Once More, Miranda Read online

  “You’re blushing, Miss James,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  I shook my head. I gathered up some books and carried them over to the bookcase. My hands trembled slightly as I set the books alongside the others on the shelf. Jeffrey Mowrey watched me, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

  “I guess I’d better go join my son before he drives poor Bradley mad,” he said after a moment. “If I don’t take him for a ride the young scoundrel will never stop plaguing me. Do you ride, Miss James?”

  I shook my head again. “I’ve never been on a horse.”

  “Pity. We’ll have to take long walks instead.”

  What did he mean by that? I looked at him, bewildered, and he came over to me and took both my hands in his. He squeezed them gently, and I caught my breath.

  “Douglas was right, Miss James. You look much better with your hair down. See that you wear it that way in the future. That’s an order.”

  His voice was low and melodious, making gentle fun of me. He let go of my hands and nodded amiably and then sauntered out of the room. He seemed to take the sunlight with him.

  Jeffrey Mowrey visited the nursery the next morning, and the next, and I soon grew accustomed to his presence. Sitting casually on one of the stools, arms folded across his chest, he smiled at Doug’s efforts to add and subtract the simplest numbers. He listened attentively when I read the geography lessons. When we “performed” with the cutout figures, he made a most attentive audience. After the first day, Doug was completely at ease in his father’s presence, showing off a bit and much better behaved than he ordinarily was, but I was never at ease.

  I knew that I loved him. I knew it was a hopeless, futile love and one I must keep carefully concealed. After a while I was able to control all of those beautiful, bewildering emotions that besieged me whenever he was near, and I was able to present a cool, unruffled demeanor, but it was never easy. Once, when we were coloring new figures for the toy theater, I happened to glance up and see him studying me with a curious expression in his eyes. He looked away immediately, but I puzzled over it for hours. There had been admiration in those gentle blue eyes, and there had been something else as well, something I couldn’t quite identify.

  I told myself I had imagined it.

  Douglas and I had planned a picnic for Tuesday afternoon. His father decided to accompany us, and Cook packed an abundant basket with cheese, sausage, chicken, brown rolls, jam tarts sprinkled with powdered sugar and various kinds of fruit. The basket was so heavy I could hardly lift it. Jeffrey Mowrey took it by the handle, thrust a slender bottle of wine among the napkins and led the way across the gardens and onto the moors beyond.

  “It seems an eternity since I’ve been on a picnic,” he remarked.

  “We have ’em lots of times!” Douglas exclaimed.

  “Them,” I said. “Speak correctly or don’t speak at all.”

  “Honora’s awful mean sometimes,” he told his father. “I like her anyway.”

  “I like her, too,” his father said.

  He glanced at me and smiled. Silent music seemed to fill my soul, swelling inside, and I seemed to be walking through a silver haze. No love is stronger, more magical than first love, the very newness opening vistas of splendor, allowing one to see with new eyes, and it was as though I had been half asleep before love awakened all my senses. Had I ever fully appreciated the pure, pale blue of the sky, the sparkle of silver yellow sunlight on leaf and stone and grass? Had I ever noticed the faint purple tinge on the brownish gray grass, the streaks of rust and dried green moss on those enormous gray boulders? The moors were beautiful, beautiful. How could I ever have thought them stark and barren?

  Douglas raced ahead of us in exuberant anticipation, disappearing around a group of boulders, and Jeffrey Mowrey and I were momentarily alone. He walked in a long, athletic stride, swinging the basket at his side. He was wearing a pair of old brown boots, faded tan breeches, a thin white cotton shirt that was a bit too large, bagging over the snug waistband of his breeches, the very full sleeves ballooning at the wrists. His blond hair gleamed darkly in the sun, unruly in the wind. I felt an uneasy tremor, and there was an aching sensation inside.

