All About Seduction(114)

“When you have a baby in your arms, it will all seem worth it,” he urged.

Would it? Would loving Jack’s baby mend the tear in her heart? Would the precious memories of the nights with Jack sustain her through the frigid wasteland of her life?

She took a deep breath. “I want the mill. I have worked hard to learn how to run it.” She had worked hard to find a purpose in her life, to have a reason to get out of bed every day, to make sense of why she had been married to this man. “I want a child, but this is awful.”

Mr. Broadhurst made a clucking sound. All she wanted was to shove him away, but she forced herself to accept the embrace.

Jack had to go to London. Their only real hope in the future was if he could make something of his life and she could run the mill and be answerable to no one. That was a slim hope.

Mr. Broadhurst continued to hold her, and she remained stiff and wooden in his arms until her maid arrived. As Mr. Broadhurst exited her room through the connecting door, she swore to herself that the first thing she would do after she got pregnant would be to have a lock installed, because she didn’t think she could ever bear her husband’s touch again.

Jack had to gain respectability and financial solvency. Only then would they be able to be together in some distant point in the future.

“He will see you now,” said the clerk.

His heart thumping madly, Jack leaned on his crutches. This was it. The owner of the company had let him sit for a long while.

Perhaps the sitting had been good. As exhausted as he was after crutching through the London streets from the train station, he’d needed to catch his breath. He was still a long way from well, but miles better than he had been the day he went to his father’s house. But his frailty frustrated him and had him cursing on more than one occasion that morning. As weak as he was, he had to convince the owner of the company he could work, and work hard. He had to do it not only for his own sake, but for Caroline too.

The last days with her had been bittersweet. The nights were filled with tender lovemaking. Long into the night he’d held her in his arms as she slept.

Still, he was here, and on a path to making a better life for himself, and one day maybe he would have enough to offer Caroline. When they talked of his appointment, she’d always bit her lip as if holding back. But her eyes had said it for her. She wanted him to succeed and come back to her. And a failure would extinguish the tiny flame of possibility that they could ever be together.

Still, Jack wasn’t certain leaving her with Broadhurst was the right thing. The man was vile. Caroline’s aristocratic family might not provide enough deterrent to keep Broadhurst from harming her. He could have stayed, been a clerk, and seen her every day. But seeing her and knowing he couldn’t touch her would be torture. No, he was better off here where the desire to see her again would fuel his efforts to succeed.

He crutched into the office.

The owner stood and came around his desk to shake his hand.

But Jack knew it was over when the man realized he was lame.

Jack had smiled and talked congenially of his designs, showed his schematic drawings, talked of how he had worked as a mechanic for nigh on a decade, but the company owner couldn’t seem to focus on anything other than his broken leg.

Nothing persuaded the man to believe he could weld or use a lathe while perching on a stool, or that he might not even need a stool once he was healed enough to walk again. The man had just kept repeating that he needed an able-bodied machinist, not a cripple on crutches.

Jack thought of Caroline and the baby they might have conceived and how desperately he needed to prove himself. He tried to persuade the owner long after he knew it was futile.

Finally, he stopped pushing.

He rose and curled his hands around his crutches to make his way out of the office. The wooden handles cut into his palms, and he wanted to slam the door the door or push everything off the ignorant man’s desk, but such actions would not persuade anyone to offer a job.

“I’m sorry you came all this way,” said the owner. Jack shook his head as he bent and scooped up his haversack filled with his few belongings that he’d left in the outer office. He had a dangerous second of teetering on his good leg as he swung the pack onto his back and pushed his arms through the straps. Fortunately he didn’t fall, but taking care with every motion he made was not easy when his blood was boiling.

“If you would have included in your telegraph the nature of the accident, I could have saved you the trip.”