The Regency (96 page)

‘
The injuries were so severe that the boy eventually died
of them,' he said harshly. O'Brien had been a favourite of his,
a promising lad whom he had hoped to bring up to overseer
one day.

‘
If they were so severe, you should not have called the
surgeon at all,' Fanny said simply. 'You must have known it
was a waste of time. Look at these figures! Two guineas, three
guineas! Do you think this O'Brien was worth it? I doubt
whether he did ten guineas' worth of work in his life.'

‘It did not occur to me,' Jasper said in a trembling voice, ‘to
estimate the worth of the boy's life, before summoning help
for him.'

‘
Well there you are, then,' Fanny said kindly. 'You should
do so in future. And now, another thing — why are we still
sending out work to this hand-weaver, when we have
machines not running to full capacity? I have looked at hisrecord in the putting-out book, and he is by far too slow.’

‘
Hargreaves' work is very good. He is slow at the moment
because of an injury to his shoulder.'

‘
Then you should not send him any more work until he is
fit again.’

Jasper breathed hard. 'Hargreaves is a good, loyal worker,
who has been weaving pieces for us for twenty years, Miss
Morland. He has a family to support. If I do not send him
work, they will all starve.'

‘
That is nothing to the point,' Fanny said firmly. 'There is
capital tied up in those machines — and in the spun cotton —
which does not shew a return until we sell the cloth. If your
Hargreaves cannot work, he must look to the parish, that's
all.'

‘
I don't think there is anything you can tell me about the
cotton business,' Jasper said angrily. 'Or about employing
men —'

‘
Isn't there?' Fanny said. ‘Do you think the men respect
you more because you are soft with them?'

‘
I understand these people, Miss Morland. I grew up with
them,' Jasper began, and stopped, reddening, as Fanny's eyes
travelled over his plain, ill-fitting coat and paused involun
tarily on his oil-blackened fingernails. Fanny, seeing the
blush, was a little sorry to have embarrassed him. She had
all her grandfather's determination and his love of progress
and profit, but just a little more conciliation. Jasper was a
useful man to have on her side, she knew, and she did not want
to make an enemy of him.

‘
I understand, Cousin Jasper,' she said kindly, 'that some
of the men seem like friends to you, but we cannot afford to
waste money on people who can't or won't work. Perhaps you
would not be so eager to do so, if the money involved was
your own —’

He crashed his fists down onto the desk, making her jump,
and leaned down so that his angry face was on a level with
hers. 'The mills are mine,' he hissed. 'Mine by right of the
labour and the love and the care, the hours and the sweat
and, yes, the blood I have poured into them! And your grand
father knows it, Miss Morland! He may give you everything
you ask for, and indulge you with your fancies, but he knows
that the mills cannot be run by a woman.’

She raised a cool eyebrow. 'Cannot they, Mr Hobsbawn?
Judging by what I see
here,
it seems to me they may be better
run by some women than by some men. But we shall see.'
She smiled. 'Let us not quarrel, however. I have brought an
invitation from my grandfather to dine with us tonight at
Hobsbawn House.’

He straightened up, perplexed. 'I don't understand you,
ma'am. We have just been at outs, and now you ask me to
dine
with you?’

She stood up and began unbuttoning the wrapper. 'What is
said between us in a business way need not interfere with our
relationship in the social sphere, I hope? We are kin, Mr
Hobsbawn; and my grandfather wishes us to be friends.’

Jasper stared at her, feeling frustrated. He remembered
again the conversation he had had with Hobsbawn two years
ago — oblique, embarrassing, humiliating — when Hobsbawn
had hinted that he would like Jasper to marry his grand
daughter, Miss Fanny Morland.

Jasper had worked for Hobsbawn since he was a small
child. He had been born in poverty and orphaned in it, and
Hobsbawn had taken him into the mills, given him work and
wages, trained him up, and finally made him mill-manager.
He had everything to be grateful for, and he respected
Hobsbawn, and loved the mills he had helped to raise from
next to nothing.

He would never have set his sights higher, except that
after Mrs Hobsbawn died, leaving only a daughter behind,
Hobsbawn had let him know that he did not intend to marry
again, and that, since he would not leave his mills to a female,
they would one day come to him, Jasper, by right both of blood
and desert. From then on, Jasper had worked every hour he
was wakeful, had strained every nerve and muscle, had eaten
and drunk and thought and dreamed Hobsbawn Mills, had
lived for nothing but to expand and improve them.

