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John Thornton arrived at the Hale residence in Crampton, promptly and correctly, the morning after the riot at his mill, filled with passion and purpose. He was welcomed and brought to a room to await Miss Hale, and while he waited, he paced.
A gentleman would not pace, John thought to himself. But he needed to move about to calm the nerves– the thrill!– that quickened his heart on such a morning. It would not do to speak to Miss Hale so overcome with excitement; the question he meant to ask her was a solemn one, one which he considered again and again from different angles. One minute he was positive she would reply in the affirmative– had his mother not assured him that Miss Hale’s actions attested to the strength of her feelings?– and the next, fear weakened him at the knees that, fine lady as she was, she would scorn him for daring to ask.
He wondered how she would look when she came into the drawing room. Would she grace him with her lovely smile, as she had when she took his hand for the first time? Would she feign surprise at his calling, respond demurely to his proposal? John was positive, at least, that she would sweep into the drawing room with all the grace and pride of a queen.
He was not so overcome with these nerves that he failed to note the length of his wait. He had never waited so long for an audience at the Hale residence, and though he had come early, it was well past the time for the family to have risen.
But at length Miss Hale did attend him, and when she entered it was not with her usual confident bearing: she stepped tenderly, with her proud head lowered and her gaze on the floor. She made her way to a chair and leaned on it before her eyes drifted up to greet him.
“Good morning, Mr. Thornton.”
“Good morning, Miss Hale,” he replied, but he was already stepping toward her, taking hold of the chair on which she rested her weight. “May I assist you?”
Her reply was a mere nod, far from her usual manners, as she allowed him to pull out the chair and tuck it behind her. John then hastened to take a seat as well, since the lady was seated; he reminded himself to select the chair at the corner of the table– within arm’s reach, but not as familiar as the seat beside her.
“Are you well, Miss Hale?” he inquired.
“I am well enough,” she answered, but she did not look up from the tablecloth. “Dr. Donaldson has diagnosed me with a concussion; but I am well enough to speak with you, so long as I remain seated, and the conversation is brief.”
John viewed her pale countenance with new insight, and resolved to speak only gently. He was familiar with concussions and knew that loud noises or excitement could cause greater distress to one with a shaken brain. Momentarily, he wondered if he ought not to introduce today the momentous offer which he had come to make; but the pressure of the moment– her heroic actions of the day prior, his long-suppressed passion, the risk to her reputation– urged him onward.
“Then I will be brief. Miss Hale, I was very ungrateful yesterday–”
“You have nothing to be grateful for,” Miss Hale interrupted, with such artlessness that John was stunned to silence by her bluntness even more than her words.
But her eyes were closed– she must have a headache– and he softened his voice to disagree. “I think that I do.”
“I did only what anyone would have done,” Miss Hale continued firmly. “I ought rather to apologize to you. I was responsible– I said thoughtless words and sent you– I placed you in danger.”
John grew concerned as Miss Hale stumbled over her words, a crease growing in her brow. She swayed and placed her hand on the tabletop.
“Be easy, Miss Hale,” John coaxed, resisting the urge to take that delicate hand in his own. “It was not your words that roused me, but the truth in them. I must thank you,” he realized it himself as he spoke, “for reminding me of my duty to the Irish hands. Even with the soldiers on the way, they were in danger, and it was my responsibility to stand in their defense.”
For two long, slow breaths, Miss Hale offered no reply. Then, haltingly– “You owe me no gratitude. But if it will relieve you of some fancied obligation, speak on.”
Her neck drooped further and she took another long breath, as if bracing to bear the weight of his thanks. To John, she looked on the verge of collapse, and he shook his head.
“I’ll not speak on it further if it will cause you pain. But, Miss Hale, I didn’t just come here to thank you.”
As he gathered his thoughts in preparation for the task he had come to undertake, she looked up at him, so suddenly and with such speed that it caused her the very jolt John had been seeking to avoid: instantly, her face crumpled with pain and she leaned heavily on the table.
After a brief second’s panic, John spoke her name. When her eyes merely fluttered, he rose quickly to ring the bell on the sideboard and return to her, his hands hanging in the air as he battled between propriety– not to touch a lady uninvited– and aid; though what exactly he might have done to help, as Miss Hale began to blink back to awareness, was lost on him.
Just as John had returned to his seat, the door opened and the maid hustled in with a tea tray. “I apologize for the delay,” the servant said, settling her burden calmly on the table. “I hope you will forgive– Miss Hale, is everything alright?”
