Chapter Text
Part I
“Oh, Margaret! How shall I ever survive parting from you?”
Margaret Hale braced herself against the force of her cousin’s embrace, finding herself briefly suffocated by Edith’s perfumed merino scarf.
“We shall be reunited soon,” Margaret murmured into the fine wool. She gave her cousin a squeeze. “I will be counting the days.”
Sniffling, Edith released Margaret and stepped backwards. Margaret took the opportunity to take in the sight of her cousin, so like a sister to her. In truth, she did not know when she would see her again.
Just over a year ago, Margaret had moved hundreds of miles away from her cousin’s home in London, accompanying her parents to a northern manufacturing town called Milton. It had been an eventful year—tumultuous and trying—and they very nearly did not travel back to London for Christmastime.
Indeed, it had been on the tip of her tongue to refuse a visit altogether when her father had suggested she go alone—she briefly thought to persuade him to travel to Oxford for a visit to his old friend, Mr. Bell, in the spring instead—but she surprised even herself when she impulsively suggested that a joint visit to family in London might do them both some good.
Her father had agreed without hesitation. “That will be exactly the thing, won’t it, Margaret?” he had said cheerfully, and she found herself hoping that this trip could be what he needed to find some happiness after the death of her mother four months ago.
The visit was indeed “the thing", and had lasted three weeks. Too short. Margaret would have stayed longer, and so would have Mr Hale, but life beckoned back in Milton. Mr Hale had his students waiting for him; Margaret was more and more anxious to look in on her friends and the four orphaned children they were caring for.
And then, of course, there was also him.
But before she could think on him—before she could relive the bite in his tone as he assured her that "any foolish passion on his part was entirely over”—a final hug from Edith brought Margaret back to the present, standing beneath the Euston Arch leading to the train platforms.
Margaret and her father bid Edith, Aunt Shaw, and Edith’s husband Captain Lennox goodbye before entering the station and queuing at the booking office.
“This was just what we needed, eh, Margaret?” her father said jovially, as they made their way slowly up the queue. “There is nothing like some time spent with family.”
Margaret thought about the evenings her father spent with Aunt Shaw, who was her mother’s sister, holed up in the drawing room. He had often emerged red-eyed and red-nosed, but always with a weak smile, assuring Margaret they had just been doing some remembering together. She suspected it had been restorative for him, and for that she was grateful.
“Still,” he said. “It will be good to return to the routine. And to visit your mother—that will be fine indeed.”
“Yes, Papa. She would like some roses for the new year, I think.”
Mr Hale smiled at that, and his features—so drawn, so strained as of late—softened into the countenance of a year prior, back when he was so hopeful of Mrs Hale’s recovery of health, and of the new beginnings they might find in a new city. “Wouldn’t she!” he agreed with a breathless laugh. Yes, indeed, reminiscing with his sister-in-law must have done him good.
The queue shifted forward, and they were at the ticket counter at last. In short order, Mr Hale had purchased their passage, their luggage was handed over and carted away to be loaded onto the train, and Margaret found herself seated on a polished wooden bench in the waiting room designated for the boarding platform.
Margaret glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. Another half-hour before their set departure, which meant that they would likely be due to board very soon. She shifted towards her father.
“You must tell me, Papa,” she said lightly, “What are you looking forward to the most this year?”
Mr Hale gave her a tender look, then looked away, pondering in silence. “Human connection,” he replied, after a moment. “I think that, above all else. And you, my dear?”
“I think the same,” she replied. “I do miss Mary, and the Boucher children. I am sure Mary is in need of my help. I should like to hear how their Christmas was, and if they did anything to celebrate—not everyone does, you know.”
“Do you think Mr Higgins the sort to demand a Christmas dinner?” Mr Hale joked, and they both laughed at the idea of Nicholas Higgins directing the placement of yuletide decorations, but it was not an unbecoming thought.
“They are a very modest family, but hardworking. I would not be altogether surprised if some effort was put forth.”
Mr Hale patted his daughter’s hand lightly. “You are right, dear Margaret. And I should like to hear all about it as well.” He cleared his throat. “I look forward to restarting my lessons, too, you know. I so enjoy a good discussion. And I do hope that—“ he broke off here, and glanced uneasily at his daughter.
