Mr Fairclough's Inherited Bride

‘You’re being very direct.’ A little bit too much for Silas’s liking. He’d always imagined himself settling down some day, but not quite this soon and not with a near stranger. Lady Mary was a pleasant enough woman, but he knew almost nothing about her. He wasn’t one to pry into other people’s affairs, at least those not connected to business that could benefit him in negotiations. ‘But the lady and I aren’t well acquainted.’

‘Not a difficult problem to rectify.’

‘She may not be amenable to the idea.’

‘Again, not an insurmountable obstacle.’ Richard leaned towards Silas, the firelight highlighted the growing gauntness in his face. Richard was very sick, there was no denying it or what it meant. Once again Silas would be left alone in the world to make his way through it. He might not be the fifteen-year-old boy who’d taken on the responsibilities of a man far too soon, but it was difficult to hold that old apprehension at bay. ‘This isn’t merely a matter of the heart, Silas, but a very practical union that could benefit you both. I know I haven’t told you a great deal about Lady Mary so I’ll tell you what I can. She’s the Earl of Ashford’s daughter.’

That was nothing to scoff at and plenty of reasons to wonder. ‘Then what’s she doing here? Why isn’t she in London where her mother can marry her off?’

Richard rolled his cigar between his fingers. ‘That’s something you’ll have to hear from the lady herself.’

Silas was certain he didn’t need to ask. There was only one reason a man as high up the social scale as an earl would cast out a daughter. Silas had never met any woman so high, but he’d met plenty of other young women from good families at the Foundation. The details were different, but the story was always the same—a man, a lapse of judgement and a very distinct alteration of their future, fortunes and standing. Silas had never held it against them. His parents hadn’t raised him with such prejudices. Besides, having made more than a few of his own mistakes, he could understand theirs and that the men were as much to blame as the women for what had happened. ‘But what’s the benefit of her over, say, Mr Penniman’s daughter?’

‘One—’ Richard held up a single finger ‘—never mix business with pleasure. Better to keep someone like Mr Penniman as an investor rather than a father-in-law. He’ll have less say in your affairs and it won’t be awkward if things turn sour. Two—’ he held up another finger ‘—her standing as a genuine lady. Americans already think any man who sounds like you is an aristocrat. If you have a wife on your arm and at the head of your table who actually is one, it’ll raise you even higher in their esteem. America is full of younger sons of the nobility trying to make a fortune, but an available young woman with Lady Mary’s lineage is a rare find. The two of you could really make something of yourselves.’

‘We’d make another commoner, like me, the son of an earl’s fourth son who preferred humanitarianism to hunting. I’ve never even met the Lord my grandfather, who probably doesn’t know I exist.’ A fact his father and mother’s passion for philanthropy had reminded him of daily while he was growing up. Silas took a sip of the fine brandy, savouring the sharp flavour. Bless his parents for their altruism. It wasn’t the way he wished to live.

‘But you know he exists. I’ve heard you drop his name during more than one conversation when it’s to your benefit to do so.’

Silas shrugged. ‘A man uses what slender means he has available and I assure you mine are very slender.’

‘With Lady Mary by your side your means will widen considerably. You could affix her family crest to your carriage or have a combination of hers and yours created. Imagine how that would look at the top of your letter head or on calling cards. You could even incorporate it into the Baltimore Southern’s insignia, give the railway a touch of English class to really impress merchants and passengers,’ Richard suggested, the way he did whenever he thought aloud about how to approach investors for a new venture. It was the idea one had to sell, not the business. Never that. It was too ordinary and boring for a man to really picture, but an idea, slightly exaggerated in its aspects but never lied about, something an investor could hold in his mind when he held the stock certificate, that was something else. It was Richard’s gift, one that Silas had worked hard to cultivate over the last five years. He never imagined it being used on him to propose a match as if Richard were some kind of hovering mother at a ball.

Silas took another drag off his cigar, turning the smoke into rings as he carefully exhaled. ‘Even if I was for it, what would the lord and lady think of this match?’

