The Witch Of Willow Hall. Hester Fox
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course, of course. Glad to meet you, Mr. Pierce.” Father pumps his hand, grateful for more men with whom he can talk business.
“I hope I’m not being a terrible intruder,” Mr. Pierce says with a crooked smile. Catherine all but jumps at the chance to assure him that he is no such thing, relinquishing her position next to Mr. Barrett, which she had only just taken up. I catch Mother’s eye.
With lank chestnut hair, full lips quirked at the corners and penetrating hazel eyes, he’s the antithesis of serious Mr. Barrett. He turns his smile to Catherine, and Mr. Barrett is forgotten completely. What a fool she is.
I take up Catherine’s abandoned position. “Have you lived in New Oldbury long?” I ask Mr. Barrett just as Ada creeps in to announce dinner is ready.
“I’m sorry?” He doesn’t catch what I was saying, and then everyone is moving into the dining room. Before I can repeat myself, Emeline runs up and takes his hand, leading him to sit next to her.
Catherine slips into the seat on his other side, and an extra chair is brought for Mr. Pierce. I’m between him and Mother on the opposite side of the table, Father at the head. I might as well be in the next town over.
“Mr. Pierce,” Father says, sawing away at his loin roast, “are you in the milling business too, then? I don’t believe I’ve heard your name mentioned in that circuit.”
“I’m afraid not. Barrett here is the man with a mind for business,” he says. “I’m rather useless at the moment. I finished at Harvard last spring, and now I’m something of a boat without an anchor, drifting about looking for some occupation.”
“I’ve been showing August the ropes at the mill, but I’m not sure it’s exciting enough for him,” Mr. Barrett says with a smile.
They’re so comfortable together. I can’t help but be jealous of their companionship. It’s Mr. Pierce I’m jealous of, really, to be able to talk with Mr. Barrett like that. I imagine them together, sitting relaxed in an office, Pierce with his boots up on the desk, fiddling with a pen and recounting some funny story. John—I can call him John, it’s my castle in the air after all—standing by the window, running his hand absently through that thick wave of amber-gold hair as he cracks a smile.
Mr. Pierce grins, lopsided and boyish. “Nonsense. If excitement was what I was after, I wouldn’t be in New Oldbury.”
“And what did you study at Harvard, Mr. Pierce?” Catherine is still playing her ridiculous role of gentle lady, speaking with downcast lashes and a demure tone that is anything but natural for her.
“Law. It’s the family business. My father passed away some years ago and my uncle runs the firm now. It only took me a month to know that it wasn’t for me. Too many documents and days spent in a stuffy office. Not for me,” he repeats with a wink in Catherine’s direction. “In any case, there wasn’t much to keep me in Boston. My mother is bedridden since a fever took the use of her legs some years ago.”
If Mr. Pierce is from Boston I wonder that he hasn’t heard the rumors. But he’s good-humored and warm, and doesn’t seem to have any inkling that he’s seated among the most notorious family in Boston. Perhaps Harvard kept him too occupied to engage in gossip.
Mother puts down her fork and tries to offer her sympathy, but he stops her with a casual wave of his knife. “Don’t fret on her account. Mother has thrown herself into the occupation of invalid with her characteristic vigor and dedication. She has the whole household on pins and needles. It quite suits her. So you see, when John mentioned he might show me the mill business, I jumped at the opportunity.”
“Well,” Catherine says with a coquettish smile, “how lucky for us that you did.”
Father, ever late to pick up on the social cues around him, is finally catching on to Catherine’s game. He colors slightly and hurries to steer the conversation to safer ground. Standing to pour more wine he adds, “Well, there’s value in a good lawyer, I would say.”
Mr. Barrett raises his glass in a toast, graciously saying that the law has lost a fine son in August. Catherine hangs on their every word, laughing a little too loudly when someone makes a light remark, smiling a little too eagerly when Mr. Pierce’s hazel eyes flicker in her direction.
Emeline, who had begged Mother not to make her eat with Ada in the kitchen tonight, looks as if she’s regretting winning that fight. Her eyes are heavy and she’s in danger of falling asleep in her plate. I give her a nudge under the table and she jerks back up.
“I think we’ll start seeing more mills sprouting up along the river now that the power looms have proved such a success in Waltham,” Mr. Barrett says. He cuts his meat briskly into even pieces. “As we speak, Chelmsford is expanding and breaking ground on a new venture. I see no reason why New Oldbury shouldn’t be any different. We have the unique advantage of a river unspoiled by nearby cities after all.”
Father leans back in his chair, hands resting comfortably on his paunch. “Do you see?” he asks of no one in particular. “That war with the Brits had some benefits. They blocked up our coast and inhibited the cotton trade, so by God we got to work and made our own cotton. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and nothing breeds necessity like the trials of war. It’s bright young minds like Barrett’s here that are going to ensure we continue industrialization and become a power to be reckoned with.”
Mr. Barrett colors slightly, but reaches for his wineglass and raises a brow in acknowledgment of Father’s words. Otherwise the praise rolls off his back.
“Hear, hear,” agrees Mr. Pierce.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Father says, plowing on. “We’re going to have to buy out some of those farmers with parcels that abut the river. Take Ezra Clarke for example. He’s got the fastest cut of river running through his land, and he’s squandering it, letting that sickly handful of cattle nibble away at the field. A man ought to put his land to best use or give it up, that’s what I think.”
Mr. Barrett makes a polite noise of demurral, but adds nothing else.
I think of the dilapidated mill where we met Mr. Barrett, and seize my opportunity to join in the conversation, grasping at the only thing I know about him. “Is that why your father’s mill isn’t active any longer? He started fresh with the new technology and built the new mill upriver?”
Mr. Barrett pauses, his wineglass half raised to his lips. His face darkens. “No,” he says shortly. “My father went bankrupt, and the wool mill was forced to close.”
Catherine shoots me daggers, and Mother gives me a warning look. Undeterred, I blunder on. “Well,” I say, “he’s lucky to have a son who knows so much about the cotton industry. I daresay he must be happy with your new venture.”
An unmistakable tension thickens the air and I realize I’ve somehow misstepped, said the wrong thing. Father is boiling up the color of lobster and Mr. Pierce opens his mouth to say something, but Mr. Barrett quickly silences them both.
“My father is dead, Miss Montrose,” he says without meeting my eye. “I’d like to think the advancements I’ve put in place would have made him proud though.”
“I’m sure they would,” coos Catherine. She says something about how he must take us on a tour of the mill sometime, and then moves the conversation to the subject of printed cotton in fashion this year. I don’t hear what they say as I push my food around on my plate. Mr. Barrett is equally silent. The rest of dinner drags on for an eternity, and I can’t even begrudge Catherine her winning the night; after all, she saved me from further embarrassment.
* * *
After dinner, we retire to the parlor where Ada brings in coffee and little bowls of frothy syllabub, Emeline’s favorite dessert. It’s so unbearably hot, and it’s all I can do to sit still without wiping at my brow constantly. Even Emeline, usually full of energy, is subdued, hanging over the arm of her chair, looking as if she’s about to melt away into the carpet.