Margaret nodded. “You hope…”
Mr Hale shook his head. “I beg your pardon. I was not thinking.”
Margaret frowned. “No, no, Papa. Please tell me your hope.”
“It is only…” his voice trailed off again, and he shifted, clearly uneasy. “I should not want you to be uncomfortable…”
Realization dawned. Margaret’s pulse quickened, but she forced a light-hearted chuckle. “Papa, please. Do not make yourself uneasy on my account. If it is Mr Thornton you are thinking of, you must know that I would not be bothered by his regular presence at the house again. I know his visits mean a lot to you—and I believe to him, as well.” She paused. “I have already told you, I do not want to be the cause of any lost friendship!” She smiled. “Besides, it is no trial to greet him at the door and bring him upstairs to your study. I need not join you for tea, if I do not want to.”
“You are too good, Margaret. I do miss my lessons with him. But I fear he has been rather too strained by business demands to keep our appointments.”
There was not much to say to this, so instead Margaret offered to go buy her father the day’s paper for the long train ride that waited them. He expressed his gratitude at the idea, and pressed a coin into her waiting palm. Margaret rose, left the waiting room, and sought out the nearest bookstall.
As she sourced a newspaper for her father, Margaret tried to keep thoughts of Mr Thornton from entering her mind. So what if he did begin his lessons anew?— she would not mind. In fact, she hoped he did. The idea that he had stopped them because of her was one that caused her great pain.
But then thinking of him at all seemed to cause her pain—an odd, clenching ache in the left side of her chest, where she was sure her heart must reside. She thought achingly of their last meeting in late November, when her godfather Mr Bell was visiting, and Mr Thornton had rebuked her so strongly. “Is Miss Hale so remarkable for truth?” he had spat aloud to the whole room, to the great confusion of everyone present.
Margaret felt a deep sadness at the memory. She had always strived for truthfulness, but Mr Thornton had caught her in a lie—and one she was forced to tell to protect her family. It had happened just after her mother’s death in early October, not long at all before he ceased his visits to her father’s study. For her brother Fred, a criminal in the eyes of the Crown, exiled of his own volition to Spain to avoid hanging, had secretly visited their home in Milton to say good-bye to their dying mother. Upon Mr Hale’s insistence, Fred’s presence was kept secret from everyone, Mr Thornton included.
As it happened, Mr Thornton had seen Margaret bid her brother farewell at the train station after dark—and worse, her brother had been involved in an altercation that drew the attention of the local constables. Margaret was questioned by the law, and forced to lie further to protect her brother, and Mr Thornton—
Well, he lied for her.
Margaret knew what he thought. Mr Thornton supposed he had seen her with a lover, and that Margaret was protecting her secret beau at the cost of her own integrity.
Mr Thornton, who had declared himself in love with her and offered his hand five months ago—only to be vehemently refused, for at the time she had grossly misunderstood him—believed that Margaret was some shameful, fallen woman.
And yet, he lied for her. He, the magistrate assigned to this incident involving her brother, had the whole thing dismissed merely to save her the shame of continuing her disgraceful lie.
Why had he done it? Surely, he could not love her still. He did not love her still— she knew this, and the sound of his voice as he had told her such, in no uncertain terms, when he confronted her later on, still rang harshly in her ears.
The words. The ones she could not forget.
“Any foolish passion on my part is entirely over,” he had said. "That is all given up; all passed away. You believe me, Miss Hale?”
She remembered the sting in her eyes of approaching tears; the lump in her throat. Her struggle to press down the wild, aching melancholy in her heart as he strode away down the street.
So involved in this memory was she, that upon re-entering the waiting room, it took some moments for Margaret to notice that a large figure, dressed all in black, had taken a seat next to her father. As she approached, she saw with no small amount of shock that it was John Thornton himself who sat on the bench.
How can this be—! she thought, wondering wildly if she had somehow called him all the way to London merely by how often she had been thinking of him.
Their eyes met, and he stood, his steely grey eyes searching her face, his stern face set in grim lines as he studied her. “Miss Hale,” he greeted her, nodding.
“Mr Thornton,” she said in reply, offering a polite curtsy. “What an unexpected pleasure to see you here, in London.”