‘They gave up the right to approve or disapprove of her decisions some time ago,’ Richard spat, then took a calming puff off his cigar. ‘Besides, they aren’t here to look down their regal noses at you, now are they? Nor are they likely to leave their hallowed estate and venture across the Atlantic to make a stink about it.’

‘No, they aren’t.’ Silas inhaled the weedy smoke of his cigar while he thought over Richard’s proposal as he’d considered every other business decision Richard had ever placed in front of him. Silas wasn’t ready to invest in Lady Mary yet but the benefits of the match, like those of a foundry for the Baltimore Southern, were compelling enough to be considered.

An interesting idea, Mary mused silently while she stood in the shadows outside the study, listening to the men. This wasn’t the first time she’d hovered out of sight in the darkness while others discussed her future. It was becoming quite the regular habit where her life was concerned. At least this time the proposed plan was kindly meant and to her benefit because Richard genuinely cared about her. It was more than her parents could ever have said about their actions. Their love of reputation and standing had been more valuable to them than their daughter.

She touched the small watch hanging from a ribbon on her dress bodice, a gift from Ruth, Richard’s sister, during Mary’s first Christmas with her. She ran her fingers over the fine filigree, feeling the few strands of the fraying ribbon on which it hung. The watch was one of the many kindnesses Ruth had shown her during the years that Mary had spent with her. She missed Ruth, but she was ashamed to say she didn’t miss the isolation of the country.

Quiet spread over the room, broken by the pop and crackle of the fire and Richard’s occasional cough, one that cut through Mary as sharply as his sister’s final illness had. Richard knew Mary’s secret and, like his sister, he’d given her a chance to reclaim some of the life and future that Preston Graham had stolen from her. It was everything she’d sought when she’d staggered off the ship still green with seasickness and breathed in the salty Baltimore air tinged with smoke. All the training to be a lady and chatelaine of a large house that her mother had drilled into her as a child—how to host a table, draw up menus, guide conversation, the skills she should have used as the wife of a titled man—was finally being put to use in Richard’s house. She’d been awkward and reserved, hesitant and unsure when Richard had initially encouraged her to meet with the housekeeper about dinner or sit at the head of his table. Tonight, it’d all come back to her as the food had been well received and served, and the conversation had run smooth enough to ease Richard and Mr Fairclough’s negotiations. She’d left the dining room with a new confidence and for the first time in many years the belief that her future would finally shake free of her past.

Death was threatening to steal it away from her for the second time. What would she do without Richard to guide her through Baltimore society? She’d be left on her own once again to make her way in a world that was even more foreign to her than the wilds of Devon and an aged spinster’s humble but welcoming cottage.

Mr Fairclough’s deep voice, his accent a touch less refined than her father and brother’s, but far from the roughness of the London streets or fields, cut through the quiet with some matter of business. The tone of his voice held her interest, the notes of it deep and sure the way Preston’s had been during those darks nights in the stable or his carriage, until it’d turned callous and cold like the road to Gretna Green.

Mary slipped away from the door and through the narrow entrance hall of the brick row house with its marble floors and tall ceilings, and up the polished wood staircase to her room. She sat at her dressing table, leaving the bell to summon Mrs Parker, her lady’s maid, untouched. Despite having grown up with a nurse to feed and care for her, a governess to teach her and, when she’d finally come out in society, a lady’s maid to see to her beautiful ball gowns and carriage dresses, the last four years of attending to herself made her hesitant to ring the bell.

No, not any more.

She was no longer a companion but a lady and she would never be anything less ever again. She picked up the bell and shook it, the tinny noise cutting through the still of the room.

‘You’re upstairs early tonight, Lady Mary.’ Mrs Parker beamed as she came in from the adjacent room. Mary smiled at the older woman’s American frankness. If a lady’s maid had ever addressed her mother in so informal a manner she would have been dismissed without a reference. That strict distance between servants and employers had seemed so right and proper to Mary back then. It didn’t any more.

