All About Seduction(126)

And unless his attitude had changed, he would find being her cicisbeo demeaning. But was it about the money?

“Don’t you want the mill anymore?” he asked.

Everything came tumbling out, about how she might have made a mistake ordering cotton from Egypt and the Americas, how the mill’s costs were too high because other mills employed more women at three-quarters wages, but there was no other industry in the village to employ men. Her half-baked plan to build a warehouse to give better jobs to the men, and how that was only temporary. Once the cotton was gone there would be an empty building. And if the mill couldn’t turn a profit, it was moot anyway.

Jack listened and took her back to her reasoning for her decisions. And made her remember she had a concern Broadhurst had never faced, and she had made a decision she believed in and that might yet be the best.

“Or I may have ruined everything,” she said. “If it turns out badly, Mr. Broadhurst will make sure I never get control of the mill.”

“He wants this baby to be his heir, doesn’t he?”

Caroline lifted a shoulder. “Only if it is a boy.”

Making a sound of displeasure, Jack pushed his cheek against hers. “I would take you away, if I had a thing to offer you, but, Caro, I live in a storeroom. I can’t provide for you.”

“And I can’t cook,” she moaned.

“You shouldn’t have to. You shouldn’t have to come down in the world to be with me,” he whispered fiercely. “You deserve so much more.”

She took in the room, the narrow stairs leading up to what was probably the midwife’s living quarters. Near the bed an upended crate served as his night table. The lamplight fell on a book lying spine up with its pages splayed. He had come a long way if he was reading in bed. She squinted at the subtitle, India-Rubber Industry in England. A sheaf of papers probably held his plans.

“My family could take us in.”

He sighed and leaned back, away from her. “I never want your family to feel about you as I feel about my family.”

She twisted, looking back at him. “But I have earned their support. I have paid for it a thousand times over—or Mr. Broadhurst’s money has.”

“You have. I haven’t. It’s not a solution, Caro.” He put his hand over his face.

Her family would support her, but there would be costs. “I just hate every minute with him. I used to think kindly of him and that his abrasiveness was just the product of his keen business sense. I worked hard to be fond of him, but I feel dead around him. And it is a terrible thing for me to go to bed wishing for his death, wake up in the morning wishing for his death, so I can feel alive? What kind of a person does that make me?”

“If you are a bad person, I am worse, because there is nothing I’d like to do more than end it for him.”

Her heart squeezed.

He gave her a rueful smile. “I think it, but I would not do it. I wanted to be successful like him, but not in that way. Perhaps I am not ruthless enough to be a business magnate.”

“Never say that. You are smart and you have good ideas. You will accomplish great things. Even Mr. Smythe is impressed with your understanding and competence. Mr. Broadhurst would have given you your congé a long time ago if you were not upstaging all the other clerks, who had the advantage of education.”

“I know. Given my background, I have to show that I am better, to be considered equal.” Jack rubbed his face. “I’m trying. I work so hard to get to where I should have been a decade ago. It just seems that every time I take a step in the right direction I am pulled down.”

He leaned over and grabbed the crutches leaning against the wall at the foot of his bed. “I have done this with rubber.” He showed her where he’d covered the handle sections, the top crossbar, and tips with rubber. “It is not exactly the most lucrative idea I’ve ever had, but it makes the crutches much easier to hold and less likely to slip. I’m sure this could really help people.”

Her heart melted. She hugged him to her.

“And I am working to make my brace more comfortable and better functioning. The rubber, even though it has a sweet smell, can stink to high heaven when I’m heating it. Mrs. Goode is not fond of my experiments. I will have to find a place, buy machinery and supplies before I can truly make anything come of my ideas.”

And he was trying to get there on a clerk’s wages.

An idea so perfect it was scary came to her. “Jack, would you consider a partnership?”