Today's Reading
"These are marvelous. Winterton's riddled with drafts, colder inside than out. Do you have electricity throughout too?"
"Everywhere," said my father. "You don't, at Winterton Hall?"
"Only the main rooms. Hell of a job—sixteenth-century walls don't lend themselves to wiring."
My father gave a low whistle. "That old? Upkeep must be summat terrible."
"It's never-ending."
"You want to do what we did here," said my father. "Knock the whole thing down and build new. Save you money in the long run."
For a moment, Frederick looked as though my father had suggested he eat a small child for breakfast. I had the impression he was choosing his words carefully when he replied.
"You've done a tremendous job here, no doubt about it. But when the place has been in the family for four centuries, it gives one a certain responsibility to the generations who've gone before and the ones to come."
I should've paid a lot more attention to that remark, and the look, but he quickly smiled and said, "I imagine it's much the same with a business like yours."
"Oh aye," said my father. "Nowt I'd like more than to hand it on to a son, when the time comes, but it wasn't to be. Our Elinor's got a cracking head for business, mind you—it was her idea to go into printed cottons and get the premium ourselves, instead of handing it to the printworks. Just a pity she wasn't a boy."
He threw me a warning glance, but I'd no thought to start that row again. I'd argued it till I was blue in the face, but more from frustration than any real expectation that I could change his mind. Because the truth was, I knew he was right. The trade would never accept a woman at the head of Haywards, and the solution he'd found, bequeathing the company in trust for the workers, with a management committee I could be part of, was the best I could hope for, when the time came.
Anyway, Frederick had obviously heard enough about cotton, because he politely changed the subject, complimenting the apple charlotte and asking if we had our own orchards.
I nearly fell off my chair when, as he was ready to leave, he asked if he could have a word with my father. Surely he couldn't mean...I'd known he might have intentions, but I'd imagined a lot more snatched glances when my father wasn't looking before things went any further.
I paced the drawing room floor, my stomach jumping and jittering like I'd swallowed a bat. Then the door opened, my father winked at me, and I knew.
* * *
Next morning, I was a cat on tacks. He was to come at eleven, and I didn't want to be running downstairs all red and flustered if he was early, so by half past ten I was in the drawing room. Sitting first on one couch, then the other, arranging and rearranging my skirts, jumping up to check my hair in the mirror, and then having to arrange them all over again.
We'd talked, me and my father, about how sudden it all was.
"Imagine you and Mam deciding to marry so quickly."
My father laughed. "It's not as though you've to save to make a home, like we did. But it's up to you—it's a good match, but you've no need to say yes unless you're sure you want to."
But you see, I did want to. I was dreaming of love, as most nineteen-year-old girls are. Frederick was so charming, I was half dizzy with the excitement of it, and the suddenness only made it more romantic—show me a girl who'd choose a sensible long courtship over a man who couldn't wait to make her his wife. And though I was sure my father meant it when he said it was up to me, I wanted to make him proud.
Frederick arrived on time and said, with a sheepish smile, "I think you know why I'm here."
I nodded, my cheeks warm.
"Then I won't witter on about the weather. I'll come straight to the point and ask if you'll do me the honor of becoming my wife."
What?
Wasn't he supposed to say he loved me first? Even the first time Mr. Darcy proposed to Elizabeth, when he was so begrudging, he said that. My surprise must have shown.
"Your father thought you were agreeable, but if he was mistaken—"
The disappointment on his face said what his words hadn't. Perhaps in real life people didn't say the other thing out loud, or not yet, anyway.
"My father wasn't mistaken."
...
