Chapter 16 #3
Marian bit her lip. “It would be a shame to give up now. We’ve made so many connections to help us get started. Maybe there’s some other way to get the funds. Or we could partner with an established brewery. Invest what you have to help someone expand their own business and bring us on to help.”
“That wasn’t what you wanted.”
“Plans change. I wanted Grandpa to give me a chance to prove myself instead of turning the family business over to Jack, but I had to make another place for myself when he didn’t agree. Maybe I can still do that, even if it wouldn’t be my first choice. And that way you could come with us.”
A sharp rap at the door interrupted them. James, no doubt, though it hadn’t been an hour. Maybe his head had cooled as quickly as Silas’s once there was no one to argue with.
“I’ll go,” Silas offered. He would try to make peace.
But it wasn’t James at the door; it was the Williams’s coachman. What was he doing here? Had he brought Hannah? More importantly, was she here to apologize or to deliver his money?
“Madame invites you to join her for a carriage ride, sir.” The coachman motioned Silas outside and he followed quickly, pausing only long enough to shout a hasty warning to Marian that he would be back in a minute.
His heart was pounding. Hannah wouldn’t have come all this way if she was still angry with him, surely. Which must mean she’d realized her mistake and wanted to make amends.
The coachman opened the door and Silas stepped inside, barely able to suppress a smile.
He was going to remind Hannah exactly why they fit together so well.
By the time he was done with her, she’d be moaning his name in between her apologies for treating him like a bit of rubbish she could cast off when she was—
“Good morning, Mr. Corbyn.” Mrs. Williams sat on the seat opposite his, her gray-streaked hair pulled back into a severe bun, her dress buttoned up to her throat.
Not her!
Silas physically recoiled. He’d been three seconds away from kissing her, before he realized who it was.
Mrs. Williams raised an eyebrow at his reaction.
“You were expecting someone else?”
“Uh…” Probably safer not to answer that.
Silas glanced at the door, measuring his chances of ducking back out before the woman could speak again. They were slim, as the coachman had already shut the door and they were lurching down the street.
He squared his shoulders and prepared to face the firing squad.
“I trust you’re well this morning?” she asked.
A trap. It must be a trap. There was no chance she’d come here to explain pleasantries.
“Well enough,” he answered warily.
“Yes. I suppose it was a difficult evening for all of us.” Mrs. Williams dropped her gaze to her lap.
What was going on? He’d thought she would have raked him over the coals by now for ruining her daughter’s hopes at marriage, but Mrs. Williams couldn’t even seem to look him in the eye.
“Are—are you well?” he asked. The question felt unnatural. Their roles would never have allowed it before. But something had changed between them. Where she might once have scolded him, Mrs. Williams had turned meek. Hesitant.
Sure enough, she sat mute for a long moment before she answered, “I don’t suppose I am.”
Silas had never been more lost in all his life.
A few days ago, he would have taken a certain satisfaction in anything that knocked Mrs. Williams down a peg. But seeing how she was treated by her own husband last night had sucked the wind from his sails. She looked so diminished that it was impossible to wish her any harm.
“I can’t imagine what you must think of us.” She addressed this misgiving to Silas’s midsection rather than to his face. “We aren’t normally like that, you know. At least—” She seemed to want to say more, but finally judged it unwise.
“I understand,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t judge you or your children by the conduct of anyone else.”
“I hope you won’t repeat the tale of what happened.”
“Of course not.” This seemed to reassure her. Was that why she’d come? To forestall any gossip about the state of her marriage?
“When I think of how I acted so superior to you when I can’t even keep my own family in order…” Mrs. Williams finally found the courage to look him in the eye, though she was blushing furiously. “I’m ashamed of myself, Mr. Corbyn. I owe you an apology.”
This must be a dream. The real Mrs. Williams would never apologize. She wrapped herself in rules like a suit of armor, shielded from any possible wrongdoing.
“Thank you.” Silas spoke very slowly. Any minute now the other shoe was sure to drop.
“I want you to understand, I was only trying to protect my daughter. After the way you two met, I assumed the worst. I didn’t want Hannah to make a mistake she might regret for the rest of her life.”
The same mistake you did. Though Mrs. Williams left the words unspoken, the comparison was obvious.
She probably wasn’t too far off the mark either. Though Silas would never treat Hannah the way her father did her mother, by any other standard he must be a poor match for the daughter of a gentleman. Even Hannah knew it, or else she would have stopped him from leaving last night.
Still, it was good of Mrs. Williams to see him off with kindness.
He hadn’t expected them to become friends before he reached the end of his time with this family.
Well, not friends, exactly. More like acquaintances sharing a guarded truce.
Whatever they were, it was a sharp improvement from the way they’d begun.
“I see things differently now,” she continued. “You’re the best match for Hannah.”
“I under— Wait, beg pardon?”