Though she was as pale as snow, Miss Hale managed to curve her bloodless lips into a gentle smile. “We are perfectly fine, Dixon. Thank you.”
“Take care you don’t entertain for too long, Miss,” the servant chided. “Remember what the Doctor told you.”
“I will.”
Though she cast a suspicious glance his way and a searching one at her lady, the maid withdrew. John immediately began preparing a cup of tea for Miss Hale, whose preferences he knew well from his lessons with her father.
“I should not have kept you so long,” he muttered to her. “I apologize.”
Miss Hale shook her head gingerly, but did not have a response before her tea was ready. John held it close to her so that she would not have to reach; still, her hands trembled as they rose to take it, and he maintained his grip on the saucer for longer than he ought, worried that she would be unable to keep it steady.
Their fingers met over the china and held there as her dazed eyes raised to his. Slowly, John withdrew his hands from her gentle touch, loathe though he was to do so.
She sipped at the tea and he waited patiently, taking the time to trace his eyes over her lowered lashes and pale face. After a few minutes, some color had come back to her cheeks and her gaze focused steadily, and John, who had reconciled himself to putting off his important business, spoke gently to her.
“My other business today, Miss Hale, was to inquire after your health, and that of Mrs. Hale. My mother told me she’d sent over a water mattress.”
“Yes,” Miss Hale replied, taking a deep breath and regaining some of the noble carriage she typically bore. “Dixon will prepare it for tonight.”
“I hope you will ask us freely for anything else we might supply that would ease her,” John said earnestly, “or– anything for yourself. I think perhaps you should not have taken a caller today, Miss Hale.”
He spoke as softly as he knew how, not wanting to give offense; and thankfully, the lady granted him a hint of a wry smile from her trembling lips.
“Perhaps you are right. My head has been aching. But I did not wish to alarm my parents. They are… I have not apprised them of my part in yesterday’s events,” she admitted, her slight pout and wide eyes attesting to her guilt. “The excitement would do my mother no good, nor my father, as he is already worried about her–”
“I understand entirely,” John said to settle her rising emotions, and placed his hand over hers which had begun to shake by her teacup. Then, affronted by his own action, he whisked his hand away, murmuring a quick apology. “But, Miss Hale, it concerns me to see you this way. I’d like to engage Dr. Donaldson to attend you today– I will enjoin him to be discreet; and to look in on your mother as well to disguise the activity. Please allow this, for my own peace of mind.” He spoke over her quiet disagreement and felt uncouth in doing so, but his distress over her pallor and general weakness was sincere, and though it was ungentlemanly, he was determined to have his way.
Miss Hale’s brief dismay faded and with a faint nod she acquiesced. “You are kind, sir.”
They rose from the table. Miss Hale wobbled; John took her elbow to steady her, and she looked up at him, pale but for the bright red mark he could suddenly see disguised behind her hair.
If his feelings for her before had shaken him to the core, they now enveloped him entirely. To think that the woman with enough strength and fire to exchange rejoinders with him in front of a table full of men was the same delicate creature who stood before him, weak from the blow she had taken in his defense, yet willing to lean on his hand and accept his aid…
John stared at her in awe until a blush came to her cheek; then, remembering himself and clearing his throat, he rang the bell and helped her out of the room, where he was replaced by the servant Dixon, who supported her lady to the stairs.
“Good day, Miss Hale,” John called, and then, in a lower voice, he intoned a wish that had not passed his lips since the humbler days of his childhood, called forth by a pure moment of regard and hope: “May God bless you and keep you.”
The lady’s eyelids were again fluttering with exhaustion; she managed to say, “Good day, Mr. Thornton,” and then he was obliged to depart.
~ ~ * ~ ~
Once Margaret was settled in her bed, Dixon brought up a broth and some easy nibblings on a tray. She begged Margaret to keep up her strength, then returned to her attendance on Mrs. Hale. Margaret managed to consume a small amount of the sustenance, but lapsed into a restless sleep until the arrival of Dr. Donaldson, whose examination she later recalled only vaguely. He advised that she was to rest and recover her strength until she could walk about without suffering from the light-headedness which had plagued her in the morning; then, as Mr. Thornton had promised, he looked in on Mrs. Hale for a longer visit.