“Is not that something, my dear?” her father effused, still sitting. “And we were just speaking of him, too! He entered the room only minutes after you left.”
Margaret was nearly speechless in her surprise. Mr Thornton looked nearly as shocked, himself. She took a seat across from her father and observed him settling back into his own seat at her movement.
“Your father says you have been visiting London these last three weeks,” Mr Thornton said, stiffly.
Margaret looked up at him. She was a little offended that he did not already know they had been traveling. She supposed he really had given up any thought of her, but she would like to hear that he had kept apprised of her father, as his friend.
“We… yes. To visit my aunt and cousin, on my mother’s side.”
“I hope they were a great comfort to you during the holidays.”
“Thank you, Mr Thornton. They were.” The three of them fell silent. She grappled for something else to say. “And… did you have a nice Christmas?”
“Very quiet,” he replied. “But pleasant enough.” Then, as though he could read her mind, he added, “I knew you were traveling, of course. We were not certain if you were traveling outside of London.”
“We?”
“Higgins… and his family.” Mr Thornton cleared his throat and looked away, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. His color was high, as though he was embarrassed. Margaret could not say why, but she strived for a subject change.
Fortunately, her father stepped in. “As I said, Thornton, Margaret and I were just discussing how we hope to see more of you in this new year. She had just asked me, in fact, of my hopes for the new year. ‘Human connection’, I said, and Margaret is much in agreement.”
Mr Thornton met her eyes. “Is that so?”
“Quite so,” replied Mr Hale, on Margaret’s behalf. “And what of you, Mr Thornton? Do you have any hopes for eighteen-fifty-two?”
Still holding Margaret’s gaze, Mr Thornton replied dully, “Nothing extraordinary. If I manage to keep the mill from failing, I will be a satisfied man.”
Mr Hale frowned at this reply. “Oh, dear. Have things taken a turn then—?”
At that moment a porter appeared in the doorway, announcing the arrival of the train, and the occupants of the waiting room all rose at once to make their way to the platform. Margaret, still unused to the relatively new standard of train travel, found herself following closely in Mr Thornton’s path, looking to him for guidance on where to go and how to move.
As they had all booked second-class passage, it was decided rather quickly that they would sit together on the same car. Mr Thornton stood aside as they approached the entrance to the car, supporting Mr Hale subtly just below his elbow as he ascended the few steps. Then he turned to Margaret and offered his hand, as though it were a carriage door. She could not help it; she hesitated, looking down at his offered hand, sheathed in black leather. Her eyes flickered up to his face. He was studying her, a furrow etched into his brow, and at her hesitation he made as though to take his hand away entirely.
But that could not be. She would not have more misunderstandings between them. She would not have him misinterpret her current reticence as a dislike towards him—not when their existing misunderstandings had already caused so much pain.
Hurriedly, she thrust her own gloved hand into his, squeezing harder than was proper in her eagerness, and let him hand her up the steps and into the train car. She felt the weight of him on the steps as he stepped up after her, and the heat of him as he followed closely in her wake. Her heart hammered as she followed her father down the aisle to whichever seats he had his sight set on, and when another passenger unexpectedly stepped out from their seat in front of her, she felt the force of him as he collided with her at her abrupt halting.
Mr Thornton’s strong hands briefly gripped her shoulders from behind, steadying her after their collision. “I beg your pardon, Miss Hale,” he choked out, evidently mortified.
“It is quite alright,” she said, hearing the embarrassed strain in her own voice. She pinned her gaze on her father and continued down the aisle.
Her father had chosen a row near the back of the car, and indicated that Margaret should enter first, nearest to the window. She happily obliged, knowing that it was so that she might have the best view out of the window, and pulled her book from her reticule to occupy her on the six-hour train ride that was to come.
Mr Thornton and Mr Hale resumed their conversation from earlier. From where Margaret sat, she could not see Mr Thornton’s face unless she leaned forward and sought it out.
“Christmas with Mrs Hale’s relatives was pleasant, I hope?”