Then there had come a series of reverses. Miss Hobsbawn had married — but the old man disapproved of her husband.
She was with child — but the child was a girl. She bore a son
— but the son died. Throughout all, Jasper had waited in the
wings, uncomplaining, like a faithful wife with a philandering
husband, while Hobsbawn's favour had waxed and waned.
Then Fanny had come on that fateful visit, and Jasper had
seen the old man's eyes light up, and a new spring come into
his step.

But he could not leave the mills to an unprotected female.
‘Woo her, Jasper,' had been the command. 'Marry her, and
the mills will be yours through her.' No longer his by right, he
thought bitterly, but as manager to that chit of a girl who
looked at the dirt on his hands, and spoke to him kindly, as
though he were a child or an idiot.

The terrible thing, the really terrible thing, was that it was
possible. He had never been interested in women: in his life he
had had too little leisure, and too little energy outside of his crippling working-hours to develop any taste for them. And
women had never been interested in him, for few have the
heart to be in love where there is no encouragement. But he could see that Fanny Morland was beautiful — not in a deli
cate, ethereal way, which he had always supposed women
ought to be, but with a strong, healthy, vibrant beauty. He
liked the hardness of her mind, too, though he deplored the
hardness of her heart. His emotions on meeting her were
complex. Mostly he wanted to put his hands round her white throat and squeeze and squeeze until he had throttled the life
out of her; but sometimes he was forced painfully to acknowl
edge that while his hands were round her slender neck, he
would find it hard not to kiss those full red lips, kiss them and
kiss them

‘
Woo my granddaughter,' had been the command. Aye,
but what if she resists? Why should she want me? 'She'll have
you, in the end, for the sake of the mills.' What does she care
about the mills, lively, pretty thing with her gowns and hats
and carriage-rides, and a dozen beaux in starched neckcloths
hanging on her every word? 'Care about the mills? Why, man,
she wasn't here five minutes before she started trying to
wheedle 'em out of me. She wants the mills like a hanging
man wants air.’

It had become increasingly clear that she did. No only that,
but she had a most unfeminine grasp of business, a mathe
matical mind which could add a column of figures at a
glance, a hardness and directness of thought and speech that
Jasper deplored both as ugly, jarring, and horribly wasted
on one of the soft sex. Miss Morland had been taught all
manner of things at home she had no business learning, from
mathematics to foreign languages, from latin to astronomy,
from the running of an estate to the keeping of its books. And
now, at the age of eighteen, and after a London Season to
sharpen her wits, she had a cool, confident bearing which made
it hard for Jasper to outmanoeuvre her; especially since he did
not know, and could not find out, how much of her grand
father's designs concerning them she was a party to

‘
So Cousin, will you come?' she said now, smiling win
ningly. 'We have a turkey just fit to be eat, and I have asked
the cook to make the little almond-cakes you like so much.'
He hesitated still, angry and confused, and she smiled a little
more. 'Or have you some other engagement? Sure, they
cannot offer you such a good dinner as I will.'

‘I have no other engagement,' he muttered gracelessly.

‘
Then you will come,' she said firmly; and held out her
hand to him. It was that gesture which undid him, for it was
done as openly and naturally as if she had never noticed that
his hands were dirty, or his nails perpetually in mourning. ‘So
goodbye Mr Hobsbawn, until tonight. Grandfather will send
the carriage for you.’

He felt the brief, firm grasp of her slender white hand, and
then she was gone in a swirl of delicate muslin, ribbon and
perfume. Her last words were a piece of kindness all her own,
saving him the long, dark walk from the little stone house by
Brindle Mill — the new acquisition — where he now lived. He knew that old Hobsbawn would never have thought of sending
the carriage. 'He's a young man — let him walk,' would have
been
his
attitude.

But
why
had she done it? He was no nearer to knowing that. All he knew was that she had exchanged for him an
evening alone in a cheerless cottage, with cold bacon, bread
and beer for his supper, for a warm, clean, brightly-lit house,
comfortable chairs, good food, fine wine, pleasant conver
sation, and all the touches of softness and luxury his life had
always been lacking. He stared around his dusty office, and
smelled the elusive fragrance she had left behind, and he
hated her.

*

Fanny had been feeling restless for a long time — indeed, on
and off, since she left London at the end of her extended
Season. She had cut Fitzherbert Hawker out of her heart, and
though the ruthless surgery had worked, and she no longer
thought about him or cared about him, she felt curiously list
less, at a loss, without her preference. Other men were so very
dull in comparison with him — not that she ever did compare
them, of course — and she couldn't take seriously any of the attempts to woo her that had taken place since then. She was
gaining a reputation as a hardened flirt, she knew, but she could not help it. She laughed at the young men, or found
them boring, and they didn't like it. To salve their wounded
vanity, because she would not prefer them, they asserted that
she would not have anyone.