Resolved to obey the doctor’s orders, Margaret sought peace, but there was little to be had. Thinking of her mother made Margaret melancholy; her father, nervous; her brother, worried. On recalling her friends in Princeton, she became so awash with concern that she found tears springing to her eyes; and when she thought of those she loved in London, such a loneliness came over her that the tears found their way down her face. But Dr. Donaldson had warned her that blows to the head often precipitated unusually powerful emotions, so Margaret tended to her tears with a handkerchief and reinforced her intentions to remain calm and restful.
Such was her tumult when Margaret began slipping in and out of another shallow doze, and so it came as no surprise when her mind found other unhappy events to display to her. Margaret saw again the livid faces of the starving strikers, their fists held up to the sky. She imagined the terror of the Irish, cowering in the mill. She remembered how white were the lips of Mrs. Thornton as she held her daughter in her arms. And, perhaps worst of all, she re-lived her own terror when she realized that Mr. Thornton had heeded her passionate entreaty and was putting himself before the mob.
Margaret recalled again and again that moment when he had stared at her in front of the windows, then rushed away in response to her words. They had argued a number of times over the care a master owed to his workers, but in that moment, called to what was right by a woman with whom he’d previously battled, Mr. Thornton had obeyed her and proven his honor. And despite what must be many other calls on his time– Dixon had reported that the strike was over and the mills preparing to re-open– he had come to inquire after her health and offer his assistance.
Mr. Thornton had surprised Margaret more than once with his Northern manners, but this morning– his hand at her elbow when she stumbled had been as attentive and proper as any Londoner of her acquaintance; his quick action to prepare her a soothing cup of tea was as thoughtful as could be; and his soft and earnest words to her as Dixon helped her up the stairs– though she’d hardly understood them at the time!– were perfectly generous and pious.
Yes, despite their many differences, it was clear that Margaret had been hasty and uncharitable to refuse Mr. Thornton the title of gentleman.
And what hubris was that! For Margaret’s own actions had not been those of a lady. Her cheeks burned to remember the words of Fanny Thornton and the Thornton family maid, Jane, as well as the gossip Dixon had brought from the market: that Margaret had thrown her arms around Mr. Thornton not in charitable defense, but amorous intemperance. Such an act could be the ruin of a young lady’s reputation, unless quickly justified.
Indeed, when Mr. Thornton was announced that morning, she had feared that he had come to make an offer out of obligation, which, if followed to its natural conclusion, could only be terribly unfitting and make them both eternally unhappy. So tense had Margaret been, in anticipation of such a thoroughly unwanted request from a man she had observed as prone to uncouthness and unkindness, that her conversation suffered and she was very nearly brusque with him. She was anticipating every moment the appearance of the arrogant man who had shouted down the rioters yesterday; only rather than insisting his rights as a master over the hands, surely he would demand from her his rights as a man!
But Mr. Thornton had made no such offer, and Margaret found herself exceedingly thankful for it. With her thoughts as muddled as they were– indeed, her head had been spinning and her vision fading even as she had sat with him!– Margaret did not believe she could have refused him with the requisite grace. How shameful it would have been to lose her composure in front of Mr. Thornton so soon after the terrible circumstances they had faced together! How could she ever have looked him in the face again if she had behaved in an unmannerly way in reply to a proposal?
Her stomach churning at these new imaginings, Margaret resolved to prepare a speech which she might address to Mr. Thornton if he should come back to make her an offer out of pity and obligation. It would be to his credit, she acknowledged, if he did the respectable thing and proposed marriage to her. But she would not allow her own actions in his defense to expose him to a worse fate by obliging him to a loveless marriage. Margaret may have her differences with the master of Marlborough Mills, but she owed him, if nothing else, a respectful refusal.
Margaret felt unfamiliar, yet thrilling sensations in her chest and her belly as she pondered how Mr. Thornton might make such an offer— with the tactful subtlety of a proper gentleman, which he had displayed to her that morning? or the forceful boldness that characterized so many of their other encounters?— but she put them aside. It was vain to linger on such thoughts, and she would only engage in the immodest task long enough to prepare graceful words of refusal.
If Margaret, once or twice among the many repeated imaginings of her demure rejection, also pictured the scene’s proceedings if she were to answer otherwise (Would he smile at her, or gaze at her with tenderness in his striking eyes, as he had that morning when he had carefully offered her a cup of tea? Would he take her hand in both of his, a mirror to the way she’d clasped his hand on the night of the dinner party?)…
Well. She had sustained an injury to her head. As Dr. Donaldson had explained, some fanciful mental wandering was only to be expected.