  Despite the books I had read and the worldly chatter of the older girls at school, despite Mrs. Rawson’s frequent and often graphic talk about matters of the flesh, I had only a vague idea of what went on between a man and a woman after the kissing was over and more intimate embraces began. Chaucer was very informative, Shakespeare, too, and the works of Mrs. Aphra Behn revealed much, but the specifics remained a mystery to me. Writers called it the sublime completion, and I understood that I was only half complete now. These new sensations would not cease until Jeffrey Mowrey took me in that intimate embrace and made me whole.

  “You’re very quiet, Miss James,” he said.

  “I—I’m afraid I was lost in thought.”

  “Care to share your thoughts?” he asked.

  I shook my head, lowering my eyes demurely. He would never know how I felt about him. I would never dare reveal those feelings by action or word. He was from one of England’s finest families, his blood the bluest of blue, and I was the daughter of a greengrocer and his wife. Had the Reverend Mr. Williams not used his influence to get me into the school, I would probably be working in a shop now myself. I could dream, I could revel in his nearness and savor the delight of his presence, but I was doomed to remain incomplete. I accepted that.

  Douglas came racing back to join us and declared that he had found a perfect spot for our picnic, leading us to a flat, grassy stretch beyond the boulders. His father agreed that it was an ideal spot. He set the basket down. I took out the large tablecloth and began to arrange things on it. Douglas dashed about, full of high spirits, and his father stretched out on the grass, long, lazy, completely at ease.

  “I’m dreadfully hungry,” he confessed.

  “There’s certainly enough food,” I replied. “Cook has outdone herself.”

  “I want one of those tarts!” Douglas exclaimed. “I want it before anything else!”

  “You’ll have your sweet last,” I told him.

  “I don’t want any of the other things. I’ll just eat the tarts.”

  “I’m afraid you shan’t,” I said. “You’ll sit down and be quiet and eat a chicken leg and a roll and a bit of sausage, and if you eat it all you may have a tart.”

  “The biggest,” he added, “that fat one on top.”

  Jeffrey Mowrey smiled at his son. The sky arched overhead, a pale blue almost white, and sunlight sparkled on grass and rock. The grass rustled quietly in the breeze, taking on a distinct purple tinge in the distance where the ground sloped up to the hillside surmounted by the ancient Roman ruins. I ate very little, nibbling at a piece of chicken, sitting on the grass with my skirts spread out around me in a circle. Douglas ate quickly, eager to have his tart. Jeffrey Mowrey displayed a hearty appetite.

  After finishing his tart, Douglas asked permission to go look for colored rocks. It was granted, with the stipulation that he not go so far he couldn’t hear me call. The child raced away, free, unfettered, bursting with energy. I watched him pursue a wild rabbit, watched him pause to search the ground, finally stooping to pick up a tiny stone.

  “He has quite a collection of colored rocks,” I said, “black ones, brown ones, one a deep maroon. One day he found an ancient Roman coin. It was green with age.”

  “The Romans had a military outpost up there on top of the hill,” Jeffrey said. “The ruins are quite fascinating. I’ll have to show them to you one day soon.”

  “That would be—interesting,” I replied.

  He took two glasses from the basket and uncorked the bottle of wine, pouring it. It was pale amber, sparkling in the crystal glass he handed to me. I took a sip. It had a sharp, delicious tang, and almost immediately a wonderful glow seemed to steal through me.

  “Robert’s best. I raided the wine cellar before we left.”

  I sipped the w
ine in silence, gazing up at the sky. A brown bird circled slowly, slowly against the blue, growing smaller and smaller as it climbed. The grass rustled. I turned to look at Douglas, far in the distance now, scrutinizing the ground with hands thrust into his pockets. I didn’t look at Jeffrey Mowrey, but I could feel him looking at me. I finished the glass of wine, a tremulous feeling inside. The wine helped.

  “Another glass?” he inquired.

  “I—I’d better not.”

  It was easy enough to maintain my cool demeanor when we were in the nursery, when Douglas was with us and I was busy with my work, but now that we were alone I was incredibly ill at ease. Several minutes passed in silence, and the silence only made things worse.