Mrs. Williams kept right on speaking, heedless of his surprise.
“At first I thought that this might be some ruse she’d concocted.
It wouldn’t be the first time she tried to lie her way out of a match.
You should have heard the story she fed poor Mr. Brown about being a Chartist, when he was still trying to court her.
But seeing the two of you together, especially after last night—”
“You…approve of the way I behaved last night?” He wasn’t sure which surprised him more: the fact that Mrs. Williams had been onto their game from the start, or the fact that her mind had been changed by the very conflict that had ended things.
“Don’t interrupt, please.” Her scolding, while familiar, was gentler than before. “I understand you better. I know I can trust you to treat Hannah properly, if you were that upset at how Mr. Williams treated me. It showed me that you’re a good man, Mr. Corbyn.”
The acknowledgment was so unexpected that Silas was speechless.
“No one has ever stood up to him before,” Mrs. Williams said softly. “No one has ever defended me either.”
“My father was like your husband.” Silas found the words slipping out of him without conscious intention.
What was he doing, spilling his story to Mrs. Williams?
This carriage ride felt like a strange dream.
“Is, I should say. He’s still alive, though I don’t know that I’ll ever see him again.
He made it clear that I stopped being his son the day I got myself discharged. ”
Mrs. Williams looked at him with real regret. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t miss him,” Silas lied. He wished it were true, which made it almost not a lie at all. “But I do miss my mother. She doesn’t have the courage to go behind his back. If she were a little more like you, she might not have let him decide matters for the whole family.”
“It took me twenty-seven years to stand on my own,” Mrs. Williams acknowledged.
“Maybe one day your mother will be able to do the same. But until then”—she reached across the carriage and took his hand into hers—“if you don’t think it’s too silly of me to say this, I’ll be your family once you marry Hannah.
I know we didn’t get off to a good start, but I think I could do better now that I know what sort of man you really are. ”
It should have seemed silly. He was twenty-four, long past the age of needing a mother at all. But he found her little speech strangely touching.
Except for the part about Hannah marrying him.
“It’s impossible now,” Silas pointed out. “You heard your husband. He’ll never consent to the match.”
“No need to worry about that. I can deal with Mr. Williams.”
“How?” He couldn’t let Mrs. Williams suffer for this favor, if it would mean putting herself in his crosshairs.
“I have my ways,” she replied. “Hannah’s dowry is settled on her under the terms of my marriage contract, so he can’t withhold it to punish her.
And if it’s an objection you’re worried about, trust that I can apply a little pressure to prevent him from embarrassing you on the wedding day.
There was a very shocking story in the papers just this morning about a viscountess who’s divorcing her husband.
I might hint that I could do something similar if he proves too difficult.
I won’t really, of course, but Mr. Williams doesn’t need to know that. ”
She said it so matter-of-factly, it made Silas reassess the assumptions he’d made last night. Mr. Williams might be a petty tyrant, but his wife wasn’t broken.
But even her plotting wouldn’t be enough. They hadn’t addressed the most important thing.
“I’m grateful,” he said, truly meaning it, “but Hannah won’t have me now. She was insulted by my conduct last night. Nothing you do will change her mind.”
“How can you say that?” Mrs. Williams puffed up to something like her former self.
Indignation was a powerful restorative. “If she was determined to marry you despite all my protests, she won’t be put off by a little scuffle with her father.
You must have some faith, Mr. Corbyn. And besides that, you shall also have my help. ”
Silas couldn’t stop himself; he began to laugh. What an absurd turn of fortune this was, to go from conspiring with Hannah to trick her mother, to conspiring with her mother to persuade Hannah.
“I don’t think it will be so easy. She’s headstrong.”
“No more of this!” Mrs. Williams used her fan to swat at him lightly. “I won’t hear any more complaints. I shall speak to Hannah today, and we shall keep to our original plans. You’ll be married as soon as the last banns are read this Sunday.”
But she doesn’t want to marry me. She doesn’t want to be married at all.
Hannah had never once expressed a change of heart. She might share an undeniable attraction to Silas, but if she’d wanted him for more than that, she would have come herself.
The sensible thing to do would be to refuse Mrs. Williams and send her on her way. Forget Hannah forever. Silas had learned by now not to reach above his station, no matter how tempting it had been to believe that he could fit into her world.
But he couldn’t seem to do it. If there was a chance that Hannah could really be his, didn’t Silas owe it to himself to try?
He’d never met anyone like her before. He’d never known a woman who had such an exceptional mix of determination and gentleness, who’d seen him for who he was instead of who others had judged him to be. He wasn’t ready to give up yet.
If he didn’t try, Silas would always look back at this moment and wonder how things might have been different.
“All right.” It wasn’t as though anyone was forcing Hannah to marry him. She could say yes or no as she liked, but he wasn’t slinking quietly off into the shadows. “Let’s plan a wedding.”