All About Seduction(4)

“Sir, no one could think this a reasonable demand.” Her whole body shook. Her fingers closed around the doorknob, and for a second she feared she was locked in with the madman who had replaced her husband. Finally, she twisted the knob and opened the door.

“Caroline, you will do this. I will brook no disobedience.” Mr. Broadhurst’s tone had turned stentorian. For a moment he resembled the hard man who had come from a crofter’s hut and built an empire.

She had never dared to defy him so openly before. A lady didn’t argue with her husband, raise her voice to him, or refuse him. “No, I shall not.”

Shaking her head, Caroline backed out the door. She’d taken great pride in always behaving as a lady ought, but this was too much.

Her legs barely held her as she stood quivering in the hall. The always silent hall. The house always echoed with too much silence. Once, she’d believed the rooms would resound with the laughter and playful shouts of her children. Instead the silence mocked her.

Gulping a couple of breaths that did nothing to calm her, Caroline fled to her bedroom. She could not believe what her husband had asked of her. She would not lie with another man.

Ever.

Jack Applegate backed against the loft ladder as the chaos of the morning exploded around him. After a week away, the household seemed frenetic, loud, and pressing him down. This had been his home for twenty-eight years, but choosing to leave permanently was the right decision.

As usual, his brothers and sisters pushed and shoved to get a turn at the pitcher and basin. The baby howled, while the two-year-old banged a spoon on the table. His fourteen-year-old sister stood at the stove stirring a pot of gruel so thin it looked blue.

His stepmother, Martha, set the kettle back and pushed at escaping strands of her fading hair, then tried to still the banging spoon. She closed her eyes. Likely the babe in her belly was giving her fits this morning.

One of the boys bumped against the ladder, while trying to pull on boots without sitting. Jack steadied his brother. The main room barely contained the lot of them, and didn’t offer enough places for everyone to sit at one time. In a few minutes all but the youngest would leave for work.

Jack’s father shuffled out of the bedroom, stooped and crooked and leaning heavily on his cane. Lines of permanent pain had carved deep grooves in his face, and Jack hated that he was about to add to them.

One of the girls popped out of their father’s chair at the table and pulled it out for him.

“Weather’s changing,” he grunted as he gingerly sat.

“You hear your father. Mind you take sweaters.” Martha stood at the stove, filling bowls. “Jack, would you—”

“Mine has holes,” complained a middle child before Martha could finish, but the caterwauling from the cradle drowned out anything else.

Jack picked up the baby and lifted him high in the air until the cries turned to gurgles of laughter.

“I was going to ask you to fetch milk,” said Martha.

If he walked to the dairy to get milk, he’d have to pay for it. This last month alone he’d already bought new boots for Beth—the hand-me-downs no longer mendable—stove blacking for the stove Martha claimed was past repair, and a new doorknob to replace the one the middle boys had managed to break. The family always had needs. He could spend all his money and it wouldn’t make a dent. “I have to talk to Da this morning.”

Jack stopped swinging the baby and cradled the tot against his chest. But the cries quickly returned and the boy gnawed at Jack’s collar.

Martha shouldered past him and plunked bowls of steaming gruel on the bare wood planks of the table. “I would think someone who could afford to take a train trip could manage to buy a bit of milk to help out the family.”

“I’ll fetch milk at the dinner break,” conceded Jack.

He’d have to buy a chunk of cheese if he expected anything to eat for his noonday meal, because payday was too long ago and little food was left to go in the lunch pails. The haunch of beef and the bakery bread hadn’t gone as far as Martha hoped when she bought them after getting paid last month. Too many mouths to feed, and he was the only one in the house earning a man’s wages.

Martha should have bought flour for bread, but she kept saying the stove wouldn’t bake right. Jack suspected this pregnancy so close on the last one was draining her and she was too tired when she got home from the mill to cook.

He nudged a sibling off the table bench and took the seat closest to his father.