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John woke to the sound of careful footsteps in the passage.
Not the tread of an adult (too light for that) but the soft, uneven hesitation of a child trying not to be heard. The sound reached him before he was fully awake, tugging him up from sleep with a sudden alertness. His breath caught as his hand moved instinctively toward Margaret, but she did not stir.
The door opened a fraction.
“Eliza?” he murmured, already sitting up.
His daughter stood before him in the half-light, eyes like his own in miniature, though softened by her mother’s wider set. Her small hands clenched the hem of her nightgown. She was three – nearly four, she always insisted with great seriousness – and the effort of standing bravely had exhausted her. Her lip trembled and tears clung to her lashes. Whatever had disturbed her sleep had been very real to her.
He held out his arms, and she crossed the room at once, pressing into him with a small, shuddering sigh, her cheek finding its accustomed place against his shoulder.
He and Margaret had agreed early on to employ a nurse for the children only during the day. Margaret remained closely engaged in the daily needs of the household, but her charitable work had not diminished. Having outside interests and responsibilities like the school, the mill kitchen, and her carefully cultivated friendships made her a better wife and mother at home.
And while the mill had since repaid Margaret’s investment many times over, the work days of the mill master continued to be long and relentless as he oversaw the expansion and so the duties of the night fell to Margaret.
Since becoming a mother, she slept lightly, always listening for a child’s need—but tonight she had not stirred. John glanced at her, sleeping deeply at last, and felt a lift of gratitude. Quality rest was always scarce for her in the final weeks of pregnancy; it would not be long before their fifth child arrived. His mother had remarked, with dry humour, that they were vying with the Queen to see who might fill a nursery first.
Tonight, then, the watch was his.
He rose carefully so as not to wake his wife, rolling his shoulders before lifting Eliza into his arms, carrying her into the passage. The landing lay dim and quiet, the house settled into its deep night stillness. He began to pace, turning slowly between the windows and the stairs, her weight familiar against his chest, though he shifted her once or twice, easing the pull at his back without breaking his step. Eliza’s fingers curled fast in his nightshirt as though the dark itself might pry her loose.
“Can you tell me what frightened you?” he asked softly, his voice kept low for the sake of the sleeping house.
Eliza spoke of a ship lost at sea. Wind and black water, and the terror of ocean creatures below. As she spoke, he smoothed her back and walked the length of the landing, his steps timed with the rise and fall of her breath. She had never seen the ocean, the thought brought him a brief, inward smile. Yet it was no less real for being imagined.
He listened without interruption, pacing until her grip eased and her words slowed, until the fear loosened its hold and became only a story told aloud. In all his years, he thought, there was no burden so sweet, nor one taken up more willingly.
“Come,” he whispered at last. “Let us find Dolly.”
“Dolly is Maria’s doll,” she corrected him, with a yawn. “Mine is Cordelia.”
“Very well,” he murmured. “Let us find Dolly Cordelia. She must be wondering where her little mother has gone.”
He placed her down with care, allowing Eliza to lead him back to the nursery. It was no accident that the doll bore the name of Fanny’s eldest. His sister had always possessed a fondness for the grand and ornamental, and she had bestowed upon her daughter a name as elaborate as any she might have chosen for herself. Eliza, in turn, had adopted it with solemn devotion.
To his daughter, there was no name more elegant. To John, there was not one more extravagantly unnecessary and yet he felt a quiet amusement in it, and something softer besides. The child’s world made room for such flourishes so perhaps it was right that it should.
John cast his eyes around the nursery as Eliza retrieved Cordelia who had clearly tumbled out of bed in Eliza’s earlier anxiety.
The family’s first-born — John’s own namesake — slept soundly, arms flung above his head, the counterpane pushed down beneath his feet. Though the day had been warm, the night had turned cool, and John paused to tuck the boy in, easing his arms down with care. He smiled to himself; were he to sleep so, his back would protest for days. Youth bore discomfort lightly.
Eliza lay still now in her bed, Cordelia clutched to her chest, her pale eyes tracking her father’s movements. He pressed a finger to his lips, and she obeyed at once, as he checked on the rest of the children.
Hugh lay wrapped tight beneath his blankets, only a dark crown of hair visible. Kneeling at his bedside, John loosened the covers and brushed a cooling hand across the sweaty forehead of the sleeping six-year-old.
His youngest slept belly-down in her cot, her small body rising and falling with each breath. Maria, not yet two, breathed evenly. John rested his hand upon her back a moment, steadying himself as much as her.
Returning to Eliza, he seated himself upon the edge of her narrow bed and stroked her cheek.
“I think it is time we both slept,” he said.
She began to protest, but he hushed her softly. “Nanny would be quite disappointed if you were cross tomorrow—and I am certain she has something pleasant planned. You must rest.”
“Will you wait?” she whispered. “To keep the bad dreams away?”
“Yes,” he answered at once. “I will stay.”
He leaned back against the headboard, and Eliza settled her head in his lap, her soft doll firmly secured beneath her arm. As her breathing slowed, John’s hand traced gentle patterns at her back and he tucked stray curls beneath her cap. His thoughts wandered, as they often did now, to Fanny—she had been about this age when the Thorntons’ fortunes had collapsed so abruptly.
Twenty-five years had passed, and yet his father’s death occupied him more now than it ever had before. Once, the memory had been sharpened by anger: the abrupt end of his schooling, the sudden weight of responsibility at fifteen. He had been determined then to provide and endure but he had missed his father’s notice. Every early success had carried the same unspoken question: Would Father have approved?
Later, he understood how little his father had seen of those particulars of John’s childhood at all. The late Mr. Thornton’s ambition and haste had narrowed his vision until nothing remained but the next desperate measure.
When John eventually came to manage his own mill, a tender sympathy had displaced the resentment of his youth. He could comprehend the wound to pride, the vertigo of failure, the sense that honor itself had been squandered beyond recovery. John’s sympathy had deepened during his own near-ruin.
Though Margaret’s fortune had spared them in the end, he knew the weight of those weeks. And yet—he could still not imagine yielding to despair. He could not have left his mother to such grief again. He had known romantic love then, even when he believed it to be unrequited. He would have begun again, as he already had once before.
But now—now that he was a husband and a father—his reflections on George Thornton turned sharper and bitterly critical.
How could a man leave his children behind?
John’s sons watched him closely; he saw it in the way their eyes followed his movements, their voices echoed his tone. In recent years, he had actively worked hard to curb his temper, aware that each habit, each word, would be taken up and carried forward. His hand drifted to Eliza’s soft cheek. Her speech had grown swiftly, her thoughts increasingly sure, yet her face remained round with baby-fat. How could anyone abandon such trust to the keeping of strangers?
He had long pitied his mother—Hannah, who wore her widow’s black long beyond custom, never turning to purple or to navy. Now, he thought of her not only as his mother, but once as George’s wife. She had loved George, surely as Margaret loved him now. The thought of a lifelong despair of a wife settled heavily upon his heart. To do that to Margaret would be unthinkable.
Before his mind could wander further and darker, he noticed the faint lightening of the room. Morning was near. He shifted, and his back answered sharply for the long vigil. It was this ache, more than the grey in his hair, that reminded him of years earned through labour. Margaret had remarked, too, that the mill had taken something from his hearing.
He rose carefully, stretching before casting one final look upon his sleeping children.
Ah—what a privilege it was, to grow old.