‘It was a successful, if not tiring one.’ It’d taken a great deal of organising prior to the dinner to make everything during it seem effortless and serene, and Mary was eager to sleep. She would need all the rest she could gather to get through the difficulties she was sure to face in the coming months if Richard’s health declined as quickly as his sister’s had. She’d seen the bloody handkerchiefs and heard the rattle in his chest, the same one that had claimed Ruth in the end. Mary clutched the watch on the ribbon, her eyes misting with tears. She was tired of losing people she cared about and who genuinely cared about her.

‘There, there, Lady Mary, what’s the matter?’ Mrs Parker laid a comforting hand on Mary’s shoulder and she didn’t shrug it off the way her mother had when her old housekeeper had tried to comfort her after the death of Mary’s grandmother. Instead, Mary welcomed the kind gesture. It reminded her of Ruth.

‘Nothing, only I’m a little tired from tonight’s excitement.’ There was no point ruining her evening, too. She would learn the truth about Richard soon enough assuming she didn’t already know.

Mrs Parker nodded her head, making the pile of grey hair arranged in a careful twist on top of it shiver with the motion. ‘I’ll get to laying out your nightclothes and have the maid send up the water to wash your face.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Parker.’

‘My pleasure.’ She turned and began to bustle about, removing Mary’s fine linen nightgown from the dresser, the one she’d purchased to replace the plain cotton ones she’d arrived with, and laid it out on the coverlet. ‘It’s so nice to have a young person in the house and a lady’s touch to soften things about the edges, but if you don’t mind my saying, some places, like this room, could do with a little more feminine charm.’

‘Yes, it could.’ Mary hadn’t made any changes to the room since she’d been here, leaving the handsome furniture and even the hunting pictures on the walls exactly as she’d found them when she’d arrived. It was the most comfortable room she’d occupied since leaving Foxcomb Hall, her family’s estate, four years ago, but far more formal and elaborate than her bedroom at Ruth’s had been. Richard had encouraged her to redecorate it. Perhaps it was finally time to learn to properly decorate a room. It was a skill she’d never mastered. Her mother had never been allowed to choose anything except the menus at Foxcomb Hall and even these had come under her father’s irritating scrutiny. ‘Tomorrow you and I can go shopping for some different fabric for the curtains.’

‘That would be lovely, a nice shade of blue, perhaps.’ Mrs Parker eyed the room as if she’d had plans for it for some time and could at last set them in motion. Mary didn’t mind.

‘But no chintz. I detest chintz.’ Her father had made Foxcomb Hall awash in it.

‘So do I.’ Mrs Parker winked in solidarity, then looked about with a disapproving tut. ‘Let me see where that maid has got to with the water. I like the girl, but she’s gone too long without a proper lady to serve. It’s made her forgetful.’ Mrs Parker bustled out of the room in search of the errant pitcher and basin.

A proper lady.

Mary was surprised Mrs Parker had said so. She’d walked in on Mary crying over the last letter from Mary’s sister, Jane, and Mary had told her everything, needing a friend and the comfort that Ruth had once provided. Not since those first few weeks with Ruth had Mary felt so lonely and far from the family she once thought had loved her. Mrs Parker had proven as sympathetic as Ruth and Richard, not judging or blaming her for having been young and in love and too naive to understanding the consequences of her decisions. It gave her some hope that others in America would be as forgiving, but after her parents’ shameful behaviour, it was a thin hope.

No one here besides those two will ever know. Richard had assured her that there were too many people with questionable histories of their own that they’d conveniently left behind when they’d come to the States to chase their dreams of success and freedom to worry about hers. Mary hoped that was true.

Mary sat at the dressing table where her ribbons, sewing box, stationery and other personal effects had been arranged. These little things were the only effort she’d made to bring any of herself into the room. She moved aside a small book of poetry and studied the letter she’d written on the fine paper beneath it. It was to her mother and father to let them know where she was living, but, try as she might to finish it, seal it and send it, she couldn’t. They’d stopped caring about where she was or what she was doing four years ago. The only one who cared was Jane. Her letters sat tied with a blue ribbon in the top drawer, her longing to see her sister again and share everything that had happened since they’d last been together dripping from each finely formed word. These letters were the only thing Mary ever received from her family, from the only family member who had cared enough to defy their father to correspond with Mary.