“Amazingly restorative. It was Margaret’s idea, of course. It has been some time since I have been in prolonged company with Maria’s sister—we did not always get along as well as Maria would have liked.” Mr Hale lowered his voice for his next comment. “Her family had higher hopes for Maria’s marriage prospects than a modest curate, you know. But she loved me, and that was all that mattered to her, in those days.” He sighed, wistfully.
If Mr Thornton was surprised by Mr Hale’s candor, it did not show in his voice. “You enjoyed seeing her, in spite of past difficulties?”
“Oh, yes. We reminisced endlessly… we spoke often of the old days. It has been so long since I have had someone I could speak to thus.”
“I am glad to hear it. Miss Hale has a cousin her age in London, if I remember correctly?”
“You have an excellent memory, Mr Thornton. They were raised almost as sisters—Maria wanted more for Margaret than a provincial country life, and insisted we send Margaret to be schooled in London alongside her older cousin, Edith.”
“It sounds like an ideal holiday spent with family.”
Margaret was eavesdropping, she realized suddenly, as she found herself rereading the same sentence in her book for the fifth or sixth time without absorbing any of its meaning. She turned the page to keep up the charade, and bid herself to actually read this time.
“Indeed, Mr Thornton, in so many ways, it was. It is really only…” Margaret heard her father sigh deeply. “I should not say, but…”
“Mr Hale, I will not tempt you to say anything you do not mean to.”
Mr Thornton spoke with that matter-of-factness that she had once mistaken for a lack of manners, or of interest. She knew him better now.
John Thornton did not play games. He would not encourage someone to break a confidence, nor to speak out of turn. It would never do to gossip to Mr Thornton, and should he catch you in a lie—well, Margaret knew all about that.
‘Is Miss Hale so remarkable for truth?’
Margaret’s chest squeezed again. She wished they would stop speaking altogether. What luck followed her that placed Mr Thornton, of all people, on the same train car as her—the same bench—for this miserably long journey? She closed her eyes and squeezed them tight.
“I know, I know.” Mr Hale sighed again. “It is hard to speak of for me. And I should not like to trouble Margaret.” At that, Mr Hale patted his daughter’s forearm gently. “It is only that, I felt the absence of Frederick so keenly—if only things could be different. But we have begun to give up hope of that.”
Margaret fought a gasp. She looked sharply at her father. “Papa!” She hissed, aghast that he would mention her brother’s name to Thornton. He had forbade it this autumn, insisted that Mr Thornton was not to know of Fred’s existence. Had he known of him, all this time? Had papa told him?
There was a long silence, until Thornton made a thoughtful noise and said at last, “I beg your pardon, Mr Hale, but who is Frederick? I do not recall you mentioning him before.”
Mr Hale suddenly reached over and gripped Margaret’s hand. The train was cold, and she wore her winter clothing still, but she could feel the emotion in his grip through both of their leather gloves. “Fred is my son, Mr Thornton. He… lives in Spain.”
“I see.” Another long pause, and then Mr Thornton said in a softer voice, “Has he been to Milton?”
Mr Hale did not reply, and Mr Thornton did not ask again. For a while, there was no conversation at all, and Margaret finally read her book. Some time passed pleasantly in this way.
Then again, Mr Hale spoke. “You mentioned your business, Mr Thornton. Is there some way I can help you unburden yourself? I would be grateful to have the chance to help, if I could.”
Mr Thornton made a low hum deep in his throat that sent a tingle radiating through Margaret’s body. Her attention was once again wrested from her book. She was only grateful that Mr Thornton could not see her face, for she was certain to be bright red.
“It is no secret. I have reduced operations by over twenty-five percent so far. I have been in London these past two weeks in a desperate bid for new contracts, hoping that by putting a face to my name I might persuade someone to take a chance on me.” He sighed— deep, heavy, bone-rattling. “And I am vain enough to feel, at times, as Sisyphus must have, as though my struggle is so different from that of any man’s.”
“I see you have chosen Greek myth as your metaphor, which I can only condone,” chuckled Mr Hale, attempting to add levity.
What followed thus was the beginning of an extensive conversation seemingly spoken in code using Greek classic literature for the basis. Soon enough, Margaret’s book took hold of her attention once again—and then, what seemed like an eternity later, her eyelids grew heavy. She drifted off to sleep, her forehead resting against the window pane, and her dreams full of Greek classics.