Chapter 1
What was so important as to require the privacy of the study? Stifling her impatience, Caroline Broadhurst folded her hands in her lap and waited for her husband’s pronouncement. They’d spent a great deal of time together at the mill and then shared dinner, but after telling her he wished to speak to her about a certain matter, he had turned taciturn. Whatever he had to say, he hadn’t wanted either the clerks or the servants to overhear.
The setting sun cast an orange glow over his solemn features. Everything Mr. Broadhurst did was slow these days. His spotted hands shook as the whiskey decanter clinked against his glass. He poured out a generous dollop then shuffled to sit gingerly behind his desk. Taking a hearty swig, he gulped, loudly shattering the silence. Moisture pooled at the edges of his mouth.
Did he feel the need for liquid fortification?
He set the tumbler down, frowned, then shifted ledgers and papers to the side of his blotter as if he could not go on until everything was in order.
He picked up the tumbler and drank. He didn’t offer her a glass, but then ladies didn’t drink whiskey. He’d married her because she had the kind of breeding and connections to society that even his money could not buy. He could buy entrée, but welcome was beyond his reach. Yet with her by his side, he was tolerated in polite circles.
“I want a child,” said Mr. Broadhurst, startling her. “A son.”
A jagged pang ripped through her, tearing open a hard truth she’d thought she had accepted. Her prayers for a child had fallen on deaf ears. Caroline choked then coughed.
After enduring her husband’s twice a week visits to her bedroom for fifteen years of marriage, she no longer believed she would be blessed with children. No matter how she longed to count little fingers and toes, to cradle a child to her breast, to worry if a baby was too hot or too cold like mothers do, those joys would never be hers.
Shifting, she murmured an apology. She couldn’t have said if it was for her coughing or her failure to conceive.
What did he expect her to do at this point? She fought to lock the yearning for a child into a dark corner of her mind, where it wouldn’t drag her into melancholy. Nothing could be done about her desire for a child or his. Or was his case less hopeless? Her thoughts chased their tails in circles. If he meant to take a new wife . . .
“What is your meaning?” she squeaked out.
His gaze slid away from hers, and he twisted the glass in a slow circle on the letter blotter. “I want a son to leave the mill to.” His words were even and measured, as if he were discussing a load of cotton or ordering new machinery.
This couldn’t be happening. Her chest squeezed and she wanted to push his glass back to his lips before the next words spilled out of his mouth. If he divorced her, she’d be an outcast. Being married to a man in trade was bad enough, but to be put aside by a man whose only recommendation was his wealth would make her a pariah. No one would ever take her seriously in the business world, let alone in society.
Caroline clenched her skirt of brown worsted. Would he even be able to perform with another woman? The last few times Mr. Broadhurst had come to her bedroom, he’d suffered embarrassing failures. She had tried to reassure him, he was just tired or working too much. Celebrating the end of that part of her marriage was wrong, but after so long, the hope of pregnancy was only a crushing burden that was cruelly dashed each month. At least without his attentions, she knew to expect her courses.
Perhaps he would buy himself a beautiful young wife. Perhaps he could find a wife who did not find congress between a man and a woman so distasteful. Perhaps he could perform with a younger, prettier, more passionate woman.
Mr. Broadhurst stood and shuffled over to the credenza to pour another drink.
“Should you have another?” she asked before she could censor the concern he would take as an attack on his health or his age.
“I do not think it will kill me just yet.” Mr. Broadhurst raised his glass in a mock toast. “This is not a criticism of you, my dear wife.”
His words were only marginally reassuring. Caroline looked down and forced her hands to relax. A lady did not fidget so. “Sir?”
“I have always been grateful that you have not behaved as your sisters have.” He studied her. “But, regrettably, it has put us in a fix.”
Her face heated. Even though her sisters, with the help of Mr. Broadhurst’s money, had married in their own class, none of their marriages were any more of a love match than hers. Funny, at one time she’d envied them their philandering husbands and gaiety in London society.