Mary took the thickest letter from Jane out of the drawer and opened it to read again about Jane’s wedding at St George’s London last year. Her sister described the cream satin of her dress, the fine lace of her train, the music, guests and every detail of the dishes served at the wedding breakfast. It was everything that would have been Mary’s if she hadn’t been so weak and stupid, if she’d followed her head instead of her heart. It was a mistake she would never make again.

The jingle of equipage and the snort of horses on the kerb outside drew Mary to the window. She pushed aside the curtain to see the black-lacquered top of Mr Fairclough’s carriage glistening with the carriage lamps affixed to the sides. The front door opened, spilling light into the street as Mr Fairclough crossed the pavement with sure, firm steps that made the edges of his cape flutter. His head was bent down, tilting his top hat at an angle of contemplation made obvious when he stopped outside the carriage door to raise a hand in goodbye to Richard. It was the same motion Mary had made when bidding the servants at Ruth’s cottage goodbye after Mary had overseen the packing up, selling and dispersing of Ruth’s things according to her will. The rest had been sent on to Richard to be absorbed into the various rooms of his house. Every once in a while Mary noticed them, pausing to think that they shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be here but in the London Jane described.

Fool. You were such a fool. She crumpled the letter and let a tear of anger and self-pity slip down her cheek before she roughly wiped it away. It all could have been different if she’d chosen better, but she hadn’t and it’d cost her everything: her family, her heart, her future, her life and all the things about it that she’d loved.

Mary watched Mr Fairclough climb into the carriage. She could see nothing of him through the dark window at the back, but if even one of his thoughts turned to her and what Richard had suggested she hoped it was favourable. The driver snapped the reins and the clop of the horse’s hooves echoed off the cobbles as the vehicle carried him away. She’d listened to Mr Fairclough tonight speaking in her native accent about ideas and prospects, the future and plans for himself and the business, and she’d been impressed. She wanted to be like him, to come from nothing and make something of herself. Marriage to a man of his standing and potential could help her achieve that goal. If she put as much effort into herself and this matter as he did his railroads, the future she’d once imagined for herself could be hers again. She would be a married woman, even if she knew very little about the man she was setting her sights on.

Not a difficult problem to rectify, she could hear Richard say, and it wasn’t.

She hadn’t been expected to marry for love when she’d come out in England. There was no reason to allow love to be the guiding force in a match here either. After all, her parents had supposedly loved her, but they hadn’t hesitated to cast her out of their lives. Preston had sworn to love her, but he’d abandoned her the moment he’d had the chance. Only Ruth had loved her and death had stolen her away, leaving Mary to grieve as deeply as she had in that dirty inn on the lonely road to Gretna Green. Mary refused to allow love to guide her or to shatter her or her world again. Her last attempt at marriage had been the wild imaginings of a lovesick girl struck dumb by infatuation. Her next marriage would be one of sense and rational thought, of a partnership with a man she respected who could make her a true lady once again.

Chapter Two

December 1842

‘Here you are.’ Silas dusted and dried the ink of his signature and handed it across the desk to Mr Hachman, his man of affairs. Outside his office door, and down the stairs, the whir of machines in the Baltimore Southern machine shop made a steady hum, broken now and again by the metal clink of hammers pounding steel into the parts and pieces needed to build and maintain a railroad. This machine shop was the first of what Silas hoped would be many to come. Soon they and numerous station houses would dot the landscapes of Baltimore and cities across the States, helping ferry people and the mass of goods entering Baltimore’s ports up and down the coast.

‘Congratulations, Mr Fairclough, on your first delivery of steel railway tracks from your, I mean the Baltimore Southern’s, new foundry.’ Mr Hachman collected the signed papers and slid them into his leather portfolio. ‘The regular deliveries will keep the men employed here and on the tracks busy for ages.’

