All About Seduction(5)

His father turned jaundiced eyes on him. “What is it? You planning another trip?”

Perhaps this would be easy. “For good. I’m moving to London.” Jack adjusted the baby on his knee, put a bit of gruel on the end of his spoon and took it to the little lips. The baby attacked the spoon, his head shaking left and right, getting gruel more on his face than in his mouth.

Only as Jack was trying to scrape the food back onto the spoon did he realize that the room had gone silent, as silent as the middle of the night—assuming none of the little ones were fussing.

He looked up. Martha pressed her hand against her chest.

His father’s watery eyes fastened on him. “Now is not a good time, son.”

“It’s never a good time.” Jack’s spine tightened, but he strove to sound calm.

Twice before he’d been ready to leave. When he was twenty he hadn’t had a real plan, but when his mother died giving birth to one of the middle boys, he decided to wait. Later, after his father remarried and all seemed well, Jack renewed plans to leave. Then his father injured his back and Jack postponed leaving again. This time he had thought out the smallest of details. His plans were solid, he’d saved enough money, and he was going no matter what.

“I talked to a man about my equipment designs. I’ve an appointment to see the company owner about a job in a fortnight.” Jack had done more than talk. He’d bought a secondhand suit so he didn’t look like a hayseed. He’d paid a university student to label his drawings with fine penmanship. He’d found the company that made the machinery the Broadhurst mill used and approached the shop manager all in the space of his four actual days in the city.

If he wanted success in life, he had to act now. He’d been worried no one in London would listen to him, take him seriously, or—as the stories went—would rob him blind. But as he found his way about the vibrant bustling city, nothing in his life had ever felt so right or so liberating.

Ever since he returned late the night before, the walls had felt close, as if they were squeezing him. He’d woken to find three of the little ones curled on his mattress in the corner of the attic he curtained off to make his own room. He loved his family, but they would suck him dry if he didn’t venture out and make his mark in the world.

“You need to hold my mechanic’s position until I get back to work,” said Jack’s father. “Too many men let go from Granger’s mills are looking for work to let a good job go vacant.”

“I need a new stove,” muttered Martha.

Jack ignored her and swallowed hard against the tug of duty and obligation. “I have been holding your job for nigh on four years. If you aren’t able to take it back now, you never will be.”

Frankly, he didn’t know if his father would ever be able to work again.

Jack’s father put a hand on his arm. “Son, this restlessness will go away if you just take a wife. You can move her in here. This house will be yours one day.”

Jack stopped himself from making a sour face. He was older than most to remain a bachelor, but it was his choice. Most men his age had their own homes, their own wives, and their own children, but he’d stayed at his father’s house long past the time when he should have left.

Besides, there was only one woman who interested him—and she was far out of reach. He might have caught her eye a few times, but she always looked away. For all he liked to watch the graceful way she moved, or catch sight of her pale arched neck under the heavy knot of gleaming dark hair, she always looked a little startled and unnerved by his interest. Of course, he had no business thinking that way about the mill owner’s wife. She was a lady and he was a laborer.

But if he could make his way in the world and have success, maybe a woman like her would be possible in the future.

Martha pressed her lips together, while two of his sisters nudged each other and mouthed the name of the girl he was stepping out with. But she was not the woman he envisioned as a future wife, and he’d told her he wouldn’t be marrying her—more than once. “I’m not ready for a wife and family.”

“You’re long past due. We can build you a proper room on the back.”

And lose the last of the garden space. And by “we” his father no doubt meant Jack and his brothers who could be trusted with a hammer.

“Or bump out a dormer upstairs,” said Martha.

And who would pay for the lumber and nails? Jack took his time feeding the baby another bite and carefully scraping the spoon around his lips. As the oldest son, he would inherit one day, but along with the rickety house and mortgage would be the responsibility of his siblings, which appeared year after year without fail. One day he hoped to support his own children, but not like this. Not with scrimping and scraping by, spending every shilling on bare necessities. “I don’t want this house, Da.”