  “Are—are you happy to be home?” I asked.

  “In a way,” he replied. “It’s good to be with Douglas. I’ve spent far too little time with him. I’ve been unfair to him. After my wife died, it was—extremely difficult for me to go on.”

  I made no reply. Jeffrey Mowrey looked down at the glass of wine he held in his hand, gazing into the clear liquid as though hoping to find some kind of answer there, and then he sighed, raised the glass to his lips and emptied it. I saw the pain in his eyes.

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time at the factory,” I said, hoping to distract him from the grief I knew he still felt deeply. “Mrs. Rawson told me you go there almost every afternoon.”

  He nodded. “Robert insists. I—I suppose I go merely to pacify him. What I see there breaks my heart—the conditions those people work under—men passing out from the heat of the furnaces, women standing on their feet for twelve hours, fainting from exhaustion and lack of fresh air, small children working in squalid, stuffy rooms, packing pottery. They—they don’t always have time to get outside to the sheds when they need to—” Delicacy made him hesitate, but I knew what he meant. “The stench is unbelievable. They’ve been breathing it so long they’ve become immune to it, but—”

  Again he hesitated, his mouth tight.

  “Is—isn’t there anything you can do?” I asked.

  “I used to think so,” he retorted. “I begged my brother to make reforms. He laughed at me. ‘You can’t pamper these people, Jeffery,’ he told me. ‘You do and they get slack, get impertinent, start expecting even more. You have to use an iron hand and use it constantly. You can’t let up or production will go to hell.’ I argued with him. He called me a fool, a dreamer, told me I’d best leave such matters to him. I was very young at the time, but—I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  He stared into space for a few moments, and when he finally continued there was undeniable bitterness in that gentle voice.

  “I continued to think about it all the time I was at Oxford,” he told me. “Unknown to Robert, I visited several other factories—not just pottery works, all sorts of factories—and I found conditions there almost as bad. I made a study, and I eventually drew up plans for renovations I felt should be made at the pottery works. Small, stuffy rooms would be consolidated into large rooms with banks of windows to let in the fresh air and sunshine. Facilities would be installed. Dozens of safety precautions would be introduced, new furnaces, conveyor belts to bring the clay up from the pits and eliminate the wheelbarrows and dangerous wooden ramps. My dream factory would be the safest and the most modern in England.”

  Doug shouted merrily in the distance, chasing another rabbit. The grass rustled. Another bird was circling against the sky.

  “It wasn’t an idle dream,” Jeffrey Mowrey told me. “I spent almost two years working out those plans. I drew up a list of proposals, too. Higher pay would give the workers more incentive and eliminate the need for children working. Various raises for individual industry and accomplishment would give them even more incentive, and shorter hours would actually enable them to work more. Men and women reeling from exhaustion can’t produce—” He shook his head, gazing into space again.

  “What did your brother say?” I asked quietly.

  He didn’t answer my question directly. “I obtained a set of the original blueprints for the factory, and a friend of mine from Oxford helped me draw up new ones. He hadn’t had any commissions yet, true, but together we were able to draw a set of blueprints incorporating all the renovations with very few alterations to the basic structure. When—after I came back to Cornwall, shortly after the wedding, I gave the blueprints to my brother along with my list of proposals. He was very patient while—while I explained my dream. When I had finished he told me I was still a goddamned fool when it came to business, that I was becoming dangerously radical as well.”

  “Radical?”

  “Pampering the workers, giving them higher wages, shorter hours, renovating the pottery works—it would bring every factory owner in England down on his head. Their workers would demand similar changes, and there would be riots all over the country. Not only would we go bankrupt, we would likely be strung up as well. I—I saw that it was utterly futile. I saw that I would never be able to convince him. He stuck the blueprints and my list of proposals away in the bottom drawer of his desk, and—I guess you’d say I just gave up.”

  “And now?”