~ ~ * ~ ~
John had cleared his entire day for the visit to Crampton, expecting that he would be obliged to have many conversations with Miss Hale’s parents regarding an engagement. Finding himself unexpectedly free, he returned home in time for luncheon. His mother and sister were surprised to have him home for the meal, as he usually took it at the mill, but a third setting was quickly laid for him.
Although Fanny was nattering on about some tiresome subject, John felt the weight of his mother’s expectant gaze on him throughout the meal. Eventually, she broached the subject that weighed on both of their minds.
“Well John. What of your business this morning?”
“Miss Hale was unwell,” John explained. “I did not make her an offer.”
Fanny gasped. Her fork clattered to her plate as her hands fluttered in distress. “An offer? To Miss Hale? But John, how could you? You must not!”
“Your brother will do as he ought,” she was corrected with a dark glare from their mother. “The girl will not refuse him.”
“I say that she will refuse him!” Fanny insisted, and turned to John. “And if you do offer to her, I will laugh when she refuses you, for you will have ignored my advice, and I am the one who would know best!”
“You’ve not had two conversations with Miss Hale,” John retorted, his disapproval of Fanny’s attitude deepening his voice to a rumble. “What would you know?”
“I am a young lady awaiting a good husband, just as she is!” Fanny declared. “And I know that no young lady can accept a proposal from a man who hasn’t been calling on her to show his attention and affection! Who has never danced with her, or offered her even a single favor! Why, if a gentleman asked for my hand who had not gifted me any jewelry, I should be terribly offended!”
Fanny’s nose was in the air and her cheeks aflame from the joy of being so right about something which her mother and brother had gotten so wrong. Such an event did not come about often, and she was determined to follow her advantage.
“Even Miss Hale, who threw her arms around you in public, would not accept an offer without being courted. Of course it is not seemly for a lady to behave as she did, but it must mean that she had been trying to entice you into courting her for some time and you were blind to it! Many men do not seem to understand when a young lady hints that she desires their attentions,” she educated them wisely.
“That’s enough,” their mother chided Fanny sternly. “If you had behaved as Miss Hale did, you’d be humbly grateful to receive an offer no matter what jewelry had or hadn’t traded hands; and if you weren’t, I’d set you to rights!”
Fanny’s protests began and continued until their mother demanded an end to them, and the conversation moved on. But John’s attention had been caught by his sister’s assertions, despite the frivolous air with which they’d been shared. Even when he’d set out for the Hales’ household that morning, resolved on his task, he had not expected Miss Hale’s reaction to his offer to be ‘humbly grateful.’ Now that the fiery passion aroused by his mother’s assurances of Miss Hale’s feelings for him had burned down, a refusal seemed much more likely, which would imply that Fanny had the right of things for once.
That being a highly doubtful conclusion in the natural order of things, John pondered further. Could she be right about Miss Hale? Would the gentle southerner refuse a sincere declaration of his feelings and an honorable proposal, for a lack of courting? The more he considered it, the more believable the idea came to be. Had she not spurned his handshake due to some foreign ideal of propriety? Did she not make all those genteel manners look so effortless which John himself had to implement intentionally every time they interacted? And– it was true– would not Fanny, who had received years of tutoring in etiquette, understand better than John would what a lady such as Miss Hale would expect from a suitor?
What evidence was there that Miss Hale might believe that he could make a good husband for her? She did not think well of the way he presided over his workers; his mother and sister reported that she and her mother did not think charitably of Milton society; and, it must be admitted, John had conducted himself in an ungentlemanly way more than once in her presence, provoked though he may have been by Miss Hale’s speeches. And even worse; she had defended him yesterday from a crowd of the very workers whose plight she blamed him for, had even taken an injury in his place that she likely thought he deserved! Surely Miss Hale had seen nothing which would recommend her to accept his suit; and, as Fanny had rightly pointed out, he had done nothing which showed any intention to treat her as a wife would deserve.
Had he proposed to Miss Hale that morning, John realized, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead and neck, she would have felt trapped. She would have had no favors from him, no evidence of his strong and true affection or his thorough willingness to ensure that she would live in comfort and luxury; and, she would have known that her behavior had incited the need for the offer, to repair her reputation and that of her family! While John believed that Miss Hale was proud and headstrong enough to ignore the damage that her actions had invited and to scorn the repairs he offered, the implication of the ruin she would suffer by refusing him would cast a dark pall over his well-meant proposal.