‘Good, for there are a great many men in need of jobs.’ The country hadn’t entirely recovered after the panic of 1837 and with cotton prices still low, there were many men in need of work. Silas and his railroad would give it to them. He touched the signet ring on his left little finger. His father had once accused Silas of not possessing a charitable enough spirit, of being greedy and grasping, but he wasn’t; he simply pursued charity in a different manner than his father. After all, there was nothing wrong with helping one’s self while helping others. It didn’t all have to be privation. ‘We’ll dominate the American market and never have our progress hampered by the Atlantic Ocean or foreign politics again.’

‘It is a grand day, Mr Fairclough, and a grand future for you and Mr Jackson.’

‘All we need now is the new English engine to haul more goods and people over our freshly laid tracks.’

We also need Richard to remain well enough to see everything come to fruition.

Silas flicked a speck off the green-velvet blotter. The rattle in Richard’s lungs had grown worse with the cold weather. The ever-increasing progress of his disease was too much like the month the typhoid had crept through his family’s London neighbourhood while everyone waited to see if they or someone they loved developed the fever. The question for the Faircloughs had been answered when Silas’s father had fallen ill. The determination, energy and spirit that had carried his father through a hundred difficulties with the Foundation hadn’t been enough to fight off the disease and he’d passed, leaving so much for Silas to carry, just as Richard would. Silas swivelled his chair around to peer out the large window behind him at the packed dirt of the Baltimore Southern rail yard. The landscape was made starker by the grey clouds hanging low in the sky and the bare trees dotting the edge of the property. He was prepared to take over the management of the railway, but he didn’t want it in this manner just as he hadn’t wanted his father to die. He wouldn’t disappoint Richard in the end the way he’d disappointed his father.

‘Mr Fairclough, there’s another matter of some concern that I must discuss with you,’ Mr Hachman said, halting Silas’s melancholy turn. ‘Our English solicitor called on your mother and was informed that the Fairclough Foundation has not received their usual monthly drafts for the last six months.’

‘How is that possible?’ Silas swivelled around to face his manager. ‘I personally sign those bank drafts and include a letter with them every month.’

‘I don’t know. This was all the solicitor sent concerning the matter.’ Mr Hachman removed a paper from his portfolio and handed it to Silas.

Silas read the man’s brief account of his conversation with Silas’s mother in October. He jumped to his feet, flinging the letter down on his desk. ‘This is two months old.’

‘It was sent by packet ship which was delayed in Liverpool while they waited for the hold to be filled.’

‘Given what we pay him to represent our interests in England, he should’ve had the wherewithal to send this by Cunard steamer.’

‘I’ve sent word that all future correspondence regarding any Baltimore Southern or Fairclough family business is to be sent the fastest way possible.’

‘But what about this?’ His stomach knotted at the prospect of his family going without or enduring financial straits due to this unexplained delay. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the foundry, he might have kept a better eye on the regular payments instead of leaving it to others. He could have stopped this problem before it had even become one.

‘I’ve received no follow-up correspondence since this letter. Our solicitor, having heard nothing from us, may have assumed the issue was resolved or is still waiting for additional instructions.’

‘I wonder why one of my sisters didn’t write to tell me there was a problem.’ They’d never been shy about describing the most trivial details of their lives and delighting over any description of his, cheering him on from afar. He had no idea what his mother thought of his life in America. The few letters she’d sent to him over the years had been terse in regards to whatever business had forced her to break her missive silence. He couldn’t blame her for not putting pen to paper more often. He hadn’t given her a great deal of reason to write to him when he’d left England.

‘I can’t say, sir, but if you have any other channels through which to investigate the matter, I suggest you employ them.’

‘I’ll send a letter to Lady Alexandra, my father’s cousin. She’s on good terms with my mother. If they’re in trouble she’ll know about it. Arrange for a bank draft to include with the letter. I want it sent by steamer immediately.’

‘Yes, Mr Fairclough.’ The man clapped closed his leather folder, collected his things and left.