Today's Reading
"There, now we know each other. I'd ask for a dance, but I'm a little incapacitated." He tapped his leg. "Riding accident, sprained my ankle."
"That sounds painful. Did you fall off?"
"Rather spectacularly. But it'll mend, and it gives me a good excuse to stay here and talk to you."
When my father came back, I introduced them.
"Of course! Hayward! I should have realized," said Frederick. "You're the cotton king."
My father rolled his eyes. "Just a daft thing the papers say."
He loved it really. They all called him that, and they liked to tell his story. How he'd started out working in a little drapers' shop in Manchester, realized he could run it better than the owner, scrimped and saved to buy it, and built the rest from there: the mills and the printworks, two more shops, and hundreds of people working for him.
"Very impressive," said Frederick, "what you've done with your business. Didn't I read you've electrified one of your mills completely?"
"Star Mill," said my father. "You read about that?"
"I did. Very interesting."
I checked his face for signs of sarcasm, because not everyone found the cotton trade as fascinating as we did. But he seemed properly interested, even asking quite a sensible question about how we'd switched from steam to electricity. I liked him all the more then, because I was proud of my father's achievements, and our business.
Even so, when a bell rang for supper, I expected he'd make his excuses. My father was talking about his new looms by then, and my mam always said that if you let him near the subject of machinery, you'd get the ins and outs of a pig's backside, no detail spared. But Frederick said, "I wonder, Mr. Hayward, may I introduce you to my mother? My father was unable to attend this evening, so it falls to me to take her in to supper, and I was hoping you might allow me to escort Miss Hayward."
My father looked as surprised as I felt, but he said yes. (It was only much, much later that it struck me: neither of them asked me.) We followed him over to the other side of the room.
"Miss Hayward, Mr. Hayward...my mother, Lady Storton."
Lady? I wasn't expecting that, and my father's intake of breath said he wasn't either.
She was frighteningly elegant, slender on the verge of bony. The dress was very good silk—my father was pricing it with his eyes—and diamonds glittered at her throat. I'd a diamond necklace on too, but mine was bought that week, and I kept checking it was still there. Hers had the look of a family heirloom and she wore it as though she hardly knew she had it on.
Lady Storton smiled. "I see my son has found better company than mine. May I prevail on you to take me in, Mr. Hayward?"
My father copied the way Frederick held out his arm to me, and we strolled in to supper, the cotton king and the cotton king's daughter, with the wife and son of an earl.
* * *
It was stupidly easy to fall in love with Frederick; I got halfway there that very evening. But I'd like to point out, before you decide I must've been soft in the head, that I was nineteen, he was the first man ever to pay attention to me, and he was very, very charming.
As Lady Storton swept my father away, he waited on me as if I were a princess, fetching me a glass of champagne, then dashing off and coming back with a plate of chicken in a creamy sauce speckled with herbs.
"Lady Burnham's cook is famous for her fricassée. I had to distract the Duchess of Bolton to snaffle this portion."
"How did you do that?"
"Told her the Prince of Wales had made a surprise appearance. She'll never speak to me again when she finds out he hasn't, so I hope you wouldn't have preferred the roast beef."
I'd read that a lady never finishes everything on her plate, but it was quite a small portion.
...
