her knitting. Alex nodded once, offering the approval she obviously did not need, and left the pair in peace.
He poured a slight drop of whiskey and retrieved the leather portfolio he’d brought back from the reading. As if doing so might change the contents, he unfurled his copy of the will.
“Alexander David Christie, son of Sir William Christie and the late Mrs. Susannah Burgess Christie, shall assume management of Christie Textiles in Glasgow, Scotland, for the period of two years. The demonstration of a profit at the end of that tenure will result in the award of a one-million-dollar
bonus. Failure to do so will nullify any additional financial bequests beyond a single payment of five-hundred dollars.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, he saw the machination for what it was—his father’s petty revenge. Of Sir William’s four offspring, only Viv had deigned follow in his footsteps as a pioneering entrepreneur, and even her acumen had been constrained by her marriage into the aristocracy. Now they all faced the individual choice of whether to play one last game of chicken with the old man’s ego.
Alex was having none of it.
His life and his teaching position were in Pennsylvania, where he was due to be granted tenure within the year. A textile mill in the heart of Glasgow’s industrial district was someone else’s responsibility. He and Edmund would be fine.
Nevertheless, he dug through his attaché of personal belongings and found a picture of Mamie. She had been so young then, her hair severe and her eyes perpetually worried. But for the daguerreotype, she had managed a patient, nearly defiant expression of calm. Alex traced a thumb across that hard-fought smile. The guilt of her death remained difficult to bear.
What would you want?
The words formed on his tongue, but he was not the type of man to ask his dead wife for advice. She had always been so careful in her replies, often coaxing the solution out of him with a few quiet words. Knowing from the outset that no reply would ever come kept him silent.
A knock at the door roused him from his dolor.
He shoved the photograph and the will into his attaché, and then smoothed the lapels of his ink-black suit coat. A second knock sounded before he crossed the suite.
“Yes?”
Dressed in the hotel’s rather pretentious green-and-gold uniform, a young bellboy held out a slip of paper. “Message for you, Mr. Christie, sir.”
Alex opened the brief note. Ice laced his veins, freezing him out to the skin.
“Sir? He’s downstairs in the reception room, sir. Awaiting your reply.”
“Tell him I’ll be down presently.”
The bellboy pocketed a coin and disappeared down the corridor. Alex only stood in the doorway. As the nearest gas fixture softly hissed behind a glazed sconce, he reread that single line of writing: “Did he bequeath you enough to keep your son?”
Alex crossed to the fireplace in the living area and knelt before its trivial flames. The petty satisfaction he found in burning his father-in-law’s taunt did not last long. Anger—a pure, blinding rage—was quick to screech back to life. As it always did. Hands bunched into fists, he ground his knuckles against the hearth’s neat spread of marbled stone.
Josiah Todd deserved those fists in his face. Repeatedly. Until the man suffered as much as he had made Mamie endure. Until he begged for the forgiveness it was too late to offer his dead daughter.
Alex looked in on Betsy, who had fallen asleep in her chair. He penned a note rather than disturb her, leaving it on the message table. After appraising
his appearance in a nearby mirror, he ventured into the empty corridor. At that hour, most of the hotel’s patrons would be dining or taking in the city’s many attractions. The Grand Central was a place for the very rich and the very influential. The stipulations of Sir William’s will meant that Alex was no longer either. In the future, he would be better served by simpler accommodations.