  “Robert insists I spend time at the factory. I need to ‘learn the business.’ He plans for me to take over one day, you see—and Douglas afterward. If I thought there was a chance of realizing my dream, I would—” Again he hesitated, his eyes grim. “Robert would like for me to work with him, yes, but he would always maintain complete control. Fifteen, twenty years from now I would take over, but in the meantime I would—I might help run the factory, but Robert would make all the decisions. I’d have no real say in matters.”

  “You—you have other plans?”

  “I’ve been giving more and more thought to the diplomatic service. I’ve made several influential friends in my travels, and I’ve always been interested in—in performing some kind of real service to my country. I’ve sent out a few letters of inquiry, but—no, I have no definite plans. Not yet. I go to the factory to keep peace in the family, but I know I shan’t stay here. When the time comes I—I’ll break the news to Robert somehow. I love my brother and I’m very grateful to him, but he, can be—” He paused, searching for the right word. “He can be extremely possessive.”

  “I see.”

  “He loves me. He only wants what’s best for me, but his ideas of what’s best are—they aren’t mine. He raised me, you know. I guess you could say he has devoted most of his adult life to me, and—I’m not complaining, mind you, but a—a man has to live his own life. Robert means well, and I don’t want to hurt him, but—”

  Jeffrey Mowrey cut himself short as though it were too painful to continue. He finally poured another glass of wine, emptying the bottle. I sensed that he was fighting a silent battle inside, and I wished there was something I could do to help. He was silent for a long while, frowning, and when he looked at me again those beautiful eyes were full of determination.

  “I’m all he has,” he said, “and that’s unfortunate. For such a long time there were just the two of us, and that was enough for Robert, but I’m grown now and it—it can’t be that way any longer. He’s going to have to accept that.”

  There was another long silence. I thought about all he had told me, understanding better now. The bird was a tiny brown speck against the blue white sky. Douglas was climbing a boulder in the distance. Sunlight bathed the moors with silvery light. Jeffrey Mowrey finished his wine. The frown was gone. He seemed more relaxed.

  “Forgive me for going on so,” he said. “I—I don’t usually talk so much. You’ve heard about me, Miss James. Now tell me about yourself.”

  “I’m afraid you’d find it very boring.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “I don’t know where to begin—”

  “The Reverend Mr. Williams told me your parents ran a greengrocer’s shop. I understand they were very loving, very devout. He was in Bath before he came to Cornwall, I know, and he said he had know
n you since you were a little girl. A very bright little girl, he told me.”

  “You—you asked him about me?”

  “Yesterday. I stopped by to see him after I left the factory. He gave me quite a scolding for not coming to see him earlier and added that he expected to see me at services next Sunday. He’s a wonderful man.”

  “He used his influence to get me into the school after—after my parents died,” I said. “I worked for them in exchange for the privilege of attending classes.”

  Perhaps it was the wine, but I suddenly found myself telling him about the school, the students, the classes I eventually conducted. I was the poorest girl there, of course, little more than a scullery maid at first, but I hadn’t minded too much. There had been an extensive library, and I had read every single book at least once, stealing extra candles from the pantry so I could stay up half the night, devouring books in my attic room. Several kind ladies in the parish had seen to my clothes, sending parcels of hand-me-downs I was able to alter to fit me.

  “It was a hard life,” I admitted, “particularly after Reverend Williams left for Cornwall, but—it could have been much worse. I could have been sent to an orphanage. I was eventually given classes of my own to conduct, teaching the youngest girls.”

  I paused, looking into the past. Jeffrey Mowrey watched me with grave, thoughtful eyes, sincerely interested.

  “They wanted me to stay on at the school,” I continued after a moment. “I intended to, but then the Reverend’s letter arrived and—I decided to become a governess instead.”

  “I’m very glad you made that decision, Miss James.”

  His lovely, melodic voice was low, intimate, and I had the feeling he was about to say something more when Douglas came scurrying to join us, tremendously excited about the rocks he’d found and chattering nonstop. I packed the basket, shook out the cloth and placed it on top, and we started back toward Mowrey House.