John felt suddenly nauseous to think that he had nearly bared his soul and all the tender feelings which had been building deep within him to a woman who would have seen him as nothing more than a ruthless and opportunistic capitalist, taking advantage of her plight to secure himself an unwilling bride.
He pushed away from the table, farewelling his family by rote, and bore down on these terrible thoughts with all the strength of his will. He had a mill to bring back to life; Irish workers to initiate; soldiers and inspectors to meet; and business contacts to apprise of the end of the strike. He could not afford to linger on what might have been. In the evening, when work was done, John swore to himself, he would dedicate his thoughts to planning how he might prove himself as a good prospect to Miss Hale, just as he might consider how to convince a new investor that he was worthy of their trust.
For an instant, John pictured himself seated in the parlor with Fanny, taking notes in a ledger while she lectured on the subject of courting. The fanciful image provided a precious moment of levity amidst the seriousness of the day, and John proceeded to his duties with a hint of hope warming his breast.
~ ~ * ~ ~
John slept very little that night. His thoughts, plans, his fears and dreams, pressed themselves into his eyes and hands and back, preventing stillness or restfulness. But he rose at his accustomed time and performed the necessary duties until he could quit the mill and seek out the house in Crampton whose occupants consumed his thoughts– with a stop or two along the way.
When he did make himself known at the Hale residence, it was with every step he must take firmly laid out in mind. To call it a battle plan would not have been an exaggeration. John’s enemies, however, were his own demons: passion, fear, and pride. And also, the aggravating maid.
Dixon, as Miss Hale had called her, turned up her nose to the very sight of him. She very nearly seemed to prevent him from entering. It was only when John proffered the goods he bore that she begrudgingly allowed him into the entryway, though she spoke quickly to establish that the master was out and there was no one ready to take callers. The implication that John ought to be on his way was rudely clear.
But this was not unforeseen, and he countered with his own measure: he told the maid that he wished to speak to either of the ladies of the house, to offer them his gifts and inquire after their health, if either were willing and able to see him; and that he had the time to wait for a response. He successfully phrased things in such a way that she would have to be overwhelmingly rude to deny him the opportunity to wait on her mistresses’ command, and the twist of her lip as she led him to the sitting room showed that she knew she’d been routed and loathed the fact.
John waited until he was alone and ensconced in an armchair to release a smug smile.
As the day before, it was some minutes that John waited. He did fear that Miss Hale’s concussion had not abated, and that he would be sent away– or, that, both better and worse, she would come to hear him anyway. He had no desire to cause her more pain, and in fact had debated hotly with himself whether he ought to send a note instead. At the same time, he yearned to see her, even if only for a brief minute as she told him, politely, that she could not visit with him today. He closed his eyes against the fervent thought that he would come to her every day, if it meant she would turn him away herself.
John had managed to collect himself and stood gracefully to receive Miss Hale when the door opened and she entered. A real smile found its way to his lips when he saw the color in her cheeks and the healthy brightness in her eyes.
“Good morning, Mr. Thornton,” she greeted, and even her voice was stronger.
“Miss Hale. I’m pleased to see you well.”
“I am well. Or, much better than I was yesterday. Dr. Donaldson warns me that I should not partake in too much exercise before I have felt healthy for several days.”
Miss Hale settled in the other armchair and John sat as well. While she arranged her skirts and shawl he drank in the sight of her: her hands and her neck and her hair, and– the hidden mark at her temple. He emboldened himself in his plan, that he would not deviate from regardless of any surges of emotion.
“I had a moment to speak with Dr. Donaldson after he attended here. I was relieved to hear his report that you should make a full recovery. But he was more concerned with your mother’s health, and recommended that fruit would be good for her. I took the liberty of bringing some that seemed to me fine.”
Miss Hale nodded politely in reply to John’s comments about her own health, but showed real happiness when he spoke of the gift for her mother: brief delight overtook her features, before they settled back into modest pleasure, and she thanked him for his kindness and said that her mother, too, would be very grateful.
Although he hadn’t done it to earn Miss Hale’s gratitude, John was glad for the confirmation that he knew at least one way to please her.
“It is a kindness for your father, Miss Hale, for the esteem he has earned from me; that, and it is simply right that she has some comforts.”
