Page 29 of Through Darkened Clouds

“I’m going to London today,” Mr. Thornton calmly announced at breakfast before taking another sip of tea, keeping his eyes averted from his mother’s scrutiny.

“You’re pursuing a contract?” she asked.

He pondered his answer. “In a manner of speaking, yes. But not the sort of which you are thinking.” He finally lifted his eyes to meet hers.

She saw his reason at once. Her shoulders drooped. “Why?” she asked plaintively.

He held her gaze for a moment and then looked away. “Mr. Bell came from London yesterday to speak to me. He gave me reason to believe she may…accept.”

“But has she not already made her feelings about you quite clear?”

The remark lashed his heart with the vivid memory of Miss Hale’s rejection nearly a year ago. He let out a long breath. How was it that his dear mother possessed the ability to stamp upon his fragile hope?

Reason swiftly told him his mother only meant to protect him from heartache. But he had already suffered from that ailment every day and night since she had rejected his love. There would be no cure to avoid further pain. Mr. Bell had laid before him the possibility of wiping all pain away—nay, the possibility of fulfilling what he had long dreamed of and had tried to forget.

“Mr. Bell!” she huffed when he remained silent. “Has he not given you enough trouble with all the Hales’ business?”

Mr. Thornton recoiled from his mother’s bitterness. He wished his mother would like Miss Hale.

“I should tell you that Mr. Bell came to explain Miss Hale’s actions on that evening she was seen with a man,” he began.

Mrs. Thornton kept quiet, eager to hear this explanation and how it affected her son.

“I did not tell you before…I did not think it pertinent any longer—but Miss Hale has a brother.”

“A brother! Where is he? Why was this kept secret?”

He explained all while finishing his eggs and toast. The accusation of Frederick’s mutiny and his permanent exile made her eyes widen.

Mrs. Thornton’s manner softened at last, as she now comprehended why the girl had boldly repelled being chastised. But why had Margaret not explained herself? It irritated the widow to remember how eagerly she had gone to reprimand the girl.

“But what has all this to do with you?” she persisted, as he sipped the last drops of his tea and rose from his seat.

Mr. Thornton could not help breaking into a soft smile. “She has no other lover. And Mr. Bell has given me reason to believe she may have had a change of heart.”

He stepped close and took her hand in one of his. “I am tempted to hope, Mother,” he said, his eyes pleading for assurance.

Her heart twisted to see him thus. Swallowing her doubts, she clasped his fingers, giving him a half-smile. But she prayed this venture would not cast him once more into a pit of impenetrable darkness.

The steady clacking of the train and the gentle rumble beneath the floor of the train car calmed Mr. Thornton. The acrid smell of burning coal and constant mechanical noise imitated the factory setting to which he was accustomed.

He glanced out the window, the forward motion apparent in the passing hedgerows and the occasional flash of a tree as the train raced by it at twenty-five miles per hour.

It was the train’s swift clip towards southern regions that caused his skin to tingle with anxiety. There was no turning back now. Locked in this moving carriage on steel tracks, he moved closer and closer towards the object of his quest.

His being had thrummed with thrilling hope since Mr. Bell had spoken to him. And throughout last evening, he had vacillated between soaring certainty to quavering doubt.

Now, when he had set in motion his determination to discover his fate once and for all, doubts crept in with sinking fervor. She had never approved of him. Only on that last day, when she had been filled with grief, had she spoken gentle words to him. Before that time, they had only ever clashed in various timbres of intensity.

How could he expect her to love him when she had little respect for his work and his standing? He had turned it over and over in his mind since Mr. Bell had hinted at her change of heart, but he could not fathom it.

So why was he here, on so daring a venture as to put himself in front of her again—to lay his heart before once more—when she had thrown away his devotion as though it were nothing all those months ago?

At every stop, he questioned whether he should continue on, or if he should forgo this lunacy and retreat to his stone house.

A little girl coughed across from him, breaking his tortuous musing.

He turned to smile at her, noting the pretty blond curls that hung from under her traveling cap.