The smile faded from the lady’s countenance at the reference to her mother’s illness, but she bore up well. “I am sure that Papa will take that to heart. He does count you as his dearest friend in Milton.”
John had fortified his nerve against every attack he could foresee; but, having planned primarily around the prospect of romantic love, he’d not thought to prepare a defence from the upswell of fraternal care that resulted from Miss Hale’s sentiment regarding her father. He fought to keep any such weakness from his face, and knew not whether he’d succeeded when he detected tenderness in Miss Hale’s eyes.
There was no time to inspect the thing more deeply, for it was then that Dixon made her appearance. Though John would have been quite happy to never see the woman again, she did perform him a great service as she brought the bouquet of flowers he had purchased that morning, since settled in a vase, and placed the arrangement on the sideboard.
“From the gentleman,” she announced, her tone only vaguely shielding her true thoughts on the matter as she tipped her head toward John, then exited with a more respectful nod to her mistress.
Miss Hale rose from her armchair and approached the display, seeming to glide rather than walk across the floor. John watched her inspect the flowers: first tilting her head slightly one way and then the other; then reaching out a dainty hand to touch one or two blooms; and finally stepping close to inhale their aroma.
As common as such a sight was in any drawing room, John drank in Miss Hale’s every movement as if she were acting upon a stage. He had never cared so much about the reception of a gift; he hardly knew whether to breathe. The second seemed to stretch out endlessly, though it was not more than half a minute before Miss Hale returned to her seat. When John saw the warm expression on her face, he had to suppress a deep sigh of relief.
“I’ve never seen such fine blossoms in Milton. I must thank you again, Mr. Thornton.”
There was something he should say to that– indeed, a very specific phrase or two that he had written, edited, and practiced in his mind, last night and this morning– but John found that in the very moment, his memory failed him, and knowing no alternative, he proceeded to the next line he had assigned himself to deliver. Calling up all of his courage, John began:
“Miss Hale, I have come to ask something of you. When Dr. Donaldson allows– when you are feeling better, that is–”
Even as he spoke, her smile faded. She sat up straighter than ever and averted her gaze down to her hands, which twisted in her lap. The whole set of her appeared as though she were bracing to take a blow.
John hesitated, double-thinking his strategy; he made a stutter of a sound, an error so unlike him that it caused Miss Hale to look up at him. Sincere concern mixed with the apprehension in her visage.
She did care. Not as he did– perhaps not any more than she would for any guest, any student of her father’s, even any resident of Milton. But she was not unsympathetic to John the man, despite their differences. And yet, she still did not know that he cared– that she had no reason to fear any word or advance from him.
John could only pray that Fanny had the right of things.
“I find it difficult to let myself– my feelings– be known. On more than one occasion, when we have spoken, I may have given you to think that I find your conversation– your company– disagreeable. But that is not so. Even when we argue, Miss Hale, I find that I want to hear you speak more.”
After baring his soul, John could feel his lifeblood in his cheeks. He was never one for showing his affect in such a way, but it was impossible that he was not glowing red at that moment. The only redeeming fact was that Miss Hale shared with him the ailment; and in her, it was married with such a bare and unguarded expression of astonishment as he had never seen on her face. There was something else in it, too, that hinted towards a positive reception– John thought maybe she looked hopeful– that encouraged him to finally make his request of her.
“When you are well again, would you consent to go for a walk with me about the town, that we might converse for a time?”
With some significant effort, John did not gasp for air after getting the question out. Though his whole body was stiff as a board in the armchair, his breathing was measured and controlled. It was through this discipline that he was able to hear the tiny gasp which the lady made: the slightest intake of breath representing an emotion which slipped by the faultless manners of its owner into the sitting room, even as her countenance showed nothing but the previous mix of surprise and a hint of something like pleasure.
Her eyelashes fluttered and her blush spread fetchingly. John forced himself not to stare, at it or at her, while she composed a reply. Instead he looked at the window, somewhere to their side. But she did speak, and his gaze returned to her as quick as a whip, and found her smiling at the vase on the sideboard which held his bouquet.
“I believe I would enjoy that, Mr. Thornton.”
Then she turned that smile onto him, and John felt it like a ray of sunlight breaking through clouds to grace him. For the first time, he felt secure in the knowledge that she held some regard for him, and that blessing, and that reason for hope, were all he would need to carry him on.